A New Kind of Normal

Things are returning to normal around our house, but our concept of normal has changed. Now, if I go all day without crying, feeling so angry I think I might explode, or wondering why I didn't just let the infection kill me, then I feel like we've had a normal day. Preston and I are both back to running our businesses, and Ray has started sleeping again. Dinner gets cooked every night, dirty clothes get washed and put away, the dishes get done, and I put makeup on each morning. Since these are all things that we did before I was hospitalized, I am willing to call this "normal."

The sadness over losing Bailey has lessened considerably to become only a dull ache that I carry around with me, and I have ceased trying to figure out why this happened. Guilt was the prevaling emotion for a while, as I began to come to terms with what I thought happened in the hospital. Essentially, Bailey died as a result of a medically necessary abortion. We can try to use phrases like "induced labor" or "stillborn baby," but if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

While I kept the guilt inside me, I focused solely on what I remember happening. In my mind, Bailey died because I made the decision to let the doctor give me the medicine that would induce labor, which was something we KNEW would kill the baby. I know that four doctors (two of whom were Catholic and one of whom is related to us), a nurse (who happens to be my sister-in-law), my husband, my mother, my mother-in-law, and two of our pastors all agreed with the decision, in fact pushed me to make the decision, but that didn't really take the burden off of me. No one could force me to take the medicine that would induce the labor. Preston even asked the doctor if he could override me and have the doctors dope me up to give me the medicine when I was threatening to just walk out of the hospital and take my chances with the infection (the legal answer was no).

I have since talked this over with my husband, my mother, and my sister-in-law, and they have all helped remind me of things I had forgotten, like that my own life was at stake and that the baby would not have lived even if I had not taken the medicine to induce labor. For the past few weeks, I have even wondered if maybe I didn't give God time to perform a miracle. My sister-in-law told me this week though, that we DID get a miracle. The miracle is that I am still alive and that my uterus is okay. She said that the only thing that would have happened if I had chosen to NOT take the medicine is that I would have died along with Bailey. I suppose that puts things into perspective.

Now I wonder if I even want to try and get pregnant again, or if I should just be grateful for the family I have and move on from here. After all, if I don't have another baby, I could get back to my pre-motherhood goals, like going to grad school, or finishing one of the novels I started writing way back when. But this probably isn't the best time to make a decision like this...

And so we keep going. We get up in the morning, we go to bed at night, and I spend every day hoping that we return to the happy people we used to be.

Bringing Bailey Home

Before I got pregnant with Bailey, I had already decided that I would not find out whether it was a boy or a girl this time around. My entire family was frustrated by this, but it just seemed like fun to me. Once I got pregnant, and we found out the date that the ultrasound would be in which we could find out what we were having (Feb 17), it became a challenge to me as well. I planned to take a videotape, like I did with Ray, but to not watch it until after Bailey was born. I could hardly wait for the moment, during childbirth, when the doctor would say either "Its a boy" or "Its a girl."

One of the many incredibly heartbreaking moments during the induced premature birth and death of Bailey was when the lifeless little body was delivered out of the birth canal, and the doctor quietly said, "Its a boy." The moment I had so looked forward to turned into the most tragic event of my life.

The induced labor took all day on Monday, January 23. It was sometime during the long wait that Preston and I decided that we would cremate Bailey's remains and keep them with us at our home. I couldn't bear the thought of the hospital "disposing of him" as they phrased it. On the following day, we met in the hospital with the funeral home director and Preston picked out an urn for Bailey.

This past Monday evening, Preston waited until after dinner and then turned to me and said, "I'm bringing Bailey home tomorrow." My heart stopped. For the briefest second, I imagined it was 10 years in the future and that Preston was talking about picking Bailey up from Little League or school or whatever. Instead, of course, Preston was talking about bringing Bailey's remains home to us. Bailey is, after all, gone. All we have left are ashes.

Preston called on Tuesday afternoon to let me know he was on his way home from work. I asked him if he would be picking up Bailey's urn on the way, but he said no, that he had picked the urn up earlier that morning. "He's been riding around with me all day," Preston said. Once more, I felt my heart crack.

The urn is marble, and so very small. Bailey's full name is inscribed on it, along with only one date,that of January 23, 2006. Since he was stillborn, there is no birth certificate and therefore no death certificate. According to the funeral home director, Bailey's death was considered a fetal demise, and so there will be no public record. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me because, after all, I held his little body. To me and Preston, Bailey did exist, if even for the briefest time. It saddens me greatly that so many people will never even consider his life. Will my parents count Bailey when people ask them how many grandchildren they have? Will Ray count him when classmates ask how many siblings he has?

We have put the urn on the mantle in the kitchen for now, next to one of our favorite candid wedding pictures, a black and white print that my was taken by my best friend from childhood. It is oddly comforting to have his remains with us, home with our family. I had to make myself leave the house the next morning. I felt I should stay home with Bailey, or even take him with us if we left the house, and I knew I was on the verge of being very irrational about the whole thing. This urn is not a baby, but the earthly remains of a life that has already left us. While I got the diaper bag together, Ray followed close on my heels with his arms up like he always does. And, like I always do, I kept saying, over and over, to reassure him, "I'm not going to forget my baby. Mama's never gonna forget her baby." This time though, there was a whole new meaning to the reassurance.

Something To Live For

Because he is so young, Ray has no concept of what has just happened in our family. Before I lost the baby, I was just beginning to show, and Ray had a great time poking at my swelling belly, but he would only look at me oddly when I tried to explain that there was a baby in there. I would point at my belly and say, "baby." He would frown, point at my belly and say, quite vehemently, "belly, mama!"

I am forever grateful that he is too young to understand what has happened. I will tell him about Bailey when he is older, but for now, Ray's obliviousness is what is getting me and Preston through this awful hopelessness. I feel guilty every time I feel a moment of happiness, scared to move on from mourning Bailey, but since Ray doesn't have to know guilt yet, he has no qualms about being silly. It is his silliness that allows me to smile without feeling guilty. And it is his life, and the hope for his future, that gives me something to live for.

Motherhood Interrupted

During the six days and five nights that I spent in the hospital, while I was being robbed of my chance to be a mother to Bailey, I was also being cheated out of a week of being a mother to Ray. The double whammy cost me a lot, and made the first few days back at home even harder than I expected, while I fought my own grief and tried to re-instill a sense of security back into Ray.

Ray is 23 months old now, and before this tragedy, we had never been apart for more than three or four hours at a time, and even that was extremely seldom. Twice, Preston and I left Ray with my mother while we went to see a movie. Once, mom kept Ray for an afternoon while I struggled with tax deadlines. And there were times he stayed at mom's or with my grandmother for an hour while I went to a doctor visit or to get a haircut. We had never spent a night apart, and even though Ray has a blast at my mother's house, I could only rarely bring myself to leave him over there to play while I came home to get something or another done.

On the Thursday that I was admitted to the hospital, I woke up in considerable pain and we knew that I would have a kidney ultrasound later in the day. At the time, we were all (including the doctor) hoping that I had kidney stones. Thursdays are my busiest workdays of the week, and mom, Preston and grandma were all jumping to give me a hand. Yolie was even offering to bring dinner over so I wouldn't have that to worry about as well.

While Preston went to town to pick up my work for me, mom came over to pick up Ray at around 8:30 in the morning. Normally, I only work during the two to three hours of Ray's afternoon nap, the better for us to never really be apart. The plan that day though was for me to try and knock out my work in the morning and then be ready for my ultrasound and be able to take the afternoon off to deal with the pain, if necessary.

Ray went with mom without hardly a backwards glance at me, and I took a shower, relieved to spend a few minutes with hot water massaging some of the pain from my back. Then, I went upstairs and tried to slam through my work as quickly as possible while the Tylenol helped to keep me upright. By around 10:00 though, a wave of pain hit me so hard I nearly fell off my chair. I stood up to go to the bathroom, and was horrified to see blood in the toilet. I burst into tears and went downstairs to lay down in bed. I had never made myself aware of the bad things that can happen in pregnancy (part of my mother's Pollyanna legacy), but I knew that if blood appeared, it was time to lay down.

I crawled into bed and called the doctor. They told me to come in as soon as I left the place where the renal ultrasound would be done. I called Preston to let him know what was going on, and then I called my mother and asked her to get on the internet and look up kidney stones. At the time, I didn't panic. The blood scared me nearly out of my mind, and the pain was close in intensity to labor pains, but I'd had a friend (another healthy vegetarian) who had been briefly hospitalized for kidney stones during her first pregnancy and I was comforted knowing that everything had gone fine for the baby.

Mom read information about kidney stones to me over the phone and I breathed a sigh of relief. ALL the symptoms fit: the blood, the pain, the cloudy urine, everything. Though I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the stones, I knew I could handle anything as long as it meant the baby would be okay.

By mid-afternoon that day, kidney stones had all but been ruled out, and my OB was admitting me to the hospital. She said I most likely had a severe kidney, bladder or uterine infection and that outpatient treatment had failed. An ultrasound was done of the baby, and since everything seemed fine there, and since the doctor didn't say ONE WORD about the baby being in danger, I went to the hospital and was laying there in a bed by dinnertime, making a list of things Preston would need to bring to me, and worrying myself sick about Ray.

For most of the hospital stay, I didn't worry about Bailey, and I hardly worried at all about my own health. I worried most about Ray and about how he would deal with my absence. There were moments, obviously, when the other worries loomed large: on Friday, when the baby was given only a 50% chance, and then on Sunday, when I was told the baby was dying; and of course on Monday, when labor had to be induced. On Saturday though, the baby's heartbeat was still fine, my fever had gone down, and the doctor was talking about sending me home on Sunday morning. The worry over Bailey went away, and I focused instead solely on Ray and on how I couldn't wait to get back to our normal schedule.

Ray spent the days of Thursday, Friday and Saturday at my mother's house. On each of those evenings, Preston picked him up at dinnertime and took him home to bathe him, feed him, play with him and put him to bed. Preston spent the nights at home, and he was the one to get Ray ready in the mornings. Ray seemed fine with the situation, though Preston told me he would come home in the evenings and walk into all the rooms calling for me. He didn't get his naps on those days, but he had fun with mom's children and so I didn't worry too much about lasting effects.

On Sunday, when everything went all to hell at the hospital, Ray's care had to change even more. He still spent the days of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at my mother's house, but he had to do without Preston as well as me. Preston went home on Sunday evening to put Ray to bed, but it was my mother-in-law and sister-in-law who stayed at our house for the night and were the ones to get Ray out of bed in the morning. It was then that I knew not only was the baby inside me dying, but that Ray was going through an awful adjustment without his parents who had up until now ALWAYS been there with him.

My in-laws dropped Ray off at my mom's house on Monday morning and came to the hospital to be with me and Preston. Mom followed soon after, leaving Ray and all of her children with Grandma and Yolie. That night, Ray spent the night at my grandparent's house, his first night away from both his home and his parents at the same time. He was a trooper though, and let Grandpa give him a bath with Jack, and then fell asleep with Lily without putting up a fight.

It hurt me incredibly to spend so long away from my life as a mother. On Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, Ray was brought to the hospital to spend an hour or so with me, but each time he would sit on the bed next to me, hunched over and quiet, obviously confused and becoming insecure. When it was time to leave, he would kiss me and go quietly out of the room with whoever had brought him there. It broke my heart.

On Sunday, mom told me she went into the kitchen at her house to find Ray just standing there crying for no apparent reason. On Tuesday, when he woke up at Grandma's house, he sat up and began crying right away. Sunday morning, when my mother-in-law and sister-in-law got Ray ready to go to mom's house, he stood in the middle of the living room and cried, not wanting to go with them. I wonder if he didn't know where they were taking him, and if he thought that he should stay home in case his parents came back for him.

Ray is starting to act like his normal happy-go-lucky self again, but I am dealing with tantrums that are new from him, and there are times when he clings to me or to Preston like he never has before. It is possible that I am reading too much into his behavior, but after spending so many years as the only birth child in a large adoptive family, and after listening to so many discussions and interpretations of my siblings' rage and acting out, it was inevitable that I would start to associate some of what I have learned about abandonment from them to what has happened to my own child while I was gone for a week.

For years, when I have tried unsuccessfully to relate to my siblings, or when I have attempted to be a part of the discussions of their behaviors, my mother or one of the older siblings have snapped at me that I don't know anything about loss, or abandonment, or grief, etc, and I have essentially felt shut out. I only wish I could return to those days. I have an empathy now for my siblings that didn't exist before, and while I am appreciative of that on many levels, I can't help but be aware of the cost at which I have gained this empathy and understanding.

Hope in Other Babies

I wonder now if God wasn't protecting me somehow, preparing me for this to happen. When I found out I was pregnant with Bailey, I blogged once about the happy occasion, and then only once more before abandoning this blog for two months. In my head, I was blogging all along, with inane little monologues about my changing taste in food and about the weight I was gaining. In my pregnancy with Ray, I put on the pounds like there was no tomorrow. Gaining weight was new to me, and it was absurdly fun. This time, for some reason, I was gaining weight more slowly, but still slightly faster than the experts suggest. By about the thirteenth week of the pregnancy, I had put on 13 pounds and was having a blast trying to stuff myself into my largest pair of non-maternity jeans. My early pregnancy pants from the last pregnancy were capri pants, not something I can wear in January, so I knew I would have to go out and buy just one pair of small maternity jeans to get me through until I needed the larger pairs left over from last time. For three weeks, I picked up a pair at Walmart (correct size, easily affordable) and looked at them for 10 minutes or so before putting them back on the rack and walking away. Didn't make any sense at the time, especially since I was holding my jeans on with rubber bands around the snaps to buy me another inch or so.

Now when I read back on my last two posts here in November, it is painful, and I am both grateful and dismayed that I didn't record more details of the pregnancy. At the time, I thought it would last for 40 weeks, and there was plenty of time to capture the magic and the hilarity of pregnancy. Never once, in either pregnancy, did I worry that I might lose the baby. It just never occured to me. And this time I kept having the hardest time remembering what week of pregnancy I was in. With Ray, I subscribed to an online newsletter that was sent to me during each week of the pregnancy, describing exactly what was happening with the baby and with my body. I guess I felt more confident this time, because I did not re-subcribe to the newsletter, with the net result being that I often had to count on my fingers and toes to remember what week I was in.

Painfully, I am having a very easy time pinpointing the week of pregnancy that I should be in now. I was 16 weeks along when I lost Bailey, and I struggled into church yesterday, knowing that I should have been 17 weeks along then. I know two other people who are expecting babies within two days of when Bailey was due, and I have no intention of being around them for even a minute during the next five months. I do not begrudge ANYONE their healthy pregnancy or their healthy newborn. I just don't want to be around someone who will be living the exact timeline that I have been robbed of. A girl in our church was in the same hospital I was in, giving birth in the next wing while my doctor was telling me that my baby only had a 50% chance of making it. Amazingly, I was happy for this other girl and her family, and even encouraged in some odd way, knowing that this acquaintaince was down the hall, bringing new life into the world.

The morning after I lost Bailey, when I had woken up from the hour and a half of sleep that sustained me for about 48 hours, I heard a new baby squalling not far from the door of my room in the new and beautiful Family Birthing Center. I smiled and said something about that being a hungry baby to Preston and to the incredible nurse that was tending to me. The nurse asked if it bothered me, but I said no, that it was the most beautiful thing I had heard in days.

Preston and mom both mentioned that every time they went outside after I had been moved to labor and delivery, that they had to walk by the window where the newborns are displayed. Both of them said that it did not bother them. Preston was even asked once by a stranger in the hall, during the day I was delivering Bailey's lifeless little body, if he was waiting for a baby to be born or if he was visiting one. He blanked for a minute, and then replied that he was waiting.

When it was time for me to leave the hospital, the nurse asked if I wanted to go out the back way, instead of being wheeled past the baby window. As much as I wanted to see those babies, to receive some affirmation that life was continuing, I did not want any of the new moms, or their families, to see me being wheeled out without a baby in my arms. I didn't want them to wonder where my baby was. I didn't even want them to be aware that this kind of thing had happened right down the hall from where the happiest event in their lives had just taken place. It was an awful, indescribably isolating feeling.

Mourning Bailey

The infinite sadness of the past week seems to have now been replaced by a vast and frightening emptiness. I am working hard to keep my head above water, but in my mind I am running a non-stop loop of the events of the past two weeks. Looking back, seeing all that led up to the moment late Monday night when I delivered a 3-ounce baby who had already left us, it now seems like, through that week, we were all caught on a runaway freight train that was rushing us into the awful despair that followed. As it happened, of course, we had no idea of what was coming. And it all seemed to happen in slow-motion at the time, though now I see it differently. Life, after all, can turn on a dime.

I am hoping to put pen to paper (or, in this case, fingers to keyboard) so that I can record my memory of that awful week, hoping that if I write it all down, that I will cease to replay everything over and over and over again. This may not be the appropriate forum for it, but it is all I have. The easy happiness and the flippant attitude with which I wrote previously in this blog is now gone. The Before Sarah is a completely different person from the unrecognizable After Sarah that I have become, at least temporarily.

We are no longer the caricatures that I wrote about before. The Southern Foodie, The Carnivore and The Odd Toddler are now simply Sarah, Preston and Ray. Reality just doesn't allow for humor right now.

I used to say that nothing bad ever happens to me. I sincerely miss the old me, the one who believed that would always remain true. I know now that the worst can happen, and it can come out of nowhere. If I do this right, I will come through on the other side without this current abiding fear that the worst can happen again.

I am having a hard time finding God right now, and God's comfort is completely elusive. I forget to pray. I forget to eat. This morning, I realized I had forgotten to breathe for a moment. I appreciate everyone's prayers, and we continue to need them desperately.

Bringing Up Bonaparte

Odd Toddler needs a name change. His tyrannical ways and his sense of entitlement have caused The Carnivore to call him Napolean more than once in the past week. And he seems nonplussed by my pregnancy and the exhaustion I've been laboring under since his 48-hour hospital stay last week. His beautiful and dependable sleep routine has been chunked, and he now insists on being taken from his crib no later than 6:00 am on a daily basis. We are often awakened by his demanding shouts over the monitor as he yells, "MAMA, MAMA, MAMA" in military-precision staccato barks over and over and over and over again until I come stumbling into his room.

Of course, if I take into account that I am going through caffeine withdrawal while I wean myself and The Unborn off of coffee, then maybe I am just reading too much into Odd Toddler's behavior.

This afternoon, Odd Toddler insisted on being held while I made dinner, no easy feat considering I had to stand over the stove and whisk a roux for half an hour while juggling Odd Toddler with one arm. If you believe everything you read, pregnant women are not supposed to lift anything heavier than 30 pounds. Its a good thing he only weighed 29.5 pounds yesterday at his doctor visit.

Last night, feeling fatigued from a few nights of fighting with Odd Toddler over his bedtime, being slightly nauseated from being in my sixth week of pregnancy while at the same time battling pregnant sweet-tooth cravings, and desperately wanting to do something nice for myself and the ever-supportive Carnivore, I stood on the menu desk and started pulling down cookbooks. I hit the jackpot in Betty Crocker's Cookbook where I found the brownie recipe to beat all others. I haven't had the best luck with brownies the last few times I've made them, generally just running into trouble getting the texture right and cooking them for the hair-splittingly perfect amount of time, and I wasn't in the mood for something overly sweet last night to begin with. This recipe was crazy easy to make, not cloyingly sweet, and came out with a nice flaky skin on top while remaining chewy on the inside. And (if only I knew what I did to make it happen), for once the brownies stayed of uniform height across the top, not sinking in the middle as so often happens when they cool. This is a new favorite.

BUTTERSCOTCH BROWNIES

• 1/4 cup shortening (man, this stuff really grosses me out)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (not self-rising)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (according to The Carnivore, walnuts are a Yankee thing - whatever- to appease him, I used pecans instead)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt (I used kosher, of course)

1. Heat shortening in 1 1/2 quart saucepan over low heat until melted.
2. Remove pan from heat, and mix in sugar, vanilla and egg.
3. Stir in remaining ingredients.
4. Spread batter in a greased 8x8x2 square pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes.

Brownies usually last for a week around here. The Unborn was a big fan of these however, and we ended up polishing off half of them last night. This is going to be a long and high-calorie pregnancy.

(photo of adoring parents fawning over their terrible-nearly-two-year-old taken by the handsome, brilliant and talented Josh Brown)

At Long Last

I clipped a dip recipe out of Parenting magazine MONTHS ago, but was irritatingly unable to find all the ingredients I needed. Wasabi paste and dried fish flakes just aren’t readily available in small Southern college towns apparently. I searched for a couple of weeks, checking four different stores before admitting partial defeat. The only defeat I could cop to was the partial kind because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fully give this one up. Wasabi paste seemed like something I SHOULD have around, particularly since The Carnivore and I love spicy food so much. And wasabi always makes me giggle when it makes my nose itch while I eat it.

After a time, I came across wasabi powder, and so I picked some up to keep around. Just in case. I figured that if I never found the paste that I would just figure out how to make it from the powder. The dried fish flakes, also called bonito, continued to flummox me. Under normal circumstances, I might have just gotten pissed off and thrown the recipe away, but this dip sounded so stinking yummy. And if there is something I want, I will move heaven and earth to make it happen.

When my big city friend Tisha was in town recently, I moaned to her about my difficulty finding the ingredients I need around here. She promised to pick up the wasabi paste and the bonito when she got back to San Francisco. I knew it might be a little while, but she has never let me down. I started to practice a little patience.

Sure enough, when we came back from Virginia last month, there was a package from Tisha with the stuff I needed. For a fleeting moment, I thought about what it must be like to live in a city where everything you need is just around the corner. Then I remembered how cold it was in San Francisco in July, and how high the tax rates are in California, and I figured I should just be happy that I have friends who are willing to indulge their small-town pals.

Of course, after all the waiting on this recipe, I dragged my feet for another couple of weeks and finally got down to business this weekend. As it turned out, the dip took about 4 minutes to prepare (after about 6 months of pre-prep, of course) and it was the coolest, most unique dip I’ve had yet. I’m hooked. The flavors are so complex, the texture is perfect and the taste is so refreshing, especially after being subjected to so many salad dressing-based dips. Loving it.

SPICY LAYERED DIP

• 8 oz package cream cheese
• 2 tsp prepared wasabi paste
• 1/3 cup bonito (dried fish) flakes
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 3 scallions, thinly sliced

1. Cut the cream cheese block in half horizontally so you have two thin slabs.
2. Place one cream cheese half on a serving plate and spread wasabi paste on top.
3. Sprinkle on half of the bonito flakes and place the remaining cream cheese half on top.
4. Pour soy sauce over the layered cream cheese and sprinkle with the scallions and remaining bonito flakes.
5. Serve with crackers and raw vegetables.

Interestingly, it was the dip that cemented what I had been suspecting for a few weeks. Maybe it should have been obvious by the way I was drinking less coffee, or the way that the smell of my baby brother’s feet made me gag. It certainly was a big tip when I heaved the first time I opened the pack of dried fish flakes and the putrid smell hit me. And then I sat down and ate most of the dip in one sitting.

So I finally broke down and took a pregnancy test…

The Baby Gourmet

It has not escaped my attention that most of the pictures I use here were taken in my kitchen. Our days are varied, but Odd Toddler and I always manage to spend time together in the kitchen, whether he is helping me unload the dishwasher, taste-testing everything I make, or just playing with a big stack of pans. He has made me proud with his willingness to try any food, and especially with the pleasure he takes in eating. If I hold out a spoon, he comes running, mouth open. He will sample whatever I am making, and then he always rewards me with a big smile and a hearty "Mmmmm." I love it.

We went to Earth Fare today, my absolutely favorite grocery store around here, but one in which I step foot no more than once a month. I could go broke there. Everything is organic and the selection of cheeses and produce is to die for. I have gone up to the deli counter many times to ask the cooks for help with making substitutions in a recipe, or just for general advice about a specific dish. This has often resulted in three of four of them coming out from behind the counter to read the entire recipe and to ALL give me tips. In a pinch, I have even called them on the phone.

Now that I am much more confident with cooking, and since I wasn't in a hurry (for once), I strolled slowly around the store, noticing things I hadn't seen before and which I wasn't even sure were available around here. I was particularly excited to see walnut oil, an ingredient that has popped up in more than one recipe now in Cooking For Mr. Latte, New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser's collection of columns that I am currently reading (for a hilarious blog about her, go here). I had been paging right past those recipes, mildly irritated that she calls for so many things that would send me bouncing from store to store in my often fruitless searches for ingredients. I intend to backtrack now in the book to find her recipe for walnut cake.

I pointed out endless items to Odd Toddler today. "Whole wheat couscous," I would say. "Mmmmmm," he would respond. There were samples of aged gouda at the cheese counter. I took a small bite, savoring the delicious pungency of the cheese, and then popped the rest of it into Odd Toddler's open mouth. He closed his eyes, "Mmmmm" he said, rubbing his belly. I'm pretty sure I kissed my little gourmet 12 times while we were there, tickled to death that he has as much fun with food as I do.

I have always wanted to try the deli items or their salad bar, but have been either too cheap or in too big of a hurry. Today was a beautiful exception. I perused the choices for a few minutes, sure that I would get a small portion of tabbouleh, but also craving some sort of a sandwich. I leaned towards the spinach pie for a minute or two, but then my eye was caught by the hummus wrap. I nearly drooled while I place my order. With a Gerolsteiner (a sparkling, sharp-tasting, mineral water that my German friends turned me on to) and a chocolate mint cookie bar to round out the meal, I relished every bite of my purely decadent lunch.

Most of the hummuses I've tried have been pasty, with a slight oily sheen and a coarse texture. I have only tried making hummus once, and the result was much the same, only less tasty. The hummus wrap, with thick crunchy slices of cucumber and carrot, nestled on a cloud of romaine and sprouts, was just oozing with the lightest, creamiest, dreamiest, fluffiest hummus I've had the pleasure of tasting. I tried describing it to The Carnivore, and he reminded me that a friend of mine is taking some free cooking classes at Earth Fare and he suggested I join her. I had been tempted before, but now I'm convinced. I will be RAIDING their website tonight to see if I can find the recipe for that hummus.

The tabbouleh was a disappointment at the first bite, not as vinegary as I tend to make it, but it grew on me quickly. The flavors were much more delicate than I am used to in tabbouleh, and it took a few bites before I could fully appreciate it. The grains were nearly smothered by chopped fresh parsley, more than I ever would have dared to use, but it worked perfectly. Parsley is so often used only as a garnish if its fresh, and overcooked when used in soups and pastas. The grassy taste of the herb, just this side of bitter, was enhanced by the olive oil and the juicy, flavorful chopped tomatoes in the dish. Now I want that recipe too.

Odd Toddler helped me eat everything, of course, and the tabbouleh was his favorite. I felt I would pop with pride over my adventurous little foodie son, until we got home and he popped a piece of dog food in his mouth and said, "Mmmmm!"

Babes in Thailand

Efficiency was the name of the game this weekend. Between sleepless nights, friends visiting from out of town, time changes and the amount of time it takes to stuff a toddler into a costume two days in a row, there wasn't a lot of time for cooking over the past few days. Matter of fact, I served microwave popcorn for dinner on Saturday night, much to the utter delight of Odd Toddler, who parked himself between me and The Carnivore and grinned alternately at us as he stuffed kernels into his mouth for the better part of the evening.

On Monday evening, much as I tried to convince myself we would stay home and stick with our usual routine, I was smart enough to extend the Efficient Meal Schedule one more evening and serve a new stir-fry recipe, thus allowing Odd Toddler and I to make the eleventh hour decision to attend the firehouse shindig with my mother and her always entertaining vanload of circus clowns.

For the second evening in a row, I brought home a glassy-eyed, overtired, party-pooped toddler who skipped his bath in favor of going straight to bed. I can't remember another evening when he actually ASKED to go night-night.

HALLOWEEN IN THAILAND RED CURRY VEGETABLES

• 1 Tbs peanut oil (I used two Tbs - no need to scrimp here)
• 3 tsps Thai red curry paste (found at Publix)
• 1 small onion, sliced into rings
• 1/2 lb tofu, cut into cubes (blech! - I skipped this ingredient for obvious reasons)
• 1 red bell pepper, seeds removed, cut into strips
• 1 green bell pepper, seeds removed, cut into strips
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh Thai basil leaves (no luck finding basil of this particular ethnicity - settled for regular Southern American basil)
• 1 (14-oz) can coconut milk
• 1 Tbs brown sugar
• 1 Tbs soy sauce (needs two Tbs)
• 1/4 lb snow peas
• 1 small zucchini, cut crosswise into strips
• 1 can bamboo shoots, drained
• I also added: 1 can baby corn, drained...
• ...and 1/3 head napa cabbage, shredded
• 2 cups cooked jasmine rice

1. In a large skillet or wok over medium heat, stir together the oil and curry paste until well-combined.
2. Add the onion and that nasty tofu (if using), and cook until the onion is translucent or that godforsaken tofu begins to sear.
3. Remind me to tell the story of how my mother traumatized me with a tofu recipe when I was a kid.
4. Add the peppers and the basil. Cook and stir until the peppers start to get tender and their colors brighten.
5. Add the coconut milk, brown sugar and soy sauce and stir to combine. Let simmer for 5 minutes.
6. Add the snow peas, zucchini, bamboo shoots, corn and cabbage. Cook for about 4 minutes, until snow-peas are just crisp-tender.
7. Serve over rice. I found the creaminess of the sauce to be much less overpowering if drained slightly before ladling the veggies over the rice.

The tweety-bird-disguised-as-a-pumpkin costume was an incredible thrift-store find of my sister-in-law Georgianne. The recipe is courtesy of the AJC Food Section, along with the usual tweaking from yours truly. And yes, my constant repetitious recipe-sourcing has made me consider renaming this blog "Cooking My Way Through the Atlanta Newspaper."