Laura Galore!

Only peruse if you want to see lots of Laura :)

Working on her pumpkin.  He had a "happy face" according to Laura .

 What is she thinking?

 Always curious.  Her favorite part about the pumpkin was taking the lid on and off.

 Smile, Laura!

 Hugging her pumpkin.

 Birthday Girl!

Photo shoot of the birthday girls.  It was challenging getting her to cooperate.  I guess that's part of life with toddlers :)

 This smile was achieved by me jumping up and down.

 We took photos at the park behind our house after nap time.  Didn't get the perfect shot, but got lots of good ones of typical Laura expressions.

 Laura: Wound pol, mama?

Mama: Yes, Laura, you can go around the pole.

 We gave her this section to eat.

Somehow my pumpkin cake didn't turn out as well as the ones my mama used to make me.  It tasted great, but the face was kinda scary.

 Show off our presents.  Thanks everyone!

Tom surprised me with a personalized pumpkin for my birthday. 

 Enjoying the English Tea set from April

 My busy little bee.

Macarons!

When we visited Paris 2 years ago, I discovered a new dessert...macarons.  Soft shell on the outside, yummy filling on the inside.  Oh so good.  Ever since then I have been on the lookout for macarons.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for my budget and waistline), the Swiss macarons have nothing on the French ones.  I have found some good ones here, but for the most part they cannot compete with French ones, especially the Parisian ones.

My Parisian Macarons

Tom has been very patient and indulgent in my macaron obsession.  We buy macarons everywhere we see them.  He even brought me some straight from Paris when he had a day trip there.  However, since they are hard to find and quite pricey (the good ones can be close to $2 apiece), I cannot indulge my taste buds as often as I would like.  To solve this problem, Tom bought me two macaron cookbooks for my birthday complete with the promise to make them with me.  It has been a great present.  Not only is it fun to do together, but the results are quite delicious, even if they aren't as pretty as the store-bought ones.  Here's a documentation of our first attempt.

After ageing our eggwhites for 5 days, sifting our almond flour to remove the big chunks and carefully folding everything together, we piped our batter into the macaron pan Tom included with the cookbooks.  (In the end we found that the macaron pan is great for making universal shapes, but TERRIBLE at making good looking macaron shells.  They were eatable but ugly!)

Piping the batter onto a cookie sheet.  Is Tom doing it like the picture?

Stage 2 - The Filling

We didn't have time the first night to do the vanilla buttercream filling for our vanilla shells, so here's our 2nd night on the job.

Pairing up the random shapes that we had and sandwiching them with the cream.

Our food pictures leave much to be desired.

Hurray, they're done!

After letting them sit for 24 hours in the fridge (supposedly to allow the cream to infuse into the shells) and then letting them sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, Laura got to eat a "ma-ka-kon" as she calls them.

Enjoying macaron success!  Laura is as hooked as her mama :)

All in all, making these little cookies wasn't quite as complicated or challenging as the cookbooks made them out to be.  They were a little bit involved, but they turned out fine.  The certainly weren't beautiful, but they sure did taste good!  Thanks for a fun b-day present, Tom!

P.S. We just finished our 2nd batch last night.  Again, they turned out tasty, but hideous.  We tired to color ours this time and instead of a vibrant bluegreen like we were hoping, they turned out a pastel aquamarine.  Not an appealing color to eat.   If you get past the color though, they're quite good!  Picture to follow.

Catch Up

I was looking through pictures and realized that I've missed quite a few of them, so here is my first post to help catch up to real time.

We visited Hauterive quite a bit before Andrew was born.  It was a perfect place to take Laura and since it was cold, we often had the place to ourselves.  Here's a family shot taken in October.

Laura helping carve her first pumpkin.

The horrible construction I had to deal with while 8 months pregnant, with a toddler and with Tom gone.  We had to park our car a block away for a week while they were laying water pipes.  Those stairs were not fun to do while pregnant!

Here we were heading to the ludothèque (toy library) to exchange Laura's suitcase for something else.  I love the concept of a toy library.  Does such a thing exist in the US?

We went to the zoo over our birthday weekend.  I think Laura enjoyed the massive playground more than all the animals.

Trying to get a good shot of a 2 year old is challenging enough without your camera going crazy.  I actually had Laura cooperating and the camera went berserk.  I managed this one non-fuzzy shot before it completely shut down.

Taking our little bee to the store on Halloween.  We only got a few funny looks from people.

Back at Hauterive - pretty fall colors and a baby bump!

Our Little People Nativity scene had molded while in storage, so we gave everyone a bath.  Laura had a ball washing baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph while wearing one of Mommy's gloves.  She also had to wear an apron like Mama.  Monkey see, monkey do!

Sweet :)

Snow Babies

Tom taught Laura how to roll her eyes.  I was annoyed at first, but now I think it's adorable.  Might as well enjoy it now while it's cute!

We took a trip up to Lac Noir one Saturday so Laura could sled.  It never stopped snowing, so it was a little cold and wet.  Laura didn't last too long, but she really enjoyed it while she was out there.

 Mommy had fun, too :)

 Andrew ventured out in the snow later that day on a walk to the park.  He lasted about 10 minutes.

 Daddy built a snowman taller than Laura!  She was very possessive of the snowman (she is possessive about most everything these days).  She couldn't stand it when some people took a picture with HER snowman after we'd walked away.

 Monkey see, monkey do!  Laura is feeding her baby like Mama feeds Andrew!

Grandma with both of them!  She did this so much better than I ever have managed.  One of them always seems to be crying when I try.

Andrew's Birth Story

Tom documented Andrew's birth from his side of things, so I thought I'd balance out the perspective by adding my own.

I was convinced that Andrew was coming early.  I was prepared for him to make his debut up to three weeks ahead of time.  I had been an early baby, Laura was early, and I was having TONS of Braxton-Hicks.  I was just hoping I'd be able to make it to the hospital before he decided to pop out.  However, the days went by and nothing happened.  Each night I went to bed wondering if it would be THE night.  I was so sure he was coming early that when I hit December 1st and was still pregnant, I felt as though I was a week past my due date!

We had a routine doctor's appointment on December 1 and I was discouraged to find out that the baby was big (estimated at 4kg!) and that I wasn't dilated at all.  We went home with an appointment for induction on Tuesday (it was Thursday), a prescription for a 'contraction cocktail' and various other snippets of advice on how to get the baby moving!  That afternoon, my parents, Laura and I headed downtown to search out the odd ingredients for my cocktail and to walk around.  We found a few of the ingredients, let Laura play on the playground, stumbled across a practice run for the St Nicolas parade on Saturday, and enjoyed some yummy coffee at one of my favorite cafes.

A friend of mine had made us a pan of eggplant parmesan for dinner and I ate a huge helping - thanks, April - and then had some of my raspberry leaf tea - thanks, Marti!   Then Tom and I got distracted playing a computer game together, so it was 12:30 when I finally got to bed.  At 12:50 (before I had had a chance to fall asleep and well after Tom started snoring), my first contraction started.  I started timing them just out of habit and they were coming every 10 minutes and preventing me from falling asleep.  I got in and out and in and out of bed - I kept thinking I'd be able to go to sleep.  Finally around 1:45 I decided to take a shower to see if that would take care of them.  I still didn't really think I was in labor and was paranoid about going to the hospital in error!  The shower didn't really help and the contractions were now every 5 minutes.  Sleep was impossible as I found myself gnawing on the bed sheets every time a contraction came along.  So I just got up and found my What to Expect When You're Expecting book and the sheet from the hospital on when to call.  I devoured the false/real labor symptoms in the book and still didn't know what to think, and the hospital's information said not to call until my contractions had been 5 minutes apart for an hour.  So I walked around and read and waited until 2:50 when I finally woke up Tom.  He did really well this time - it only took about 5 minutes to get him to full awareness and get him to listen to me!  (With Laura he went back to sleep after I told him my water had broken)  We called the hospital and they told us to come "gently" to the hospital - meaning we didn't have to hurry.  We got dressed and went upstairs to let my parents know that we were going.  I still wasn't sure my labor was real, so didn't make any promises to them!

We got to the hospital about 330 and walked from the parking lot to the ER and then walked ourselves up to the maternity ward through the deserted hospital.  It took a little while because I had to stop every 5 minutes, but we made it with no problems!  The midwife met us and started our paperwork.  Everything was nice and relaxed.  Then she check to see how much I was dilated.  She had a funny look on her face, so I was convinced that I was at 0cm and was just having false labor.  She then told me I was already at 9cm!  She was shocked and so were we!  Things weren't relaxed after that.  The midwife started moving at 100mph.  She called a bunch of people, got my IV started and moved us into the birthing room.  I think we freaked her out just a bit :)

We got settled into the birthing room about 430 or so and things slowed down.  (I think it's that goofy medicine (oxytocin?) they give me to increase contractions...it was the same time with Laura...anyway...)  The midwife calmed down when the doctor got there and everything was ready for the baby to arrive.  I was free to push when I wanted to, but wasn't having any urge to push.  We waited, and waited, and I stood up for a little while and waited some more.    I got tired of the waiting and just decided to try pushing to see what happened.  Tom was a great coach and 20 minutes later at 5:30, Andrew Paul Holst entered the world!  I couldn't believe that he'd arrived so quickly (with Laura I pushed for 2 hours), but was happy to be done with it!  My work was finished and I could just admire and caress the sweet, wet, beautiful new baby in my arms.  The first think I noticed was his back - it was hairy!  "Tom, he's just like you!" I said.  He was quiet and precious and content just to rest on my chest.  He was worn out from the birth, too!

The doctor and midwife finished taking care of me and an hour later (not a very fun hour) the three of us were finally left in peace.  We called our parents with the good news and sent a dozen texts informing the world of little Andrew's arrival.  We were excited to reveal his name.  Andrew was my father's father and a wonderful man.  He loved the Lord and served Him quietly and faithfully for as long as I knew him.  I pray that our Andrew will grow up to do the same.  Paul is the name of Tom's brother as well as the second name of my mother's father - both of whom are also worthy namesakes.  We pray that our little guy will love the Lord and serve his family like the men before him.

All in all, it was a quick and easy delivery.  It's hard to believe that only 2 hours after getting to the hospital we were holding our new baby.  He's a sweetie and growing growing.  We had our one-month appointment yesterday and he is already 5.2kg...Laura didn't weight that much until 2 months!  He goes 3 hours between meals except once at night where he's gone up to 6hrs!  There are some advantages to having a big baby!  I've really enjoyed the 4 hour stretch of sleep that I occasionally get from midnight to 4.  Life is rather hectic with a newborn and a toddler, but I think we're doing ok.  Laura LOVES her baby brother and only acts out towards us as she copes and not towards him for which I am thankful.  She just loves to hold and hug and kiss "Baby An-Drew".  Today I showed her that he would grasp her finger if she gave it to him.  She was tickled pink and kept trying to get him to hold her hand the rest of the evening.  Tonight was the first time I had to put her to bed while also having to manage Andrew (Tom is out of town for 3 nights - so far, so good!).   After I turned the lights off to sing and pray, her hand started roaming.  I thought she wanted to hold my hand, but no, she was searching for Andrew's.  She held it the entire time and had to search for it if she lost it.  Too sweet :)