Alas...

No miracles came to reside at Chez Sokoloff. The Divine Miss M caught whatever bug Elianna had and is currently sick. Elianna didn't catch her first cold until she was after one year old so this baby being sick thing is all new to me and, man does it suck! They can't take anything but Tylenol and the new dosing means that you have to force down ridiculous amounts of liquid medicine while they're coughing up a lung. Then, she's lost her voice so she has this pathetic little mewl that I can barely hear. This, along with her red rimmed eyes and sad face just breaks my heart. She doesn't understand why she feels so bad (obviously) but she still tries to be happy. She is such a sweet, sweet baby, I can't wait until she feels better.

Not her most pathetic but sad, nonetheless:

And in happier, non-sick times:

Poor bug.

Elianna is sick. She's got this awful cough and a stuffy nose with a fever and she just feels like poo. She is awfully snuggly when she's sick and since she's not normally that affectionate we are eating it up. We also know she's sick because her hollow leg has filled up. Usually Elianna is a bottomless pit when it comes to food, always saying, "I want something else" and now she's barely finishing half of her meals. If Marielle doesn't get sick it'll be a miracle. We've been teaching Elianna to cover her mouth when she coughs or sneezes but she's only good about half the time. Fortunately, she hasn't felt like playing with her sister that much...hope that will help us dodge that bullet.

Poor little girl snuggling with her buddy:

Marielle is a lot of fun these days. She's very smiley and we are getting more chuckles everyday. One of the best things is going into her room, first thing in the morning and seeing her huge smile as she wiggles around in her swaddle blanket. Sleep is still an issue but we're working on it (have I said this before? I'm having deja vu!). She's growing like a weed; she's already in 9 month clothing for some things and she's working on a second roll on her legs. Also, her cheeks!

In her ridiculous but oh so cute hat:

She's gained a new skill: spitting. I thought she was drooly before, oy vey! We had a damp spot on the carpet where she was lying from all her drool/spit. She is quite taken with herself and her newfound talent, does it all the time. She's also rolling again; she stopped rolling for awhile because she kept putting her arms by her sides and she wasn't strong enough to overcome that barrier. She's strong enough now and I bet she'll be rolling back to front very soon now.

Food, glorious food!

That's pretty much how we feel about how we eat these days. We are always trying new things, new recipes and thus far we haven't had any duds. Sure, there are things we won't make again but more often than not, we find something new to put in our repertoire.

One thing we have again and again is something Mike calls our macrobiotic dinner. He sautés greens, any greens from chard to kale to cabbage (ok, sometimes it's purples, not greens) along with whatever vegetables we happen to have in the crisper. He uses some Bragg Liquid Aminos and cooking sherry as seasoning and it comes out delicious. I know, you're thinking, "ew, cabbage!" (I'm talking to you, Kevin!) and I was the same way until I had this. Now I even forgo more of my rice to make room for more cabbage. Crazy, huh?

So greens, some kind of grain, either millet or brown rice or quinoa tend to be our grain of choice but any grain will do. We then add homemade refried beans, avocado, tomatoes, cashew ricotta and one of the tortillas mentioned in a previous post. Delicious!

Various musings...

Oh, if I'm going to do this blogging thing, I need to be better about taking pictures. No pics today. At all. Whoops! Today was a mellow day with Mike getting home at about 930 after being on call for 24 hours.

I was moderately tired after my night; I started Operation: Get Marielle to Sleep for More than Two hours at a Time at Night and it was a bit trying. I mentioned she's a screamer, right? It's bad enough during the day but at night, when you know she's not hungry, she just wants to play and is upset because you won't...then the screaming is rather upsetting. She made it through the night and so did I but I'm not looking forward to tonight when it gets harder. I know we went through this with Elianna and she's a super-duper, all star sleeper now so I have hope but the process is just so harrowing.

Spokane has been really, really mild this winter which is nice for me who is used to the sunny winters of the SW. I feel bad for Elianna though: she'd been talking about using her sled since August and thus far there hasn't been enough snow for her to use it. Yesterday, there was a bit of snow on the ground and we got dressed as fast as we could after breakfast so she could make tracks and by 930 it had all melted. Poor bug!

So, this post was written in pieces, some one day, the rest another. Another thing if I'm going to blog is I'm going to have to learn to type faster. I'm better than hunt and peck but I'd never get a job as an executive assistant.

Speaking of jobs, I'm starting one soon! I interviewed for a position in pediatric hem-onc (kid cancer) which is very similar to the job I took right out of nursing school. It's not my ideal job (ICU, preferably peds) but in Spokane, the job market has been very difficult for nurses so I'm happy to have anything. I didn't get the job I interviewed for but they liked me so much, they finagled a position for me that I think will be a better fit. It's part time, make my own schedule but I can work as much as I want. It'll be nice to get out of the house and meet people which I've been very bad about since we moved here.

Anyway, let's see if I took any pictures to keep the hordes at bay...

Migas!

Okay, I said I wanted to do more on the amazing food we eat on a daily basis and I have yet to do that so here we go. At some point I hope to be talking about our food regularly enough that it can split off from this and be its own blog but for now, the grandparents are going to have to deal with a little food talk. ;)

Tonight we had migas from Robin Robertson’s book, Quick Fix Vegan . I’ve only ever had Tex-Mex migas which is quite a bit different from Portuguese or Spanish versions. I didn’t even know there were other versions until I decided to look it up (thank you Wikipedia) and honestly I think the American version sounds the best. Migas have scrambled egg, corn tortillas, sometimes chorizo and together with refried beans get put together into a sort of soft taco. I’ve had it before and truly liked it, so I was excited to see how the vegan version turned out.

We changed the recipe a smidge by adding more vegetables, kale and yellow bell pepper to be precise.

I’ve really started to like kale; at first it was a barely tolerated part of Isa and Terry’s potato and kale enchiladas from Veganomicon but now I’ve had it in so many things, it’s grown on me. As an aside, Veganomicon is a wonderful cookbook and you'll see it referenced here pretty much on the daily. Back to the meal: yellow bell peppers are delicious. They're a bit sweet and I have, in the past, eaten them like an apple. Bell peppers get used a lot in Tex-Mex cooking, I just decided to do yellow instead of green. We figured that adding veggies, while not necessary, would bulk up the dish and make it possible for us to eat more of it while not adding that many calories.

For the tortillas we used these fabulous corn tortillas from the Tortilla Factory.

They’re more like a flatbread than a tortilla and are so good.

I first sauteed onions for about 5 minutes until they were soft, then added the peppers and kale.

After about 5 minutes more I added garlic and about 4 of those tortillas, torn into pieces and stirred everything around until it was hot.

To one pound of soft tofu, I added nutritional yeast, salt and salsa. I bought tomato salsa because the recipe called for it but the tomatillo salsa we already had would have been just fine.

Then I poured it into the skillet and stirred it around until it was hot throughout. We served it with more salsa and chopped avocado...delish! No picture of the final product...I forgot!

Apologies for the change in font...I've tried to change it twice and it ain't happening. Hopefully next post will be more readable!

1/5/12

Marielle is 5 months old today! She has changed so much; she’s much more of a person. She has the best smile and when she crinkles her eyes, it makes me melt.

Elianna seems to have adjusted to having a sister pretty well. Marielle is the first person she asks about when she wakes up and while there are times she isn’t interested in her, most times she wants to include her in everything. For Marielle’s part, she loves Elianna; if Elianna is in the room, her eyes follow her around the room and she has a huge smile on her face.

For Elianna’s part, she’s become quite the little mother. She ‘pumps’ for her dolls and will feed them, either with a bottle or ‘breastfeeding’.

Elianna pumping

She wants to feed and burp Marielle and does a pretty good job, only gagging her a couple times with the spoon.

Ah, yes, we’ve started solids and the Divine Miss M is a fan. Avocado is her favorite, closely followed by bananas. Sweet potatoes are meh but she’ll eat them. Tonight she even grabbed the spoon from me and jammed it in her mouth. She also screamed at me when I walked away to get her more. She’s going to be a good eater, just like Elianna, at least I hope so!

The fog has lifted!

And not a moment too soon! Those 1st few months were pretty rough, I won't lie. There were times when I really wasn't sure I was going to make it; the only reason I kept going was that I had to. It was slow coming but I definitely feel I've come out the other side.

Which is awesome because Marielle has become a really sweet, happy baby. It took awhile but now we realize that her ear piercing screams don't necessarily mean she's upset...she's just a screamer! Seriously, the girl has a future in horror movies. But now that we know it's not always a mad thing, it's pretty cute. She's kept Elianna up from a couple naps:

Me: Elianna, why aren't you sleeping?

Elianna: My sister is screaming so I'm counting my toes.

Because that is the obvious thing to do when one can't sleep, right?

I've also realized that if I'm going to do any justice to this blog I'm going to have to do it with Marielle or Elianna on my lap and I'm going to have to type FAST. Marielle's attention span is what you'd expect for a 4 almost 5 month old and Elianna has decided she likes to put plastic bags over her head (eek!) so leaving her alone even if all the bags are away is not an option. This doesn't leave much time for showering, let alone blogging but I'll do my best. No pictures this time but I'll get more up there soon.