Average Stagg Saturday

The average Stagg weekend begins with a Saturday Farmer's Market run; we indulge in crepes made by our friends Dave & Erin, buy a bit of fruit or vegetable matter, wander about, and lastly stock up on a dozen or so tamales from Lupita for the week. Generally on the way home, we have to stop at the park and swing for a jiffy.

Eric mows the lawn, the girls distract him from that or any other project he had intended to tackle, I am generally cooking something. We have spent A LOT of time at our good friends and neighbor's pool this year. Who doesn't love a pool and particularly in my current state - buoyancy just feels fabulous!

LindyJean has learned very quickly to use a stool, she still can't reach anything, but at least she can see. This photo is also proof of my poor mothering as I forgot to grease the little piggy with sunscreen and she got a tad toasted...

Our favorite vendor, Anna. I always buy something from her, whether I need to or not. She loves my kids (she has witnessed all my pregnancies); giving them peaches or something other fruity treat when we come by and she is a super kind gal.

RowdySue

LindyJean was recently coined "RowdySue." My mom gave her the name and it is quite fitting -she is messy, walks like Godzilla, loves to roughhouse, and is generally an adorable little ogre. She makes me giggle incessantly.

RowdySue eats... need I say more?!??!

I walked into the girls' room and this is the state in which I found RowdySue's pajamas... how on earth did she do that?

What was she doing that got them in that twisted mess and it took me much longer than expected to untangle and remove them. What a goofball.

Happy Birthday Bitty Boo!

We had a small gathering of friends for Adelaide's third birthday. The weather was perfect, the food exceptional, and the company was just peachy! Brian, Lisa, Maggie, and Baby Katie; Todd, Abril, and Amelia; and ourselves were in attendance and the evening was just swell.

The girls and Todd playing hoola hoops and bubbles. (Todd and Abril are expecting baby #2 (a boy!) any minute now.

I don't believe I've posted a shot of Katie just yet. She is now 3 1/2 months old, real cute, and an exceptionally easy going baby. Here she is sleeping in her most favorite spot... Dad's arms.

Bitty Gourmand, demanded a whole hosts of menu items - after we narrowed it down from what could have been a 400 course, 5 day feast she ultimately decided on; Garlic and Tomato studded Focaccia, Greek Salad, Moeke's Cucumbers, Basmati Rice, Steaks with Chimichurri, and a Vanilla Cake with Strawberry Sour Cream Icing. My three year old is a food snob... oops!

Happy Birthday to me! Isn't Aunty Staci's card the cutest?

These blinged out, cowhide flipflops are a gift from Nana. They are three sizes too big, but she still insist on tromping about in them. I'm not sure if it's because they are from Nana or because they are just so darn bitchin'!

The look of sheer joy when she opened the box with the Ukelale was priceless. She has been asking Eric for her own guitar for months and months, never mind that she was also REALLY stoked to be wearing the butterfly wings and tulle skirt that Boss & Aunty Staci sent along. These two gifts were likely her favorite... that is until the box from Kara, Russ, Tyler, & Nathan arrived not too long ago!

Bitty on lead guitar, Maggie on vocals!

Cake. Mmmmmm cake. I have been known to bake the worst cake in the universe, ever, hands down. However, this one was a rousing success and I ate the remainder for breakfast the next day. :)

I don't think that Lisa got a single bite, LindyJean was eating cake like it was her solemn duty to do so.

Here is a video of the evening's activities. It's a bit long, quite frankly this post is getting to be rather long winded...

life as me (update)...

I thought all was well. The family had returned and I had just enjoyed a few days of rest - then I spent 2 full weeks cleaning up puke & other unmentionables while the entire family (including Mom & Dad, when they came to visit and we thought we were in the free & clear) got the nastiest, most rotten (& recurring) cases of the flu. By some miracle of God, I managed to escape the terror of actually being ill myself. Which would have been too much, I may have crawled in a hole and chosen to have died.

HOWEVER, I have washed every bit of clothing & bedding in my home and bleached every hard surface and we are all well again and I hope to make good on my promise to start the blog posts again. Happy Birthday to Miss Bitty today!

In a jam.

With all of the normal fruitful bounty either being nonexistent (wiped out by fall frost, wind storms, rain, and generally cold, crappy weather conditions) or very delayed, I have done little to no food preservation as of yet. We decided to buy some berries at the local farmer's market and make strawberry freezer jam.

Aren't they pretty? Strawberry freezer jam is easy, best preserves that fresh, ripe strawberry taste, and makes the best ever PB & J sandwiches. Which is all Adelaide ate in the months of June & July for lunch - absolutely, positively could not get her to touch anything else. She would sit in her chair and order up a "peanut butter and jam sandwich, please... don't forget the butter on the jam side and today I'll have (fill in the blank) jam." Staci and I made so much jam last year that she always has at least 3 jars of any of the following to choose from; apple butter, spiced plum, strawberry, grape, raspberry, apricot, blueberry cassis, peach, or pear butter. She only stopped eating them when she discovered Lupita's tamales; we buy a dozen nearly every Saturday at the Farmer's market and they usually last until Wednesday. She has insisted on those for lunch nearly daily since her first bite in the firsts of August.

"SQUISH, Squash, I am squishing berries!" Also, having a hard time getting her to wear anything but a t-shirt and undies as of late...

Jam... stir, stir, stir. We got two batches done and now have 14, 8 oz containers in our freezer. PB & J here we come!

around the house...

LindyJean loves corn on the cob, avocados, having her photo taken, being in just a onesie, playing in the dirt, and imitating Bitty.

Munching on canteloupe, pre-breakfast snack, LindyJean insisted on sitting in a big girl chair like Bitty. It's funny; she's doing a lot of things earlier than Adelaide because she has Adelaide's example to follow. Additionally, she's real keen on being every bit as capable as Bitty at most things.

A sure sign you got a "walker" on your hands... goodness gracious, this turned into an UGLY bruise.

Just after we've gotten over the 2 week stint of vomiting, diarrhea, and obscene quantities of cranky & whiny sicko behavior - Adelaide wakes up from her nap with these all over her body!!! Are you serious? I have no idea what they were, but our doctor neighbor came over and dosed her with benadryl and said she'll either be fine in 24 hours or you'll need to call the pediatrician. Thank the good Lord she was fine. I could likely not have handled much more illness.

Life as Me...

A post for JoMama...

No photos, I apologize you're stuck with just my frivolous word smithing. Life has been most fabulous and, simultaneously, completely hellish as of late. Let's start with the shitstorm that arrived after a near full week sojourn provided to me by my most lovely ma-in-law and handsome husband (more on that later).

I managed to delete our entire library of family photos... yep, massive blunder. Thank goodness we pay for Carbonite and I was able to recover them, however it took an entire week for the back up system to download the 40 Gb of 10,980 photos and tied up our computer for SEVEN days. Which made Mr. Stagg even more annoyed by my monumental screwup. It also has caused me to fall seriously behind on my bookkeeping for the business as I did not want to restart the computer to boot to the Windows side of my newly partitioned Macbook (which I had to do b/c Intuit does not seem to think it necessary to make a usable version of Quickbooks for Macs... I hate Intuit.)

I broke my toe. As if it's not hard enough to waddle around hugely pregnant, I've clumsily added the bonus of an unexpectedly painful broken pinkie toe. Awesome! Even if I was not totally knocked up with our soon to be third baby (in four years), there is not much that can be done for it - except that you can visit the chiropractor and she can snap it back where it belongs (which, at the time, hurts so bad you want to punch her in the face, but within 12 hours makes the toe/foot feel MUCH better).

There are a number of small blunders that accompany these big two, that added to the aggravation of the big two, but I am not going to recount them. Not so much as to save you the boredom of reading them, but so that I might not plunge back into the pit of despair over what an idiot I can be at times. I am not sure if I am just realizing what a moron I am or if pregnancy not only makes you temporarily crazy/super-dooper hormonal and whale-like in your proportions, but also just plain stupid?

The good news... as we are nearing the end of this third pregnancy adventure, I was gifted 4 days to myself at home. Eric took Bitty and they went camping for 5 days (I'll get a post up soon, now that I can use the computer again) and Trudi, my ma-in-law, took LindyJean for 4 days. Let me tell you, it was FABULOUS. You get in the groove of mothering your children, pampering your husband, keeping house, and whatever else you add to your schedule and you do not realize that you are NEVER alone. Never left to your own thoughts and devices. Anyone who thinks they have no free time and is childless, has NO idea what they are talking about. I am also convinced that everytime you add a kiddo, you can look back and say to yourself, "What the hell was I doing with all that free time before 'what's his/her face' arrived?"

I had dinner with girlfriends, went to my book club, shopped, cleaned my house (and it stayed that way for days, not minutes), lounged about, read, gardened, caught up on all my bookkeeping chores, worked a day at the winery, cooked, and enjoyed myself immensely. We are very early risers in our household and I even stayed in bed reading one morning until 9 am. I highly recommend an "at home alone vacation" for all mothers. It is like someone hit the reset button and you have a new lease on life. Yay!

However, the return to reality can be a bit rocky. The quantity of laundry, whininess, and general chaos that returned with my loving children & husband was a rude and unexpected ending to a beautiful sojourn from my real life. However, I must say I am very glad to have them back and it's never boring 'round here!