Author: jennifer

Winter is quickly approaching. The skies are heavy with it when the wind blows just a bit stronger and slightly colder. It is right around the corner with burnt orange leaves scattering themselves on the sidewalks and kids sloshing through the freezing rain. Everywhere stores are putting up Christmas decorations and Santa is settling down in every mall across the city. Winter is definitely on its way.

Something happens to me this time of year…for some reason I am giddy and smiling (even if it is a tired smile) as the days become shorter and the evenings grow cooler. It might be the promise of better sleeps (I have trouble sleeping in the summer) or the idea of seeing the snow beginning to fall. It is perhaps the snuggly sweaters and wool suits all the stores have in their windows…and tall boots – I just happen to love tall boots. It could be the idea of a lovely holiday in December that revolves around turkey and stuffing and family. It may be the nearness of the New Year and a fresh start…and snow… I can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly but I get pretty koo-koo this time of year.

Perhaps it is how autumnal foods seem to be more comforting, more soothing to me than other dishes. Vegetables stewing together happily with chunks of slow-cooked meats. Noodles being featured prominently in dishes and hearty stews and chilies finally coming back into mode. I can once again make my own stocks and roast some of the summer’s last tomatoes to store for the winter, and use up the last of the *last* of the beautiful berries before they all go dormant for the season.

Having a child in daycare is absolute torture.

Leith is coming home on a daily basis knowing new things, having learned new words, acting more independent and – I swear – having grown a good inch taller. He loves it but I’m having a hard time tolerating it.

Not that I want the learning and the autonomy (and the growing) to stop – I don’t. The one thing I would like to stop is the constant flow of colds he has been trekking into our house. Everyone warned me that having a two year old in daycare was going to mean having someone in my house with a constantly runny nose, but no one explained that that nose might just end up being my own.

I have spent the last two weeks attempting to cough up a lung with the latest "cold" and even succumbed to asking my doctor to order a chest x-ray the other day just to make sure I wasn’t harboring a wayward case of pneumonia within my chest.

So please excuse my absence – I was away from the blog and the kitchen, these last few weeks. Last night I finally was able to keep myself from coughing for the time it took to cook dinner, and through a cold medicine-induced haze somehow managed to turn out the perfect meal. Soup is always good for whatever might be ailing you, and this soup in particular was exactly what my raw, sore throat and aching rumbling chest required.

Friday night I arrived home from work to a pot of delicious-smelling Bolognese sauce bubbling on the stove. S. had been home all day with Leith and they had decided to make me dinner. It was absolutely delicious, if a little messy. Leith also approved the dish and although he managed to eat most of it, a great deal of it ended up in his hair and on his face and hands. Directly after dinner I stripped him bare and shuffled him upstairs to the shower. As we stood in the bathroom waiting for the water to heat up he grinned up at me impishly from behind a veil of tomato sauce (which I regretfully did not get a picture of), delicately showing me his sauce-covered hands, telling me how dirty they were.

Five full minutes later the water was still running cold. This is when I started to panic and called down to S. to check the hot water tank in the basement. Immediately images of our belongings floating on a sea of dirty basement water crossed my mind and I blocked it out quickly. Perhaps the tank was just empty…S. had done the dishes before dinner hadn’t he? S.’s response to my slightly panicked query was that I should let the water run longer – and under his breath I’m sure he muttered something about how women are truly useless…but we’ll never know. After another few minutes I called to him again, explaining that I thought there was something very wrong with our water tank as the hot water was still running cold after almost ten minutes. He reluctantly got up off the couch and headed down the stairs. Within about 10 seconds I hear a yelp and him running back up the stairs telling me that the water tank had burst.

Luckily we have a sloped basement and all of our things were in the higher part and there is actually a drain within ten feet of our hot water tank – the house Gods were looking down on us on Friday. Nothing was damaged except for a box of laundry detergent, a few dust bunnies and perhaps my own desire to continue to own our house. The tank was replaced over the weekend and everything went quite smoothly all things considered. Of course on top of replacing the hot water tank we now also have to replace the furnace (it’s a long story), and that absolutely has to be done in the next few weeks.

As I stood in my kitchen on Monday afternoon kneading dough I just kept telling myself that it could be worse. We’ve been through much worse. Things can always be worse. I think the gastronomic reflexology helped more than the mantra; nonetheless I felt much better afterwards. Of course, the smell of fresh-baked bread tends to be a cure-all for anything that might ail me.

My son has been sick quite a bit recently (he just started daycare) and this past time it was awful. I put him in bed for the night and within 15 minutes he was awake, upset and crying, calling for "Mama" and "Baba" at the top of his lungs. Going to his room I expected him to want a book or his blanket repositioned, which is the norm for him. Generally Leith is an excellent sleeper, but when he is sick all bets are off.

He was sitting up, sniffling and obviously quite congested. I picked him up to try to calm him a bit and immediately he was pointing at his bed, indicating that he wanted to be returned to it. I settled him, tucking him in – placing blankets where requested and certain animals in the bed as per usual – only to be summoned by his plaintive cries a scant 15 minutes later. This time I gathered him up in his lion blanket and trucked him off to my bed. S. was downstairs studying and I figured a few hours sleep beside me was better than 15 minute naps. At least if he woke up in my bed I could settle him quicker and easier and get him back to sleep again.

This arrangement worked for a few hours – until he woke up, more congested and even more miserable than he’d been before. Because I had to be at work super-early for a meeting S. and I agreed that he would try to settle Leith himself. Both Leith and I managed to sleep then – until about 4am. Then the coughing began. He sounded like an ailing seal and my sleep-deprived brain managed to summon one brief word: CROUP. A terribly scary word to the mother of a toddler, and one I personally abhor. I woke myself up a little more, ventured down the hall to his room and listened again. I could hear that his breathing wasn�t laboured and that he was going to be okay without any medical interventions, at least for the time-being.

At that point, S. ended up taking Leith downstairs so that I could sleep for one more hour. Both of them ended up going back to bed just as I was getting up to take a shower. I managed somehow to get dressed in the near-dark, tip-toeing around the house so as not to wake either of my sleeping, snoring boys.

All morning I continued to think about Leith and it took all of my will-power to attempt to concentrate on what was going on around me. Of course by the time I arrived home he was oblivious to his congested state, happily munching on a banana, watching Chicken Little, snuggled in on the sofa with his dad. That night I made him a huge bowl of home made tomato soup – that along grilled cheese is the perfect childhood cold remedy.

The summer has flown by in a mere instant this year and I’m not looking forward to fall with my usual reverence. Normally by now I am getting excited about the back-to-school sales, the prospect of wearing sweaters again and the thoughts of Thanksgiving and Halloween preparations. By mid September my brain is customarily searching out fall colours – both in shop windows and the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood.

For some reason this year is different.

I lament the end of the summer season and wish it would go on just a little longer. It seems like only a month ago that we brought home a new barbecue and began the plans for our summer grilling menu. It feels as though it was only last week that we were taking Leith to the various swimming pools and splash pads in the neighborhood, talking about how it was going to be a long, hot summer, spent mainly water-side. It does really feel like yesterday that I planted my miniature herb garden out in the backyard and was looking forward to many delicious meals planned around its bounty. Summer has come to an end entirely too soon.

I can’t even try to ignore it like I might have in past years because Tuesday signaled a huge change in this Domestic Goddess’s house. For the first year ever both of my boys went to school. Yes, Leith and S. trotted off with their backpacks and their lunchboxes on Tuesday morning while I went to work. S. has rejoined the University ranks and Leith has at long last connected with the some daycare buddies. My life now revolves around making lunches, planning our dinner menus and telling the two men in my life that "yes, you have to go to daycare/school today…that’s the way it goes".

By the way, if anyone has any suggestions on how to plan weekly dinner menus I’d greatly appreciate you sharing them – I’m still struggling with doing this and the once-weekly shopping expedition.