making lunch for three...

Here is a list of the things I learned, perhaps not for the first time, while cooking lunch today:

1) Holding your baby is not advisable while cooking food.

2) If necessity demands it (which for me, it nearly always does) just put the baby in your sling, leaving you two free hands to cook.

3) If your baby is frantically trying to escape the sling, it will be necessary for you to hold her in with one arm and try to keep the masala sauce from permanently burning onto the pan with the other.

4) If, at this point, your three-year old tries to take control of the situation by squeezing herself between you and the stove and yelling, "Mo-om, put Eden down!", you might benefit by taking her advise.

5) If, instead, you decide to persist because you're tired of everyone else being right about everything and you just want to get lunch made because its approaching 3 o'clock and all you managed to slam for breakfast was a handful of Joe's O's and some spiked coffee and you're beginning to feel the more unpleasant symptoms of hypoglycemia, which include uncontrollable anger, be advised that your yelling will probably upset your toddler enough that there's no way she's going to eat the food you're preparing.

6) And finally, if by all your one-handed efforts, some masala sauce winds up dripping down the side of the pan, please remember amid all the distraction of two disgruntled children that no matter how good it smells, licking the sauce off the side of the hot pan will not yield the flavor sensation you were hoping for.

Corey Feldman by any other name...

My little baby Eden puts everything in her mouth.
As six-month olds go, this is fairly common. But li'l E kind of takes it to a whole other level. Obsessive. Por ejemplo, her first action after she slipped out of my womb was to try to eat the receiving blanket. Nowadays, with tongue hanging out, and with a feverish look in her eye she goes after shoes, keys, the floor, sunglasses, pinecones, framed pictures, the cat's tail, her sister's feet (look mom! Eden likes to eat my toes!) she can now inch her way over to the dog's bowl for a little munch on "Active Large Breed." Beyond that, if I haven't pinned her little arms inside the sling, she holds her arms out, hands open as I walk around, hoping to swipe something from somewhere we pass and slobber it up. Kind of like a sea anemone. Only she's the one moving around. Okay, so not really like a sea anemone, but whatever. The point is, I've thought for a while that "Mouth" would really suit as a nickname.
Not only is it appropriate, but kind of burly, which I like, and it would serve as a daily reminder of The Goonies and what is surely the performance of Corey Feldman's career.
I digress.

My point is, I know that despite my best efforts, “mouth” is not going to stick, but this brings me to the larger topic that is naming in general.
Alongside my amazement that we babymakers get to keep these eight-pound balls of helplessness without any sort of credential or training is my amusement at the name game. We get to decide what they will be called all their lives, for better or worse. Speaking of which, look who’s six!

So, my apologies to all you children who spend a large percentage of your young lives correcting people on the spelling and proper pronunciation of your moniker. (It’s m-o-r-d-e-c-a-i.) And again to all you Aragorns and Frodos and Aowens, whose nursery is decorated like Middle Earth. Maybe they got a little carried away.
Good thing we didn’t have a boy to call John Wayne Jones.

monday funnies

Dysplastic Fantastic

It was only a matter of time...

Stella, the canine representative of the JLF, is going under the knife on Wednesday.

She acquired a disheartening limp when she was about six months old and after numerous examinations, shark cartilage shots, x-rays, and a trip to a specialist in Mill Valley (ouch!) we found out she has elbow dysplasia. Yeah, they can get it in their elbows, too.

Pobrecita.

Since then, and she's two-&-a-half now, Stella's been on daily painkillers (.75/each, you can do the math) and supplements to try and delay the inevitable. Although it looks like a normal elbow, there's a little bone chip floating around in it, causing a physical limp for her and a financial one for us.

Oh Stella B., you damned Rottweiler.

Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Write Them

Who are all these people?
Who reads these things?
How did I get here?
Why am I asking you?

Let me first kick off this bad motor scooter by saying that I don't know what the word "blog" means. I assume it's some sort of acronym, perhaps two words that got combined. No matter, really, I mention this for only two reasons: 1) in the hopes that I will be inundated with responses from all the people who do know what it means, which will prove to me that someone reads this; and 2) to serve as a warning that this and all subsequent posts here at Domestic Gold are the workings of a backwoods amateur.
Maybe someday there will be music, maybe videos, if I ever figure out how that works. But for now, just ramblings. More often than not, the subject will be one or the other or both of my daughters, since I hang out with them the most. And because they're cute. Like really cute.