We beat the plague and celebrate (with a cow, too)

We're now at a full day with no fever (and 2 days without a high fever) and I'm feeling relieved at finally turning the corner.   Getting Maya back on solid food is likely to be a week long battle (as she's happily transitioned to a diet composed solely of milk, water, applesauce, yogurt & chocolate pudding), but at least the fever is gone and she's on the road to normal.

We celebrated with a fabulous feeling-better-and-it's-Mother's-Day-too! weekend . . .

Saturday . . .

We go to Stew Leonard's, which never disappoints.  This time they have some sort of kids club thing happeneing outside, complete with snacks, hand painting, and . . . a calf!

A baby cow?!

 I'm going to come get you, baby cow.

 True love.  Note the cow trying to lick Maya---I think the feeling is mutual. (Also, note my death grip---I've seen Maya's "gentle hands" with Parker, and was afraid she might try to love the cow to death.)

 I think she was debating a big kiss on the nose.

I'm going to kiss you!

One big snuggle for the road :)

We become the hand painter's favorite client of the day when I request . . .  not a princess, not Spongebob, not a tiger, but a white circle.  It's the moon.  Maya is obsessed with the moon (ever since we took her outside with friends back in March to see the "Super Moon").  

And on Saturday night I made a big fancy Mother's Day dinner.  It may have been one night early, but I was excited to splurge on nice food and spend some time in the kitchen after spening most of the week sick.   So I bought the food I wanted, the flowers I wanted, and the good local beer I wanted and made up a nice meal:

Why not take a picture of dinner?  This was steak, potatoes, bok choy, garlic green beans, and tomato/onion salad.  I didn't get a picture of the amazing dessert, but it was equally wonderful.

Sunday . . .

I went out shopping alone, and Dave & Maya went to the zoo.  While it was nice to have a little break from toddler mom duties, I quickly became a little lonely (and remembered that I hate shopping).  So I went home, grabbed Parker, my book, and an iced coffee, and laid out a blanket at the park instead.

That's much more my speed.

The afternoon brought trips to 2 different playgrounds, walking around the neighborhood, and take-out Thai food from my favorite local place. 

 Maya was delighted to find a stopped up, filled-with-muddy-sand water fountain at the second playground. 

 Hey, you!  Come here!  You've got to see this!

 Successfully dirtying other playground children.

She may have also had a grown-up partner in crime.

It was a perfect return-to-health/Mother's Day weekend :)

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there!  Especially to my mom (Maureen), sister (Lisa), mother-in-law (Helaine), and sisters-in-law (Anne, Laura, & Lori).

Clean, Play, Cook

1.  Operation Clean House is still in full effect here.  We just cleaned out the top shelves in the closet, which consisted of: unwearable old clothes, clothes with tags still on them, framed pictures that hung on the wall of our old apartment (yes, about 3.5 years ago).   Oh, and three bottles of colognes---different ones.  So we sprayed all of them to see if any smelled good (FYI, not the best idea to spray 3 bottles of men's cologne in an unventilated closet). 

2.  Here's a taste of our morning:  Maya, Parker & I hit the playground for a bit.  It's getting easier to manage both of them on my own at the playground, now that Parker is older and more obedient.  We have to adjust ( or avoid) depending on how crowded it is, but today he just hung out on the side while Maya climbed around.  He'll watch birds, and kids running by, without moving at all---but when people approach him or talk directly to him he'll get up to say hi---we're working on that.

3.  We finally got some ground beef---for the first time in months.  This ground beef is fresh (well, frozen, but whatever) from Lewis Waite Farm, a local farm that raises grass fed, grass finished beef.  It's certainly pricier than regular ground beef, but it looks better and smells better (like a LOT better) and is better for us.  And supports local (and responsible) agriculture, cuts down on fuel for transporting food cross country, etc. etc.  (If you're into food stuff/local stuff, some good reads are Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, or anything by Michael Pollan.  Or you could take the easier route and watch Food, Inc.  Everyone who buys or eats food should really check out that movie.)

Anyway, the ground beef pictured above was turned into meatloaves, which were cooked & frozen in slices.  (And although I find the name "meatloaf" kind of digusting, I swear it's really good.)  That's a whole bunch of easy lunches/dinners.  And I have a great meatloaf recipe----I think it came from Gourmet magazine . . . but I cheated with a few things (we don't need ground veal, so I just do ground beef for the full meat amount), so it's "Almost Gourmet" Meatloaf:

Ingredients:
2 lbs ground beef (or whatever meat or blend of meats you want)
1/4 cup minced green pepper
3/4 cup minced onion
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
2 tbl horseradish
1 tsp dijon mustard (or whatever mustard you have)
ketchup
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (or whatever breadcrumbs you have in a can)
2.5 tsp salt
pepper
4 slices bacon (uncooked.  I like to chop up a few more slices of bacon and add them into the mixture, too)

Instructions: Combine everything except for the bacon slices.  Knead it all together.  Put it into a greased loaf pan and lay the bacon slices on top.  Then coat the top with a thin layer of ketchup (on top of the bacon and the whole thing).  Bake at 400 for 50 minutes, let cool 10 minutes before serving.

Freezing: After it's totally cooled off (like in the refrigerator for a few hours), slice into, well, slices.  I freeze the slices flat, then load them into a gallon sized ziploc bag after they're frozen. 

Eating: A dinner would be 1 slice of meatloaf, plus potatoes and 2 types of vegetables---so one meatloaf can really last for a lot of meals.  It makes an easy lunch too.