More food for thought

I've written many times now about our family's eating habits; the buying, storing, preparing, and eating of food takes up a pretty hefty chunk of both our time and money, so it's a topic that's bound to come up often. A "quick trip" to the store to "pick up a few things" for us means a full cart and a few hundred dollars these days. More often than not, we've filled our cart to overflowing by the time we get about three-fourths of the way through the store. I'm going to have to come to terms with the idea of grabbing *two* shopping carts at a time, in hopes of actually being able to get a weeks' worth of goods in one trip. The funny thing is, none of us are very big people, yet we seem to consume an enormous amount. This morning for brunch after church I cooked a full loaf of bread into French toast, and a whole pound of bacon. Several people were still hungry, so Matt made eggs and toast for himself and a child, and Paul made himself an egg sandwich. Several children were still complaining of being hungry, at which point I declared the kitchen officially closed and pointed to the fruit basket. I'm going to start sending them out on the front yard to graze!

One reason for the jump in our food consumption, besides a number of rapidly growing adolescents, is that Baby D has started eating quite a bit of "people" food. He still eats some pureed baby food, and still gets his milk "on tap", but he's now pretty much eating what the rest of us eat. His favorites are chicken cutlets, bananas, and goldfish crackers. You can see the entire table behind him that is full of his food. I told Matt we better not let him try bacon, or before you know it I'll be frying up four pounds at a time just to feed everyone breakfast!

The perils of babyhood

Poor Baby D still has not figured out how to propel himself forward. He motors around on his belly, pushing himself backwards, until he becomes lodged under a piece of furniture or stuck in a corner.
Here he is waiting patiently to be rescued. Fortunately, he lives in a house with a lot of willing rescuers.
Here he's playing with his favorite "toy", the TV remote. This one actually goes to the old TV that's down in the basement. I'm pretty sure he knows we're pulling one over on him.
He's also playing with Joe's light-up spinning lightsaber. Good luck getting either one of those away from him.

Where Oh Where has my little blog gone?

I'll start here by apologizing to my faithful followers (both of you) for the pitiful lack of new posts. That was the biggest break since I started this blog two years ago. So what have we been up to?
We (the royal we, which is of course, me) finally got around to painting the bare drywall in the new addition, as well as the adjoining rooms. The job is about 90% finished, and will probably remain in that almost-done state indefinitely. Above you see a sampling of some of the most boring shades of beige paint known to mankind, one of which now graces our walls. I went against my better (and may I say, superior) judgement and picked a lighter shade than I normally go for. It is such a boring color, I think my heart might actually stop completely if I stare at it too long.
Joe, our in-house puzzle whiz, has spent his time this winter solving the Rubik's cube. He's a persistent little squirrel. He can now solve it from any messed-up state in just about two minutes. We've upgraded to the 4x4 Rubik's; we'll be sure to update you when he solves that one.
Baby D is quickly becoming mobile. He can't quite get the forward-crawl down yet, but he can scootch forward on his behind, roll around, and do a complete 360 while laying on his tummy. He's getting very good at pushing himself along backwards, though he lack directional control. Eventually he finds himself shoved underneath a chair or backed into a corner, and has to holler for help.
I live in a House of Nerds. This is not a bad thing- if I need someone to calculate sales tax while we're out shopping, I've got multiple volunteers competing to give me the answer first, and I never have to add up my own Yahtzee score. We brought this cake home for dessert last week, and Paul was quick to point out that though this was labeled as "pound cake", it in fact only weighed ten ounces. I explained to him that pound cake is a type of cake, and has nothing to do with the actual weight of the product. He was dissatisfied with this answer, but managed to eat his dessert without further commentary. A short time later, Matt came home and looked at the cake, and the first thing he said was, "Hey! This says 'pound cake', but it only weighs ten ounces!" Nerds. They take everything literally.