A Fussing Cease Fire

Sunday night may well have been the Wombats' least fine hour. Something was stuck in their tiny craws and as a result we got essentially no sleep. Jen's mum left on Monday leaving us tired and frightened for was was to come.

Then, a strange thing happened.


Monday night the Wombats may have had their best night ever. They got cozy in their Rock 'n Plays, slept soundly for four hours, then had some great uninterrupted stretches in the night. We awoke on Tuesday morning feeling startled and refreshed. They had slept just like little angels. Angels that cry, fuss, and poop their pants, but angels nonetheless.


On Monday, before Jen's mum flew out, she was somehow able to get out to pick up the vegetables. This week we got a whopping four pounds of tomatoes, a basket of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, two oriental eggplant, a bunch of basil, two Walla Walla onions, sweet peppers, hot peppers, Bright Lights Swiss Chard, summer leeks, plums, nectarines, and peaches.


Last night I put together this salad with farm kale, mixed greens, farm tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, farm peaches, avocado, lime juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper.


I'm getting a little bit of Swiss chard fatigue but I powered through it to make this calzone for dinner. I cooked some garlic, farm summer leek, red onion, and the chard. I added in some Pomosugo marinara sauce at the end then folded it all together into some pizza dough with fresh mozzarella before baking it on the pizza stone for about fifteen minutes.


For a drink I had this New World tripel from the Sam Adams Barrel Room Collection. Like most of the recent beers from Sam Adams it was excellent. This may have been the best beer I've ever had from the Boston Beer Company and it was a very tasty tripel, different from any I've had in the past. At 10% ABV I was only up for half the bottle but that's why they invented champagne stoppers -- for lightweights like me.

That's actually not why they invented champagne stoppers at all.


For dessert we had this fantastic Vietnamese Iced Coffee ice cream from the new Brooklyn ice cream maker Phin & Phebes Ice Cream. Much like the tripel I had with dinner this was an outstanding version of the coffee ice cream style but with a very unique twist to the variety being made with cardamom and chicory.

As a native Rhode Islander I feel compelled to be an obnoxious a-hole and comment on how I was raised on coffee ice cream and how that makes me feel like some sort of aficionado. Everyone in my home state considers themselves an authority on coffee ice cream, coffee milk, and (of course) Del's Lemonade. So why not act like my geographical place of birth automatically makes me an expert on something? What's the point of being born anywhere if you can't be a sanctimonious prick about something because of it?

I'm from Rhode Island and I know good coffee ice cream. This is great coffee ice cream!

There. I'm a jerk. Are you happy now?


Jen's first full day alone with the babies was a smashing success. She said they behaved like little gentlemen, tiny farting gentlemen.

For the second night in a row the Wombats even slept through dinner -- a very new phenomenon. It may have been the soothing sounds of the final episodes of Eureka that kept them calm. It may have been that they are just getting used to their tiny new bodies.

My theory is that with our help leaving they took a look at their sorry, inexperienced parents and made a pact with each other to go easy on us, at least for a few days. They probably figured that we needed all the help we can get. Things are challenging enough even when they are well behaved. I'm sure we're just trading this for some days of pure terror when they are two years old.

One day at a time.