Shannon Phillips

I snapped this while the boys were watching television—an uncharacteristic moment of stillness. They always look so much older after a haircut!

The show was “My Little Pony.” Robin is a brony now. He got some birthday money from his great-grandmother and he decided to spend it on a Rarity doll. Maybe it’s a Rarity “action figure”? Anyway, that choice came as a surprise to us, because he mostly talks about Rainbow Dash—but after Rarity arrived, he started saving up his allowance for Fluttershy. So I guess those are his favorites!

The allowance is a new thing too. We’ve started giving him $5 a week, which would basically allow him to get one new pony a month (although some of them are on sale sometimes). We keep track of his money on a notecard attached to the fridge. It’s the Bank of Mom and Dad. The advent of the allowance coincided with the arrival of a weekly chore schedule—he’s now expected to let the chickens out of their coop every morning, and to help set the table for dinner.

Davy’s hit some new milestones too. He’s successfully transitioned into his own bed, in Robin’s room: it’s awfully sweet to hear the two brothers chatting to each other in the mornings. The next big challenge will be potty training. I’m going to give him six weeks or so to settle into the school routine, and then start pushing to get him out of diapers.

Lastly, here’s our little girl, at almost ten weeks:

Still a baby, but getting bigger!

Well, technically it was Robin’s second day of school—but Davy’s first. For the rest of the year Davy will be going on Thursday and Friday mornings.

Robin showed him around the school:

And sat with him at lunch:

Then they split up, and Davy went out to wash a monster truck:

But we met up again at park time, when Davy spent time on the swings:

And Robin ran around barefoot in the sand:

And then it was time to go home!

This morning I picked some blackberries from our back yard and made blackberry pancakes:

They were a hit!

Davy started chirping as soon as I brought in that bowl of cherry tomatoes. “This. This one. Mine. Eat. Matoes! Mmmmm!”

So I put them on a plate for him, cut in half and sprinkled with a little fleur de sel (fancy schmancy!), and he promptly ate them all.

The zucchini is destined for tonight’s stir-fry (with tofu, carrots, ginger, and scallions), but I also made a barley salad using some garden herbs:

The bell pepper in the salad was supermarket-bought, as the one pepper plant I bought for the garden was an early casualty of the Squash Wars. At this point the tomatoes, zucchini and kabocha squash have carved up the garden bed amongst themselves, with the parsley, basil, mint and chives sort of hanging out around the edges. Next year the squash and zucchini will be moved to their own bed, and I’ll have another try at peppers, eggplant, and leafy greens.

Barley Salad with Fresh Herbs

Adapted from a Whole Foods recipe

Combine three cups of water, a teaspoon of salt, and one cup of pearled barley in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer until the barley is tender, about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, toss 1/2 cup chopped green onions, a diced red pepper, 1/4 cup chopped parsley, 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, and 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves. In a second, small bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup mild-tasting olive oil, one or two tablespoons of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and a clove of garlic that’s either minced or put through a garlic press.

When the barley is cooked, drain it and add to the bowl with the herbs. Toss with the dressing and add salt and pepper to taste.

At the preschool, each kid has a cubby for their backpacks and jackets. The cubbies are labeled both with the kid’s name and with a photo, so that even the youngest children can easily identify their own cubbies.

Here’s the photos I sent in this year for Robin and Davy:

School starts next week!

We had lots of appointments yesterday! First Thora had a vet check in the morning (10.7 pounds and practically perfect in every way), and then we split up in the afternoon: Sam took Robin in to the doctor for some booster shots, and I went to meet with a new midwife, because I am once again enceinte. I still find that term very charming. Wikipedia says it’s “from Latin incinctus: girdled, surrounded…a French term used technically in fortification for the inner ring of fortifications surrounding a town or a concentric castle. In architecture, generally, an enceinte is the close or precinct of a cathedral, abbey, castle, etc.” Isn’t that an interesting metaphor for pregnancy? Because, you know, at that stage, the walls of the abbey have rather been breached.

I suppose it’s the baby who is meant to be fortified.

I used to have a quote at the bottom of this blog: “I positively think those ladies who are always enceinte quite disgusting; it is more like a rabbit or guinea-pig than anything else and really it is not very nice.” —Queen Victoria, mother of nine. In fact Queen Victoria is an excellent source of trenchant commentary on motherhood in general. (“I must say it is a bad arrangement.”)

Fortunately, my outlook is sunnier than Her Majesty’s. For us three children was always in the plan, although the truth is that of late we had started to feel two was a very comfortable number as well. So we weren’t exactly trying—but a new baby is a perfectly welcome result nonetheless.

I’m about 11 weeks along at this point, which would put my due date in mid-March. We won’t know for a while yet whether it’s a boy or a girl; I’d love to have a baby girl, but there’s also something appealing about the idea of having our own little pack of boys. Really the only source of anxiety is about outgrowing our two-bedroom bungalow. “Let’s just stay here and pile the kids up like kindling,” Sam said, which I took to mean “bunk beds,” and, well, that’s one solution. St. Louis is another. But basically, the future is both a little more exciting and a little more stressful than it seemed just a few months ago.

Omigosh you guys! Do you know about puppies?

Thora is our puppy. She is made out of warm velvet and love. When you pick her up she snuggles into you, and when she snuggles into you, you feel nothing but happy.

Also she very much enjoys taking naps.

That’s all I know about Thora so far! More to come!

Of course, every time I think about moving, I look around our house and am struck with pain. I love it here. I’ve just about gotten everything the way I want it! Look, here’s the before-and-after on the breakfast nook:

to

Yes, ideally, I would like to change the tile (I’m thinking hex tile) and give it a new coat of paint, but it’s pretty much done. We use this space all the time. (We even use it for breakfast!) The table was Sam’s grandmother’s, the tomato salt-and-pepper set were a gift from his sister, and the orange chairs and clock and phone were flights of whimsy on my part. It just makes me a little bit happy every time I walk by.

We flew to St. Louis last week to visit Nanita and Markie, and had a great time doing all the tourist stuff: eating toasted ravioli, going to the Arch, visiting Grant’s Farm, touring the zoo… The weather was great for our trip, too. It’s been unbearably hot, but the heat broke just as we touched down, and we enjoyed balmy 80-degree days during our stay. It was just hot enough to cool down with a sno-cone:

Robin rode the carousel, and Davy was intimidated by goats:

“Pick me up, Mommy! Goats will eat me!”

We left impressed again with St. Louis’ livability and affordability: we saw charming four-bedroom homes, in walkable neighborhoods with shops and parks, selling for $200K. We love our own bungalow, but it’s likely that we’ll be outgrowing our sweet little two-bedroom home soon—and the shops near us are mostly boarded up, and the crime is a constant low-level worry, and…what with one thing and another, the whole “maybe we should move to St. Louis” conversation has been resurrected. It’s a question we’ll probably reconsider seriously at the end of this year.