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Little Monkey

UPDATE: My apologies, I just looked up what the former title of this post meant--absolutely NOT what I meant to invoke!!! I am an idiot.

One Year Ago...

...I was huge.

My goodness, Tillie turns 1 in just two weeks. We went to a new friend's 1st birthday a couple of weeks ago. He didn't like his cupcake, poor thing. Why is it so much fun for a bunch of adults to stand in a circle around a freaked out little kid staring at him in great anticipation while he tentatively tries his first bite of birthday cake? I mean, that is a lot of pressure on a little guy. We love cake. We dream of having the chance to taste cake for the first time all over again. We think, if only it were possible...no, instead I'll just experience it vicariously through this young child. Yes, let's feed this kid cake and just savor his reaction. It will be the closest we can ever get to our beloved youth. I'm starting Tillie on a daily regime of muffins in preparation for this big event. She will LOVE her cake damnit!

Sofia

Tillie's nanny brings her own daughter, Sofia, who is 4 months old. She is so cute! She is kind of creaming Tillie in the hair department, but when I point this out to Tillie, she reminds me that Sofia can't even roll over on her own yet. Good point--Tillie is still the cutest. I like it that she gets to play with another child every day. I think daycare will be neat for this reason. She will get to have her own relationships with peers. I hear that when they get to be about 3, it gets quite dramatic all the little mini soap operas that take place at daycare.

An Apple Pie a Day...

How do you get rid of many apples? You bake many pies. Last weekend, Amy and I made 9 full-size pies and 5 mini pies. We have given most of them away, but we are still gobbling through the remaining 3. Our nightly ritual of "pie-s-cream" is going to destroy my recent diet success, but it will be worth every moment!

Speaking of diets, it took only 6 months of Weight Watchers, but I finally lost my pregnancy weight, plus an additional 10 pounds! I feel like me again. Okay, I kind of cheated on the last pound--it came off due to the evil food poisoning of last week. I discovered what all anorexics and bulimics have known for decades, 4 days of not eating is an effective way to lose 4 pounds. I can't recommend it though. I felt like crap. Obviously, due to the number of pies I have personally polished off this week, I'm back to my normal self. Shew!

Notweilers

A horrible bout of food poisoning has shed some light on the backyard neighbor with the barking dogs. She seems to have been able to reign them in since that horrible weekend when they barked for two whole nights, so we have been sleeping peacefully. However, we found out that the rumors were false. She has 5 dogs, not 4, and none of them are rotweilers. They are mutts of various sorts. Also, the reason she keeps them locked out at night is that she also has 4 cats. Yikes, too many animals! Anyway, while I was spending a few hours in the bathroom dealing with the aforementioned poisoning (Ug, I'm contemplating death as an escape from the misery.), I overheard her in an hour-long, curse-ridden rant about how her "d*** neighbors" should leave her "poor dogs" alone and keep their "m***** f****** cats" out of her yard, etc. I couldn't hear any other voices, so either her interlocutor's voice was too low to make it through my bathroom walls or she was just ranting like a crazy lady on her back porch. The obscenely large number of animals that she corrals along with her can't-tell-if-it's-stupid-or-southern accent makes me suspicious that there was no one there.

Meanwhile, Tillie is still cute:

Peewee Applause

Tillie is so close to saying her first words. She can understand so many, having just added to her repertoire of nouns she can point to: "tummy" "foot" and "face" -- and verbs she can do: "clap". I'm so proud! Just this week it seems that she is mimicking the first syllables of some of the words we are saying, but I'm not sure. I think she is only weeks away from her first word. What will it be?

Produce Explosion

Our guests Mike and Amy got back from Mike's parents' farm and brought with them more produce than you can shake a stick of cane sugar at. There are four large boxes of apples, two bags of grapes, about 20 zucchini, 20 cucumbers, 20 yellow squash, a bag of elder berries, a box of potatoes, a box of walnuts, a bag of green beans, and Tillie's and my favorite--a giant cantaloupe (basketball size). Now, there are many people who would not think of this as a great challenge that must be met head on, armed with butter, a wooden spoon, and your favorite apron, but hey, I'm that kind of lady. So far in just one week, we have made apple pie, baked apples, apple cobbler, chocolate-caramel apples slices, apple cookies, apple bread, apple butter dip, stuffed zucchini, zucchini-squash-and-corn chowder, squash latkes, grape gin, cantaloupe-tinis, chocolate covered grapes, bread-and-butter pickles, and dill pickles...and we are NOT EVEN HALF WAY through the produce!!!

Pickling Action

Apple Boxes

Grape Gin and Cantaloupe-tinis

And what is Tillie up to during all of this? Well, mostly yelling: