40 weeks and counting.....

I am officially overdue. Hendrik broke out the Happy Birthday chanson yesterday in the car after spotting a birthday cake in his sticker book (it lives in the car), and we wondered if the babe would make an appearance if we sang happy birthday dear baby sister enough times, and I wondered out loud whether or not she might show up if I made her a birthday cake. Steve followed my comment with, "you might be the only person that would actually do that... make a cake as soon as you start having contractions." No, I don't think I'm the only one in the world that would do that but Yes, it's something that I might consider; for the cake and for the baby. I didn't end up baking any goodies, but Steve did; he made a delicious slow-cooker version of this chocolate pudding cake, and I was able to eat in full comfort on my 40-week belly:

I finished Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting yesterday, and liked it. Both Steve and I spent a season (eight-ish months) in France and neither of us were super into the attitudes and/or general feel of the people or the culture there (we were in the south, where snobbery (so it is said) reigns supreme), but the French seem to have a few lessons to give on child-rearing. I read a few passages out loud to Steve a few nights ago, and he agreed with the moral-of-the-story, paused, and then said: "Yeah, but they turn into French people." Hm. Yes. I feel a little guilty agreeing with the sweeping generalization, but it echoes my general feelings about the French. And the generalizing, I've been doing with Quebecers too; I know some fabulous amazing wonderful people from la belle provence but when I see three+ people running red lights every. single. day. and young couples smoking with their kids/babies/toddlers right beside them or right there (every single day), it makes me think things that I can no longer say out loud if Hendrik is in the car. Anyways, that's beside the point. What I was getting at is that in the Bringing Up Bebe book there are numerous sections on how kids eat and what kids eat, and perhaps, in part, it was this information that inspired me to make vichyssoise and serve dinner in two courses. Or hm, perhaps it was just that we had a bunch of leeks in the fridge and a sack'o'potatoes in the pantry that needed to be used. Either way, the soup was delicious. And we had homemade soda bread on the side to boot; Steve and I decided, in a quest to replicate Savary Island's unbelievably delicious soda bread (we want to bring loaves and loaves home every time we come back from Vancouver) to have a soda bread bake-off. He made this recipe the other night, and it was delicious... but a distant facsimile. I made this recipe (with a few changes: I subbed whole wheat flour for most of the white, reduced the sugar and passed on the fennel) and it was closer - not exactly what I was going for, but delicious just the same. They were both reaaaally easy to make (no yeast, no wait-for-it-to-rise, no-knead) and I'm hoping we can remember to make them again. Yum.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from the past couple of days - we've been trying to take advantage of family-of-three time, and enjoy each other's company - a pretty easy thing to do...