baby boom

3 precious baby girls have been born to families in our sunday school class in the past 2 weeks, 1 was born to a neighbor last month, and one is due to another neighbor any day now. i was fortunate enough to be able to hold baby "m" when i dropped off a meal for her family.

making meals for other people... in the past, i have defaulted to my homemade chicken noodle soup. it's a classic. but you know what? i am sick of it. especially since i just made some last week. so, i finally dug out one of the cookbooks that my mother-in-law gave me. (The authors of Parenting Is Heart Work would probably put me in the "unmotivated" category as opposed to "strong willed"... i have been given magazines and cookbooks, even bought a few cookbooks, and still i tend to cook the same few things over and over.) i flipped open The Dinner Doctor, and it magically landed on Susan's Chicken Pot Pie recipe. and you know what... i actually made TWO of them. one for baby "m's" family and one for us. and God intervened. he knew my fragile self-esteem could not handle a cooking failure when the dish was to be given to someone else. it was time for me to step slightly out of my comfort zone and make a new dish to bring. disregard the fact that the ingredients are hauntingly similar to my old faithful standby. this required a couple more steps than throwing things into a pot to boil...

around the time i was to begin my adventure in this new recipe, it was still raining. it rained so much that the parking lot to my favorite grocery store down the street was flooded. our power flickered. i prayed. our power flickers a lot during storms, and a couple of weeks ago it was off for 6 hours. And that storm did not include 3 inches of torrential rain in an hour.

so my pot pie ingredients were simmering, and i prayed... and the power came back on. i decided to go easy on the seasonings for baby's sake, but worried that i had still put in too much garlic. i can't resist fresh garlic (not by itself, of course). then it came time for the crust...

i had followed The Dinner Doctor's advice and used frozen deep dish shells. well, the bottom crust was baked, and what were supposed to be the top crusts were stuck to their pie plates. very stuck. i ended up balling them up and re-rolling them. they looked hideous, but you can't have a pot pie without a top crust... that's just wrong. so then i got nervous that because the crusts were made of several patches of dough instead of one smooth sheet, they would somehow taste bad. nevertheless, it was time to bake and deliver. i had tasted the filling, it passed, but i feared the ugly crust would ruin the dish.

the storm subsided, and i hit the road in my trusty silver road warrior. traffic was horrendous. some foolish people had tried to drive through the flooded bluff road and were stuck. after thinking how stupid they were, i hoped they were out of the cars and safe. it took 30 minutes to go what should have taken 15.

but when i arrived, baby "m's" mommy was holding her precious little girl, 10 days of pure newborn life and i forgot about the stupid people driving through creeks (until my return trip home when i passed more of them). both mommy and daughter looked so sweet. memories of last fall came flooding back to me. the realization hit that my baby is no longer... tiny. of course, i know this, but i felt it. i remembered the gratitude i felt when my friends brought us food so we could cherish our little one just that much longer. when i mentioned my concern over the hideous top crust, my friend graciously said something like, "things that look funny often taste best." she let me hold her precious baby, and while my eyes saw anothers beautiful little girl, my heart went back 9 months...

later, hubby and i ate our own pot pie while my no-longer-newborn baby sat in her high chair. she ate a few spoonfuls each of peas and squash before expressing her disdain by knocking the spoon out of my hand. (she is developing her daddy's (lack of) taste for veggies, especially green ones.) hubby dished his piece of pot pie and gave the verdict... it passed! it was edible! in fact, it was pretty good. i should have used fresh veggies instead of frozen, but it was far better than those store-bought frozen single-serving pot pies that you keep on hand for emergencies. i breathed a sigh of relief that our friends did not have to order pizza or scrounge up leftovers and sacrifice our gift to the sink monster. hopefully they and their other 3 children would be able to eat their dinner and cherish the tiny new addition to their family just a wee bit more because of their pot pie.

and while i loved holding baby "m", no, i am not itching to add to the baby boom any time soon. i want to cherish every moment with my no-longer-newborn-baby.