My sister and I were talking recently about how we used to love cooking. I was a good cook once. I would spend three days fixing a meal for guests. It was fun - I loved the feeling of work with tangible results, especially when those results made people so happy and grateful.

But children are not grateful. Or rather, they are grateful for only a small number of foods. My children, anyway.

Somewhere I began to lose my love of cooking. I used to bake my own bread, but gave up once I had two kids in diapers. Bread is too time-sensitive; just when the dough needed to be punched down, or the loaf needed to be removed from the oven, some diaper-rashy toddler screamed that she was poopy, and I rushed to change her, and then forgot what I was doing in the first place.

Many a loaf of bread has been ruined by diaper rash, I suspect.

But I am just so tired of the food that suits the palate of my children that I am trying to revive my love of cooking. Thanks to the bloggers of the world, it hasn’t been going too badly.

I made Pioneer Woman’s casserole for me and the in-laws, and it went over well.

For my birthday breakfast I made cherry cornmeal upside-down cake, and had the leftovers for my breakfast this morning. Yum.

And nothing brightens my day like tripling the recipe for peanut sauce. I justify this by pregnancy. I need the protein. Shut up.

Tonight I will be making sherried tomato soup and later this week, I will be trying spinach feta bread. A local bakery used to make a version, but the bakery closed, and I have been out of luck ever since. I am steeling myself for the results.

And I must have fish in my near future, because the mere idea of this makes my mouth water.

So thank you, many food bloggers, for improving my life in so many ways. My children would happily eat nothing but beans and rice or peanut butter on crackers for every meal, but sometimes a mom needs something more. She needs flavor.

“This is so great. We have not gone out alone together in over a year. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to put on make-up.”

“That’s okay. You look nice.”

“My shirt shows a lot of cleavage. Does that make up for it?”

“Cleavage makes up for A LOT.”

So after an awful day with the kids, I decided we needed a really good day together. So we got junky fast food for lunch, went to the art museum, and then ate ice cream at a playground.

We relaxed and played, and they were actually obedient, non-whiny and delightful.

JellyBean was delighted with the art museum’s reflecting pool.

I cannot explain why I love this picture so, but I do.

Sweetpea combines her love of ice cream and aspirations to be a symphony conductor. I think.

Strawberry frozen yogurt with chocolate sprinkles looks surprisingly like blood with a chaser of ants.

JellyBean loves the slides.

PoppySeed eschewed ice cream in favor of wood chips.

Peekaboo.

All in all, the day was definitely a success.

Some days I just can’t do this job.

I want to write a post and whine. Just whine. Tell you how hard it is to be pregnant while caring for three small kids, tell you how often I’m still throwing up, tell you how much I hate the super-demanding stage of babyhood that my youngest is in right now, tell you too personal details about our schedule and how often I am utterly alone with these children for days at a time. I want to snivel and growl and whine and convince you all that things are just so much harder for me than for anybody else.

But I can’t write that post. I don’t even want to read that blog, let alone be responsible for it.

Still.  I’m having a rotten day. How’s yours?

You know how I always want to read the book before I see the movie?  Well, It looks like this is one movie I want to skip altogether.