These Days

Almost two years ago I did a little post chronicling a fairly typical evening at home, and I thought it would be fun to put together another one, except this time, I get to start with the morning! I thought they would look and feel so different (new house, new baby, etc.), but it's sort of amazing to see how similar the pictures look, even though the descriptions are very different.

On this day (which was May 28, when Lizzy was one month old), she slept next to me on the couch while I ate breakfast, checked email, and read a bit of This Old House (my favorite magazine). I watched Kelly and Michael, which, to me, is one of the big perks of being home in the late morning and fed her (again - notice the always within reach lanolin!), and then I put her down for a nap. She sleeps in our room during the night, but I'm trying to put her in her crib for at least one nap a day now so she'll start to think it's a wonderful place to sleep in the not-so-distance future :)

While she slept, I worked on a project I'd been chipping away at during naps for at least two weeks - painting the stairs. The treads and hand rail got two coats of French Grey in Annie Sloan paint, and then the risers and spokes (are these all the right terms?!) got painted in Simply White. For reference, they used to look like this! I have a runner that I still need to put down, but I need to re-stock the staples for my staple gun.

She woke up, ate again, and then suffered through some tummy time while I made my lunch. This was such a good salad, you guys. First I sauteed the stems of rainbow Swiss chard, then added in a handful of sugar snap peas and a splash of water and cooked those for maybe a minute. Once the stems are a little soft, add in cut up Swiss chard leaves, some chunks of pepperoni, and a nice glug of olive oil. I obviously ate it on it's own, but I think it'd be great mixed in with pasta or with an egg on top to make it a bit more substantial. 

Afternoons are a weird blur to me. We probably snuggled, read some stories, and Lizzy likely got  to take a nap while I held her (her favorite). Then Peter comes home, and it seems like a switch is turned on and it's crying time on and off for the next few hours. I prepped dinner while he played with her for a bit - this basically involves letting her hold your fingers at this point! - then I fed her while Peter finished pulling everything together for this peanut noodle salad we had with left-over steak.

These pictures are blurry because time is of the essence during dinner since I never know when she's going to happily hang out in her swing for 45 minutes, or when she'll scream bloody murder five minutes after going in. We took our chances this night and put on an episode of the Sopranos - I've never seen it before! We ate, and then Peter and I passed her back and forth between us until her bath and bedtime routine. I know these days of happily passing around our little meatball for extended snuggles are short, so we're tying to enjoy them to the utmost.