go owen go!

after eating double helpings of green veggies to grow big and strong and learning to balance and fall without his pedals owen zoomed down the alleyway on his big boy bike!

voilà!

i used to have a subscription to real simple magazine and one of my favorite features went something like: take two bags of this from your pantry and one box of this from your freezer and voilà! something delish and fancy! since my boys have been superstars while i click clack away at the laptop (fixing the garbage disposal, going to costco, and doing dishes while i take a yoga break) it seemed time for some quick magic.  

for dinner: one rotisserie chicken, the remaninder of an overripe tomato, half of an ageing avocado, a lone scallion, half a box of taco shells, a handful of olives, the remainder of a bag of shredded cheese, the last of the lettuce form our csa basket  and some brown rice out of the freezer and black beans out of the pantry (hmmm things are sounding pretty pitiful around here--it's been a long, long week!) and a super  taco bar!  a squeeze of lime on the shredded chicken, some quick pico de gallo with the tomato, tacos crisp in the oven, and fancy bowls for the rest. a seriously delish and healthy meal!

for dessert: one sheet frozen pie dough (half of a box left from a quiche i made last week), frozen blackberries (leftover from smoothies) and the zest of our first lemon from our potted lemon tree and zing!  blackberry pockets! (alas, if i had only used the powdered sugar shaker instead of the flour!)

now michael is reading  fantastic mr. fox to a sleepy, sleepy owen (first bike ride with pedals today!!).  tonight: a bottle of castle rock pino and a purple pen and ta-da--an edited chapter ready to send on monday!

post-state-of-the-union observations

pointing to our president, owen exclaimed: "mom, what's that?"

"what?"

"that thing obama's wearing."

"a tie?"

"oh yes, i think all presidents must have to wear one."

owen the paleontologist

as most of you know, owen doesn't just like dinosaurs, he lives them.  not only does he have an ever growing dinosaur library (and a scientific dinosaur vocabulary) he can tell you the difference between the mesozoic and the carboniferous periods; he can spell micropachycephalasaurs (me, i'm not so sure); he can differentiate between a styrachasaurus and a triceratops.  and now, he can assemble a trex fossil!

having exhausted the "walking with dinosaur" series (and the "walking with monsters"--life before dinsoaurs.  go ahead, ask him about early arthropods!) he's been having fun with the kratt brothers and zoboomafo (thanks edy & jerry for the subscription to big backyard which came with this awesome dvd!)--in one epsiode they build a dinosaur out of a bag of bones (ok, they had exact puzzle-piece replicas but then they painted it and mixed it up for good fun).

so last night at nana & papa's house he had the idea to build his owEn dinosaur.  this morning i printed out a copy of a trex fossil (zoom dinosaurs by the way is a great dinosaur resource with accurate coloring pages--no anachronistic cavemen or grinning dragons) and left to edit chapter three of the diss.  when i came back after making minimal progress nana and owen assembled an entire  tyrannosaurus rex from papa's wood scraps.  and i must say, it's the most beautiful dinosaur i've ever seen!

and the completed skeleton (after owen carefully doublechecked his blueprint and directed the careful assembling of each incisor and cranial piece!):

just watch out for those carnivore teeth!

i've been drafting one long blog post in my head since the first week of january... but for now i'll just say i'm looking forward to my breakfast date with owen--peets coffee and i heart bagels followed by a work date in the office ("mommy i can work on my computer and you can work on your computer so you can finish your virginia woolf book").  we've been a super writing team (along with the rest of the supporting cast) and in the last few weeks i've done more writing than probably in the last few years. a good freind and dear mentor once told me that when i learn to write with owen then i'll finish my dissertation--more than that, i'll be a writer.  and of course, she's right. hoping to send off a massive chunk of my dissertation at the end of the month and move forward to meet filing deadlines as soon as april.  hoping to do more writiing here (and put up some promised project pics--i confess to just doing quick updates via fb) as well to keep the keys clicking and make note of the madness and joy that is our life... much love to the fidfam followers and happy janumas to those in the know!