Settling back in

from Tristan & Isolde

After a few days of rough starts and not wanting to take a nap or nurse following our Thanksgiving travels, Eden seems to be back on track. Thank goodness! She usually takes a morning, afternoon, and evening nap and then goes to bed with us between 10 and 11pm and wakes up at 6 to go potty, then goes back to bed till around 9. Last night, she fell asleep around 9pm while we watched a movie (Tristan and Isolde--one of our favorites, for its beauty and simplicity and come on, how not to love someone with James Franco's versatility?) and slept through until almost 8am. It seems to have reset her somewhat because she woke up smiley and happy this morning, then fell asleep for a morning nap without protest (or excessive amounts of bouncing, back patting, and singing, which is what it sometimes takes).

On top of Tristan and Isolde, last night was also made special by the cooking of a fantastic batch of spaghetti and meatballs, which we've made before, and while this time the meatball mix seemed a little wet and ended up somewhat disintegrating when simmered in the sauce, it still made a delicious rich ragu to ladle over homemade spaghetti. We have this pasta roller and we like it quite a bit for simple, delicious, and relatively quick homemade spaghetti and fettucine. It's also by far the cheapest pasta roller we could find, but it works great for us. If you haven't made fresh pastas--I'd really recommend it! Ours calls for a recipe of 2-1/2 cups of flour (we use 100% whole-wheat) and 3 eggs (sometimes it seems like I need to add a fourth--probably depending on the size of the eggs). And--a bottle of red wine. We are unabashed fans of the $3.29 Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe's, and last night felt like we might just have something to celebrate. I have been working for over a year to try to set up midwifery clinicals somewhere--Virginia, DC, Maryland, Iowa, Wisconsin, just somewhere! It now seems like it might be possible that I may be able to work something out with a midwife near Iowa City --you know, where it all began. My sentiments about this echo the same mix of sadness and excitement I had about leaving Iowa City in the first place--but then again, that's not news.