mamajoan

( cooking )

Ruthie and Chubby are formulating an interesting love-hate sort of relationship. Ruthie is SO excited that we have a kitty ("ditty") in the house. She talks about him constantly, e.g. at daycare pickup: "we go home and see da ditty!" and every few minutes "I go see what Tubby doin'!" and first thing upon waking up each morning "Where da ditty?" He spends most of his time hiding either under Ruthie's bed or in the closet in the kids' room; and Ruthie spends WAY too much time trying to get at him. When he's under the bed she crouches on the floor looking in at him and making meowing noises at the top of her lungs. When he's in the closet she tries to get to him (there's a lot of random stuff in the way) going "Hi ditty! Meow! Hi!" and patting at him.

Amazingly, she has yet to be scratched or bitten. Really, she's quite gentle when she actually does get her hands on him -- she just doesn't move slowly enough or speak quietly enough to keep from alarming him. ;)

BUT!!! -- he does come out, especially at night when we're lying down in Ruthie's bed to put her to sleep. He comes out and meows, and sometimes jumps up on her bed to look for petting. Usually I end up shutting him out of the room because having him around keeps Ruthie from being able to fall asleep. But the other night he came on the bed and lay down between us while Ruthie was nursing, and she was sleepy enough by that point that she didn't bolt upright; she just lay there and continued nursing and petted Chubby softly and he put his paw gently on her arm, and she went to sleep. So that was nice. And he has started coming around more often while she's there -- usually looking for petting from me, and tolerating some attention from Ruthie until she gets too excited and then he bolts. ;) Still, it's good progress. Yesterday he came up on the bed while I was changing Ruthie's diaper on it, and she was wiggling all over the place. He even held still for a few seconds of smothering (Ruthie basically draping her entire upper body on his head/neck, her version of a hug) before he fled. ;)

And several times lately we've found Chubby sleeping on, rather than under, Ruthie's bed. So I can see the beginnings of a beautiful friendship forming between them, which is nice.

Ruthie will now occasionally, once in a while, say "Isaac" instead of "ah-goo." It sounds so bizarre and wrong coming out of her! And it makes me kinda sad. I'll miss "ah-goo." On a related note, we've been reading Isaac's book The Night Before Kindergarten and I've been having difficulty explaining to him why the parents are crying when their kids are having fun on the first day of kindergarten. "Their noses, so sniffly! Their eyes red and wet!" says the book. "Why are they crying?" says Isaac. "Uh...they're sad because they have to leave their kids and go to work," say I, lamely. I suck. ;)

ok, time to run, more later

Yeah, so, when I agreed to adopt/foster a new kitty, I conveniently managed to forget about the part where kitties keep you up half the night... *groan*

On the bright side, Chubby is definitely warming up to us! LOL.

I had a really hard time getting Ruthie to sleep last night. I decided to do a slightly early bedtime because Isaac was super-cranky, throwing screaming sobbing tantrums (complete with adolescent-esque "You never listen to me!!") and I realized that he was tired. Bedtimes have been creeping later and later since it stays light outside later, and we've been getting up early, so he's been losing out on some sleep.

So I got us to bed about 20 minutes earlier than usual, but Ruthie just could NOT fall asleep. At one point I thought she was close and I had to get a break, so I told her I'd be right back, and went into the living room. It was very quiet for about 5-10 minutes and then suddenly she started sobbing loudly. I went back into the bedroom and sat down on her bed, and she said, "I NOT YIKE THE WIPERS!!" O.o So I womanfully refrained from LOLing ;) and took her out to the living room to sit on the couch. Then I think she might have nursed to sleep, except that Chubby came along all "oh, I see you are sitting on the couch, this must mean that I can haz petting now!" and Ruthie woke right up. *facepalm* So there ensued about a half-hour of meowing and "Dat a kitty! Whass dat? Dat a kitty! He say meow! Meow! MEOW! Da kitty say meow! His name Chubby! Whass dat? Dat a kitty!" Groan!!

Finally I took Ruthie back into the bedroom, restarted the CD, and again lay down to nurse her on the bed. Chubby continued to make himself known but I petted him with one hand to keep him quiet while bracing myself on the bed with the other; and at last Ruthie fell asleep. Whew.

Then I had to go watch the rest of the wild, ridiculous Sox game; and then I tried to go to sleep, but Chubby made himself obnoxious again. We had the paws in the face, the meowing, etc., etc....climbing all over me in bed, snuggling me for a moment, then jumping up to check out another part of the bed, etc....

I must have fallen asleep eventually, though. And I slept right through Ruthie coming into my bed again, because the next thing I knew it was about 5am and Ruthie was snuggled up with me and Chubby was rustling some papers on my bookshelf. So I sat up and stage-whispered loudly at him to stop it, and he popped out from a pile of papers and meowed all like "what? who, me? what'd I do?" and I was like, "hush!" And I lay back down very carefully, checking to make sure Ruthie was still asleep...and she was...but then as I settled back down next to her, she said, "Meow!" and I was like, oh crap. But she wasn't waking up! She said "meow" in her sleep. LOL!!!!!!

Anyway, long story short, Chubby is making himself right at home. ;) Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that he's getting comfortable enough with me to come on my bed with me, and with Ruthie to not flee as soon as he spots her. I just hope he'll let me get some sleep in the very near future. sigh.

( Pictures of Chubby behind the cut )

As you can see, he really isn't chubby at all. I'm thinking of renaming him if the people we got him from don't object.

In other news, this morning I went to register Isaac for afterschool, which turned into a bit of a "thing" because as it turns out the flyer had the wrong date; registration for kindergarteners isn't supposed to start till Monday. But the woman took my application anyway, and it seemed clear that I wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last parent coming in that day. I don't envy that woman the day she'll have had today.

I also noticed that according to my income and household size, I just barely miss the cutoff for a sliding-scale afterschool rate of $99/week instead of $115/week. Ah well. It'll still be a nice big jump down from the $220 that I currently pay for Isaac's preschool.

Today I decided to work from home in order to keep Chubby company and hopefully let him get used to me. I had to go to the office for a morning meeting and to get my laptop, so I got back home around 11:30. I found him hiding in a different spot, which I guess is progress, lol, but he hasn't come out to see me since I've been here. Last night after the kids were asleep and all was dark and quiet, he did come out for some scritching and rubbed his face on some of the furniture and me, so that's progress too. And at some point in the night he jumped up onto my bed, then fled when I lifted my head to look at him. heh.

I haven't been doing much cooking worthy of note lately, but I do have a few updates. I just looked back at my 2008recipes tag and realized that I never posted my second lentil experiment from a couple of weeks ago. I can't recall too much of the details except that it involved green rather than red lentils, and whole-wheat elbow noodles, and zucchini, and curry powder. And it was very tasty, although I decided that I like red lentils better than green. Anyway, I'll call that #34.

#35 was this weekend and was muffins from the recipe I usually make, except that this time instead of the milk I used orange juice, and I substituted applesauce for half of the oil, and added lots of cinnamon. So they came out quite fruity, which was nice. I brought them to the pot-luck yesterday at the home of one of Isaac's preschool friends. And I realized afterward that they were actually vegan! It kind of makes me LOL when something I cook winds up being vegan "by accident."

#36 was a new bread recipe that I made last night, out of Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. This is called "Sandwich Bread," using the whole-wheat variation, half white flour and half whole-wheat flour. I also proofed the yeast before adding it, which I had never done before. The recipe uses over a cup of milk (the other bread recipe I've been making lately uses a cup of water and just a couple tablespoons of milk) which I guess contributes in part to the fluffiness. Anyway, I was highly skeptical because the dough was SO sticky, but it actually turned out GREAT! It rose a lot (perhaps due to the proofing?) and has a really nice texture and flavor. The book said that the whole-wheat variation would not be fluffy, but I sure didn't find that to be the case. I might have to consider making this my new bread recipe, except that the stickiness issue makes it more difficult to whip together while the kids are playing like I do with the other one. But we'll see.

Anyway, that's the cooking update for the moment. Our CSA will be starting up again next week (yay!) so I'll probably start having lots more recipe updates after that. What do you think are the odds that I can convince the kids to eat kale? ;)