Food Reviews by Lucy

Lucy has recently been trying out various solid foods, as you may have seen in all the flickr photos. But recently, she's been doing some taste-testing of various kinds of baby teething biscuits. As a public service to all the other babies out there [and by the way, WELCOME to Lucy's newest cousin, Greta and CONGRATS to her Mom & Dad!] we're having Lucy do a guest blog feature, Lucy's Food Reviews, Volume I: Biscuits!

UNEEDA BISCUIT



Lucy's Perspective:
Uneeda Biscuits are basically extra-large saltines without salt on the tops. I love Saltines, so I figured I would love these, too. It turns out, these are a bit harder than Saltines, and so I had a hard time biting into them. Once my mom broke them up for me a bit, I had a better time and was able to munch happily.

Bridget's Thoughts:
I bought these because because I love their name. Actually, I didn't even think they were made anymore. There used to be a very old "UNeedaBiscuit" ad painted on the side of a building in Northampton, and I always thought it was a great name. But I figured they'd been discontinued ages ago. But there they were, in the cracker aisle of my Market Basket. They're OK, but Lucy wasn't crazy about them. She's a big fan of Ritz, which she prefers over Saltines.


Arrowroot Biscuits

Lucy says:
Yum! But still, they're pretty hard, and I can't bite into them. When mom breaks them up, I can suck on the smaller pieces and eat those, which I like. Hey! There's a baby on the box! I like that!
Bridget says:
These seem like cookies. Should we be feeding Lucy cookies at this point? I'm not so sure. Again, some product nostalgia here; I didn't know they still made these.

Organic Biscuits for Teethers



Lucy:
These biscuits are hard! Very hard! I can't even break off a piece. It's like a lego! I love legos! Is this really food?
Bridget:
Super hard. And super messy. Incredibly messy. Basically, they slowly melted in her mouth and hands, completely covering her with a sticky brown molasses mess. She has fun with them, but we only feed these to her right before we're giving her a bath. In fact, she once ate one in the bath. So it's an edible bath toy.

That's all for today's installment. We'll see if we can get Lucy to do more food reviews soon.

Masonry Projects Complete!

Our mason did a terrific job fixing up the various problems at 83 Durant.

The main job was fixing the front wall in the basement, which has been the source of leakage over and over again. That area of the basement also had a bunch of weird built-in workbench type things. Why do I describe them as weird? Well, one of them was actually a door -- a cheap, hollow door -- made into a workbench top. It was kinda crazy, and we never used that area for anything, let alone as a workshop. So Jake's first job, before the mason could come to do his job, was to rip out all the junk. Here it is, most of the way broken down:


And now, here it is, all fixed up and water-tight!


We're now thinking that we should also have the side wall (where the window is) done later.

While we had him here, we also had him take care of a few masonry projects and repairs on the outside of the house.

This is a small area of the wall on the side of the house, towards the back. As you can see in the "before" picture, it looks like all the mortar has been chipped away.


The mason not only re-pointed, but decided that it would all be much stronger if he just coated the whole thing. So here it is, all nice and smooth and ready to paint (if we want to).





Here are the steps that lead out to the backyard from the basement:
They were once all cracked, and several bricks were missing. Now they're all better. (Sorry, I couldn't find a before picture.)

He also fixed up this little area of brick pointing:

So things are now nice and tight and hopefully water-proof and critter-proof! Hooray!