Wild Salmon, Wild Babies

Jen was kind enough to let me sleep tonight. I think she felt bad for me after seeing me drag my sorry body across our front lawn last night as I returned home from work, a broken man.

I was only supposed to sleep until 2:00 AM last night but she didn't wake me. I remember waking up at 3:00 AM, realizing what was happening, and attempting to drag my body off the bed to relieve her. Unfortunately, I collapsed halfway through getting off the bed in a haze of exhaustion and slept until 7:00 AM.

Jen and Jen's mum then spent all day with the babies. Apparently there was a lot of fussing, gas, and poop-explosions today that I missed.



Martin likes to rotate around in his crib during the day. While my mother-in-law was cleaning up he had worked himself perpendicular to Elliott, something he does quite often.



After cleaning for a bit more she found that he had done a full 180 degree rotation, a new record for his short life. I can only imagine this makes things more difficult for him since one of his favorite pastimes is kicking his little brother in the head while he sleeps.

It's spooky how he does this because you never see him moving. You just look away then look back and he has made some degree of rotation. He's like those evil angel statues in Doctor Who except less evil.

And more snuggly.



After getting home I had a very short amount of time to put together dinner. It was a race against our hunger and knowing that the babies are programmed to spoil dinner by waking up in the middle of it no matter what time we start.

I made this salad of Chiogga beets from the farm with Marcona almonds, Sun Gold tomatoes, balsamic glaze, and baby greens with olive oil.



For the main course I cooked down some onion and garlic in olive oil and butter then tossed in some summer squash, chives from my mother's garden, salt, and pepper.

I got a really nice piece of wild Alaskan salmon, squeezed a little lemon juice on it, dusted it with salt and pepper, spread chopped lemon basil from the farm over the top, and drizzled it with olive oil before roasting it.

I am proud to say that my mother-in-law, who declared her dislike for summer squash, went back for seconds.



For beer I celebrated my mother-in-law's extreme hatred of monkeys with this Monkey Fist IPA from Shipyard Brewing Company in Maine. This was a really nice IPA with a rich amber color. However, I almost think that a Bud Light would have been welcome after two full days of work and very little sleep.

Okay, I admit that was hyperbole.



After dinner we settled down to the Olympic opening ceremony. Jen's mum hated the opening ceremony just about as much as anyone in the world could hate anything. I don't think she minded the parade of nations so much but she could have dealt with 100% less ridiculous reenactment of this history of Britain.

Four years ago we watched the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in our stuffy New York City apartment the day before leaving for our honeymoon. Today we watched it in our cozy, air conditioned suburban apartment while soothing our newborn babies.

Four years from now I hope to introduce the guys to Animalympics, the greatest movie about the Olympics ever made.

Having kids is going to make it so much easier to convince Jen it is okay for me to watch cartoons.

Why else have children?