A Very Brady Thanksgiving

Anyone who really knows Brady knows that while he seems to be good at just about everything he tries (don't get your hopes too high for your own success if you ever play board games or card games with him--and I won't even tell you how high his GRE scores were), one place where passion and talent collide wonderfully is in his cooking.

November is a big month for Brady, culinary-wise. Ellie's birthday, his birthday, and then Thanksgiving. Last year I was pretty much a zombie for all of November, trying to adjust to no sleep and feeding a baby who didn't want to be fed, so we didn't quite pull off the usual extravaganza. This year, it was on. I was back at my post as soux chef, enabling Brady's masterful creations (usually that means rushing around cleaning up whatever pot or utensil Brady just used so he can use it all over again--not very glamorous). For his birthday he got a new pizza stone and peel, so making flatbread pizzas was once again an option. He spent almost his entire birthday party in the kitchen making pizzas for everyone, and he loved it. And so did everyone who attended. The upside-down apple gingerbread cake didn't hurt matters either.

But the next week it was Thanksgiving, and then things really got serious. That is Brady's holiday. The cooking started Tuesday night and didn't end until Thursday at feast time, sticking somewhat closely to the carefully balanced pre-planned schedule. I documented our process, but then decided to leave out the uglier side of things (de-boning raw turkeys) and missed some of the prettier things (buttermilk pie), and without all the aromas, I don't know if my poor photography skills can do any of this justice, but here goes.


To have a very Brady Thanksgiving, you will need mounds and mounds of aromatic vegetables.


At least a dozen heads of roasted garlic for the honey garlic glaze. I, along with my brother-in-law Tyler, got to peel each individual clove. Like I said, not very glamorous, but worth it all in the end.


Brussels sprouts, even though everyone else is very leery about eating them, and most have never even tasted them. But you will get them fresh, saute them in a little bacon fat, add bits of bacon, pine nuts, raisins, currents, and a homemade vinaigrette and everyone will be pleasantly surprised.


Eight pounds of potatoes to steam--not boil--then mash.


Enough gravy to drown them in. And then some.


Cranberries sauced.


The renowned corn bread-pudding (not cornbread pudding) that family members wait all year to sample.


Sweet potato spinach pecan bacon salad you tasted at a restaurant once and loved so much you had to go home and recreate it yourself, after getting the dressing recipe from the restaurant's chef. Also a Brady Thanksgiving standard now.


Dark meat from the turkeys, which you painstakingly removed from the birds the day before and tied up to cook like roasts separately from the white meat. Because white meat and dark meat cook so differently, you explain about a hundred times to curious family members.


And the white meat, brined, cooked until partially done, then glazed, then cooked some more.


And then carved.

Everyone will ooh and ahh and be thoroughly amazed once again at your culinary skills and love every bite of every dish. Meanwhile, you will already be making adjustments in the garlic-to-honey ratio for next year's rendition and thinking of what cookbooks or new kitchen gadgets to ask for for Christmas.

ONE!

It's been a week and a half since Ellie turned one.


Time seems to be going faster these days.


A while ago someone in our ward asked how old Ellie was. When I told her about 11 months, she asked, with a bit of a knowing look, "Has it gone soooo fast?"


I think I might have disappointed her when I answered, "No. Not really."


It has actually been quite a long, rough year. Well worth it, to be sure. But quite a hard year with reflux and all that goes along with it, Brady's internship, cross-country moves, etc., etc.


I worry that when I mention the difficulties we had with reflux, people might think we are complaining or that we don't like our baby or something. Just perusing these pictures, who couldn't adore this little girl? We absolutely love Ellie to pieces and would do it all over again if we had to just to have her. There are so many things that could have been more difficult than reflux. As much difficulty as she did have, she has every right to be a grumpy, cranky baby. But she is so happy and excited about life, she's just fun to be around. And thankfully, reflux is something she has outgrown. I hereby declare reflux over! This birthday was quite a milestone for all of us.


We had a small party to celebrate our mutual triumph.


Ellie caught onto the idea of presents pretty quickly.


I got this teddy bear at a consignment sale and then made a dress and bow for it. Ellie doesn't have a lot of girly toys. Being the first granddaughter on this side of the family in about ten years, Ellie has had a lot opportunity to play with dinosaurs, trains, and cars Grandma has collected over the years. So this was my attempt to give Ellie a touch of the feminine.

Mostly she just pokes the bear's eyes and nose and then goes back to the orange monster truck she was pushing around. She's not much of a cuddler.

On her birthday Brady made a pound cake and lemon curd to spread on it. Because that's what every one-year-old wants to eat. Brady is trying to refine Ellie's pallet.


Later we had a party with more family and had the traditional first birthday chocolate mess, which Ellie also loved.


And finally, here she is modeling the dress that Brady's parents sent to her. I love it. I think Ellie does to, though she hasn't said so outright.


Sometimes I am completely in awe of this little girl--that she already is becoming a little girl, her own little person with separate thoughts and personality from my own. There are moments I wish I had captured (I know, hard to believe that I missed any based on all the pictures in this post--congratulations to anyone who has made it this far; sometimes I go on a binge and take a million pictures, and sometimes I forget all about cameras and want to experience Ellie face-to-face, not through the view finder of the camcorder). I miss the little "game" she made up last summer, yelling into a little cup "ha, ha, HAAAA," then handing it to me to do the same, back and forth. Or when she would crawl up to where the sun shone through onto the carpet and try to pick up the sunbeams. It was a rough year, but lots of good moments in there too. We can't wait to see what she has waiting for us in the next year.

Berry Picking Time

I overcame my Halloween malaise of last year for Ellie's sake. For Ellie, Halloween meant so much.

It meant putting up with funny hats your parents put on you


if that's what it takes to finally get out of the house after being cooped up all week with a cough.


It meant getting to see cousins and comparing costumes.


It meant tasty treats, of which she had more than any child under the age of one should have.


It meant going out in public to parties and stores and restaurants


and letting strangers dote on her cuteness.


But mostly it meant way too many pictures. "Seriously, Mom?" I may have turned her off to the holiday too.


Poor kid.

11 Months

Last Sunday Ellie hit the 11-month mark. Here is the best shot I got from that photo shoot.



Here's a sampling of how the rest of the shoot went.











Needless to say, this kid is still always on the go. One of the big highlights of this last month was a trip to Utah to visit family and friends. For some reason, I only managed to pull the camera out once the whole trip, so I missed a lot of good photo ops. Luckily, I managed to sneak a couple good photos of the Utah cousins.





Ellie has discovered that one of the best things about traveling, other than getting to see more cousins and friends, is getting to play with other people's toys. She was not shy about this.



Other developments this month: learning "pat-a-cake," learning to stand unassisted (at times, when she doesn't realize she's doing it), and most importantly, sleeping through the night by herself! I seriously had started to think we would have to go with her to college, swaddle her at night, and sing and bounce her to sleep. I thought we'd never be able to overcome all the hard stuff reflux brought with it for sleeping time. But to Ellie's credit, she learned pretty quickly and is finally sleeping like a baby--in a good way.

Everyone's a Critic

Lately, Ellie just devours books (I took a picture of Ellie chewing on one of her books to insert here which would have made this line hilarious, but the picture didn't turn out). She definitely has her favorites, distinct tastes in which books pass for story time and which don't. She seems to prefer the subtle sophistication of Goodnight Moon over the more crass Goodnight Gorilla, though lighter fare such as Boynton's Belly Button Book! or Sesame Street's Bubbles, Bubbles is certainly not beneath her notice (given her parents' occasional ventures into pop lit, who can blame her for a little guilty pleasure reading now and then?--we never did finish that book, for the record). I'm not sure how much any of these books are really developing her intellect, though. Her basic, formalist approach to most books is both obvious and lacking depth by privileging form over social context. I find her Marxist critique of Hippos Go Berserk a bit of a stretch, claiming that it is the nine proletariat hippos who "come to work" that incite all the hippos to "go berserk," thus leading to the eventual departure of said hippos and demise of the one, leaving him, in the end, alienated and "alone once more." However, I do think her postcolonial take on Curious George is spot on. (Sometimes I miss being in school. Just sometimes.)

Turns out, as wiggly as Ellie is most of the time, the one thing she will hold still for (other than eating ice cream) is a good book. She loves when we read to her. Ever since she was tiny, this has been a soothing activity for her. Sometimes we'll do a solid half hour of reading before she wriggles down to go do something else. She loves to point at and pat the pages, and she anticipates when the good parts are coming and starts smiling and laughing a page early and trying to turn the page to get to it. Sometimes the pages of her board books are stuck together because she gives slobbery "kisses" to her favorite pages.




The best is bedtime stories with Daddy, though. She is quite a daddy's girl lately, and loves when he reads to her, especially since he does better voices than I do most of the time. Sometimes Brady will read the same book three times in a row because he want to try a different accent each time. We've discovered that Sean Connery is the best voice for "Hickory, Dickory, Dock," and that there is no one quite so reassuring to Little Bo Peep that those sheep will come home than James Earl Jones. It's probably not the most conventional way to get a kid to bed, but at this point, we'll take what we can get.

At the Zoo

Ellie took her first trip to the zoo last weekend with some of her cousins. She was very well behaved, but somehow it was hard to get a 10-month-old very excited about seeing the animals.

Kind of so-so on the "wallaby walkabout."

Pretty apathetic when it comes to lions.

A little embarrassed by Daddy at the petting zoo.

Penguins? Meh.

Cousin Jared tried to explain the exciting attributes of penguins to Ellie.

Not even Gracie could get Ellie excited about penguins, though.

Okay, giraffes are pretty cool.

And Isaac does make a good gorilla . . .

But Ellie's favorite seems to be people watching, waving to Grandma and Hannah over Daddy's shoulder.

She was definitely excited about sharing Daddy's milkshake after the zoo.

Or sharing anyone else's milkshake, for that matter.

She seems much more interested in people than animals right now and is likely going to be our little social butterfly.

She seemed to have a pretty good time, despite her lack of interest in the animals. She was so good we just might have to take her again sometime.