play with your food

A little more than 20 years ago an ancient Croatian lady, after presenting me and my travel companions with an enormous platter of steamed black Mediterranean mussels, demonstrated how to take a mussel shell and use it as a pincher to pluck the briny, meaty little mollusks from their abodes and pop them into your mouth. It was one of a handful of transforming food experiences that I can clearly identify as a signpost on the road toward my career and lifelong passion for things edible.

Last night we steamed a pot of mussels at home and showed Tiz the drill. She had fun with the exercise and ate more than her share of the mussels. You couldn't have found a prouder papa anywhere.

artist at work

Tiz loves to draw, so Kim bought her an easel. She mastered chalk and crayons and now she's graduated to watercolors.  

We've had amazing weather, so we're spending a lot of time out on the patio... the mature trees in our yard diffuse the afternoon sun for great lighting in shots like this. Of course, Kim gets the photo credit (when they're this good, you can bet she was behind the lens).

Tiz is really into how things work. After Kim showed her just once, she methodically dipped her brush in the water, then the color, then brought it to the paper over and over.  It's so fun watching her figure stuff out.  Now I understand why so many parents say this is their favorite age.  

watergirl

watergirl from Matt Lennert on Vimeo.
Our friends Elaine and Joel have a great pool and we've been visiting it often this summer. I decided to make a little movie of one of our excursions, since Tiz is super-cute in the water.  Little did I know that she would decide to swim on her own for the first time today!  What a score to catch it all on film.  Enjoy!

a little more tiz

When she's not playing in the waves, Tiz has made new friends in Larry and Louise's grandkids... they've all been really sweet with her. Here she is playing with Colin indoors to escape the mid-day heat.


Never one to sit idlely, Tiz has also started learning the guitar. Here she is going to town on the solo of 'Stairway to Heaven'.

waves

Tiz has been getting acclimated to the ocean little by little. Today she really started to get comfortable playing in the waves.

flying our colors

Another beach tradition is flying the Jolly Roger. Here, Dad, Cindy and Larry are raising the pirate flag...

...while I'm down on the sand doing a little flying of my own... Kim gave me this stunt kite for Father's Day and this is the perfect venue for learning how to fly it.

teaser

Here's a teaser... we're working on a theme song for our vacation, so keep it tuned to this station for our upcoming debut...

margaritaville

Tiz was thrilled to see Aunt Kristin...

Especially when she shared her strawberry margarita!

first day of vacation

Tiz was disappointed that her Mom couldn't join us, so she called home first thing this morning to chat.

Then we went out to brave the howling winds and pounding surf.

But in the end, Tiz just decided to spend the afternoon being outrageously stylish.

ocean isle beach, nc

Tiz and I are at Ocean Isle Beach in South Carolina, where my parents have rented a house every summer since 1981. This is Tiz's first trip, so I'm excited to introduce her to an important family tradition.

On our flight Tiz met Jackson, a curly-toe-head from Charleston. She worked her charm on him and scored a generous handful of his cheddar goldfish. That's my girl!

not as bad as it looked

I realized after looking at yesterday's posts that Tiz's injury looked a lot worse in the photos, so here are a few updated shots now that we've been able to clean it up a bit. The surgeon did a great job with the stitches and with any luck, the scar will be really minimal.

Well, I guess these photos don't look that much better. You just have to see it in person. It's funny when she reaches up and touches the ends of her stitches and says, "Hair?" in her little voice. She must think we got her eyebrow extensions.

more from mom & dad's

Tiz has been having fun discovering all Dad's plants around the yard. Today she helped me water everything and we enjoyed the sunshine and 82 degree temperatures.

She and I both were particularly impressed with this orchid blooming in the greenhouse.

But even with all the work to be done, Tiz still took time to smell the... uh... plants with red flowers on them (guess I didn't inherit Dad's green thumb, eh?)

bruiser

When you're a new parent you get barraged by all the parenting cliches. "It goes so fast" they all say... and wow, we've learned, it really does. "You never knew you could love anything that much", they said and no, we didn't. But now we do. Well, today we learned that the old adage, "It only takes a second" applies just as well. Tiz and I are down visiting my folks and helping out while dad recovers from heart surgery. Perhaps out of sympathy for Grandpa, Tiz decided to launch herself off the back of a rocking chair face-first into a hardwood door. I saw the whole thing (if you're a parent, you know the drill)... the chair tipping and my stomach twisting as over she went in slow motion, just not slow enough for me to get there in time to do anything but pick her up off the floor. She howled as blood gushed into her little batting eye and down the front of my shirt as I carried her to the kitchen sink for triage. Dad rushed to help out and kept me calm as we assessed the wound and decided to drive her to the hospital ourselves. Once there, Tiz took 6 stitches like a champ and within minutes she was waving 'bye' and blowing kisses to all the nurses. What a brave little girl.

A kiss from Grandma makes everything better...

And in this corner, weighing in at 33 pounds...

fish on

Last weekend I snuck away for a quick fishing trip to Michigan with my friend Joel, Aaron Spears (an old friend from high school) and my brother-in-law JB. It turned out to be one of the best fishing experiences of my life. We spent two days on the Muskegon River near Grand Rapids, Michigan float-fishing the gin-clear waters with our guides from Bett's Guide Service. If you're ever thinking about fishing the Muskegon, I definately recommend you give them a call. We hooked fish after fish (over fifty in two days!) while every other angler on the river was casting in vain and shooting searing looks as we floated past while fighting another big lunker. We had travelled to the river for the Steelhead spawn... the photo above shows me with a small-ish female and she's showing off the reason they're known as 'chrome bullets'. In addition to steelies, I managed to hook a bunch of other species as well. Here are the highlights...


This is a walleye who, to our disappointment, was still out of season. A week later and he would have been our shore lunch!


And here's an elusive brown trout. It was sheer luck to hook up with this beautiful fish. I've been trout fishing for 15 years and have never caught a brown this big. What a gorgeous creature!


Here I am with Chad, our guide, holding the trophy of the weekend. I battled this 14+ lb. monster for what seemed like an eternity before finally bringing him to net with legs quivering and heart thumping. While we released most of the fish we caught, this big boy came home and ended up on the smoker at Moveable Feast. Delicious!


Here's Joel with the biggest chromie of the trip. She's a beauty, and that s#it-eating grin suggests that Joel might be having a good time!


Finally exausted, we headed upstream to meet up with the boys. Our timing was perfect and we got to watch JB jockeying around the boat while this big buck stripped line off his reel. He landed the fish and posed for photos in his finest Orvis waders and Pata-gucci fleece. You've got to look good to fish good, baby! On a sidenote, JB got the 'one-liner-of-the-weekend' award when he asked the manager of the hotel where we could purchase lingerie and whipped cream as we were all checking into rooms together. Priceless, JB... Priceless.


I'm bummed I didn't get a picture of Aaron with a fish, but here he is with JB. I know he caught his share and from what I saw, he was probably the best angler in the group. Maybe he'll send me a photo to post (send me a photo, Aaron!)

Tiz n' Uncle Andrew

This is a great shot of Tiz with her Uncle. I think they're enthralled by the bingo caller...

sleddin'

We all had fun on the snowmobiles, but Mom was hilarious. At first she was a little nervous...

... then she got into it...

... then she was unstoppable!

Kim and I had fun too... here she is trying to catch me... Good Luck!

northwoods adventure

We needed a little break after the crazy holidays, so we decided on a northwoods adventure with my family to Brainerd, Minnesota. We rented this little cabin on Gull Lake, loaded up my sister and brother-in-law's snowmobiles, piled on as many layers of clothes as we could and headed north.

Here's a nice shot of Kristin and Andrew on the ice.

Of course, mom was just happy to hold the baby...

Tiz is back

Dust the cobwebs off her url, cause Tiz is back and ready to charm! Here she is drawing - a skill she just picked up in the last week or so. Her other talents inlclude singing (she has an extensive vocabulary), running behind a little plastic car Mom & Dad got her (she's not quite walking on her own yet) and playing the piano. As you can see, she's also been working on a mouthful of teeth. There's another film in the works, so I will hopefully have it up in the next week or two.


Besides loving this little girl so much we can't stand it, our world is mostly status quo. We have abandoned our building project... turned out to be too much of a project for new parents. We'll be working on some new growth strategies for Moveable Feast in the coming months, so who knows what the year will bring.


Hope everyone is well. Post a comment to say hello! All the best for the New Year from Tiz, Kim & Me!