Playful Rooted

Hey gang. Coming at you from another super cold, super gray winter’s day. Does anyone actually like winter? Or to rephrase, does anyone who’s not a monster actually like winter? This season always throws me for a loop, ever since I was a kid; I hate being cold, I hate the gray sky and dead grass and bare trees, I hate putting five layers of winter clothes on just to step outside without freezing to death. I get Seasonal Affective Disorder every year, and it’s the pits. This year has been especially terrible because pregnancy already makes me feel NOT LIKE MYSELF. Winter just compounds all of it.

Anyway! Moving on. Just sharing some random things we’ve been up to around here these past couple weeks. (Clearly, these photos are all from before The Eyeball Incident.)

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I’ve been baking my way through this book for about a year now. I should be finished, but I took a long break during early pregnancy due to morning sickness. So I’m just starting the chapter on baking with pre-ferment (basically Sourdough, Jr).

Making a biga is similar to making a sourdough starter, but you only have to make it the night before you want to bake, so it’s a great sourdough alternative if you don’t have a hundred years (read: several days) to make a starter. I found it pretty hilarious that I literally had to plan out my day around baking this bread, though. 😉

My friend Alissa recently wrote a post on sourdough, and it inspired me to finally pony up the money for an actual banneton instead of letting my dough rise in an old, falling apart basket that I got years ago from the thrift store. So I ordered this set of two bannetons that came with a lame, linen liners, and a plastic scraper. I’ve only used everything once, but it’s a nice set, and so far, I recommend! I use a round dutch oven for baking, so I got round bannetons, but there are lots of different shapes and sizes to match whatever baking vessel you prefer.

The work was worth it! Hello, gorgeous. There’s nothing like homemade bread.

We’ve been spending lots of time indoors lately, and I don’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but I’ve gotten pret-ty good at “helping” the kids design fancy train tracks. 😉 It’s such a cozy thing to do by the fire on a cold day. Luca’s pictured here, but it’s actually Sawyer who’s more inclined to pick up pieces and start building a track. At 18 months, he can totally build a workable course all by himself. He’s definitely our little engineer!

A terrible, grainy bathroom selfie, but here’s my little 15-week bump! I went to the midwife last week and got to listen to the heartbeat again; even on the third kid, there’s nothing like hearing that little “whoosh whoosh whoosh” from inside your body! Never gets old.

I’m still half in shock, and most days, I’m pretty really cranky about going through this all again. (Happy! Blessed! Grateful! But cranky, too.) But I’m eager to start feeling the kicks and wiggles that make the aches and pains worth it. And let’s be honest, I’m eager to be finished being pregnant. 😉 Very ready to meet our last little one, and ready never to do this again!

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My sister-in-law recently reminded me about this author, Julia Rothman. Luca and I had checked out Farm Anatomy from the library when we were planting our garden last year and loved it (although we skipped most of the info about farm animals because, well….#vegetarians). So I decided to buy Nature Anatomy as a companion to the nature studies I’m planning for the spring.

Just like Julia Rothman’s other books, Nature Anatomy is a GORGEOUS tome full of so. much. information and so many beautiful illustrations. There are loads of topics I had already planned on introducing this year, and I’m excited for such a lovely resource to go along with our learning.

Here’s the tiny engineer at work along with his new baby doll. (Cue the heart eyes.) When I was pregnant with Sawyer, I bought Luca a baby doll so he could get used to the idea of a baby, but he immediately gave it to his friend Madi and literally said, “You can have this; I don’t want it back.” Haha! So it was a big surprise to me when Sawyer saw this doll at the store a couple weeks ago, squealed as he picked it up off the shelf and kissed it, and then cuddled it in his carseat the whole way home. Since then, he needs his baby for every nap and night time and most meal times. And often throughout the day, wherever Sawyer is, his baby’s not far away. Gosh, I love this kid. It’s excruciating how much I love him.

This next photo is monumental. Monumental, you guys. See that EMPTY PLASTIC CLAMSHELL??? That means, my friends, that we finished that whole container of baby spinach and kale before it went slimy and gross in the fridge. We did it! (Is anyone else constantly throwing out past-their-prime greens from a plastic clamshell?? Or….just us?)

Also pictured: salad dressing from Primal Kitchen, which is my latest obsession. I’m totally not a ranch dressing person, but I had a big craving for it last month, so I tried Primal Kitchen’s vegan ranch (not expecting to love it). I LOVED IT. So, so good. And now I’m working my way through the other varieties; this Greek dressing was also great, and the Lemon Turmeric is up next.

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As mentioned, I HATE WINTER, so I’ve been having a reeeally hard time getting outside lately. But I’ve forced myself to get outside with the kids a few times these past couple weeks, and it’s always a good exercise to look for interesting things in nature.

Luca and I had just read in our nature book about tree rings and how you can use them to tell not only the age of the tree, but what kind of season (rainy or dry) each year had been based on the spacing of the rings. Pretty fascinating to uncover so much information from this stump that we’ve walked by a thousand times!

There aren’t too many nature finds to collect in the winter, so we’ve been studying different kinds of tree bark: classifying it into smooth or bumpy, looking at the external and internal colors and textures, trying to identify the tree it came from.

(Sawyer’s little tummy here kills me.)

Luca’s taekwondo instructor has been sick, so he’s been doing lessons over Zoom instead of in the classroom. It’s actually really fun for us all to watch together; normally, Ben takes Luca to class while I cook dinner. Sawyer’s absolutely loving it, too, because he can finally “join in,” his biggest dream come true.

My eye is still healing, and we’re not sure how long that will take, which royally sucks. I’m not allowed to drive, of course; I’m not supposed to bend over (tell me how this works when you take care of people who are much shorter than you!); I’m not allowed to lie down (I’ve been sleeping with like fifty pillows behind my back, so in other words, not sleeping); I’m not allowed to work out (an elevated heart rate could cause the pressure to increase in my eyeball, gag me). So my plans for the foreseeable future are pretty minimal. Fingers crossed that everything heals up and my vision returns to normal sooner than later.

Until then, I’ll be the one in the eye patch.

xo!