books

I've started reading to Gwen on a regular basis; usually after a bottle and before going down for bed at night, or for a nap. We're going through a book Mother Goose book, and then I have a few others (I will have way, way more when the rest of our books arrive here from storage, and when I have a chance to go through Joel's baby books) which we rotate in when I'm bored with nursery rhymes. One of them is a Beatrix Potter chapter book that I'm not familiar with, so we've been reading Little Pig Robinson with interest and anticipation. Another is a fantastic, hilarious, little book Mama, waarom staat er een server bij ons thuis ("Mama, why is there a server in our house?") which we got from Martijn and Wendy. The first time I read it to her, I realized that it doesn't matter to her, in terms of understanding, whether I read to her in Dutch or in English, so even if I don't always understand what I'm reading, that's no reason not to read to her Dutch books.

So today we went out shopping. I wanted to get her an alphabet book, a book of nursery rhymes, and a Nijntje book. (Tangent: The name "Nijntje" comes from Dutch konijntje 'little rabbit'. When I started typing "Nijntje" into my phone, what did autocorrect suggest? Bunny. Eerie...). I didn't find the first, at least not what I was looking for, so I will keep looking for that. For the second, I got a book of verses; I don't know if they're traditional Dutch nursery rhymes or not, but either way it's a book of short little poems that we can alternate with Mother Goose. And I also got Nijntje in de Dierentuin ("Nijntje in the Zoo") which has a lot of animal names. Even if we don't stay in the Netherlands long enough for her to speak Dutch, I figure it can't hurt to have her hear both languages from an early age.

Something I'm finding interesting about parenting is how all sorts of skills and things are all coming back from my days babysitting. There's a cadence that you use when reading aloud story books to little children; there's also one that you use when reading fiction aloud to adults, but it's not quite the same. It took me only one or two reading sessions before I fell back into the kid-cadence, and now that I know that I do it, I find it interesting to hear how much emotion and interpretation I put into the words via my voice. And I keep remembering other things -- for example, how once they reach a certain age, kid love being held upside down. I tried that with Gwen last night, tipping her down over my knees and bringing her back up, and I'm not sure what she thought. She didn't struggle or cry, but when we'd come back up, she'd look at me with this slightly worried expression like "I'm not sure if that was scary or awesome." We'll try again in a few weeks...

During our trip to the US was when she really started waking up to the world. Even though she still sleeps most of the day (in the morning she'll be up for about 1.5 hours before the first nap, but during the day it's sometimes only 1 hour, rarely 2, between naps, and naps generally last 2-3 hours), when she's awake, she's no longer content to just sit in my arms. She doesn't like being on her tummy (who would, when your head is so heavy?), and if I put her on her back, after a little while I think she just gets bored. So we also picked up one of those overhead play things -- you know, four legs and a bar across the stuff with things hanging down from it. I put her in her carseat so she was sort of sitting up, and put the thing over it, and I think she found it interesting. It's hard to tell. I'm still waiting for cause-and-effect and interaction to happen with her. I know certain things that I can do that can cause her to cry (not prepare the bottle fast enough, give her a bath, leave her on her tummy more than about 2-3 minutes), but I haven't yet found things that have a clear causal effect in making her happy. We've still gotten only a handful of smiles; most of the time she's not crying she's got such a serious face.

I'm not a cook

Joel is able to take the same ordinary ingredients that we always use, and come up with absolutely delicious soup -- witness the two batches (of two pots each) of vegetable barley with meatball soup that we made before Christmas, and which I've been plowing through at an alarming rate this week while he's gone. Between cooking the barley the right amount of time, and likewise the marrow bone, the soup turned out thick and creamy.

A few days before Christmas we'd steamed some broccoli and it reminded me of just how much I love broccoli and cauliflower in pretty much all forms, and how it had been awhile since I'd had cream of broccoli or cream of cauliflower soup, so I decided I'd try to make some this week while he was gone.

Cream of Broccoli/Cauliflower Soup with Vegetables

(This was done in two pots, so everything was split in half.)

3l broth (I used 2 chicken bouillon cubes)
1 head cauliflower
2 not huge heads of broccoli (they were smaller than I wanted but all I could get)
200g creme fraiche
400g cream
800g soup vegetables (I got the ordinary mix -- leek, carrot, celery, flat-leaf parsley -- because I went to a different grocery store and so couldn't get the kind we really like that also has cauliflower and red pepper in it)

Remove florets from broccoli and cauliflower stalks; dispose of cauliflower stock. Cook broccoli and cauliflower in broth 20-30 min. (I put the broccoli stalks in for added flavor, and removed them after the 30 min.). Puree. Add creme fraiche. Return to heat. Add veggies, and cook until tender but not mush, 10-20 min. Remove from heat. Add cream. Season with black pepper (and salt if you think it needs it, but I think it has enough from the bouillon).

It's soup. It's not terrible, but by no means would I call it all that good. It's too thin. I think I should've had more broccoli and cauliflower, and more cream. Or less broth. But I'm not sure how I could've had more broccoli/cauliflower and less broth and still gotten it to steam right in the initial stage. And I don't think more cream would've thickened it in the way that I want.

It's at least something different. I thought we had three types of soup in the freezer before we left, but so far I've only found two (the aforementioned vegetable barley, and dahl), and soup is all I've eaten this week other than a frozen pizza one night.