theparkerfamily.org

Month: July 2010

  • family reunion

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    family reunion, barrington, nh

  • bowling

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    it seemed like a good idea at the time, but we kept sparklet up until 9:30 tonight … bowling. at least she was diggin’ the blacklight, even if she wanted to eat the balls instead of roll them.
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    candlepin bowling, portsmouth, nh

  • guestbook: barb & bill

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    guestbook: barb & bill

  • “you know, eet may be possible to be *too* attractive…no?”

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  • isle of shoals

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    we’re up in new england for a family reunion, and on day one we took a boat out to the isle of shoals — tiny rock islands about 9 miles off the coast of new hampshire and maine.

    not only is it a place we’ve boated to as a family for as long as i can remember, but it turns out that we have ancestors who used to live on the islands back in the 1600s.

    of course, there were only two families desperate enough to live on the isles those days, and they inbred like crazy, but that’s a sign of courage and persistence, right?

    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    isle of shoals

  • sunset in rye beach, nh

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  • “make it go faster, daddy!”

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    photo from the parking shuttle to the baltimore airport, for our flight to manchester, nh.

  • found: july

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    photo of the week // week forty-one
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    Camera Dump: July

  • the road to delaplane

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    sparklet’s sick, and has been since the day after mommy left for san francisco. little bit of fever, but nothing serious — until she started projectile vomiting on Friday.

    i will say, that there isn’t much sleep going around … and yesterday sparklet didn’t manage a nap over 20 minutes in length.

    the temperature being over 100 degrees for the last three days hasn’t help much either, as going for a walk is traditionally the easiest way to get an unhappy sparklet to take a nap.

    so today, we resorted to driving. for three hours. in no particular direction.

    by the time we ended up in delaplane — out Route 50 in Virginia, towards Shenandoah — sparklet had slept for an hour and she slept for another two on the way back.

    we’re all feeling better already.

    p.s. nine month pediatrician checkup was last friday, and she’s still growing like a weed. 99th percentile on height, 95th on weight, and the doctor is happy with the balance between the two. she’ll be talking by the next appointment, and we’re to start adding meat to the diet. exciting times.

  • alfredo w/ mushrooms, sour cream & dill

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    when i was in russia working on my honors thesis — reprinted here in full for those with six hours to kill — i fell in love with exactly one authentic Russian dish.

    and this isn’t it.

    the dish i loved was a side dish, some kind of mushrooms and peppers cooked in sour cream, Parmesan chesse and dill — and i’ve yet to figure out how to cook it properly.

    however, i’ve gotten basically the same taste by adding dill and sour cream to a relatively standard mushroom alfredo sauce.

    full recipe after the jump.

    (more…)

  • oh, ethyl — we hardly knew ye so well

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    i love going to the petting zoo, and — according to gowalla, and foursquare before that — we’ve been to the “kid’s farm” roughly two dozen times since early May.we go because i love that sparklet enjoys going to a “farm,” even if it is a fake farm with fru-fru animals like Miniature Mediterranean Donkeys and Anglo-Nubian Goats. that, and it’s only a couple blocks away so we go all the time.

    today, however, we noticed someone was missing — Ethyl, one of two Nigerian Dwarf Goats. (fwiw, the other is named Lucy … in a fit of “I Love Lucy” hilarity.)

    we asked one of the zoo keepers (who was really quite worked up about it) about what happened and she said Ethyl passed away earlier in the week after some time in the Zoo’s hospital.

    now, sparklet’s obviously too young to know any better … but before we lose any more Zoo friends, we decided to do a “guestbook” of those we see the most:

    ECPA20100719_4121 by [ecpark]
    Pat
    Miniature Mediterranean Donkey    		 ECPA20100719_4115 by [ecpark]
    Giuseppe
    Miniature Mediterranean Donkey
    ECPA20100719_4097 by [ecpark]
    George
    Miniature Mediterranean Donkey    		 ECPA20100719_4085 by [ecpark]
    Flash
    Miniature Mediterranean Donkey
    ECPA20100719_4092 by [ecpark]
    Tulip
    Holstein Cow    		 ECPA20100719_4091 by [ecpark]
    Rose
    Polled Hereford Cow
    ECPA20100719_4140 by [ecpark]
    Mortimer
    San Clemente Island Goat    		 ECPA20100719_4102 by [ecpark]
    Iris
    Anglo-Nubian Goat
    ECPA20100719_4104 by [ecpark]
    Lucky
    Anglo-Nubian Goat    		 ECPA20100719_4137 by [ecpark]
    Marla
    San Clemente Island Goat
    ECPA20100719_4138 by [ecpark]
    Lucy
    Nigerian Dwarf Goat    		 ECPA20100719_4150 by [ecpark]
    Cirrus
    Alpaca
    ECPA20100719_4090 by [ecpark]
    Orion
    Alpaca    		 ECPA20100719_4080 by [ecpark]
    Ziggy
    Alpaca
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    kids farm, national zoo, washington, dc

  • good night, mommy!

    hope you’re reading the blog from san francisco 🙂

  • out: national gallery of art

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  • go speed racer, go!

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    photo of the week // week forty

  • mushroom risotto

    well, i’m cooking again.

    it took a decade for me to finally remember by culinary heritage — my father was a chef for 30-odd years — but i’m starting to have fun in the kitchen again.

    i used to love it.

    my father and i would regularly cook thanksgiving dinner for 400+ and we’d have a ball (a slightly exhausting ball, but a ball none-the-less).

    i have no idea what happened in between, but it’s passed — and the lady sparkler is now too busy with a small child to tell me what i’m doing wrong (bonus!).

    tonight was a risotto with wild mushrooms, a recipe that i picked up from a office-retreat-slash-cooking-class with Chef Susan Holt at CulinAerie (great class, btw — highly recommend it).

    full recipe after the jump.

    (more…)

  • “a little to the right, daddy…”

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  • guestbook: the talimo’s

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    more pictures (and a short video) on taliandmo.com.
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    guestbook: the talimo’s

  • what’s next … an earthquake?

    well, after a brief return to normalcy, sparklet’s sleeping habits are back to being a royal pain in the rear. she’s fighting us going down, and isn’t usually staying down for long.at one point this week i stopped asking God for world peace, and started asking him to focus on letting me sleep.

    based on last night’s events, he wasn’t amused:

    • 8:20 pm — after 40 minutes of trying, sparklet is finally asleep … but not until a full hour after her bedtime.
    • 8:35 pm — ha, ha! just kidding, we’re awake.
    • 9:52 pm — seriously, sparklet. go to sleep. i walk in and she is sitting upright, but listing deeply to the side because she can’t keep her eyes open.
    • 10:28 pm — the lady sparkler finishes up pumping, and we bunk down for the night.
    • 1:10 am — it’s morning in babyland! the lady sparkler takes the first shift and stuffs a bottle in her face.
    • 1:25 am — the lady sparkler runs out of steam, and the hollering gets me up and out of bed. i take over.
    • 1:38 am — oops, looks like sparklet’s wet through her diaper! and now, after 25 minutes of feeding, she’s wide away and not the least bit interested in taking a bottle and/or going to bed.
    • 2:10 am — after tipping sparklet over for the umpteenth time (i swear she would try to sleep sitting up if we’d let her) she’s out, and i start for bed.
    • 3:01 am — i’m just about asleep when i get a call from a friend who is due to birth a baby girl in a couple of weeks. my heart leaps like a gizelle. turns out she hit the wrong button on her phone. false alarm.
    • 4:14 am — i’m just about asleep when sparklet’s up again, but (haha!) this time she is sound asleep once again by the time i get to the crib. funny.
    • 5:01 am — i’m rattled awake when an earthquake strikes suburban maryland. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP.
    • 5:30 am — just about asleep (for the first time since 1:10am) i remember to shut off my alarm so that i can squeeze an extra couple of minutes of sleep in the morning.
    • 6:58 am — the lady sparklet wakes me up to tell me that i don’t need to get up. (still figuring that one out.)
    • 7:20 am — i give up and go to work.

    there you go. independent proof that God doesn’t have a sense of humor. at least, not about sleep vs. world peace.

  • video: first waves

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hsXI0slHw

    after a week of “is that really a wave” questions, we’re willing to call it … it’s a wave. and once she starts, she just won’t stop.

  • “i hear these come in chocolate, too?”

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  • mighty, mighty boigs

    i really, honestly can take no credit for this one — but that doesn’t mean i’m not going to try.

    good friends of ours bought a domain (mightymightyboigs.com) to migrate their old blogspot blog, and never made it past the content migration. after 10 minutes of setup, 12 minutes of page migration, and one pre-made wordpress theme (yup, it’s too nice to be mine) and we’re good to go.

    Mighty, Mighty Boigs
    http://mightymightyboigs.com/

  • puttanesca

    made one of the lady sparkler’s favorites tonight, pasta with a puttanesca sauce. she thinks it’s all about the olives, but it’s the capers that hold everything together.

    full recipe after the jump — adapted from a Linguine-with-Puttanesca-Sauce recipe on epicurious.

    (more…)

  • guestbook: sarah

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    guestbook: sarah

  • rainstorm

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  • nine months

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    photo of the week // week thirty-nine

  • out: coleen @ cloverhill yarn

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    coleen @ cloverhill yarn shop, catonsville, maryland

  • hike: tall poplar trail, patapsco valley state park, maryland

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    trail information:
    Trailhead: 39.357479, -76.887839 (Google Maps); Length: 1.4 total miles; Elevation Gain: 160 feet; Trail Type: Loop; Skill Level: Easy.
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    hike: patapsco valley state park, ellicot city, maryland

  • stalker

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    sparklet’s never really been one to let us leave the room without her for very long, but the crawling development has brought with it a new twist — she just follows us.

    it’s almost like having a brand new puppy in the house, a point which emily-the-cat has already complained about more than once.

  • mother’s day, mostly

    it’s possible that i am hardwired to be susceptible to guilt trips.

    even if that’s the case, however, nothing in recent history has beaten the one that i got from our beloved m.o.h. (maid of honor) three days after the mother’s day that the rest of the planet had back in May.

    (and by “rest of the planet” i mean “all you crazy people who have enough spare time to keep track of these things.”)

    from the m.o.h., i quote:

    Where was the sweet first Mother’s Day post on your blog?? Didn’t [Sparklet] give her mommy a present? I know [The Lady Sparkler] doesn’t celebrate Mother’s Day, but I was hoping that [Sparklet] would.

    well, funny you should ask, because instead of celebrating mother’s day this year we were in williamsburg, virginia celebrating the wedding of a very good friend.

    (and by “very good friend” i mean “high school girlfriend.”)

    so tonight, a scant 59 days after it occurred, we finally went out and celebrated mother’s day the way mommy sparkler intended — dinner at hank’s oyster bar, drinks at bar rouge and then desert at local 16.

    a couple of things, for the record:

    • [insert sweet first Mother’s Day sentence]
    • m.o.h. is dead on when she says that mommy has no interest in celebrating mother’s day, and she isn’t opposed in the “you better want to celebrate it anyway, bub” sort of way.
    • sparklet’s first gift for mommy was a digital picture frame for mommy’s office, chocked full of mommy-and-sparklet pictures.
    • daddy’s first gift for mommy actually happened last year, but his second gift was 59 days of insistence that we were going to celebrate mother’s day whether mommy wanted to or not.

    but, i digress.

    in all do seriousness, we do love mommy and are VERY lucky to have her. she is the omni-energetic ying to daddy’s thirty-minutes-of-action-tuckers-me-out-for-a-month yang, and a boundless source of love and wonderfulness for both daddy and child.

    there, i said it. (thanks m.o.h.)

  • video: crawling!

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYZYvSoik0s

    over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen lots of pseudo-crawling/stops and starts … but this is the first honest-to-God, as-seen-on-TV crawling we’ve ever gotten.

  • july 4th

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    it’s sorta cute, the number of people who’ve asked about sparklet’s first 4th of july.

    besides brunch with the mightymightyboigs (the highlight!) we spent the day hiding from the heat, and the night putting sparklet back to sleep after being woken up by late night, unlicensed “community” displays of patriotic exuberance.

    go, team america.

  • not sure about the whole ‘babaganoush’ thing

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    firsts: eating chickpeas and babaganoush at amsterdam falafel, adams-morgan, washington, dc

  • walter pierce playground

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    walter pierce playground, washington, dc