shiso mama

OK, people, put your pitchforks down and your torches away.

One Halloween chef sitting on a pumpkin is pretty funny……

But two Halloween chefs standing next to each other are HI-LAR-I-OUS!

We tried out our costumes at the Farmer’s Market. More Halloween pictures to come later. Emmett is coming trick or treating with us so we’ll have tons more pictures.

wow, i was this close to throwing my scanner out the window.

Daylight savings time sucks. Otis woke up today at 6:30, which is not unusual, but when I discovered that it was actually 5:30 (though, not really actually, just conceptually actually), I groaned louder than usual. One man was waiting outside the door of the bakery at 7, where diehards (like us) usually congregate minutes before the 8am opening time, anxious to charge in and grab their morning buns. A few lonely bicyclists showed up at the coffee shop an hour before their rest of their properly time-telling teammates would appear for their regular weekend workout. There was general dissatisfaction with the world as we know it.
But Otis was chipper. Maybe because he knew it was FASHION SHOW SUNDAY!!

Leggings courtesy of the girls’ department at Baby Gap. How pleasing that the 80s are coming back.
Here he is going Sean Penn on my ass. He didn’t want me to take his picture. He kept shaking his little hand at me, whining his high pitched, “Noooooooooo.”

The musician at the Farmer’s Market today was a mandolin player, who played a CD with a range of other instruments, and just jumped in with his mandolin every now and again. Doesn’t that seem like cheating? It’s like karaoke with a mandolin. Not that it stopped Otis from doing his little white boy dance…

The Halloween costumes are finished! This afternoon/evening if our neighborhood potluck/parade/excuse to move out the barricades and shut down the street. Stay tuned for pictures of costumes. You. Are. Going. To. DIE!!!!!!

It took me a while for me to get excited about Halloween this year. Last year we dressed Otis up as a big game hunter, but we figured it wasn’t a raging success when one of our neighbors asked us if he was a Desert Storm soldier. Now Otis is 19 months, and it’s harder to find something that he will definitely wear. Elaborate headdresses are definitely out. Wigs and moustaches too. Props are iffy.

I finally came up with a costume that I was excited to work on and that he will hopefully wear. Plus it will have a second life later. Here’s a sneak peek:

Not too many details, or I’ll ruin the surprise. I’m also trying to make a matching outfit for our baby friend, Emmett. Unfortunately, he’s not available for a trick or treat date, but I’ll try to snap some pics of the boys together this weekend.

Last Friday, we went to a pizza party at Otis’s daycare. It was nice to hang out, meet a few other parents, and chat with some of his teachers (unfortunately, he burst into tears at the sight of two of the nicest teachers around). We made devil’s food cupcakes with white chocolate frosting from this book. (Love the devil’s food, didn’t care for the white chocolate frosting.)

Otis helped!  Checkit:

And helping me some more:

And look how helpful he can be! Two hands!

It’s amazing any of the cupcakes made it to the party at all.

We don’t wear shoes in our house, so we’ve been working very hard to teach Otis that the first thing we do when we come home is to take off our shoes. He’ll usually inch backwards and fall onto the bottom stair, waiting for us to pull his shoes off. Then most of the time, we start easing his socks off, letting him pull the rest of with a triumphant yank. Lately, he’ll take that sock, bring it up to his nose, take a deep whiff, wrinkle his nose, and exclaim, “Tzo!” (stinky) before throwing the sock on the floor. I’ll ask him, “Otis, tzo bu tzo?” (Stinky or not?) and he’ll usually respond with an emphatic “Tzo!”

**

There are things that Otis knows he’s not supposed to do. Like throw or play with his food. There have been times lately when he’ll watch me carefully and throw some of his food on the floor (rather than dropping it, his usual M.O.) and when I say, “Nu-uh, Otis. We don’t throw food.” he’ll make a grand windmill-ish gesture with his right hand, touch the back of his left hand as though to slap it and say, “Da da! Da da!” (which means hit, like he’s punishing himself.) I swear he didn’t pick this up from me or any of my punishment techniques, crib tent or not. Fifth Aunt Grandma K said to him once in jest (she would be totally incapable of punishing the kid to save his life), and he picked it up immediately. Now, our day is filled with UH OHs and dramatic, breathy DA DAs.