A Foodie Baby

Dane continues to amaze us with his culinary adventures. This weekend, after my long awaited trip to the San Mateo Farmers Market, we got 4 artichokes. We braised 3, cut in half, in olive oil with garlic, herbs and wine. There was no dipping sauce involved, only salt on the artichokes. Dane said he wanted a bite and Saul helped pull it through his teeth. He loved it and continued to ask for more. We were amazed. And to add to our amazement, Miles asked for a bite. Yes the non-foodie in the Lewis HH asked for a bite. He liked the first bite, which seemed too good to be true. I gave him a 2nd bite and he spit it out. As I suspected he didn't really get the meat off of the leaf, he mostly ingested salt. The 2nd bite was more of the meat and he hated it. He said it was too spicy. At least he tried. Sophie watching this all go on, then decided not to take a bite and go with Miles assessment that it was too spicy. 1 out of 3 is not bad:-)

Van d'Eau

Every once in a while you'll get an idea/inspiration from somewhere that's so simple but so GREAT. This happened to us last weekend. On Saturday we were passing by a neighbors house at 8PM (way too late to be out w/the kids walking but Saul dilly-dallied at the park shooting pix) and she was bringing out a small bucket of water and some (art) paintbrushes for her daughter Jenna to play with. I thought wow, what a great idea, "painting" with water on the sidewalk. Now let me step back, painting can bring about thoughts of messes and cleaning so we usually saved painting with Miles for warm days and we've never let the babies paint because, well, they're only 20 months but they've just started experimenting at daycare. Now that the weather has turned it's perfect painting outside weather (no I don't know if we'll ever let our 3 monkeys paint inside), but the mess issue still causes us to pause with concern over such a project. BUT thanks to Jenna's house, I thought let's let our little artists "paint" with water when we were in the backyard yesterday on a very hot pre-summer's day.

What a brilliant idea. They amused themselves for quite a while as Saul and I hung out sipping wine and not doing a thing. No paint, no mess, just water and paint brushes on the ground and the kids loved it. I have an idea we'll be bringing out the paints this Summer but until the perfect time/day hits us, the kids will be painting with DWP's finest.

Managing TV Time - The Sanity Sanity Saver

Kids TV programing can be awful. For $5 or $10 per month you can get DVR through your cable company and there's absolutely no reason your household needs to be subjected to Teletubbies or Barney. Our kids are young enough where they don't understand that there are a number of shows on at any given time. We pick shows out that we like to watch, record them and let the kids watch what we like/want. And all 3 have learned sign language thanks to Signing Time. Here's what the kids "programming" is on the Lewis family TV:

Jack's Big Music Show (Noggin)
Backyardigans (Noggin & Nick Jr.)
Wonder Pets (Noggin & Nick Jr.)
Miss Sunny's Spider Patch (Noggin)
The Upside Down Show (Noggin)
Signing Time (PBS)

We give them their TV Time/Downtime here and there for their enjoyment and our sanity, and in between our favorite Pixar movies and Pee Wee's Playhouse DVD's this is all they get on TV (oh maybe except for Mom's cooking shows and Dad's motorcycle racing). And luckily Saul and I can handle these shows and I usually catch Saul immersed in them too. My favorite is turning on Jack's Big Music Show where we can all get silly and dance and sing.

Free Your Chi

I found a site that is Saul's worst nightmare. It's a blog called Unclutterer that has some great tips and tricks for staying organized and uncluttered. It's the key to free flowing Chi you know... Anyway, it's awesome and I have to get on the ball and organized and uncluttered. What happens with us is that each pile of give/throw away that needs to go to Goodwill/consignment or the dump becomes another piece of clutter so we live in utter disarray. I hope/plan to change that someday.

One of the highlights I found is an organization Freecycle that has groups around the world and you post locally things you want to give away for free that someone else will find useful. This is particularly good for Saul who hates to throw away things, and thinks that he can find someone who can actually use it. So Freecyle is for him. But you can't write it off, so you have to weigh how "good" minded you really are in helping others:-) http://www.freecycle.org/groups/

Tri Angles

Dane

Miles

Sophie

Saul posted some updated pix on his blog of the kids, but they're burried beneath his various amusings. So I thought I'd post them on mine so that they can be immortalized in a different way than Saul's blog:-)

Bento Time

Gastrokid is definitely one of my favorite sites as a parent. It appeals not only to my sense of gastronomy into my family life and interesting things to feed the kids and family. It's entertaining to read as well, written by 2 men both English but one is in LA and one is in England. They've got a great tone and I enjoy reading their posts. I found this from one of their posts and it made me think about how our kids love their Japanese food and how I love this Bento box that I found for them.

There is a woman Mimi Ito, who has most days since 2008 taken a photo of the school lunchbox she prepares for her children and published it onto her Flickr blog. The kids are older (6 and 9 I think) but it's never too early to think different about what to feed the kids for lunch when we're not with them. Apparently here kids love what she makes and don't want the food at school - nice! http://flickr.com/photos/mimiito/tags/bentoblog/

Where to buy Bento Box:
www.plasticashop.com

iTunes Playlist for Kids

We are lucky enough to have kids that like our music. We expose them to a wide variety of music and they bop their heads along to nearly all of our music. Saul is so happy to boast that Miles favorite band is the Ramones. I decided to make a playlist for Miles on my iPod since he knows more songs and can recognize more than the twins. They love the playlist too but it was created for Miles with his tastes in mind. There's some traditional kids music with some non traditional ones that both kids and parents can enjoy. Here's Miles has on iPod playlist:

I Like To Move It - From Madagascar
You Are My Sunshine - Johnny Cash
I'm Gonna Catch You - Laurie Berkner
Spider Man - The Ramones
I'm Me and You're You - Laurie Berkner
The Candy Man - Sammy Davis Jr.
Kitty - Presidents Of the United States of America
My Energy - Laurie Berkner
I Know A Chicken - Laurie Berkner
Rock Lobster - B52s
Coconut - Harry Nilsson
Itsy Bitsy Spider - Carly Simon
Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
You Are My Sunshine - Ricky Nelson
Number One - Hot Peas 'n Butter
Johnny Quest/Stop That Pidgeon - Reverend Horton Heat
California Sun - The Ramones
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones