DATING MY HUSBAND

About a month ago, while my mom was still here and available to babysit, the husband and I ran out for a quick dessert date, after which I concluded that I LOVE dessert dates, and decided to make this sort of thing a regular habit in our romantic lives. It’s wonderful because we don’t end up spending as much as we would on an entire meal out, we get to try the desserts at a restaurant, which we rarely do due to being stuffed with other foods, and a fancy cocktail, at that! Somehow our dessert date felt more like a date than a dinner date usually does. Maybe it’s because it’s an indulgence, out of the routine, but whatever it is, I like it. We went to Balliceaux, which is one of my favorite places to go in the fan area to feel fancy - they have good music and dancing on the weekends! the food is good! the atmosphere is both mod and cozy!

And because sometimes I like listing the things that we tried at a restaurant if they were impressive – blood orange sorbet, omg, thumbs up to the negroni, which was really strong. Grapefruit infusion? Rosemary syrup? I'm in.

The actual thing that I wanted to write here in the mood of a dear diary is that, ahem, “dear diary, I just went on a fabulous date with this amazing guy! He was attentive, clear-eyed, intelligent, and handsome. We had great conversation. I liked his olive green jacket and the way he let me take pictures of the sorbet before we ate it, even though it was melting. He made me laugh, looked at me, I mean really looked at me, and I felt close to him. I think I would definitely go out with him again!"

Ta-da! Here we are. These are the type of photos that we are going to look back on and be like, oh look! That's us on a date 6 months after we had a baby looking like we are pretty pleased with ourselves about having a baby in our lives but also excited to get away for an hour or two. ...

SLOANE AT 6 MONTHS

This post is long overdue, but long story short, the baby is well into her 6th month. I’ve been counting by weeks, counting 4 weeks as a month, theeeen I realized doing that would get Sloane to 12 months one month before her one year birth date. Which is just awkward and confusing for everyone. So I’m officially shifting to counting her age by months. Which means, this last post about this was baby at 5 months. Which means my wish that she would stay 6 months for a long time came true, kind of.  Anyways, heeerrree she is! 6 months.

^^^ Lately, she does this thing where she stares at you, hard, like she does, until you look over at her and then she breaks out into the biggest, widest, truest smile. When I am cooking and she is hanging out in her contraption thing, sometimes I look over and find that she is standing still, looking at me, waiting for me to turn around, and then she is all ‘HI MAMA!!!!’ not with words; with her face. When K. is around, she is often staring at him, waiting, and as soon as he looks back at her, it's sunshine on her face.

^^^ It always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when baby has been taking a nap, and she is laying somewhere where I can see her sleeping, and then get surprised when I look over at her again and her eyes are open and she is just quietly laying there, surveying her surroundings, nary a peep. Blink blink.

^^^ She is showing more will, and it is so funny to see this tiny person get all worked up in a huff because she wants more pureed mango. I guess she has no other way to communicate right now that she wants more, so it’s a lot of "eh eh eh eh eh eh."

^^^Watching her employ all sorts of tactics to try to get her hands on something out of reach is fascinating.

^^^The other day I was giving her a bath and she could not get enough of the thin rod of water coming down from the bathtub faucet. She fixated on trying to grab the rod with her hands and we both zoned out for a while, watching her tiny hands attempt to conquer water.

^^^When I drink a glass of water, she stares me down as if I am doing the most.fascinating.thing. Come to think of it, you can’t help get sort of an inflated sense of yourself, with this tiny creature always watching your every move as if you are doing something awesome. Like this morning, I was putting on my boots, and she could not get enough of it.

^^^If you stand her up and she has just eaten a good meal and is feeling particularly happy, she will do this sort of dance where she stamps her feet – left, right, left, right – with a bounce. A jig of sorts.

^^^She has started on solids, she likes it, and it makes me giddy to introduce her to a new food each week.  Also, I started to notice that when I tell her to “use your hands”, she grabs the spoon and complies. I, of course, declared her a genius on the spot.

^^^One tooth has emerged. It’s the middle one on the bottom, and she likes to clench her jaw with her one tooth and do a repetitive biting motion with her mouth.

^^^She is still utterly fascinated by Rusty. He is pretty unconcerned about her.

^^^I love holding her little hand.

WITH MY LITTLE EYE...

 this is my desktop wallpaper right now (source)

i cannot stop thinking about this passion fruit lime bavarian cake recipe, originally from the tartine bakery in san francisco. if i obsess long enough, i just might end up trying to make it (source) 

the postal service just released this song, "a tattered line of string" - their first since their "give up" album ten years ago. that album reminds me of senior year of college. this new song sounds so much like what they are about, it made me nostalgic, even while listening to it for the first time.

REFLECTIONS OF A SATURDAY MORNING LONG GONE BY

Life is a little overwhelming right now. It’s a blur, and I meant to post this in the middle of last week but, you know.

You know it’s bad when you can’t keep your eyes open on your drive to work and have to blast country music as loud as you can so that you don’t doze off. That is what is happening these days because the literal lyrics and easy melodies are doing it for my frazzled brain.

A lot of times I’m in the middle of preparing some food for the baby and I think to myself, I can’t believe my body and mind are still operating at this moment. I must have a reserve battery that has kicked in somewhere. Or maybe it’s that a giant hand comes down occasionally and winds me up. Or maybe it’s because I get to cuddle and kiss the cutest little dragon baby every morning and night?

It’s clear that Sloane doesn’t understand the concept of sleeping in when it’s the weekend. She’s up by 5 or 5:30AM these days, even on the weekends, which means I am too, and then she gets sleepy again by 9AM so sometimes I get to sneak in another hour of sleep. This past Saturday though, I decided we should get out of the house and put a dent in the long list of errands that I always end up having for the weekends. No scratch that, for life in general. It’s very possible that my entire life story these days could be told through the lists I make each day. Sleeping in might have been what the doctor ordered, but it was also unexpectedly kind of nice to be out and about at some of my favorite spots while it was still early on a weekend day, which meant that there was hardly anybody out. It was nice to walk through the quiet.

We visited a bookstore, which always puts a pep in my step, and I thought I might read a little with my coffee while the baby napped in the stroller but then she woke up and we just ended up taking pictures of her sleepy-i-just-woke-up face. It’s so much cheek and oh so serious. Also, she was like, ‘What IS this place?’ because visually, the bookstore and all its books and colors must seem like carnival for baby eyes. We also stopped by the baby store to get more baby feeding supplies, did some power walking up and down hills, and saw the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers at a local market.

What does it say about me that it is more important to me now to live near a good grocery store than a good restaurant/bar? Good things, I think.

 

Oh and if we are sharing about weekends gone by, why don't I sneak in some photos from the Sunday before this one just discussed? That was my mom's last weekend here and even though she was here for longer than usual, it was still sad to see her go, and i know how much i appreciate her and my dad being here this past winter.

we went to chicken fiesta for our last meal together and here is sloane after her nap  - serious face, happy face.

and isn't this last photo the best photo ever? this was what i found my mom and sloane doing when i came downstairs, the last morning of her stay here.

IF YOU NEED A LITTLE PICK-ME-UP...

FARMER'S MARKET IN DURHAM

I had all these words written up for this post but then I went, eh. I'm feeling a little bit like there is no gas left in my tank and I have been refusing to do the dishes that are piled up in the sink so waxing philosophical about the joy of people watching is not really reflective of my mood right now, even though they are true words.

I really need to cut my toe nails, I am relieved it is Friday, I like farmers markets, even in the winter.

VISITING DURHAM

I am definitely in a different kind of headspace these days. I do things like putting my hands behind my back while I’m at my desk at work and wonder how on earth I would do any work if I didn’t have any arms. It’s also been increasingly hard to leave baby to go to work, but that’s nothing new, or is it? because she is getting even cuter and more like a teeny tiny person than ever, and who knew it could be so satisfying to do things like feeding baby pureed organic green beans for the first time?

This past weekend, my mom, Sloane and I decided to do a quick trip to Durham, and it was only for a day and a half, but I will take what I can get, especially since it meant we got to take a peek (-a-boo) into my sister’s life and spend some time with her and her fellow. Sloane slept on the way down, and sat quietly like a little lady playing with her toy on her way back up.

Some things that happened during the weekend - the farmer’s market, an amazing pretzel from a food truck (melted smoked gouda mmm), lunch at watt’s grocery, consignment store shopping, the 'Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: the Cone Sisters collection' exhibit (i loved this), cooking dinner at home, good conversation, church, and brunch at Guglhupf.

And about the Matisse exhibit - my mom gets excited about Matisse, I get excited about Matisse – he’s probably one of my favorites - so maybe not that surprising that Sloane would be a fan and it delighted me to observe her checking out each of the paintings. Who knows what she sees exactly but it is my kind of wonderful to imagine what it looks like from her perspective. I loved how she fixed her eyes upon the large paintings and her eyes would go extra black. Also, we don’t know this for sure, but it seemed like Sloane would get especially excited about the paintings that had boobies in it. I guess also not surprising?