NINETEEN

Vera has a very specific "I'm frustrated because I can't put this item of clothing on by myself" cry. This is how Matt found her after a few minutes of screaming. This photo adequately represents my entire week of being cooped up in the house with her.

2015 week nineteen

Another rainy green week. I'm starting to feel like we are living in the Pacific Northwest. Also, there is no end in sight to this rain. My garden is going to lose its mind when Texas weather returns to normal.

First round of potatoes from our garden. Disgustingly, I unearthed just about as many grubs as potatoes. And since we're on bugs, guess who has termites in their yard! But don't worry, we have so many ants that they have driven back the termite forces and have successfully stymied the rebellion.

Matthew made perfect ribs the other night. Sometimes trolling through imgur will really change your life. (I understand that that sentence is completely unintelligible to many people. It makes me feel proud, like I can speak another language.) In addition to this we had cornbread and coleslaw. And we would have had baked beans, but Martha was actually serious when she said they would take at least 6 hours to cook. Ours took 8. 8 hours for baked beans. We had to eat them the next day. After this delicious dinner, I promptly threw up for the first time in a while. I also threw it up again when I tried to eat it at lunch. And while I was throwing up Vera was yelling, "Mama! Feel so sick! So yuck!" and then tried to copy the sound of me vomiting. I'm pretty sure throwing up barbecue is a punishable offense in Texas. 

Fava beans. Beautiful pain in the butt to peel fava beans. To make...

This blurry but delicious Fava Bean soup. At the bottom of the bowl you put garlic breadcrumbs, chopped mint, chopped shallot, and chopped bacon.  On top is a dollop of yogurt with chopped mint. I did not throw this up. But Vera had to eat it by herself the next day because I could only stomach eating top ramen... Also, it tasted exactly like it was made from regular green peas. So, when I make this again, I'll go the dirt cheap route of frozen peas instead of fancy fava beans.

V loves to walk into the sewing room and announce that she is going to make a mess. One day she grabbed a piece of fabric and requested a dress. She was so happy with the result until the loose strings wrapped around her toe and her hair phobia took over in a fit of writhing and screaming, "sticky! On my leg! Sticky!!!!!!" Sticky is what she calls hairs. I don't know why. I only call them hairs. 

A hot sticky afternoon calls for reading books in your panties. Preferably the same book 3 times in a row. 

We went to a Mexican restaurant for a friend's surprise birthday party. We thought, this will be great! Vera loves chips and salsa she'll be so calm. No. A cement donkey outside will change the entire trajectory of your dinner with a toddler. It was all screams and tears and fruitless (albeit, very enthusiastic) attempts to escape the highchair -even feigning needing to use the toilet (1) -to get back out to touch the donkey. 

I had been feeling a lot better since I hit the second trimester mark. But then I ran out of my daily anti nausea medicine. I thought, well I'm feeling so much better, and I've been taking this daily for three months, maybe I should allow my body to recalibrate and not be dependent on this any more. Well, it's fine now, but all week has been difficult. We have had (glorious, I'll never complain about it but) sooooo much rain. Our yard is flooding. The cat has tried to regress to using my garden as a litter box because her other favorite places are puddles. Compound the rain, with the withdrawal of nausea meds and an unearthly obsession with cleaning and purging my house RIGHT THIS MINUTE, led to us being indoors all week. Poor V. She's losing her mind. Because it's been so wet, Matt has just been taking the car and we've been locked inside. So this week held a lot (a. lot.) of frustration for my poor wiggly toddler. Luckily, she loves play-doh and helping me clean, and reading books, so she can stay pretty busy, but I was experiencing some early nesting or something because every counter, shelf, cabinet, closet, and drawer got a stern talking to from me this week, and she got pretty much ignored. And now my house is clean and calm. And ready for another week (!) of rain. The loveliest part of this week is how much V made me laugh. Her sentences are getting more complex and she makes me laugh all day. Except when she spirals into frustration screams before I can even talk to her or intervene. Then I am not laughing,

Funny phrases from V:

We got to eat dinner outside one night this week. We had honey on the table for the cornbread. V had finished her plate of dinner and very politely turned to me and said, "Now I would like some honey, please." While she said this she was nodding her head trying to get me to say yes. When I started laughing, she said very seriously, "pah-wheeeeze."

She is trying very hard to ask for things so politely. Matt made popcorn the other night and without being prompted she walked into the kitchen and said, "Papa, I would like to have some popcorn, please." It was too much. So sweet.

She loves to count things. If she sees a photo of herself holding her giraffe she will count, "One. Two. Two giraffes!!!!" Her favorite thing to count is jelly beans and she requests them all day every day. So glad we finally finished off our bag from Easter. She is really good at counting jelly beans (by that I mean she will count higher than two) and she only says her colors correctly when it's jelly beans. Every other time, everything is always green. But with jelly beans she will proudly hold up each one, "orange. yellow. white. blue."

She rediscovered this stupid pink bear that I have. After she hugged it exclaiming, "Oh bear! I found you!" she turned to me and asked, "my bear haves nipples?"

She's been taking a lot more tumbles lately. After one such fall she kept reminding herself, "I fell down." And then later she brought it up again, "I fell down, hurta leg. Everybody falls down."

Matt had to change the sand in his spider terrarium so it was sitting on the floor (the terrarium, not the spider) and V comes up to lay down next to it. With her face against the glass she croons, "Hi spider. What are you doing? Are you walking on the ground? Giraffe, do you want to see the spider? Come here giraffey. Don't touch the spider giraffe.  Don't touch the spider." Sometimes she is such a sweet little mama to her toys.

Sometimes, however, she is talking to herself and I hear phrases that I say that I do not love her repeating. The other day she was playing with an ice cube in a bowl and brought it to the cat. "Drink the water, cat! Drink! *Loud exasperated sigh* Oh my goodness!" hm... time to reevaluate how patient my words are over here...


Happy Mother's Day. Matthew gave me the funniest Mother's Day card and a beautiful bottle of balsamic vinegar, and some snapdragons. I love them. I also really loved not having to make dinner or dessert. :) What I love most though, is that I get to be a mama. I love being Vera's mama so much, and I'm so happy to have another baby this year.