food connection

last night i made dinner for 12 people with most ingredients culled from the garden. homemade pesto with the basil, eggplant caponata with japanese long and lavender eggplant, tomato and cucumber salad, and zucchini bread. there is something so satisfying and primal about being connected to the food that we eat, and i'm so blessed to have a family to garden with, to cook with, and to share meals with.

the really, really happy things

sometimes, when i need to feel more like a superhero and less like a hot mess (literally and figuratively), i focus on the things that make me really, really happy.

you know, things like:

fresh veggies from the garden, and kids underfoot

family. and love.

nature. and dirty feet.

color.

art.



relaxing. and drinks.

the meetings with creative friends in this beautiful art space.


aaaah. what are your really, really happy things lately? xx

circus love

lulu and puppa--
they
could
start
a
circus
act.

xx

dear tomatoes...

dear tomatoes,

you know you have always been my favorite food. since i was little, living on nanu's farm, i would wait for you to show your beautiful red faces. and when i saw your beautiful red faces, i would bite them off and love every second of the summer because of you. i'd swig back a little red wine vinegar and call it a day. some of my fondest memories are of you. loading up the back of nanu's station wagon with bushel baskets of your goodness, and then driving around peddling you.

have i mentioned that YOU ARE MY FAVORITE FOOD?

i admit it, i can get a little excessive when it comes to you. one is never enough. i get greedy and before i know it i've enjoyed a whole family of you and your friends. but then i chill out a bit and eat just a few. every day. a couple times a day.

but as i got older, my body began to speak to me. and here's what it said: "DUDE, THE WHOLE TOMATO THING (oh yeah, and oranges, too) JUST ISN'T WORKING FOR US. BACK OFF!"

i ignored it.

with every passing year i would ignore the random sores and blisters and mildly annoying things that made me realize that my love affair with tomatoes from the garden was coming to a close.

but this year...oh this year.

i'll make a long story short and just say that my body has staged a major revolt. it started a couple of weeks ago when i was in the lovely jungle that is our family garden. picking veggies, brushing up against the lovely foliage. then my legs burst out into what can only be described as itchy, burning, ugly, bumpy nastiness. and then it spread systemically and covered my arm and armpits. it wasn't pretty. strangers were (and still are) stopping me and asking me what on earth is going on. loved ones are begging me to go and get help.

but here's my secret, tomatoes, i'm not going to stop. you won't keep me away from the garden! yesterday, after picking a couple of baskets of fresh veggies for dinner (tomatoes included), i went home and felt sick. i was itchy and felt woozy. but then i bit into a cherry tomato and tasted summer again, and all those wonderful memories came flooding back. sounds crazy, tomatoes, i know, but this is how much i love you.

i'm still not 100% sure that it's YOU that's causing all this trouble for me. a more normal person would go to the doctor's or the allergist to figure things out. but i'm still holding out hope that maybe it's one of your less-delicious friends that are making me this way...you know, like squash?

xx

good friends are friends for life

we are blessed that when johnny was in the military, and we were living six hours away from home up in watertown NY, we made some really good friends. mostly everyone that crossed our path there was kind, and we have maintained many of our friendships even after moving away and leaving the military. the charltons are our very special friends from that time, and we are lucky enough to vacation with them once a year. even with our total of five kids, we have managed to get together through pregnancies, newborn-stage, etc! we either go to them, they come to us, and we have gone to burlington, VT and lake george, NY together. this year they were nice enough to come to us (good thing because i'm still a little scarred for life from lulu in the car for a total of 12 hours last year).

the good thing about the charltons is that we can pick up exactly where we left off, which pretty much means that johnny immediately farts and burps all over jen. and then we have a dance party to lionel richie records and pretend to dance on the ceiling. and then we just sit around and eat food and drink. we did make it to boston for a duck tour and some lunch and some dancing in the rain. the kids thought it was pretty rad that a mermaid drove our duckboat- and then gave them each a chance to drive in the charles river! and the kids make a big obstacle course and we laugh and then the weekend is done. time flies, and we say goodbye for another year. it's the best kind of friendship, if you ask me. easy, breezy, beautiful.

thank you to the charltons for another great year!

here are some of our highlights from this year:













(evidently "steamahs" from our area are much different and scarier that the littleneck clams from northern NY! unfortunately the charltons had to learn the hard way)

naked joy

today
i am channeling
the pure
joy
that is
swinging on a tire swing
naked
for a couple of hours
on one of the
hottest summer days.

xx

the joy that surrounds me

every day

i choose to focus
on the joy
that is all
around me.

love-punched

been busy getting punched in the face by love.

and don't get me wrong...

that's a very, very good thing.



just enjoying life, thinking about the big things.
loving how we're all connected,
and we are all a freaking mess.


i hope love punches you today. hard.

xx

real talk 2010

we have this friend pat, and he introduced us to the phrase "real talk". and by real talk he means saying it like it is, putting it all out there, hearing the hard stuff. you get the point, right?

well these past two weeks have been filled with "real talk".

so much so, we keep throwing around the phrase "real talk 2010" every time we say something heavy.

frankly, there have been some very difficult moments this past week. things that i can't write about here due to privacy issues. life is chaotic and crazy, but also predictable and beautiful. it's a conundrum, one that i am humbled by and honored to witness.

i'm learning how to deal with this unfamiliar tightness in my chest. i'm usually a very low stress person that let's everything roll off me, but the heartburn and tightness have returned lately. i still feel put-together and chill on the outside but my insides are screaming at me! i haven't felt like this since johnny was deployed to kosovo. i'm trying to treat myself to the things that matter- family time, whole foods trips, healthy food, a good bar of soap, a few good movies.

but i'm learning that life goes on. and that a little bit of real talk helps keep things real. the kids still need me to make them a million meals and snacks and drinks a day. lulu will inevitably take a dump on the deck. i will wash tie dyed clothes with the whites and ruin everything. i will have a pedicure party for the kids in the neighborhood, and pick strawberries, and do the dishes. i will fall into bed at the end of a long day and be thankful for all that i have.

nothing really stops when life gets crazy. it's the little real talk things that ground me.

happy father's day

inspired by mindy's call for father's day posts, i forwarded an email to johnny wondering if he'd like to participate. and this is what he came up with, without me even asking. i couldn't ask for a better father for my kids- one who never complains, and works hard every day for us. one who loves with his whole heart. thank you for your words, johnny. you inspire me to be better, always. xx



The one thing that makes me happiest in this world is seeing my kids blossom into wonderfully creative, talented, quirky and self-confident beings. The reality is, I have very little to do with this daily progression, which to be frank, sometimes makes me feel a bit disconnected but more so makes me that much more proud of them and my wife – who is by all accounts THE one that IS responsible for it. Every day when I stop to admire and listen to my children talk about their thoughts on love, family, acceptance of others and their seemingly grown-up ideas on art, creative projects and life itself, I’m reminded why I fell in love with my wife and continue to fall in love with her more and more every day.

Although I know it’s not enough for me to sit on the sidelines and stand-by in wonder as it all unfolds around me, it does give me great pleasure to be witness to the creativity and individuality taking hold in each of my children’s lives. I wish that I could be around more and I sometimes wish that my internal conflicts between my uncompromising drive for perfection in all things endeavored and the reality that nothing is ever really perfect and my focus on practicality and the inability to sometimes live in the moment didn’t affect my ability to demonstrate more love and acceptance to my own children. Because of this, I know, deep down inside that although it’s frustrating to sometimes watch from afar, it’s extremely comforting to know that the person most present and most constant in my kids’ lives is someone who’s ability to love and to teach and to show how life is truly meant to be lived is unmatched by anyone else I have ever met. For that, I am grateful beyond words.

Simply, I’m really glad that my kids have Nina(Bina) as their primary teacher in life. Although it sometimes frustrates me that none of my kids have much regard for facts, logic, planning, practicality etc., it makes me superbly happy that they all know who they are and are all very comfortable with themselves at such a young age. It makes me proud that Grace’s teacher is not only impressed with Grace’s intelligence, wit and scholastic ability but even more so with the kindness she shows to others, her genuine gift for teaching and communicating with those who may be challenged and her refusal to be embarrassed by her own choices in funky outfits, vegetarian lunches, and “against the grain” haircuts (and let’s not forget her deep love for 1950’s vintage cat-eye, eyeglass frames).

Through seven years of watching my kids grow, flourish and bloom I’ve realized just how blessed I am. It’s through the focused lens of fatherhood that I’ve come to appreciate not only the differences and wonders in my kids, but the differences between us all and the reasons why those differences make each of us so wonderful. Fatherhood for me has elevated “acceptance” from a nebulous word in my vocabulary to a way of life and an overarching philosophy by which I live. I haven’t completely given up on reading Ayn Rand but I much more enjoy Todd Parr!

Having grown up without a father, fatherhood is a bit of a foreign idea to me. A pair of pants that sometime feel as though they were handmade for someone else nearly the same dimensions but with much thinner legs. They fit well in some places, but in others they chaffe a bit too much. I battle constantly with how to do it better and surely there are many areas in which I can and should improve. I am most thankful for my family because they challenge me daily to be a better person and to be a better father and aren’t afraid to tell me how to do it differently. I’ve come to understand that it’s healthy to hear from my four year old that I disappointed him in ways that I could have never imagined and it helps me to know that my seven year old feels acutely under whelmed with my current level of communication. If these are the issues my kids are discussing at the ages of four and seven and this is the level of understanding they are demonstrating about their universe and these are the values they hold dear as toddlers and young kids, what will these magical people be like when they are 16 or 25 or (gasp!) 32? I am so proud to be a father of three amazing kids and I’m supremely blessed to be married to the person who has single handedly made them that way.

Happy Fathers Day.

hula hooping!

johnny is very patient with and supportive of all my "projects" that i come up with. they usually involve me handing him directions and supplies and making him do everything (kind of like the tie dye episode). recently i've been interested in hula hooping, mainly thanks to this mama's blog. after reading these directions, i decided that we would make our own! and johnny was happy to comply.

after many crazy looks at lowe's, i bought the supplies, and let me tell you, it was the best $33 i have ever spent. all the kids in the neighborhood participated in the making of the hoops, and then everyone had a chance to try them out. it was the best night ever (and by 'best' i mean that johnny and i would occasionally look at each other like "when are all these kids going to leave so we can have a drink?")! and we still have lots of supplies left over to make more when our friends from NY come to visit us in a couple of weeks.

we've been carting our hoops around to various get-togethers and family parties, encouraging people to give it a try. i love watching people that say that they haven't tried it in years...they couldn't possibly...and then they try it and love it! we made our homemade hoops really big and it makes it super easy to be a hula hooping rockstar.

someday i'd like to learn some tricks, but for now i'm content sending the hoops around my waist, over and over, over and over. repeat.

xx


here's a little video of me being a complete dork:

what i call therapy

the best therapy
in my humble opinion
is getting out into nature
maybe finding a sheep
with little balls of poop stuck on his bum
and having a good laugh

i also think
that dancing to this song
(preferably on the coffee table)
is really, really therapeutic.

and it didn't even hurt

i just told joey to go into the bathroom and brush his teeth. you know, because 1:09pm seems like as good of a time as ever to brush your teeth, right? so he seemed to be taking quite a long time in there...which is fairly typical for joey. he tends to get sidetracked...a LOT. but he finally just emerged from the bathroom and declared proudly-

"HEY MOM, I JUST CUT MY HAIR WITH THESE SCISSORS....

AND IT DIDN'T EVEN HURT!"

he doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that there's a huge chunk of hair missing from the middle of his head.

just another day being joey's mama. no sweat.

xx

find beauty everywhere

because it's there for the taking.

xx

anything can happen today

the mind is the final frontier, evidently.


today is going to be incredible for you.
i feel it in my bones.

it's laying out before us,
ready for the taking.

i'm not kidding you
when i say
that anything can happen.

xx

tie dye

we've tried tie dye-ing before in the past but honestly it was a complete trainwreck. it involved making crappy end products (which i still wear mind you- and actually, lulu is wearing one today, too) but the colors faded over time. and it involved using lots of scalding pots on our grill, and destroying all our kitchen utensils and pans.

i've had my eye on this good tie dye kit for a while, and jumped on the chance when it was on sale--

we used this exact kit, which i would highly recommend. especially if you buy if for 50% off, or use a 40% off coupon.

the kits uses the good dyes, and soda ash to fix the colors. i also learned that using 100% cotton is key and makes a huge difference. i don't even know what kind of junk we used in the past but it made this kit look completely rock star. johnny, being johnny, researched and WATCHED THE DVD THAT CAME WITH THE KIT MULTIPLE TIMES before we could start the adventure as a family. but let me tell you, the research paid off and they all came out amazing! and nobody burnt any of their skin off! and the kids can tell you the names and differences between all the different patterns! and now we can all go out in public completely matching in tie dye and make complete strangers uncomfortable! it's perfect.

(of course, being in your underwear while doing tie dye, like joey is demonstrating, is completely key to the process as well)

you should totally try it.