Scattered Things
Hello there! I guess I haven't had much noteworthy material to discuss in great detail lately, since I often get to the end of the day and think, "You know, I should blog. But I can't think of anything, so I guess I'll just watch a documentary on the British royal family instead." The documentary might also have been another show (Jessica Jones season 2, anyone?), or perhaps a baking project, or maybe some sewing, but I often end up only doing one leisure activity per night, and blogging, I suppose, hasn't come in first place on the leisure activity hierarchy within the past couple of weeks.
So here we are. And this isn't even a real post, since it's more of a series of hot takes. Feel free to take it or leave it.
Item 1: I think Elise needs at least one more pair of pajamas. She has four pairs at the moment, and because they somehow need washing after a single wear every single night, I need to get some more. Or maybe I just need to get off Lazy Island and do laundry more than once every four days. Actually, that's probably the real answer, because when I do have to do laundry, it's the size of Mount Doom and it takes an age and a half to fold. Or perhaps the REAL real answer is that I should get in the habit of actually putting her in her bib before she eats yogurt for breakfast...
Item 2: I'm finding that I'm missing my job a little more this summer than last summer, mostly because of all the travel it entailed over those months. I didn't think about it too much last summer since I was in the throes of postpartum recovery and taking care of a newborn, but now that we've gotten into a good groove and Elise is a little more independent, I wish it was easier to hop on a plane once (or more) times per month and check out a new spot. Of course, I say that while I'm happily playing with an almost-toddler, idealistically forgetting how exhausted I was at the end of a corporately-focused summer when I never wanted to hear the word "economy seat" ever again. This is probably a great time for me to recall that great parenting refrain: everything is a phase. There will be more high frequency traveling seasons in the future, I'm sure. In the meantime, I'll also remind myself that we literally just traveled and should be grateful for that.
Item 3: Now that the weather is FINALLY warmer, we've been enjoying more time outside lately! Since Elise learned to sit during the winter months, she had never been in a swing outside until now. Turns out she loves it, and I expect we'll be doing a lot of it this summer.
Item 4: My hot chocolate obsession began just before Paris and it has continued since our arrival back home, and I actually have a shocking number of pictures of mugs of it on my phone. Evidently I only break from my constant stream of photos of Elise when I'm presented with a steaming cup of cocoa topped with a mountain of whipped cream:
The pinnacle of all hot chocolate I've tried, from the Musée D'Orsay.
The first tasty mug of hot chocolate in Basel, Switzerland.
The second tasty mug from Basel. Hard to say which was better.
Decent hot chocolate with an attractive backdrop in Portsmouth, NH.
Another decent one in Beverly, MA. I seem to use the same angle for almost all of these shots...
Homemade, with a dash of peppermint extract.
In case anyone is curious, almost every mug of chocolate I've encountered in the US is sub par, including the ones I've made with a host of mixes. However, just this week I discovered the most European-style hot chocolate since returning from the motherland itself. If you too are a MA-based hot chocolate connoisseur, look no further than Tartine in Beverly. It will not disappoint! While not quite as thick as the hot chocolate in France, the flavor was about the same. Not too sweet, no sugar sludge at the bottom. Of course I took a picture. That's a question that didn't even need asking.
I didn't even miss the whipped cream.
Item 5: My parents are in the process of moving (closer to us! yay!), and in doing so they've given us some of the things that I had when I was small. The most recent of those things was my rocking horse, and Elise was p.u.m.p.e.d.
Item 6: This is perhaps the most random of all the things in this post. My hands are always dry in the winter, and we're talking the cracked and bleeding variety. This year, it was much worse than usual, and it continued until this past week, which is far later than usual. I attribute that to more frequent hand washing thanks to changing diapers. It had gotten so bad that I would dread washing my hands every time, because it felt like getting a thousand small paper cuts as soon as my hands hit the water. Not a good thing! I crowd sourced some recommendations on a Facebook group, and lo and behold, I have a new miracle product. This stuff has completely changed the game, and it's like my hands were never dry at all! And it only took one use!
It also rates really well in the Skin Deep database, so I feel pretty good about using it. Just thought I should pass on the discovery, because a magical hand cream is worth its weight in gold.
I could add more, but we're heading to a party with cupcakes and we definitely don't want to miss out on that.