Those Who Are About to Rock

Ladies and Gentleman,

That is all.

In which I am anal retentive and also there is a flow chart

Most of you are aware of my obsession with Let's Dish! Yes, the exclamation point is part of the name. For those of you who are unenlightened, Let's Dish! is a once-a-month cooking store/service. That's the closest I can come to explaining it. Basically, you sign up for a session online. You choose a menu. Then you go to the store and they have stations set up where you can make up to 24 meals. They have all the ingredients chopped and prepped, and you just assemble them. You freeze the meals and just pop them out of the freezer throughout the month.

I love to cook. I love diving into a recipe, losing myself in the flow of it. I love looking at a pile of random ingredients and using them to create something new and unique. What I do not love is trying to do all of this while two or three very short people are using me as a jungle gym. So I have loved Let's Dish! You go in, cook your ass off for two or three hours, and you're done for the month.

Which is why I was so supremely bummed when my local Let's Dish! stopped offering in-store sessions. They still offer what they call Dish-and-Dash. They will assemble the meals for you, and all you have to do is pick them up. I have tried it a few times, but it wasn't the same. I like being able to leave the paprika out of a dish, or add an extra pinch of cumin. I like seeing what goes in to what I am serving.

So I have decided to take the leap and do some once-a-month cooking on my own. In typical Monkeysparkets fashion, I have excessively over planned. There are color-coded spreadsheets involved. I have sticker labels and a flowchart. You are jealous, people, don't try to hide it.

My sister, who recently expressed a desire to learn how to cook, came over today to help me chop stuff I mean...partake of my culinary genius. Here is our menu:

• Lemon Dill Salmon
• Vegetable Lasagna
• Mushroom chili with homemade French bread
• Grilled Barbecue chicken
• Balsamic Grilled Chicken with Roasted Red Peppers
• Chili Lime Grilled Chicken with Black Bean Salsa
• Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken with Garlic Herb Cheese
• Chicken Fajitas
• Pepper Beef Stir Fry
• Baked Beef Rotini

All together, we made thirty meals in just over five hours. So, that breaks down to a meal every ten minutes. And I won't have to cook for a month! Yee haw!

I will do a few things differently next time. I will definitely do my shopping the day before I cook so that I can get an earlier start. I also may try bi-weekly cooking, as 5 hours was a long time to be on my feet in the kitchen (and a long time for Mr. Monkeysparkets to have both of the kids). If you are interested, here a few sites with good tips and info on OAMC (ooh-acronyms!)

http://www.frugalmom.net/once_a_month_cooking.htm

http://www.once-a-month-cookingworld.com/

The Birthday Extravaganza

This weekend we celebrated the Sparkets family collective birthdays. All four of us have birthdays within four days of each other. Don't ask me how we managed that one, it was not a planned thing. And for all those of you who are counting backwards on your fingers

The first week of May - Nine months = August 16 (our wedding anniversary)

That may have been too much information for some of you. Sorry! Anyways, we had an awesome backyard barbecue, and now I have a touch of the post-party blahs. You know, where after a perfect perfect weekend everything else just seems a bit lackluster and without focus. I need something new to plan, dangit.

I was going to write a long detailed post describing the whole shebang, but it can really all be summed up by this picture:

Or maybe this one:

We are a family that likes our cupcakes. Even when they lead to the inevitable

Happy birthday, little sparkets. And Daddy Sparkets, too.

Letters to Isaac, Month 12

Dear Isaac,

Well, here you are, big boy! One year old.

We had a fantastic party for you and your sister this weekend. You were amazing. You handled the excitement like a champ. You especially liked the cake.



You have changed so much in the last month. A few of our relatives who hadn’t seen you since Easter did not even recognize you. You are losing that infant look and beginning to look like a kid. A couple of Mommy and Daddy’s college friends drove up for your party and brought their three month old baby girl with them. It was the first time in a while that I had held a baby younger than you and it really was really odd. I am used to you being the baby, and all of a sudden you…weren’t. I am excited and a teeny bit sad all at the same time.

In addition, you took your first real steps this weekend! Up until now you have mostly just been cruising the furniture. You would stand on your own until you realized what you were doing. Then you would get the same look on your face that Wile E. Coyote gets when he realizes that he has run off the edge of a cliff. Your arms would start wind milling cartoonishly, and down you would go.

The day before your birthday, your Granny came up to visit and she brought her dog. You were fascinated by his big fluffy tail. You took a step towards that tail, then stopped. We all waited for you to catapult over. You stayed up! The next day you decided you would take five or six steps in a row over at your Nanny’s house. Show off!

Some of your favorite activities these days include:

• Eating. You, child, are a bottomless pit. Your favorites are meat and bread. Last night for dinner you ate half of an adult-sized pork kebab, a big scoop of your aunt Kate’s yummy raw acorn squash salad, 3 big shrimp, half a banana and half a bowl of key lime mousse with whipped cream. We all totally expected you to yak. But you kept on banging your high chair tray and saying “umm-ma, umm-ma, umm-ma” which I believe translates to “More, more, more”.
  
  Incidentally, you are getting quite a vocabulary, little man. Your first word was Dada, of course. You followed it with Mama, No, Juice, and Down. I am amazed at all this as your sister rarely lets anyone get a word in edgewise.
  
  
  Other favorite activities:
  
  Conquering the backyard. Though seriously, buddy? Sticks are not snacks, okay?

And of course,

• Destroying the playroom
  
  

I wish I had a picture that truly captures the swath of destruction you leave in your wake. This is the best I could do. I especially love your triumphant howl.

You are a character, little man. I love you.



Love,
Mama

Letters to Isabel, Month 36

Dear Isabel,

Yesterday you turned three years old.

Three. Years. Old.

You are no longer a toddler. How the heck did that happen? It is weird that most of the time I can’t imagine you any way other than you are now.

I remember you being a baby, of course (how could I forget?) But those memories are not as vivid as they once were. Thinking of you as a baby seems…surreal maybe? It is very hard to put into words. But every now and then you will snuggle up to me and lay your head on my chest and I will get this very vivid déjà vu-ish moment where it seems like only yesterday that we slept in the rocking chair together every night because you hated your bed; that we spent most of our days pacing the living room floor or jiggling you over my knee to keep you from screaming loud enough to perforate an eardrum.

Now here you are. A preschooler. I have seen so many changes in you this month. Mostly in your ability to play with other kids your age. This is your friend Randy:

She comes over to play with you most days of the week now. You two get into all sorts of mischief together.

This was a rough transition for you at first, but after the first few weeks you really started to become more comfortable. You have made amazing strides. You still are not the most social kid on the block

But you really enjoy being with other kids now. It’s amazing to watch you grow and change.

Not that this time has been without its challenges. The addition of another kid to your space as well as the fact that your brother is becoming more mobile (read: more of a threat to your toys) has led to some lovely sibling rivalry. I will never forget the fist time I saw you sneak up behind your brother and shove him to the ground. I found myself in this odd inner mother-instinct dilemma. It is a horrible feeling to see one of your precious babies hurt another. Of course, once you realized what a spectacular reaction you could get out of me by pushing the baby, you started to do it more and more frequently. Time out was no deterrent. I spent about a week at my wit’s end.

Thank God for my wonderful Mommy friends. There is a group of us who meet once a week and they assured me that you weren’t a sociopath. In fact, most of them expressed surprise that it had taken you this long. They gave me some great advice, and a few days later we started this:

Ah, the precious marble jar. It is pretty simple. Good behavior earns a marble. Bad behavior costs a marble. After ten marbles, you earned your first prize, which was a talking Leo doll that you picked out. After 30 you will earn your next prize, which should be very soon. It has made a huge difference. You love earning prizes, but you also seem to love just earning a marble. This morning you walked up to Isaac as he sat on my lap and kissed him tenderly on the head. You looked at me and said, “I get a marble now! I’m going to get a green marble and make it go ‘chunk’ in my jar!”

Your dad and I are also working hard to make sure we give you more positive attention. All in all, things are going a lot better. We still have our rough days, but we are starting to settle into more of a routine. The weather is getting nice, and Nanny and Geeze got you guys the coolest thing for your birthdays:

You love it. I don’t know how often you are going to get to play with it. Because, honey? Your Mommy is a little neurotic when it comes to, well, dirt. And sand. And my carpet. And your hair. I basically don’t want to combine any of these things. Also your brother sees sand and thinks, “Lunch!” You guys played with your new toy for thirty minutes this morning and I think I had about three coronaries. I wish I could be more of a relaxed, lets-not-worry-about-the-mess Mommy; and I try. I really do. It is just…not in my nature.

This is one of the many reasons that I am so grateful for you, little one. Every day you take me out of my comfort zone. I am a better person for having known you these last three years. You’ve taught me how to cultivate patience when it seemed impossible to be patient, how to be at peace in the midst of chaos and how to laugh even when I am being sprinkled with bodily fluids. Happy birthday, honey.

Love,

Mama