We’re currently on the Great Family Tour of 2010, visiting relatives in several parts of the country between trips home for E to take his midterms and me to regain my sanity. On Friday we celebrated one of my nephew’s birthday in the grand tradition of generic children’s entertainment everywhere: Chuck E Cheese. In the hopes that I could eat my pizza and caffeine free Diet Coke (damn fetus) in peace, I bought the world’s most overpriced balloon. Although I personally found it terrifying, it has provided at least three children several hours of entertainment. Best $2.19 I’ve ever spent.

Baby Evan is clearly too cool for this place. You can tell because he's wearing his shades inside.

My child ran in circles ALL DAY and yet he still got up at midnight and 3 am, demanding attention and milk. Why exactly did I think a screaming infant would be a good addition to this scenario?

Parents waste a lot of time wondering what their kids are going to be when they grow up. You can’t help it when you spend 24 hours a day with this little person who has the potential to be almost anything. Despite the stereotype of every mother wanting her kid to be a doctor, most parents probably have more realistic expectations than kids themselves. I spent most of my childhood planning to be the world’s first astronaut-ballet dancer-marine biologist-movie star. That didn’t work out so well.  But it doesn’t stop me from projecting just a liiiiiittle bit onto poor Baby Evan.

Baby Evan sits on the dog – He loves animals! He’s going to be a vet!

Baby Evan chews on a board book – He loves books! He’s going to be a famous writer!

Baby Evan falls off the couch – What a daredevil! Maybe he’ll be a skydiving instructor!

Baby Evan kisses my toes – He clearly has an interest in feet. He’s going to be a podiatrist!

Baby Evan eats trash – What an adventurous palate! I bet he wins Top Chef one day!

But the truth is, I don’t care if Baby Evan is any of those things. I don’t care if he’s rich or poor or single or married or owns a mansion or only owns a cardboard box. He can be a successful businessman or a starving artist. He can live in New York or LA or Paris or Sydney or my basement. None of that stuff matters (although if he does live in my basement you better believe he’ll be paying rent and mowing the lawn).

I just want him to be happy.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas, mama-to-bes, and future mamas!

Although Baby Evan is named after his father (and grandfather), I couldn’t stop myself from picking out a few other possible names for boy children during my first pregnancy. Luckily, we don’t have a legacy to continue this time so I get to maybe use some of those choices. I’ve got a list a mile long for possible girl names but E and I have actually almost settled on another boy name – two names from my side of the family, one from my mom’s side and one from my dad’s.

Unfortunately, these two names would give Baby 2 some rather unfortunate initials. I mean, not unfortunate like A.S.S. or G.A.Y. or even D.U.M. but they almost spell something. Think of a specific type of hallucinogenic drug popular among dirty hippies during the 60’s.

There are two ways around this. One, we just name the baby what we want. How often does a guy use their initials for something? I don’t know the middle names of almost ANYONE I went to school with, except for the people who used them as their first names. Plus I don’t think these initials are terrible enough to really matter.

Our second option is just to add a second middle name. It breaks up the initials and gives him something a little bit special, which might be nice since Baby Evan has that annoying III after his name. My only problem is I really like the way the first two names sound and haven’t come up with another one I like as much.

At least, I hadn’t until my mother emailed me last week.

If you’re due Christmas day, she said, then I know how to solve the problem with the boy-name initials…

… His name should be Firstname Middlename Jesus Davis.

GENIUS.

And amen.

When Baby Evan was just a couple months old, my little sister Carolyn came to visit. She wanted a chance to meet her only nephew before moving to Africa for two years, since it’s not exactly a place you just fly home on the weekends from. I would like to tell you her visit was lovely, full of hugs and laughter and hair-braiding but honestly, I was still in that oh-my-God-I-just-had-a-baby-and-I’m-never-sleeping-again stage of new motherhood and I barely remember it. I’m sure it WAS really fun though. Since we got past the stage of hating each other we have a lot more in common than you’d expect a homebody Navy housewife mom and a traveling Peace Corp volunteer artist to have. Starting with we both love Arrested Development and dessert. Although most of the visit is a blur the part that is CRYSTAL CLEAR is the apple tart she made. I think we ate the entire thing between us before it was even cool. But, hey, I was nursing 24/7 and she was about to leave for a place without ovens. Or indoor plumbing.

Of course I wouldn’t let her leave the continent without giving me the recipe, but in true free-spirit fashion, she wrote it in some sort of crazy shorthand on the back of a Gerber onesies cardboard insert. No, seriously:

To make things a little easier on myself, I got my Google on and tracked down what I think is the original recipe which provides useful information such as what exactly do I DO with the apples and the apricot jam? Although first I had to figure out what “fraugipani” was. Turns out it’s bad-handwriting for “frangipagne”, which is a kind of almond filling.

Are you getting hungry yet? I bet you are. And I haven’t even told you Carolyn spent a semester in France so she knows good pastry. Ready for the recipe? Allons!

Pastry:
1 1/3 cup flour
pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg yolk
3 Tbsp cold water

Mix the flour and salt, then add in the butter and egg yolk.

Oh those French and their love of butter.

Stir it together with a fork and then add the water a little at a time until you can press the dough together. If it’s still too dry, add a little more water.

My pastry took exactly the 3 Tbsp called for to look like this.

Wrap the ball of pastry in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Remember, it has raw egg in it. Not that it's ever stopped me, but at least CONSIDER not eating it.

Frangipane filling

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 egg yolk
1 Tbsp apple brandy (or whatever kind of liquor you have laying around)
2/3 c ground almonds*
2 Tbsp flour

Topping
2 – 4 apples (I used Braeburns)
1 tsp granulated sugar
1/4 cup apricot jam (or whatever you have in the panty)

Cream the butter and sugar, then add in the eggs.

I guess you could use a mixer, but it goes pretty fast by hand.

Dump in the brandy Kahlua and mix well. Combine the almonds and flour in a separate bowl, then add it to the wet ingredients.

The only thing in my liquor cabinet that seemed like a good substitute.

I suppose I could have used vanilla or almond extract instead. Oh well.

Roll out your chilled pastry crust so it fits in a tart pan or a pie plate. Fold up and flute the edges so it looks pretty.

Shockingly, I don't have a tart-specific dish, so this is just a 9 inch pie plate.

Preheat the over to 400 degrees.

Spoon the filling into the crust evenly.

The filling gets puffier while it bakes, so don't worry if it looks a little empty.

Peel, core and slice the apples into thin wedges. Arrange them super fancy and all artistic-like over the filling, pressing down firmly. Or if you’re just going to eat the whole tart yourself, just throw them on there.

This is just two apples, not the 4 my sister called for, since they were on the large size.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce oven temp to 350 degrees.Bake for 10 more minutes, sprinkle the tart with sugar and bake another 10 minutes.

Looks pretty good, doesn't it?

While the tart is still warm, brush the apricot jam over it so it gets nice and melty.

You could water down the jam a little so it spreads without messing up your pretty apples.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or just eat it strait from the pie plate before anyone else can get their grubby hands on your tart. I’m taking mine to knitting group tonight so I don’t snarf the whole thing down myself. Although they won’t get to see it looking this pretty since there’s going to be a piece missing.

*A note about the ground almonds. I was going to just use almond flour but I couldn’t find any at my local Stop & Shop, so I used my handy-dandy mini-Cuisinart to just grind them up myself. Several other versions of this recipe call for marzipan instead, which would be an easy alternative.

Absolutely the BEST kitchen appliance ever.

Since I have about fiveteenbazillionty people visiting right now for Baby Evan’s birthday, I was really hoping to find an Friday activity we could all enjoy more than starting at each other. Or cleaning my stove. Which is apparently my dad’s idea of a fun afternoon activity. Luckily, I was able to rudely invade my play group’s Easter egg hunt at the local park, because standing around staring becomes an acceptable pass time when there are children at which to stare. Of course I mean stare in a totally non-creepy, not in the bushes, not driving a windowless van sort of way.

Besides, it’s not like I had anything better to do than buy, stuff, and hide 30 plastic eggs. I don’t have much going on right now. You know, nothing like a ridiculously elaborate, hand crafted birthday party for 45 people. Nope, not me.

All the pretty baskets

Baby Evan enjoys story time before the hunt started. P.S. DON'T EVEN ASK ME ABOUT WHY HE HAS A GIANT BANDAGE ON HIS FOREHEARD.

OK, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HIS HEAD. It's really not a big deal. Baby Evan fell this morning and smashed his head on the support post in our kitchen. I'm told he wasn't actually that upset but the bump is HUGE. Even huger than the bump from our emergency room trip.

Baby Evan's cousin Ethan liked finding the eggs, but was very disappointed most of them didn't contain candy. All the mommies made wise choices so most of them had stickers and organic snack mix.

Baby Evan didn't really care what was in them. He just liked that they were round and brightly colored.

Ethan did somehow manage to find the only two eggs on the entire playground that had chocolate in them. Boy, that kid really likes candy. Saturday is going to BLOW HIS MIND.

Awesome, now I have a whole bunch of really useful plastic eggs.

OK, so the bump has gone down a lot since this morning and I'm hoping he'll be improved enough before the party that no band-aid is better than band-aid. Or maybe I'll just find some circus themed band-aids and pretend it was on purpose.