more like wyatt looks like a kewpie doll, even without the photoshopping.

our friend cassie thinks tom might look a little bit like a kewpie doll. what do you think? (who else remembers kewpie dolls?)

what have i been doing? reading other people's blogs. it's so fun to have links to other interesting and artisitic stuff.
oh, and playing with wyatt. we pulled out the lincoln logs the other day. they're real wood. i want to put the whole set together, but he's not really into building. more breaking. so i had to hold my breath and count to ten when he destroyed the awesome tower i built over the train tracks, or when he tried to put the cowboy inside the bank and wrecked that too. maybe i'll build it while he's sleeping...

if you're looking for a really good blog, present company excluded, visit this one. this is my former co-worker, still good friend, and if she doesn't make you laugh out loud you don't have a funny bone. also, if you need a little touch up work done, she's the master. she taught me everything i know. (and i'm not talking about liposuction or breast aumentation)

$o.o1

the price of stamps went up again. i think the last time this happened was when tom and i got married. we sent out all these thank-yous but had to have the extra one cent stamp to add to the already purchased stamps. so now they're offering the forever stamp. you buy it for 41 cents and it will always be good, even when the postal service raises the prices again (and they will.) i listened to 'wad'ya know' on npr saturday and michael feldman said if it really is a "forever" stamp then you should be able to reuse it too. so if someone sends you a letter you should cut it out and either give it back to them or use it the next time you send a letter. i like this idea, except for the fact that we hardly ever get any mail with real stamps and right now i'm sending out baby announcements (yes she is already three months old, but in the grand scheme that's not that old). so it's off to the post office to get some one cent stamps, and maybe some forever stamps. check a mailbox near you. i dare you to reuse it.

sidenote: do you call him the postman or the mailman? (and no jokes about calling him "dad")

so i changed the background (again) because i forgot i left it on that white and ick, that's not very appealing, is it? but check out this header. is that a grape? olive? some type of leaf that has food attached to it? surely they're associated with food...maybe i should change the name of the blog to foodfoodfoodilovefoodilovetoeat.blogspot.com

you're wondering where i've been. did you look for me in the kitchen? it's been a rough two weeks and there's one more to go. and i will be honest, dear reader, i've fallen off the wagon. a week ago i realized i had become a maniac and decided to save my husband and children and start eating what america eats. cheese. and bread. and sometimes fruit with my meat. and it tastes good. it was gradual, this easing out of the cleanse, like i had my back to the door and while graciously bowing, i scooted out.

tom meanwhile still endures the cleanse, eating strictly according to the schedule and menu. that menu is created by me and is one of the reasons why i was crazy. grilling lunch, grilling dinner. chopping peppers for lunch. chopping onions for dinner. peeling and slicing carrots for a snack. going to the grocery store every three days. closing my eyes as the long-haired cashier at whole foods tells me the total. thanking the lord that sam's club offers organic salad in bulk. and in a container made of corn.

was cooking really what drove me to madness? no, not just the time in the kitchen, or the heat of the grill on muggy days. it was the money. and the lack of variety. and the fact that if we were in a time crunch, we really couldn't go out to eat, and certainly not fast food. how does a family function if mom is a wreck?

i'm not too proud to tell you that a lack of will and discipline was involved. i can omit sugar for a time. i can omit cheese for a time. i can omit carbs (nevermind they're sugar too) for a time. i can even omit sauces. but all these things at the same time? and then limiting my protein portions (don't worry, i upped it for the baby's sake). being allowed to eat as many veggies as i want doesn't really make up for all the other stuff.

surely i learned something from my week of "cleansing".

things i learned while not eating whatever i want whenever i want, by leah blake
1) i like food
a) i like to cook food
b) i like to eat food
c) i like to give food as a gift

2) i am not a scheduled person
a) breakfast, lunch and dinner always come first for wyatt
b)breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, second lunch, dinner and second dinner for cassidy always take priority over my stomach
c) tom gets to eat when i eat, unless it involves granola or eggs

3) beets are not scary
a) i know where the term "beet red" comes from
b) you can grill beets or bake beets and they're good
c) they're kind of like potatoes
d) if i were into textiles i'd use them a lot to dye things

4) i do not like lamb, sam i amb

a) not ground

b) not leg

5) larabars are amazing
a) fruit and nuts, what's not to love?
b) soy free, gluten free, dairy free, no gmo, no added sugar, unprocessed, raw, and kosher
c) you can buy them at sam's for less than $1.oo

6) eggs are better with cheese and butter
a) tom likes them with a side of potatoes
b) i like them with a side of toast
c) we both like them with a side of bacon

7) the grill is my friend
a) not much clean up
b) fast cooking
c) you can put anything on it

in short (don't you love it when people say that at the end of a long monologue?) i'm not on the cleanse any more and i'm really excited for tom and the other 7 people who are on it to be finished so we can eat cinnamon rolls and drink coffee. yum.

this is so sad but i just saw a really well-taken photograph of someone wearing a jean jacket with a hoodie underneath and jeans and i thought, i wish it were cool outside. didn't we just leave winter?

day three

all part of a complete breakfast. it's really hard when you wake up saturday morning and all you want to do is scramble some eggs, fry some bacon and drown your pancakes in sweet, sweet syrup and then you remember, i get to drink a shake this morning. 18 days left and i'm hungry. really the shakes aren't too bad. you add a supplement powder and a fiber powder and some oil to water and frozen fruit and you've got yourself some kind of smoothie. it's nothing to complain about. it's quite filling and once you add pineapple to anything it tastes nice. it's the lack of real food in the morning. no spoon, no fork. oh i forgot to mention but definitel no coffee. i repeat: NO COFFEE. we've got some broadway coffee sitting on the shelf, as well as some allegro coffee from whole foods, both birthday presents for tom. the timing was off a little bit on his 30th, that's for sure. now when i open the cupboard for a glass to pour my shake into i get a waft of luna in whole bean form. what am i learning from all of this? i miss cooking. i miss that complete meal with the right beverage and side and dessert. oh dessert. not that we aren't eating. just not very much. more on that later. (they say your energy increases on this thing but i have yet to enjoy that benefit.) with heavy eyes i'll dream of cinnamon rolls and black coffee...i shouldn't even joke like that.

day one

7 pills + 3 times a day = 21 stinky pills
they'll clean you out one way or the other

for unka jo

we serve up cute little burritos and tons of tortilla chips, so come on over... take that christiano ronaldo...this is what cute looks like with its shirt off...
so then the fish said to the seahorse...

the day i forgot

i'm in the midst of it, so i'm not going to forget it. yet. while wyatt is on the accelorated track for cuteness, his words are slow in understanding. he'll talk for hours but only he knows what he's saying. today he reached into the suitcase of toys and said "BALL" and lo-and-behold he pulled out the soccer ball! huzzah!

he says "atchoo" when i sneeze; in a semi-reckognizable way he says "what's this"; and is starting to say "sis" i guess. i think he might be saying "Jesus" a lot, so maybe he's already learning how to talk with the messiah. nice. but today was remarkable because he said it on his own and then produced the ball.

woodpecker
we have a beak-challenged woodpecker banging on our sun porch. it's not wood. at all. there are no termites living inside. it makes a very loud noise when he bangs on it and i think he'll eventually suffer a bent beak if he doesn't stop.

joe
he sent me pictures of his czech girlfriend, iva, and she's a looker. those darn skinny europeans.

food
the cleanse starts tomorrow. that means we're eating uber-healthy. no carbs, no fun. i won't be baking for 21 days. we'll see what that does with my free time.

stay tuned for some bathtub photos. if i can figure out video on this blog there may be some of that, too.

i promise

we're alive here, and kicking for that matter. just a little under the weather and recovering from the pre-birthday, birthday and post-birthday gatherings. yup, he's thirty. 30. three-zero.

oh, and the wizards won their first game, on the road at rfk. kc-4, dc-2. our new pick-up michael harrington showed us he's a starter and good ol' sasha showed us he's still got it.

my competition

happy 60th birthday emmylou (i know there are prettier pictures of emmylou, but this one is with a dog and who doesn't love dogs as much as their favorite country singer?)

a-1 trash man

it amazes me how fast wyatt's moods change. this morning started off rocky and i offered to trade places with tom. he's spraying a house today and thankfully he didn't take me up on my offer. an hour after wyatt's crabby breakfast episode the trash man comes and wyatt is enthralled. he crouches down to look out the window as the a-1 guy throws the bags into the truck. when the lever lifts the trash can, well that's the icing on the cake. and then usually there's a cute wave from the trash guy and wyatt just stares. maybe he's thinking, one day i want to do that...maybe he's thinking, thank you for taking my stinky diapers. whatever he's thinking, he looks darn cute while doing it.

k-who?

wyatt just barely fit into this get-up for the tournament, but it really doesn't matter, does it?

uncle joe

this is wyatt on the tail-end of being sick. i'd like to think that he was crabby because of said sickness, however, i think it has more to do with the fact that he does not remember the last time he saw joe (he was only 9 months, i think). he thought joe was hilarious, but only at a distance. when joe got his paws on wyatt i thought the world was going to fall apart...maybe next time wyatt will be more polite when his uncle comes to the states.

i almost forgot...

wyatt puked on brooks' foot, too. that makes everyone a victim of the vomit, except yuma. lucky dog.

in the last five days i've:

had both babies poop on me in the same day
watched wyatt projectile vomit while sitting on tom's lap
bathed wyatt at least 6 times in one day
washed wyatt's sheets a dozen times
reswaddled cassidy in the middle of the night more times than i care to count
gagged because of my son's poop
thrown up myself
rinsed some form of excrement out of every member of our family's clothes (except yuma's?)
listened to wyatt cry more than i thought was possible
watched wyatt eat a banana while dancing while sitting on tom's lap
let wyatt watch television (9pm and nacho libre was on...harmless, right?)
slept and not slept
asked for God's mercy multiple times every day

having sick babies is the pits.

look at the size of that mellon

um, where is cassidy, luke?

who are these people and why do they look like they're going to eat my daughter???