Author: Carrie Spritzer

Weekend moments

Someone has a purple tongue from eating purple potatoes. Check out her hair: full of food! I assure you that she took a bath immediately after this meal. (And then proceeded to pee on the floor AGAIN! I’ve ordered her a little potty.  But that’s another post…)

Here she is helping us move books from the living room to the guest room:

Who knew that the next stage of baby proofing could be so fun? Now we have half as many shelves to unload and climb in the living room as we did two days ago. Next weekend we’ll hopefully get to the rest. It’s mostly my books that are left so it may take a while. That’s because I like them alphabetized. I’m a librarian’s daughter; it must be genetic.

Removing the bookshelves opened up the living room and suddenly we have all this extra space. Alas with the books gone so has the feeling of coziness. We also lost the spot for our keys and sunglasses, etc. Hopefully I’ll find a stunning and affordable solution to our entry way problem in my copious amount of free time.

I think a trip to salvation army is on the horizon. And frequent checks of craigslist and freecycle in the meantime. Perhaps one of these lovely items from Pottery Barn will show up? One can only hope.

No longer a little vegan

Well, that was an unexpected blog break. Posts every day last week and then none this week, such is life. What can I say? We’ve been busy soaking up the gorgeous California sunshine and oh-so-social to boot. We had not one, but TWO play dates this week. Miss Leyba was in heaven.

Tomorrow the rain is supposed to start up again, so you can expect many more posts soon. Including the birthday post that I still owe you. I haven’t forgotten, I’m just ever behind. You’ve come to expect it, right?

And now on to the title of this post. Miss Leyba is no longer eating a strictly vegan diet.

Now that’s she’s one year old, we’ve thrown caution to the wind and have been introducing a steady stream of new foods including yogurt, eggs and, gasp, wheat. (To those of you who don’t know my diet, we waited so long because of my family history of food sensitivities.) So far, so good.

Plain yogurt is evidently very tasty when eaten with blueberries and banana wedges:



Wait til she tries chocolate cake. At this rate, she may get to try that indulgence by middle school.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Miss Leyba wants to know if you’ll be her Valentine?

These beautiful flowers were from my father; Miss Leyba and I each got a bouquet! Every year my dad sends me flowers and I think this is one reason why I have always enjoyed Valentine’s Day: because I’ve always celebrated it no matter what.

In our house, today is about love.

Regardless of whether you are single or coupled, know that you are loved.
By your family, your friends, and by us.

We all deserve a Happy LOVE Day!

Now go treat yourself to some fair-trade, organic chocolate, while we head out to our ice cream parlor. Yep, you know the one.

Some (food related) goals

1. Start making my own broth from scratch. It’s easy and cheap.

2. Learn how to make cheese. It’s (supposedly) easy and cheaper.

3. Make ravioli from scratch and freeze it in portions. The payoff will be worth the time and effort. Perhaps this weekend?

4. Stop eating my daughters oatios. The cereal is for her, not me.

Now, excuse me, while I go eat another handful.

Rainy day activities

Today the weather finally acted like it’s supposed to: we had rain!

What did the girls do on this indoor day?

We built with blocks:


Miss Leyba is getting very good at stacking them and, of course, knocking them over. (Can you tell I was sorting them by color? And she was SO over it?)

We had several lengthy dance parties:

Here she is contemplating her next dance move; all of the dancing photos came out really blurry (no surprise there!). Evidently we both really like moving and grooving to Australian pop music. Who knew?!

And my scary smart child also mastered the art of opening childproof containers:

You know, the ones that you have to push in and rotate to open?

Yeah, my one year old can open those in 15 seconds flat.