At 7:30 p.m., both my children were in bed and soundless

And that, my friends, is all that a recently minted mother of two can ask of the universe. And the reward I give to the universe in return is this blog post.

Oh, friends inside the computer, never have I had so many unwritten posts rattling around inside my goat brain. Alas, time is short and what wee quantity of stamina I have left when a nugget of time lands in my lap usually has me driven to some more pressing task, like washing my face. I'll admit I have actually written a couple of posts for therapeutic purposes, but then haven't had the stones to throw them out there to you. But they've served their therapeutic purposes helping me process various things associated with the recent revisions in my job description here in Momville, and who knows, perhaps someday I'll turn them into something a few other people can stomach.

In the meantime, I wanted to give you all a quick update on things. Circus, okay, screw it...I'm changing his name. I have to force myself to type "Circus" at this point so I'm officially changing it. Circus is now officially Snuffle Pig, okay? Or maybe Snuffy, if I'm feeling into the whole brevity thing.

So, Snuffle Pig, well, he is growing. Holy flaming beanbags is he growing. He outgrew the newborn size of diapers in about 2 weeks and newborn/0-3 month size clothing at about 4 weeks. He is now begging for a size 2 diaper as I continue to cram him into my stockpile of size 1's, is solidly filling out the 3-6 months size, and, dare I say it, even wearing a few choice items in 6-9 month size. I estimate his weight to be in excess of 13 pounds. And I measured him the other day with a yard stick and he was pushing 24 inches long. This is our big one. Dude.

He continues to spit up copiously. I wore 4 different shirts today. I don't know why I continue to change. Really, what am I thinking? His 2-month well baby visit is on 9/2, and I suspect we will be entering the world of reflux meds. Ah, yes. That being said, his overall demeanor is really improving. He's still a tough nut, but we are getting more and more awake and content time out of him. Thank God. My main difficulty with him continues to be getting him on something resembling a routine. It has been really hard, as he does not just drift off into a happy slumber on his own at this point. Oh no he does not. So it is hard to get him down with a raging flaming Phook wrecking shop around the house. But we're making progress with him. I need to do a whole post about this topic, because it's kind of sort of about 98% of my existence right now.

But, for now, we'll talk about the other 2%. The other day, before Auntie Hode left, a friend of mine who has the most gigantic garden I've ever seen (it's bordering on a farm), invited me to come harvest some of her cucumbers. Hode and I loaded up the kidlets and drove to her homestead and went to town. We picked a 5 gallon bucket of cucumbers. Holy shiz. Obviously, as I'm kind of into the whole home canning thing, our intention was to make a few pickles, but that is a serious quantity to contend with. A long day's work, and that's not even taking the shorties I've got running around here into consideration. So, totally having our wits about us, we stopped at a farm stand on the way home to get some dill, and I found myself kind of limply falling into a fugue state as I heard my sister wheeling and dealing herself into half a bushel of beets for pickling. And then I found my car driving to this Amish grocery nearby and purchasing an entire bushel of fresh peaches. For $19. How could I not?

When we got home, my kitchen table was awash in raw materials. It looked like this:

And I, realizing the complete and utter lunacy of acquiring so many perishables when I had a suckling piglet and a crazed, perpetually teething toddler on my hands, looked like this:

There was nothing to do but dive in. Because that's what I do. Dive into things. Empty pools, for example. Even Snuffle Pig knew we were nucking futs:

He got a little sad though when I told him he couldn't eat anything himself for at least another couple of months:


The first thing that happened was that we weighed our jumbo box of cukes about 9 trillion different times trying to figure out the best way to optimize them for pickling by size of cuke and quantity needed for various types of pickles. This picture, not showing the depth of the box, really doesn't do it justice, but this is what we were working with:

We ultimately determined that we'd do a double batch of dills (half spears, half whole pickles), and a double batch of bread and butter pickles. Ultimately, it looked like this:

Okay, now I'm feeling compelled, since this post features pictures of my kitchen, to offer my biannual disclaimer about that godawful faux brick in my kitchen. I hate it - I hate it - I hate it - I didn't put it there - I need $30K to redo my kitchen - I hate it - I hate it - Don't judge me - I hate it. Okay. Moving on.

As I mentioned earlier, we also acquired a bushel of peaches. After sorting out a few bad ones and appointing Uncle Growler to monitor ripening, it looked something like this (note a special peach reserved on Phook's high chair for her breakfast the following morning):

When confronted with this situation, even when I'm on a canning mission, I can never prevent myself, as hard as I try, from making a pie. I mean, seriously. Those things are just begging to be pied. So I slipped and this happened:

And, as anal as I can be, I'm all about getting my kid in on the fun as far as cooking is concerned. So I sort of let Phook squat on the kitchen table and dick around with my leftover dough for an hour and a half:

But back to business. After making the pie and eating many peaches, we still ended up with 14 pints and 3 quarts of canned peaches. Oh, yeah, and a few pints of peach butter. And, well, yeah, we pickled those godforsaken beets too. I present the following:

So there you have it. I was really thinking I wouldn't get around to any canning this year, but through the miracles of Auntie Hode, a baby swing, and letting my big kid plop her ass down in myriad foodstuffs, we got 'er done. And since I've put the word out to the tomato people in my life that I'm in the market for their overflow, I suspect there will be additional fun to be had in this arena before it's all said and done. It's just a bunch of jars, friends, but it's proof that Big W is still managing to exist, even now, even against all odds, even with two kids. I suspect those peaches will be extra sweet this winter.

And, speaking of extra sweet, check out the smile on my little puker:

His sister didn't pony up goods like that until she was significantly older. I think the Snuffle Pig is a keeper. And now I should probably go to bed, because the universe has a twisted sense of humor, and I'll probably be dealing with hourly nightwakings and a stomach flu within a few hours.