Magrilless

Maggie is in an under phase. Under the table. Under the coffee table. Under her high chair. She’s also in an in phase. In the laundry basket. Also an on phase. On birthday presents. On storage bins. It’s also an up phase. Up the stairs by herself. Up the bookcase shelves. I guess really she’s big on prepositions right now. No walking, but plenty of exploring and knee shuffling.

Her birthday was very much fun. She enjoyed wrapping paper and envelopes, and then when she got tired of those, there was a new toy too! We spent most of the day opening presents and spending plenty of time learning about each new toy. And we found a way to get her to eat broccoli and spinach — in lasagna!

Happy birthday, Mags! We’re chilling out, relaxing, opening a present every once and a while. And remembering that 1 year and 15 minutes ago Maggie was born!

I know we’re supposed to teach her not to play with her food, but sometimes Mom needs a minute to fix lunch and regular toys are not enough when you’re a hungry baby. She continues to be a fairly adventurous eater. Green foods are still a bit of a challenge though. We found that the stereotypical airplane spoon flying into her mouth seems to work for a serving of broccoli or asparagus. Guess there’s a reason people do that.

We have already dropped a breastfeeding from the day I think. She never asks to nurse after first lunch, so yesterday she just had her cup of milk and snack and we let the nursing go. No complaints. We’ll see if we can continue that through the next couple of days and get her used to the idea. Extra benefit: she always falls asleep at the first lunch breastfeeding, even though it’s verboten. I always feel bad waking her up, but she really only does one nap a day. More than that and the nighttime is a bear. A short bear. So. Weaning going well.

Otherwise, Mags is the little energizer bunny that keeps us busy. She has started to walk on her knees more than crawl. I think she’ll appreciate walking on her feet more, but she wants an intermediate step, so knees it is. She is doing more of finger-walking (walking while holding on to someone’s hands), so she’s slowly getting the picture. Plus she’s around a lot of walking little people at Gym. Baby steps, as they say. Check out the video below to see her rocking the knee walk.

The second batch of our foraged chestnuts has now been cooked up nice and easy in our good old-fashioned way. We marked our x; we heated our oil; we plopped those suckers in; and we peeled the hard shell away to get at that sweet sweet nut meat. So this is how it’s been done with every batch of store-bought chestnuts we’ve purchased. And always those nuts end up great, ready to eat off the cutting board, warm and delicious.

The foraged nuts we cooked exhibited a few differences. 1) When we notched the x into the shell, they started to give off some oil. That must mean they’re really fresh and will be especially tasty, much better than those dried out supermarket nuts. All nuts have oil — that’s why you can buy bottles of hazelnut and walnut oils for gazzilions of dollars in the health food store. Gold mine of chestnut oil over here! 2) When we put the nuts in the hot oiled pan, the nuts really started to give off their juice. It just started bubbling out of the marked notch and fried like a thin dough. It smelled absolutely wonderful — just like fresh crispy french fries.

3) Peeling, always a bit of a task, was harder than normal. It took real effort to get the shell and the skin off the nuts. It meant we ended up with chestnut pieces instead of whole nuts. 4) The finished product was still completely inedible. Bitter bitter bitter, like poison.

There’s one more method left to try. The lady down the street (who’s lived here her entire life) described for us her father’s recipe from the old days. We’ll see if baking does the trick.