On Saturday it rained.

And so we checked the internet for what people do on rainy days in Seattle and made sure that we did the exact opposite. We went to the zoo!

It was exciting for all of about 30 minutes until the light rain turned to very heavy rain and the mugginess turned to horribly cold. We ran for refuge in a nearby cafe and didn’t feel too disappointed as we munched on sweet potato fries and pocketed our yearly zoo memberships. (Wooop!)

On Saturday evening we did something that we’ve never done before. We left Mika with a babysitter that we didn’t know. It was slightly scary but entirely awesome. All Ivan and I wanted was a few hours to hang out and talk and people watch somewhere where we didn’t have to whisper while baby slept (one more week in a studio apartment!).

It turned out perfectly. We got a tiny booth at a very crowded Bimbo’s Mexican bar/cafe in Capitol Hill, and played with our new dice (obsessed) whilst throwing back a couple margaritas and corn chips. Then we walked all the way home in the cold night air through the crowds gathering for Pride events.

We spent Sunday perusing the Fremont Market. We’ve decided it’s our favourite. We like Ballard as a suburb, but the Fremont market just has so many awesome trinkets, cool vintage finds and sweet repurposed furniture and things – it’s so easy to spend an entire day there. Plus the food is awesome (fennel tacos! vegan naan bread! sweet potato!)

We ended the weekend with a easy vegan asparagus soup, homemade hummus and a few too many slices of Dave’s killer bread. Somehow even after the extensive sampling at the Theo Chocolate factory, I still needed to use up the last of our quickly-going-moldy strawberries. So I followed this recipe more or less, using strawberries instead of plums and it has just come out of the oven:

What we don’t eat now will no doubt be consumed for breakfast tomorrow

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So it was possible! The weekend was wonderful.

The Fremont Solstice festival was everything we could hope for and more. We really had no expectations, but with muggy weather, naked people on bikes, roasted corn cobs, super coffee, belly dancers, fun masks and beautiful company, we really couldn’t go wrong.

It was father’s day in America, which meant that we appreciated Ivan even more than we usually do (which is a lot). We spent the entire weekend exploring the city and the suburbs. We ate and cooked a lot of amazing food. We walked a lot and we are exhausted in a very pleasant way.

Mika slept through an entire game of scrabble. We think it was probably her gift to Ivan.

Iced coffee. Raw vegan enchiladas. Mediterranean tofu scramble. Asparagus & portobello tofu scramble. Spelt pizza with brocoli and shiitake mushrooms (vegan). A very good food weekend and recipes to come!

Today we went to buy Mika some shoes. She’s getting so much better at this walking thing, but she always has bare feet which isn’t always too ideal in this sometimes cold weather. We wanted to get her tiny toms, but ended up settling for some converse sneakers only because they just stayed on her feet whereas the toms were always falling off. We’ll get her some toms when she’s a little sturdier on her feet. Can we just take a moment to appreciate how adorable she is? She ran around Nordstrom so proud of herself in her new shoes!

We ended the day in the public market to pick up a tortilla press that we are very grateful to now have (no more hand pressing tortillas!)

I hope you had a wonderful weekend also. x

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This weekend:

- I wrote letters in the sun
- We drank Supreme coffee (!)
- We took many (many) walks
- I cooked baby-friendly, delicious vegan pancakes (twice!)
- We hosted a family lunch in our courtyard
- We attempted to take group photos of cousins (see above)
- We did an insane workout
- I made oat milk and applesauce
- We read lots of books and played many games of peekaboo with Mika
- We didn’t go to the lagoon (for like the first weekend ever!)
- We went on a nice date to the fancy movie place

And last night we attempted to get rid of the 2am feed. I’m assuming it’s a chicken and an egg thing – If she eats all night, she doesn’t eat as much during the day and so if I don’t feed her all night she’ll hopefully be hungrier during the day. This resulted in 75 minutes of trips into her room, lying her back down, staying with her til she was calm, leaving the room, and repeat. After 75 minutes (3:15am) I decided to give her some boob. She fell asleep and stayed in her bed until 6:40am. I fed her again and she fell asleep in our bed til 8:30am.

She woke up really hungry and so I’ve been trying to give her as much food as possible during the day, because tonight we’re trying it again. If we can get her to sleep from 10pm through til 5am then I’ll be a very happy person. And then we can look at addressing the 10pm feed and then maybe try stretching out the mornings to 6am. One can only hope.

Anyway, if you are a) interested in eating less dairy/egg or b) have a baby/child who is intolerant to dairy/egg then here is a very well tested and delicious recipe for weekend pancakes.

There’s a few variations you can do here – if I was cooking for just Ivan and I, I would probably use nut milk and maybe use ground walnuts instead of the wholewheat flour to make them gluten free. But since I was cooking for baby, I used the following.

Weekend Pancakes (Dairy, egg, sugar and potentially gluten free. OK so they’re Vegan – I said it.)
Adapted from My New Roots

• 2/3 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of salt

• ripe banana
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp olive oil (or oil of your choice)
• 2/3 cup oat milk (or nut milk, or soy milk)

1. Put rolled oats in a processor or blender and pulse until they turn into a shaggy oat flour
2. Tip into a bowl and add wholewheat flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon
3. Put banana, vanilla extract, olive oil and milk of your choice in to blender/food processor. Blend.
4. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry and stir until just combined.
5. Cook as you would normal pancakes, on a hot pan with a little oil.

These pancakes are delicious and you don’t even need to cook them all the way through because the batter tastes amazing too. We served ours with some finely chopped walnuts, homemade applesauce and slices of banana. Mika just ate hers plain and she loved them!

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What was meant to be ‘photos from our weekend’ turned out to be really just ‘photos of Mika from the weekend.’ Ah well.

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3 days without a computer. 3 days with nowhere to be. 3 days taking our time, eating 2 meals a day and savouring every bite. 3 days walking and hiking and swimming and strolling and shopping and cooking and relaxing. I use the term relaxing quite loosely because most people probably wouldn’t consider a sleepless baby very relaxing – BUT when you have nowhere to be, sleepless nights aren’t entirely bad. And she always smiles for us in the morning and our hearts melt and our eyes twinkle and we gush over how gorgeous she is and we continue with our day in a marvelous manner.

We were embarrassingly bad at taking pictures. One camera ran out of battery, the other didn’t have a compatible memory card and the iphone was often left behind. So here’s a few of what we did take. But perhaps the wonderfulness of the whole trip is evident in the lack of images.

If you’re ever in Mt Maunganui, I suggest Slowfish Cafe for a very satisfying brunch and coffee. They were very accommodating to a few dish tweaks, had a very sweet chef who said hello & goodbye to me and by far had the nicest grilled tomatoes we tried on our trip.

On Thursday we are off to Wellington! So much to do, so little time. If you or anyone you know is after a travel cot or a baby carrier, we are selling one of each on Trade Me. The cot is a Phil & Teds red traveller cot and the carrier is a Baby Bjorn Active Carrier.

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