Our Impossible Adoption Story
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Chicken Tikki Masala
I can’t say that Husband is a picky eater, because he’ll eat pretty much anything. (I’ve always said we’d make a great Travel Channel show. He’ll eat anything and I’ll be the girly wife who says what everyone at home is thinking about how gross it is, but still gets made fun of by the couch jockeys. Call me, Travel Channel. We’ll do it for cheap too.)
Rather, let’s say, he has a deep appreciation for food done well. He likes to cook, and he’s really good at it. All of this makes it difficult for me to attempt to make dinner. So I usually don’t, and everyone wins.
But it’s slow cooker season (i.e. Winter) anyway, and everything is busy with a new baby in the house, so I’ve been pinning slow cooker recipes like crazy.
Most of them are okay. They’re kind of bland, Midwesterner food dishes, and he puts hot sauce on everything. There’s only been one, so far, that he told me to lose the recipe for, but none of them have been great.
Until now.
Enter Chicken Tikki Masala. This one is good. And I even cheated. It’d probably be really good if I did it right.
Download the recipe cards, or get the whole thing (and my cheats) after the break. (I forgot to take a picture, but there are gorgeous ones at Table For Two Blog, where I found this.)
On Daydreams and Chasing Onions
Photo Credit: Erik Kastner
Some days I daydream about being a stay-at-home mom. (I never wanted to before, and I always secretly thought that stay-at-home moms were boring people. There, I said it. I’m sorry, but I get it now. Ever since we brought Meatball home … I get it now.)
Some days I daydream about being a stay-at-home mom, but those are usually the days that I lock myself and my infant son out of the house in sub-freezing temperatures. And the days I lock us out of the house in sub-freezing temperatures … again. Yes I did. Twice in one week. It was a shining moment. I really need to get the spare key back to the neighbors.
Some days I fantasize about reading kids’ books and making dinner, but those are often the days that I sleep through his doctor’s appointment and then, later, sleep through get-dinner-in-the-slow-cooker hour. I become the woman calling the doctor’s office to explain we’re going to be late, and I know, and it doesn’t matter that no one else knows, that I can’t even really blame it on the baby. And then, later, I become the woman texting her neighbor to borrow a cup of … soy sauce, because now dinner isn’t going to be ready until 8 PM and that’s if I don’t have to go back to the grocery store for soy sauce.
Some days I think about homeschooling (and un-schooling), but those are almost always the days Read more…
I Want To Remember Our First Moment Alone
I want to remember 6 AM on December 17, 2012, for as long as my heart can contain it.
I want to remember our first moment alone. After the crazy bustle of the hospital delivery room. After my extended labor experience. After you and Daddy came back to me from an hour in the nursery, and Daddy had finally passed out on the pull-out sofa bed next to us.
I want to remember the serene stillness of that quiet, dark hospital room, and the intoxicating feeling of your warm, new skin finally pressed against mine – the way you curled into me, pressed your cheek against my chest, like you were perfectly at home somewhere you’d never really been, perfectly trusting someone you’d never really known. Read more…
Men Experiencing Labor
The Mommy
I got to be The Mommy.
I’m a mommy. I’m Niah’s mommy. Sure. But after five weeks, I got to be The Mommy … with special The Mommy powers.
People like to cuddle and coo over babies, and I get that. We make people wash or sanitize their hands first, (Seriously. I have a small bottle of sanitizer in the diaper bag. Don’t laugh. Have you heard about this flu bug going around? It’s nasty.) but I get that.
But only the extreme baby-lovers don’t mind being cried on. It’s like we have this idea that babies – pure and innocent as they are – are excellent judges of character or individual worth or something, and being cried on makes you a bad or lesser person. You know it’s true.
So we kind of panic – like our secret is out and now – and hurriedly hand Baby back to Mommy. Usually the excuse is, “I think he’s hungry.”
Hardcore baby-lovers, however, will stand and walk and rock and shush and sing and try to sooth the baby themselves. This often works. When it doesn’t, and especially when the baby-lover knows the baby has just eaten, the excuse becomes, “I think he just wants Mom.”
I’ve fielded both, countless times in my five whole weeks as a mommy, but the later really gets me. Read more…
Spits and Wiggles 