The Cookbook Junkies

As I bake for Hospitality Sunday and mentally prepare myself for a Chuck E Cheese birthday party at two (three Advils and a two liter of Diet Pepsi, my drug of choice)….I was looking through some of my youtube videos and wondering why my husband always seems to have to work when there is one of these “events”. And while browsing through my youtube library — I have about fifty videos there (icywit is my user name should anyone like to browse), I found this one from two years ago:

How cute is that kid (and the husband isn’t bad either)? My husband always says that my videos have a Blair Witch quality to them. To which I respond, “Hey, Blair Witch was wildly received.”

Two years…I remember making this video. Time is going by so quickly. In a blink of an eye, I’ll be posting about a wedding video — no, no not my third wedding — but Andrew’s wedding.

Happy Saturday folks.

Update – 4:24 p.m. I would rather be the only woman allowed into Riker’s Prison on conjugal visit day than to go to Chuck E Cheese on a Saturday.

Further update: Baked two things for Hospitality Sunday – and guess when Hospitality Sunday isn’t until NEXT Sunday. Aggggrrrrrrhhhh. I swear I thought it was the first Saturday in February tomorrow.

Every night since his birth we’ve been reading to Andrew. For the last three years, we’ve been reading a minimum of thirty minutes each night. Perhaps this explains why he has been reading since age four – yes, I’m bragging. After reading, we say our prayers and we recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Since age three Andrew has been able to recite the Our Father and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Since the tragedy in Haiti, we’ve been adding to our good night prayers “Dear God, please help the people in Haiti. Give them food and water and shelter and keep them safe. Thank you God for all you give us.”

It is no secret, Jim and I have desperately tried to have another baby. We’ve talked of adoption but not even worrying about the cost – how could I, or Jim, travel to China or another country three different times (a requirement). I cannot leave Andrew (it is hard on any child to be separated from his mother but Andrew’s anxiety would be tripled) and Jim being able to take off work is extremely difficult.

I’ve heard talk that adopting from Haiti now has been simplified.

Andrew had two doctor’s appointments today. His pediatric neurologist to review his medication and progress and then his regular pediatrician to check his ear infection and do a tympanogram and get phase II of the swine flu shot.

While waiting in the pediatrician’s exam room – we had this discussion – verbatim:

“Andrew come here please I want to ask you a very important question.”

I pull him in my arms and say, “What would you think about us trying to adopt an orphan from Haiti?”

“You mean like get him.”

I replied, “Sort of, we would make them a part of our family to love and he would live with us.” (I don’t know why Andrew thought it would be a “him”.)

“I guess I’m okay with that as long as he isn’t brown.”

“What do you mean? Your friend Ryan is brown. Our President is brown. Many of your friends in class are all shades of brown.” (after I pick myself up off the floor)

“I know…but I don’t care for brown.”

“Andrew, people aren’t colors – we can’t judge a person like that.”

“Well, okay if you want to but I won’t spend a lot of time looking at him if he is brown – I like lighter colors.”

PLEASE NOTE: No one that lives in this household has a racist bone in their body, nor have we ever referred to anyone as “brown” or “white” or even “African American” or “Caucasian”. So where he got this from it puzzling.

So a few minutes ago, I asked “Andrew what did you mean about your brown comments because we don’t like people based on their skin color or what they look like.”

“I know that.”

“So what did you mean?”

“It’s okay if you want to get a brown orphan that’s okay. But if he won’t play with me, we have to return him.” (I held in a laugh. Then a light clicked on.)

“Andrew, are you trying to say that some of your friends that are brown or tan don’t play with you at school?”

“Yes, sometimes they don’t play with me and it hurts my feelings.”

Thank God, we didn’t raise an Archie Bunker.

UPDATE: Adopting from Haiti is still an arduous process. If we had started the paperwork a year ago, they might have rushed it through but now there are so many displaced people that they are being extra cautious declaring children as orphans and they are diligent in stopping possible child-sex trafficking rings (which is very smart).

My husband never fails to remind me that he lived over thirty years before he found me and did fine. (But when someone forgets one of his friend’s or relative’s birthdays – it’s “my” fault.)

My husband got himself ready for work this morning. I usually pack his backpack and warm up the car to make life a little easier for him. He leaves the house at 6:45 a.m. comes home at 9:30 p.m. and then works an hour or more after he eats dinner at 9:45 p.m. And trust me – he isn’t doing the Tiger dance unless he’s doing it at his desk in the middle of a bank – because he is always at his desk and he wants to hold on to all the parts that God gave him.

This morning he left at 5:30. I was too tired to get up. I haven’t been sleeping – Andrew has been having a hard time the last couple nights. This morning I woke up at 3:15 and really couldn’t fall back to sleep so I laid in bed and dozed.

I asked if he was okay and needed any help at 5:15 and he said “no honey I’m okay”. I reminded him to take his lunch (ziti) and I did hear the fridge open and close. I heard some other noises but I thought I was dreaming.

I get up at 6:30 and I notice a number of things – the paper* is still on the kitchen table (Bryan brings it in when he comes home from work at 4 a.m.), a wooden wall hanging is on the floor, Jim’s pager is vibrating on the office floor, the Dorito’s chip clip has exploded and bits of it are on the floor (related or not to Jim’s departure is a mystery to me)…..

I GoogleTalked with him this morning – I said, “you forgot your pager and paper, there is a wall hanging on the floor in the kitchen and the chip clip has exploded”. He wrote back: “Yeah, AND my ziti opened up in my back pack and I just spent 15 minutes cleaning it out. The Z to the I to the M to the B.” A second later, he wrote “There’s ziti in my bag.” “I’m a wreck without you.”

I laughed so hard. There is a Phineas & Ferb episode where Candace gets squirrels in her pants and she sang this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OID7gA8fcaw. Andrew loves this show and so do we.

I told Jim that this experience is a blog entry for sure. He asked that I not use his real name. I said, “Don’t worry James F. Hartin – I won’t.”

*My husband loves his Daily News – he is George Costanza and reads it cover to cover.