spicetart

Get Down, Baby!

Ivy has figured out that when music comes on, you shake your booty.  She bends her knees, up and down, no hip action yet, not entirely unlike her father, but she knows when that music plays, she better get to shakin'.  This is a new development, but I have been working on it for a while.  When any music plays (that counts the music the highchair toy makes), I start dancing and tell her that music means dancing.  This child WILL grow up gettin' down.  Unfortunately when we ventured to Ruby Skye for Baby Loves Disco last month, she had not yet aquired this skill, so I had to do all the dancing for her (and with a Sophia Mini in me, I was ready to rock).

Mostly she looked around without smiling, showed off her navel to all the other babies and ate cheese.  Baby steps, mom, baby steps.

Olives

It's that time of year, Olive time!  Sort of like Hammer time, but without the parachute pants and house foreclosures.  I have a baaaad feeling about this batch of olives.  The first time I made olives was back in 2003 in Santa Monica, and I confess that I used lye in the initial curing phase.  Boy, it really did the trick, and soon after the water ran clear, I brined them then ate them and they actually didn't totally suck.  Funny, because I don't even really like olives all that much, I just wanted to see how to make them. 

So when I saw a bunch of green and purplish Manzanillas at the SF Farmer's Market, I decided to have another go at olive curing.  Sadly, my baby addled brain sort of forgot about them for a few days and I lost about a third to the elements.  I decided to go the non-lye curing route this time, so on the advice of several websites, I whacked the olives with a rolling pin to help the water get into the center of the olive so that the yucky, bitter glucoside would be extracted easier.  I may have banged some of the olives too hard (snort) cause after a week in water they were looking pretty damaged.  Oops.

But carry on I did, after a week in water being changed daily, into a brine they went.  The green got salt, white vinegar, lemon, garlic and rosemary, and the purple got red wine vinegar, cumin, coriander, black pepper and oregano.  I have no idea if that was a good choice.

What's the worse that could happen?

Getting away.

So I got away, away from it all, for 2 whole days.  No baby, no husband, no cooking or cleaning, no more teacher's dirty looks.  And AND I was a the spa for 6 hours.  6 HOURS PEOPLE!!! 

Plus, it was mostly paid for by my POW (Place Of Work).  Booyah!!  I actually was there because my boss was moving out of a position he had held for a year (my boss rocks by the way, he totally is awesome and rocks and I love him), which means that hopefully we will get a bit more of his time and attention.  This is a man that does 30 hours of work in 16 hours, I have no idea how he manages to do it all but I admire his drive.

Anyhoo, the weekend was a success, especially the Spanish herbal salt wrap and the Sage oil hair mask.  Yee haw.  But could I sleep in? No. No, of course not.  Up at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, 6:30, you get the picture.  Sleep is forever ruined. *sigh*

Baby, mom and dad all survived the weekend, hopefully that means many more spa vacations to come.

Halloween

Ok, so don't buy your kid's Halloween costume 2 months before Halloween.  The lobster costume was cute but it was too small and she hated that she couldn't crawl or walk in it.  So she just cried.

Last minute I found a cowgirl costume that was just too cute (yes, she looks like a boy, but cowgirls don't wear pink).  And she could crawl and stand like normal so it was a hit.