TIGER PANTS!!

"make a tiger suit, mom...make a tiger suit..."

and it was midnight and I had started that dress...and was pretty disappointed after a night-out wearing of my Sencha. I had fixed the fluffy sleeves on my burda blouse, finally bucked up and figured out how to prepare my wool for the Jacket...and put the muslin on again for a closer look...anyway, i wanted to Wrap Something Up. And so I started something new. Logic does not apply!

This month's sewalong is treasure pocket pants...and I decided the boy needs a tiger suit. and then it was 4 am! hmm, i do not always make excellent decisions, but i did make it to work early and dressed. and the boy has tiger treasure pants. WOOOOOOOOOO. :)

he wore them to the lake this weekend for a field test- they are awesome, if a little baggy for his narrow frame. 

Oakland! haven't seen that on the news, have ya?

Auntie Lola is jealous, and i may have to make two pairs of adult sized tiger jeans now, for our band.

TIGER PANTS FOREVER!
r

PS um, thank god for sewalong/online community. I just found TWO PAGES of errata from this book on the flickr group.

only so much

friend! family! project! photoshop.

isn't it a bitch that you can't work full time, spend loads of snuggle time with your kid, see all of your friends, have a good relationship with your sweetie AND sew a whole new wardrobe? if you say you can, you're lying.

luckily, my boy is blessed with excellent style.

i've been doing all of those first things, and even though I blocked out a day to sew, i still went to yoga and had coffee with a friend. I love my people. *Probably* more than my clothes :).

done! easy linen shirt

it's super cute, it was totally easy. it's a classy linen shirt for a 3 year old.

Slightly contrasting thread...

 looks just interesting enough.

I have a feeling the arms are kinda long. my fit model comes home tonight and then we'll know for sure.

i missed the instruction to do a french seam on the sides/arms. Next time! 

his comments on the process fitting? "you should finish it."

Next up: tiger hoodie, flannel jacket, some warm blue pants. Agh! Now we both have long "to make" lists!

SEW Much progress!

trying to protect copyright...

Last night I finished blouse # 1 from the Burda book. It'll also be my first submission to The Sew Weekly woo!

(Are you going to the Meetup this weekend? I can't wait.)

Cut linen for my little guy's Easy Linen Shirt for the Sewalong...which is the quietest sewalong perhaps ever?

And I've started a photo archive of my fabrics and patterns. I know there's some kind of online tool for managing these. I'll dig through your archives to find it!

Woo so fun to wear my me-made shirt and me-made jacket into the office this morning. It's Me Made March!

cooking with kids is a moving target: cold sesame noodle / salad

the little monkey used to help me make granola. it was really sweet, and fun for me because i ended up with granola AND a nice together activity.

today he wanted to "help with the noodles" so i enlisted him to stir up some sesame sauce. he's a pro at holding a measuring spoon, and dumping it out on command (ok, he sometimes jumps the gun, wha-ev).

it did not work. he got frustrated at some point - with a toddler, it could have been a cool breeze on his nose - and had a little spazzz which led him to pick up the sauce. as I watched him do that, I also watched the impulse go out of control and the tahini, rice vinegar, sriracha garlic MESS was all over the kitchen as he threw it to the ground.

i improvised another sauce which turned out great, but that was after i hosed down the rug outside and cleaned a goopy gloppy mess from my cabinet and counter, and had a good talk about when it's ok to throw things and when it's not (throwing shoes in the kitchen, for instance, is on the buzzkill list).

he even helped clean up, once we had calmed down.

So! here's the sauce. dress some noodles with it and eat it cold thank god!

1/4 c tahini
2T soy sauce
2T fish sauce
2T rice vinegar (i used the last of this in the first batch, so i omitted it from the one i actually tasted. i didn't miss it?)
generous dash of powdered ginger. fresh would be good of course.
chopped garlic clove
1T (or less) sriracha

1) i used a bag of brown rice spaghetti instead of the fettuccine Cook's Illustrated suggested, and dressed it with a splash of sesame oil while the noodles cooled.

ooh! here's a tofu lesson!

2) drain the tofu, cut it up, put it in a sandwich of paper towels, and let it get strained for a few minutes (or an hour?) then put it in a pan with hot hot oil and just leave it there for a while. a few minutes or whatever. the recipe said 8-10 minutes, but i think mine cooked for a half hour! who can tell though, when you're going up and down the stairs trying to fold the laundry and lure the kid inside. it took a while. i kept thinking of Julie & Julia, "don't crowd the mushrooms", just leaving it be and trying not to overflip.

omg i got crisp, browned tofu cubes, with creamy delicious interiors, instead of the mess of crappy tofu crumble i used to get before i gave up on the Curd [almost] altogether. (did everyone else know this? how was this information not in my "welcome to Oregon" vegan starter kit???)

3) mix the sauce into the noodles, with a little bit of noodle water (or plain water if you dump the noodle water down the drain)!

4) add in some vegetables, preferably semi-julienned and semi-cooked, and brightly colored because otherwise everything is beige and ew! (garden-picked zucchini, lettuce, and arugula did the trick tonight) the recipe calls for scallions for just this purpose.

on second thought: use greens! it's so much nicer to have a salad with some noodles in it than a bunch of noodles with a rare veggie. ignore this note if you're taking it to a party, greens don't keep.

Enjoy with white wine and later a bunch of cookies. <3 r

interview

i told Rishi how much money we'd have if i got the job. "Rishi," I said, "do you know what we could do if we had money?!?"

"Go to park?" he said. 

Oh, no, not so much of that. :(

why not swearing in front of kids is so great

When Rishi dropped a giant bag of Halloween candy he had been lugging around, he cried "Oh DEAR!"

pumpkin pie and a technique to keep your house warm for an afternoon

With all of the boiling and baking in this recipe, it's perfect for the first cold day of the rainy season. It coincided nicely with the first pumpkin in our veggie box. 

Take one small pumpkin (about this size or a little smaller)

From Fall 2010

, chop it up. Roast the seeds, well salted, at 200 degrees for about an hour.

Steam the pumpkin chunks in a steamer basket - about 30-40 mins

Mix these things in a bowl:

mushed pumpkin ~ 1.5 cups

3-4 heaping tablespoons crystallized honey (you know you have some hiding in the cupboard)

1/4 - 1/3 c. agave nectar or similar agave/maple blend

1 14oz can coconut milk 

2 eggs

if you have a toddler, let him help with:

1/2 tsp salt

1.5 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp powdered ginger

1/2 tsp powdered cloves (we may have gone a little light on the cloves)

mix it up, bake it in a pie shell at 425 for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 300 and bake another 40-ish minutes. it bakes a LONG time because of all of that liquid. it will be gooey, and delicious. 

good and bad and sweet for today

Start with good
No strangers yelled at me!
I talked with THREE members of my family and tentatively planned a getaway.
When my attorney's on vacation, she's not charging me fees (I hope)
Rishi's shoes came home!

In the bad
I'm scared about health care
It's been a while and I could use some sex

Let's close the day with a cute kid story.
We have a library book called More More More Said the Baby. I thought it would be fun because the peanut can sign "more"...though now he's starting to say, too..."moh".

One of the characters in this lovely book is Little Pumpkin. She's my favorite because she's in a mixed race home (how could i not love her brown skin and white granny?)...but Rishi is concerned more with her footwear.

Through the course of events in the book, Little Pumpkin loses one shoe

and then another.

When Rishi first realized this, he commented "oh no!" and pointed at her shoes on the ground. (This is for a pivotal plot point. But you'll need to get to the library or Pegasus to find out exactly what happens...) Oh no, Little Pumpkin, your cute green sneakers are amiss! We chuckled about it-- oh no! (so cute)...and kept going. But Rishi had just set me up for the real punchline: The next time through, we opened to Little Pumpkin's page and Rishi stopped, pointed at the shoes on her feet, and said, with implicit foreboding, "oh no!".

This kid is a comedic genius.
(smiley Rishi from July 2010)

i should be much more alert now

this baby woke up 2 hours late and instead of waking him up and starting the day (or starting mine before his), i luxuriated in bed too. but now he's not napping and he's in that purgatory of not going out to do fun stuff and not sleeping either. though actually, he doesn't seem to be bothered...

i didn't drink my coffee because i was working out. but then i didn't finish the workout because he was restless. so i'm un-exercised and un-caffeinated. now that i put it that way, this is an easy problem to solve! back to the reheat button.

later!

lamb recipe

that lamb was so durn good i'm writing down the recipe

buy 1/2 or one whole lamb from sierra farms. enjoy the experience of picking it up, then jam the lamb...in the freezer.

when you want to have a lot of lamb, because you only cook every two weeks, or because you're having guests, or you want to share with your neighbor, defrost the ROAST.

preheat the oven to 375
have some vegetables on hand

rinse the LAMB, trim any giantly offensive hunks of fat (but no more), then salt and pepper it all around. grab some rosemary sprigs off the porch or out of your herb dish and rub them in too. jam some sprigs into the sides of the roast, where it was cut from the rest of the little lamby body. while you're at it, jam some crushed garlic in there too. a clove or 3 is enough.

stick the roast in a casserole dish.
throw some vegetables all around to soak up the delicious lamb juices. i used a whole small cabbage, a few carrots, little potatoes in white and purple, and big hunks of squash. throw a few more cloves of garlic in with the veggies. why not? it's cold and flu season and garlic keeps sickness and vampires away.

cover the dish with aluminum foil. if you have a better-equipped kitchen than i do, i suppose you could use a fancy dish/lid combo.

let the thing cook about 30 minutes per estimated pound. after the first half to one hour, turn the temperature down to 325.

when you think it might be close to being done, turn off the oven and go to bed.*

in the morning, put it in the fridge. you can have a nice lamb sandwich for dinner!

*OK it would probably be fine to just take the lamby out and let it cool, then serve it up to your eager guests. the vegetables are also delicious. if you want to turn it into baby food, just grind it up.

there you go. happy house in a dish. i love you! R

bad mom

eating rice and oatmeal
Originally uploaded by the littlest raptor

that's gotta be google's top search term. my god, everything i do could send me down that road.

but nope. i have the faith.

i started feeding the monkey again- this time with avocado. that's a recommended first food! good work, mom. Then i moved on to sweet potato. zomg! that's recommended too! then i added carrots- but they were kinda chunky for such a little guy...and then i started feeding him yogurt every chance i got.

some docs say wait til the 1 year mark for the yogurt. suck it, doctors! this is Straus!

that's right, baby's a locavore.

they also recommend starting with bananas. but this sugar-addicted mommy is trying to teach her little man to eat better...and i hear you can train their taste buds with the right program. so no bananas for you, tiny guy!

there's not much local left in the fridge, so for dinner tonight he's eating blueberries and oatmeal. blueberries aren't on any list i've found. take that! i think it's going to be great. because i love blueberries and oatmeal and EVERYONE likes breakfast for dinner.

post script!

he's FINE. he was just hungry.

gained 8 oz in a week from eating. try it!

as for me- the supplement i'm taking to fatten him up causes "GI issues" and blood sugar problems.

two birds, one visit to the lactation specialist!

happy friday.

dear

you know how i told you baby was scrawny? he's 2% for weight and doctor wants to check his kidneys. that means blood samples and a catheter, because babies don't know how to pee in a cup (maybe i could just take off his diaper and wait?).

i am taking my time with that little guy, feeding him for a long time and being patient. not running off to work or running to the computer or to yoga or really anywhere. just sitting with him and repositioning over and over again. we've fed him cereal and i fed him egg yolk. neither really seemed to make it into his sweet little belly, which is good because i am an idiot and fed the egg to him raw.

we'll find out friday if it's worked, or if the therapist is right and he's sponged up me & daddy's stress. it's in the DSM, "failure to thrive" (no link there because they are terrifying). This guy? no way.

on a side note, but really a parallel one, i need a really good doctor. one who can tell me how to deal with my hunger, my indigestion, my fatigue, my pain. it seems like i haven't dealt with those and have passed my weakness to him. at least he gets plenty of kisses.

first mothers day

i got up early-ish and skipped yoga to walk through the park with my main [man], got some basic clothes-care stuff done with mom, made it to the city for lunch at the deyoung cafe, a destination of my obsession for a good year now, spent the whole day with baby, mr todd and momma, checkin out arts and fresh air.

i hugged and kissed my baby goodnight, had a bowl of ice cream, and talked all manner of topics with my own mom til bedtime. check!

baby

34
Originally uploaded by the littlest raptor

see below.

chips and chocolate

there is no way to start and fill in the gaps since i last blogged. tonight i had chips and chocolates for dinner, as my re-heated thai food cooled on the table. when the baby cries, i usually respond. he's so beautiful and so exhausting. i want to stare at him for days on end and i want to leave him with his grandmother and go shopping. for a walk. anything. this time is short, though, so i am not sweating the fact that i haven't left the property for several days (wait- no- i went to the pharmacy** on christmas, so it's only 2 days...), or just changed from one set of pjs into a new one at 5pm. this baby's going to grow up and i'll never have him so tiny and new again. so buying new pants, or finding the ones i used to wear, will have to wait. besides, his dad gave me this crappy box of chocolates for christmas, so why let them go to waste?

so you- come on over- and let's go for a walk. xoxo r


** baby has what doc thinks is staph !?!?! on his lil thighs and armpits. those baby folds go deep, and you can miss these things. poor lil guy is on antibiotics. so i'm eating yogurt for two.

1 h@d a baby

51 hours in the hospital. i really need to write more about it. most inexperienced birth team ever, maybe, and the best ever...mostly. dad is on my shitlist, but what else is new? i'm not impressed with his lack of intention in his "presence". seems like the two of us just really don't understand one another At All. irritating, cause we made a damn fine baby.

today some interesting things happened: i went to the doctor, i started crying, i couldn't stop crying, i took a nap, maybe, and then got some nursing gear...then i coughed and am pretty sure i started bleeding. this sh* is how do you say intense?

red headed stepchild

apparently my biomom has assumed this view of me as well. who knows if my stepdad will come out to meet the new baby, but mom can offer up to 10 days. unless it interrupts christmas. in which case, tough. good luck with all of that. call if you want me to mail you some shit.

oh and the month long golf vacation in palm springs? no, honey, don't guilt me into changing that. we might stop by for a week before or after. if we feel like it.

is this what "support you however we can" means? i would think otherwise. no wonder i have a complex about needing people.

WOW!

baby "peach" was born this morning. we had just gathered to give anjie all of those final items- a changing table pad, a car seat, loads of darling clothes...and the next morning her water broke.

anjie gave birth almost exactly one month "early" of her due date.

when i found out Anj was preggers, i felt awful- she was stronger and better than i was, she could take an accident and make it hers. i was pregnant at the time, but found out weeks later. she and i have found strength in each other through this weird time. discussing baby dad's involvement, hopes, fears, etc etc etc.

so the fact that anjie moved in with her married friends on the same day i did, and that anj and i are taking similar if not exact maternity leaves, is putting the fear of god in me right now.

i would enjoy an excuse to quit working, but i have a lot of prep to do before this baby comes. last night i found myself a little rudderless, so it's time to make a list:

re-upholster that great bassinet. paint it too?
inventory baby clothes from the Gabors
wash the car seat/stoller linens
ditto baby bouncers
list for announcements
baby shower
birth prep class- get both coaches in there? crossing fingers....
baby CPR class.

Dear. I am busy again, eh? Thanks, Anj, for paving the way.