Boo!

It's that time of year again!


Guess what she's eating!

For the last couple years, we at the Piggy household have dined on human flesh for Halloween. A couple years ago, it was a free-range human, Timothy. He was treated well and ... well, I'll just pull a quote like I did last year:

Little Timothy was fed a natural diet free of growth hormones and antibiotics and was allowed to leave his cage and go outside and play for sometimes up to a few hours per day! And he lived four happy years before he was shipped off to the slaughter house and took a bolt gun to the head (really, the most humane way to kill a human raised for meat). We're pretty sure the bolt gun was painless. So don't go getting your undies in a bunch. He lived a good life. We're compassionate people here in the Piggy household.

Here's a photo of Anna feasting on the lucky little guy way back when.


And last year, we didn't have as much time on our hands, so we just picked up some human liver at a supermarket.


But this year, we've been trying to be more compassionate and eat more locally ... really adopt a back-to-the-land attitude toward food. So we raised some backyard cats. Here's Anna feasting on rice krispies and cat eyeballs.


Liam looked on in shocked horror. But he'll learn soon enough: If you don't finish your cat eyeballs you don't get any dessert.


Finally, here's Anna just taking it all in. She's such a foodie. She's my little Bourdain-in-training.


Have a Happy Halloween! I'll post some costume photos in a couple days.

Friday Liam #23

That's a skinned apple. He shaved some off with his teeth, but not too much. As with all things (especially food), he got bored with it after about a minute and wanted to do something else.

Anna Wednesday #22

Friday Liam #22

Fall in the Back Yard

The tree out back usually has some nice colors in the Fall. We didn't get the bright red this year that we have in years past, but the yellows are spectacular.




The kids are pretty freaking cute, too.

Anna loves pushing Liam in the swing, but I think he likes it even more.






And of course, some shots of the kids in the tree.






Yes, I had Liam sit on the tree, too. Don't worry. I had a hand on him.

Anna Wednesday #21

This will be funnier to the people out there who have known me within the last 10 years or so. The shirt that Anna's wearing is the one that I've worn approximately 1 out of every 2 days since my mom bought it for me back when I was a freshman or sophomore in college.

And yes ... I realize it's Thursday.

Veggie Nugget #30

"Children confront us with our paradoxes and dishonesty, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, from this piece that ran in the New York Times Magazine, adapted from Foer's upcoming book Eating Animals.

Really looking forward to reading this book. This will be the last nugget from it for a while, since the book doesn't come out till some time in November.

Veggie Nugget #29

"This isn’t animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Yet taste, the crudest of our senses, has been exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses. Why? Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, from this piece that ran in the New York Times Magazine, adapted from Foer's upcoming book Eating Animals.

The Incredible Crawling Liam

Liam crawls!



This video was taken a couple weeks ago. I've been lazy. He's crawling a lot better and faster now.

Also, after he started to crawl he learned to roll from his back to his front. Most kids learn that before crawling. Anyway, now whenever we lay him down in his crib he immediately (even if he's already asleep!) rolls over and (if he's sleeping) wakes himself up. So we have to (gently, I assure you) hold him down for a few seconds (or sometimes minutes) until he goes limp. It would be funny if it wasn't so frustrating.

OK, it's still funny.

I just strapped him into his car seat for his afternoon nap. They usually last twice as long that way.

Veggie Nugget #28

"To give up the taste of sushi, turkey or chicken is a loss that extends beyond giving up a pleasurable eating experience. Changing what we eat and letting tastes fade from memory create a kind of cultural loss, a forgetting. But perhaps this kind of forgetfulness is worth accepting — even worth cultivating (forgetting, too, can be cultivated). To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, from this piece that ran in the New York Times Magazine, adapted from Foer's upcoming book Eating Animals.

Veggie Nugget #27

"Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. Turkeys have been so genetically modified they are incapable of natural reproduction. To acknowledge that these things matter is not sentimental. It is a confrontation with the facts about animals and ourselves. We know these things matter."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, from this piece that ran in the New York Times Magazine, adapted from Foer's upcoming book Eating Animals, which I'm very much looking forward to.

I'll be posting a few more nuggets from that piece and once I read the book I'll probably be posting more from that. It's so refreshing to see a literary-type writer tackle animal issues. Makes for a lot of well-written insight.

Friday Liam #21

He crawls.


Video to come...

Anna Wednesday #20

Snow.


It has melted since this photo was taken, but it won't be long before it's here to stay. Anna's excited.

Friday Liam #20

This little piggy had tofu for the first time on Wednesday. He liked it. He didn't love it. But he liked it.

More Slices

Driving in the car a couple weeks ago:

Anna: I'm thinking of a story.

Mom: What's the story?

Anna: There was a boy and his name was Chocolate Kicker and he kicked a fence and hurt his foot. And his mommy came over and put a band-aid on it.

Mom: Did it make his foot feel better?

Anna: Yes. And he had a baby and his name was Happy Cap.

I think this is her first invented narrative. Of course, she's always pretending with her dolls. One of them wakes up and she has to put her to bed, or something like that. But I think this is the first time that she made something up out of the blue, without a prop to assist her.

As a writer, it makes me gush with pride.

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A few nights ago, Anna called out for us about a half-an-hour after going to bed because she had to pee. In the bathroom, she looked at me and said, "I'm a bigger girl now. Does this mean I can touch sharp things?"

Yep, she's been waiting patiently to get bigger so she can play with knives. Should I be concerned?

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Earlier that same night she said, "Watch this," and walked over to a lion sticker on her wall and pointed to the freckles on its cheeks one after another. "Did you see that?" she yelled.

"What were you doing?" I asked.

"Counting in my head!"

I remember when I learned to read in my head. It was a big day for me and the realization that I could do it made me feel like a god. From her exclamation, I'd like to think she felt similar. We high-fived and then I hugged her for a few minutes.

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Anna took this photo:


I need a haircut.

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I explained the brain to Anna a couple days ago. I waved my hand and said, "My brain is telling my hand to wave. My brain is telling me to smile." Etcetera, etcetera.

So now every once in a while she'll say something like, "It's telling me to walk slow," and I get all creeped out until I realize that she's talking about her brain.

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We order delivery from Pizza Luce once a month or so. After the delivery guy dropped off the pizza last week Anna asked, "Is there a Luce at Pizza Luce. I think the guy who brought pizza to our house is named Pizza Luce. His name is Pizza."

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Liam is crawling now, sort of. He moves forward, sort of crawling with one leg and pushing off with his other foot. He's also pulling up to stand and cruising all over the place. Pulling leaves off our plants, trying to eat books. He can wave goodbye, sign for more, clap his hands and smother you with open-mouthed kisses.

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Anna has started skinning her grapes. She's really good at it.

No Mofo for this Mofo

Ah, VeganMofo, that glorious month where hundreds of bloggers sign up to post something vegan-food-related at least once every weekday during the month of October.

I did it last year. It was fun. I really wanted to do it again this year, but decided I didn't have the time (click here to see my Mofo posts from last year).

So I'm not doing it this year, but it's still on my mind. And to all you VeganMofoers out there, good on ya.

But I feel like joining in a bit on the fun, so here's a photo. Anna made some pickles with her mom and her mom's mom on Saturday.


Be sure to check out all the blogs participating in VeganMofo this year. It's staggering. I love that there is too much veganism out there on the web for one person to ever read in their lifetime. It gives me warm fuzzies inside.

Anna Wednesday #19

Anna's Dance Moves

Anna goes to dance class on Thursday's. She loves to dance and always has, so we figured, why not? It's an eight week program and she's half-way done with it.

So here she is dancing. I didn't edit this video down at all, because I love every second of it. (Note: at about 30 seconds you can hear Liam crying from all the way upstairs. The kid's got lungs.)



About the dance class:

Anna loves the class, but she's unsure about the other girls and has actually told me she's scared of them (and then later, that she's shy of them).

It probably is just her being shy, but part of me wonders. The class is for ages 3 to 5 and most of the older (and even some of the younger) girls wear actual ballet slippers and leotards. It's an informal class and there is no dress code.

Part of me is mad at the parents who dress their kids in dance clothes, because they know full well that not all the kids are going to wear that stuff, and why make the kids who don't wear it feel inadequate?

The other part of me wants to buy a leotard and ballet slippers.

Anna told me she bumps into the girls and she says sorry to them when she does, but that they don't say anything back to her.

Unfortunately (but probably fortunately) they don't allow parents to sit in on the classes. We just get to watch the final class, where I assume it will be different than a normal class anyway. I suspect subtle bullying. Who knows.

Anyway, the teacher is nice and the girls all love her (yes, it's all girls in the dance class). But we're still not sure if we're going to sign her up for more classes. She's also in swimming lessons and we'll keep doing those.

We're thinking of maybe putting her in yoga next, since she's expressed interest in that too. Any suggestions or recommendations for fun active classes for a three-year-old?

Friday Liam #19