Leif and I just made good ice cream. Better than good. The texture was the most amazing thing ever, even if the flavor wasn't great.

I used the avocado chocolate pudding recipe - avocado, chocolate to taste, sweetener approximately equivalent to the chocolate, a little vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a little coconut milk because it seemed to thick for ice cream batter. I also tossed in a half eaten apple because it was there and needed to be used and it seemed like it needed something. Food process until smooth.

In theory, it doesn't taste like avocado. I've successfully made it not taste like avocado in the past. I think the main problem with the flavor was that these particular avocados seem to have a very strong flavor. I noticed it in the guacamole I made the other day, too.

Or maybe I just needed more chocolate.

The texture is more than enough to convince me I need to work on the recipe. Seriously, it's what you'd expect to find at some gourmet place for $10 a scoop.

Aikido cheered me up in spite of myself today. I was not in a receptive mood, but still felt better coming out than going in.

I have Serenity sitting here waiting for me to (finally) watch it, and two sleeping kids, but I think it's really too late to start it. Someday...

I wish I had no self control and was eating up this whole tray of brownies and drinking all the milk. Alas, I do have a bit of restraint.

(After all, there is a whole nother tray, so it's not like I'd be hogging them all)

At the moment I feel like eating nothing but salad with some sort of added protein (but not nuts or cheese), fruit, and maybe something like yogurt or pudding or non-chocolate ice cream as my entire diet until the baby is born. Everything else seems like it would make me feel yucky one way or another.

I suppose there are worse diets.

I've been feeling really yucky in general lately, enough so that I'm dreading 1-2+ more months of this. I don't remember feeling this yucky last time, even at the very end. I probably just need more exercise, though. On the other hand, it was easier last time because I could more easily follow a "sleep when I happen to feel like it" sleep pattern after about this point.

Wow, that was a little scary. Someone called koyote. From the conversation, I figured it was probably our friend Christine. Leif apparently made the same mental leap, because he asked "Is that Christine?" It wasn't like the context clues were blatant, either. He might have been able to hear her, but she isn't someone he knows terribly well, so that would surprise me a little too.

Now he's back to the pretend game he's playing with his dinosaurs. Dinosaurs and a rubber chicken.

And now he is dissecting a tampon. Ah, the life of a 3 year old.

After his slight wandering the first night, he slept all night in the room by himself for the other three nights. Makes me wish there was a real possibility of a separate room for him in the near future. Same room/separate bed seemed so sensible until I found out how well he sleeps on his own!

I'm having such a hard time waking up right now. Hopefully tea will work, though I hate relying on caffeine at this time of the day.

Played Clean Sweep on a friend's house today. It's a lot more fun when it isn't your house.

How often does MDC have to go down for moves? I'm not exactly the most active member, but it seems they're down for a move every other time I try to visit.

This morning I was making tea for myself and Leif. I tossed in some turbanado sugar (the brown, less processed type - the same kind as you get from "Sugar In The Raw" packets). I tried a sip of Leif's, and it wasn't very sweet, so I put a few more spoonfulls in mine. It still wasn't really noticably sweeter.

Leif decided he didn't like the tea, so I made him some juice instead in the same cup. A few minutes later he spilled it, and some sort of weird grainy stuff spilled across the table along with the juice.

It seems the turbanado sugar was actually couscous or something. There was a nice big sludge of it at the bottom of my cup. Unfortunately, cooking it in tea didn't make it taste particularly good, or I'd have had a nice breakfast.

Appetite changes are definitely kicking in.

We went to a party today. Most of the food was pretty unappetizing, even though I'd usually like it. Which made me feel kind of bad, since koyote did most of the cooking, except that it's his fault in the first place, so I shouldn't feel too bad.

Soy may be turning me off again. Possibly sesame oil, too.

I was seriously considering grabbing beef/pork off people's plates until I finally got some of my own. No interest in chicken, though. Usually I probably would have passed up the red meat entirely in favor of the chicken, or possibly even just stuck with the tofu.

A seaweed salad I'd usually be all over looked gross.

Sweet stuff is less appetizing. I still ate more than I should have, but that was largely out of habit and because it seemed more paletable than most of the rest of the food.

I don't normally like baba ganoush much, but either the stuff there was unusually good, or it's another Weird Pregnancy Appetite Thing. I didn't eat nearly enough of it. (No, really. I had one bite of it and somehow didn't manage to get back to it). The tapenad was yummy, too.

Hmm. I think that Mediterranean in general seems a lot more appetizing than Oriental.

I'm going for the strawberries big time, but had some rather disappointing blackberries.

I get so tired these days. By noon I feel like I've pulled an all nighter. There was a four week old baby there who was happy just being held by whoever for most of the time, rather than running around like a banshee. Made me want a more sedentary model of child. Though I'm sure that once I get one, I'll be quite ready for it to entertain itself as well as Leif does.

(And yes, I know the phrase is "screaming like a banshee." He did plenty of that, too)

The doctor's test yesterday said I was pregnant. Ya think?

I don't feel like updating.

Leif and I are visiting at my mom's house. The keyboard sucks, so please excuse any typos I don't correct.

We're supposed to go to San Diego tomorrow, but my mom is sick, so I'm not sure we'll make it.

I wonder if Leif is weaning. I can count the times he's nursed since we left early Tuesday morning on one hand, and he actually didn't want to nurse before his nap this afternoon, and fell asleep on his own, which I don't think he's ever done when he was with me and not in some form of transportation (car, stroller, baby carrier, whatever). It's possible that he has certain associations that were broken by going someplaces else.

I went out on my own this afternoon. I went to a coffee shop and drank a latte and ate a sandwich and finished my book. Then I wandered around stores and a library. Whoo. I saw the oddest thing in a women's clothing boutique - a fleece spaghetti strap tank top. Huh?

Leif is currently watching Finding Nemo, and seems to want me to come over and hold him, so I suppose I will do that.

I'm such a freak when it comes to bees.

There was a HUGE yellow and black bee-like thing (I think it was a yellowjacket) flying around in the shower when I went to get clean.

I got out, told Leif he wasn't allowed in the shower yet, got the flyswatter, whacked at the thing until it was dead, screamed, and then drowned it in Dr. Bronner's soap because it was still twitching.

*shudder*

We skipped library story time today because I decided it would be a bright idea to make pancakes for breakfast, which takes forever to cook, even though the batter was already made. They're yummy, though. I took the leftover pumpkin pie batter and added pancake ingredients until it worked.

Still have to go to the library later, since Leif's movies are due today. We should go soon, both because the library is much more pleasant before the kids get out of school and because the chances I'll get called in seem to increase after noon.

If I were a different person, I'd totally be starting some friends list drama right now, but as I tend to not really enjoy drama, all I'll say is that I don't like not being considered a separate entity from my husband, if that is indeed what happened.

Or maybe I'm just boring. Whatever.

***

A handful of pomegranate seeds turns our everyday ordinary salad into something I wouldn't feel cheated paying $30 for.

I'm feeling more sensitive to food flavors lately, like the past week or so. In a good way, though. I'm not sure why this is. I'm just having unusually strong positive reactions to some things.

No, I'm not pregnant, unlike everyone else on my friends list.

From a recipe for cookies with cocoa powder in them:

Bake in preheated oven 350 degrees for 15 minutes, or until crisp and light brown on bottoms.

WTF? They're dark brown to begin with! How can "light brown" be an adequate indicator of doneness?