Category: Uncategorized (Page 27 of 40)

…induction heat!

Sometimes you just get to a breaking point. In my kitchen, I had burned way too many dishes, yelled at the cooktop one too many times–cooking with electric was just making me crazy. Since there is no gas line on our street, we had 2 options: use a gas tank, perhaps in the basement, plumbling it somehow upstairs. Or we could try an induction cooktop…and hooray, we made the leap!

It just arrived today and after a few experiments, I had it down. For those who want to read more about how induction cooktops work using electromagnetic fields, check out the wikipedia article.

The obvious immediate benefits are: much more efficient, cooktop doesn’t get hot, and most importantly, immediate response and exact control of temperature.

And it’s fast! Here is a video of me demoing how fast water boils:

Did I mention it was over 100 degrees this past weekend? D is not into getting wet, but we managed to trick him a couple times into walking thru the sprinkler to cool off… we sat outside for as long as we could stand it.

Here he is covering his ears to protect them from a low-flying airplane (he is very sensitive to sudden loud noises).

Swimtrunks courtesy of Otto (Maddy–can you believe D still fits into this stuff??)

Turns out D doesn’t like the heat, anymore than we do. After he ate his snack, he decided it was time to hit the road and get out of his hot back yard…

Grandma Beverly sent us a selection of train-related gifts, including an Engineer’s outfit (overalls, hat, and kerchief), more trains, more track, a groovy intersection piece of track, and a train whistle. Thank you so much!

Here we are exploring all the items Beverly sent (can you see the big box???!). In the background you can see a gorgeous outfit from G & G Weiss and the Duplo legos from them. Thanks!

When we bought my new fave appliance, the BlendTec, I intended to use it for making green drinks. I thought it’d be a good way to get D to consume more greens, not to mention a way to use up all the kale we grew in the garden. It took some experimenting, but we finally have a green drink that tastes great and is full of vitamins (ok, we have 2, but the other one is hard to make because it requires risking life and limb to crack open a fresh coconut).

Here is D enjoying the new recipe!

Best Greens Drink
1 1/2 cup almond milk
1 banana
4 pitted dates
large handful of baby spinach
large handful of kale pieces (center stem removed)
1/4 cup frozen strawberries
1/4 cup frozen blueberries

Blend on “Smoothie” setting (and cover your ears, like D does. That blender can crank!).

Birthday cake, right after a nice long nap…it makes one so tired to contemplate blowing out 2 candles!

Mom made almond cake with blueberry “coulis”–a fancy French word for sauce.

It goes good with a swig of nice cold milk (D is going through a phase–kind of a long one!–where he wants to be babied at home, thus the bottle. We’re working on being a big boy at all times…)

Well it’s been birthday madness around here. Here is the first of a few posts about the big day.

Thanks to all of you who made D’s 2nd birthday so memorable. We so appreciate the gifts and cards!

A special thanks to Aunt Amanda, who sent this year’s “wow” factor gift: a new Skuut balance bike.

D was very gung-ho to try out his “new bike!” Here is a video–in 3 parts–showing him getting to know it.

If you can’t see the 3 embedded videos ‘cos you’re not using Chrome, use these links instead:

Part I
Part II
Part III

P.S. The sticker you see on the bike is for GitHub, a product Jeff uses to revision control his code (I am learning to use it also). “Octocat” is their logo/mascot. Yep–starting D off with some good geek creds early in life.

The days start out cool and misty, with the rabbits and robins competing for the most succulent morsels in the yard. Then lunch time rolls around, in a lazy way, and summer arrives again each afternoon, with picture book skies and a honeysuckle breeze.

Grandma Beverly and partner Jan came to town for a few days at the beginning of July, and I have finally sorted through the photos. Dashiell was a bit shy around Jan, having just met her, but he remembered Grandma “Bubba” and those two had such fun together–thanks for all time spent down on the floor with those trains! Dash likes to point out people he knows in pictures, so I’m going to frame one of these for him to see often. He also kisses the people in the photos!

Every night at bath time, we “practice” using the tot potty in some way. Lately we’ve been aiming for success (pun intended!) by standing D in the warm bath, then holding the potty under him. The other night, all the elements came together, and it worked–my little man peed into his potty. We gave lots of encouraging words and did a “potty” dance (yes we are getting very motivated, since diapering is becoming a battle).

In the last few weeks, Dad has taught D how to wash himself. Jeff tells him what to wash, and then he does. He knows all his major body parts and always looks so proud when he carries out request, beaming with pride after each success. Here is a version of the routine…

Finally, I am taking a golf class and I absolutely love it. I have learned so much from the awesome Jack Young. It’s only 5 classes–and today is the 4th–but my “game”–the word itself being a stretch–has already improved about 400 million percent. I said to Jack last week: I hope to be a decent player in my lifetime. And he said: oh it’ll be before then. He’s a funny guy, too…

It’s been said that to get really good at something requires 10,000 hours of practice. I’m trying to fit in those hours over lots of short sessions (as a newbie, I just can’t focus for terribly long), and that means sometimes we all head out to the green…

Here’s Young Golfer, strutting his stuff.