Fab Four!

Starting to move

2007-06-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

We're moving out in less than a month.

Crazy! John and Anna were both born during our time at this house. The yard has been changed a lot. We've had three sets of neighbors on one side, two below us, and one on the other side (but they've moved out and it has stood empty for a few months now, though they still mow the lawn). I've met other moms in the neighborhood but never really connected with anyone, sticking with the social group from the University instead. I do wave to a lot of people when I take walks, though.

We don't have a place to move to yet, so the movers will be moving our stuff into storage for about six weeks. I am really thankful Dan's post-doc comes with a moving allowance!!!

I'm nervous about the move. I don't want to be the only mom on the block surrounded by a bunch of college students but I don't want to live in the suburbs, either. We have driven so far to church for so long that we are tired of it! I want to live by church and within the church community and also have the church connected to Dan's work community!!! I'm scared that we'll go to a church close by just to find out that everyone commutes in and we're not in the community afterall.

I don't want to break the bank on living expenses.

Sigh. But I'm not really worried, not like I was when we didn't have an apartment before we got married. I love where we live now and I love our landlady. She'll be raising the rent by 40% when we move out. (We suggested it - that'll make it market rate!) I am thankful for God's provision here and am excited about how He'll provide for us in the fugure.

The Pen is mightier than the Huge Crayon

2007-06-01T18:44:00.002-07:00

While on the topic of John's fine-motor skills, we would like to share with you some discoveries we made in John's artwork. This first piece shows that when given lined paper and a pen (not a bulky crayon), John writes characters on the lines!

This next piece shows that John is still a scribbler when it comes to buky crayons (the blue), but with the pen he tries to fill in the spaces and not cross the lines!

And finally, this shows that he loves curly-haired dogs (again, ignore the blue crayon).

I am so proud.
-Dan

Yes, they are different children

2007-06-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

I have NEVER met someone with as high of a pain tolerance as John. If he falls and scrapes his knee so that it is bleeding, I might not find out until I notice the blood on his pant's knees. He can bite his lip open while falling and stop crying within twenty seconds, then point at the table edge he fell on as if to ask, "You think I look bad? You should see the table!" This has been an consistent pattern in his life and I just figured it was because of the laid back attitude Dan and I took in recognizing hurts.

Then God gave us Anna. We're the same parents (although we do point out if John has hurt her so that he'll be more careful) yet she has responded differently. She FEELS pain and TELLS you about it.

With John, I didn't know about teeth unless I saw a rash, after which I would search for a tooth and usually find a new one. With Anna, it is totally different. She has had a fever for the past few days. No redness in her throat, no enlarged lymph nodes, perfect ears, or so the doctor said this morning. If I put her down, she SCREAMS. I felt her gums and, yes, she's working on a tooth.

Her lower pain tolerance is evident in everything, although I don't know how much of it is due to earlier movement than John. At Anna's current age, John was usually just sitting up with a Boppy behind him. Anna, on the otherhand, can pull herself up to standing, fall down, and then scream about it. Some of it might be frustration and suprise, but some of it is hurt, as her poor little first tooth is showing!

Legos picture

2007-05-29T17:36:00.002-07:00

The Lego barn, custom built for John's circus elephant.

Anna's mother's day card.

A cake per week...

2007-05-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

Adds up to a lot of cakes!

My first try at fondant!

A mock wedding cake for when Beth and Scott visited. The layers are 8" banana cake with lemon buttercream/lemon curd filling, 10" carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and 12" vanilla/chocolate cake with buttercream and ganache filling. Most of the banana cake is in our freezer, the grad students ate the carrot cake, and we took the 12" cake to home groups - what wasn't eaten was left or tossed!
This cake was an adaptation of a Martha Stewart recipe. It was really good, except for a big HOLE in the middle! I'm still perfecting the recipe - it came out better the second time with only a 2" hole. I'm going to try adding more liquids next time.

Large and small motor skills

2007-05-28T16:59:00.001-07:00

Anna is really advancing in the large motor skill world. She crawls everywhere so we've started closing the gate at the top of the stairs again. She can pull up to standing, so we lowered the crib mattress. She likes playing with John's toys, especially his pull-leash dogs, but John hasn't played with those in months so it usually doesn't seem to bother him. She likes exploring everything with her mouth (AAAH!) and loves it when John fawns all over her. She even likes it when John sits on her, within reason. She makes all sorts of noises with her lips and loves being held by everyone.

John, on the other hand, is doing great things with small motor skills. His speech therapist (ST) suggested we put away our "chunky" crayons because he has the small motor skills (and desire) to use small crayons. He loves "writing" with pen, and again the speech therapist was impressed and suggested we refer to what he does with a pen as writing and what he does with crayons as drawing. I now ask John whether he would like to draw or write and he usually chooses to write. John tries to hold the pen in the correct writing grip and gets frustrated with himself when he realizes he isn't holding it properly. John draws little dots and squiggles which really do look like little letters.

I took the first "John built this" picture a few weeks ago. While the ST was here, he built a "barn" for some animals with towers on top. I didn't think much of it - I knew that John had carefully placed each brick, but he always does that. The ST, on the other hand, kept telling me of reasons why it was so neat. I think the picture will be one in a long line!

The ST (I fell like I'm getting a child development class with her!) told me that John is at a point where color introduction would be good. No problem, I was ahead of the game.

Last week, when we went to Firestone to see if we really needed a new radiator, John and I played a game. The tiles are gray, with black, red, and blue scattered about randomly. I stood on a black tile and told John to find another that was black and stand on it. So there was no confusion, I moved to another black one and repeated the command. He then walked to a black one and looked at me. He continued to at least five other black tiles before getting to the end of the waiting room, stopping and looking at me while standing on each one. My mother watched.

John's speaking is increasing a lot. He really is beginning to communicate well, though he still doesn't say "mama" and only a few words would make any sense to someone else. He can say "No", "Dog", "Vroom", "Baaa" (bark), "Choo choo", "Dada", and a few other things very clearly. He is beginning to repeat consistently, as long as I use short sentences and short words. He might try to say "Cow" but will not do anything for a word like "Giraffe."

Treating torticollis - Effects on Mama

2007-05-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

When the PT started treating John, she told me to carry him in my left arm so he would look forward to the left.

I'm pretty strong now, but my left bicep is significantly bigger than my right. Weird.

Signs you've been baking lots of cake...

2007-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

You take the cake out to fill and frost and can't remember what type it is. Oh well, that's what vanilla filling is for, right?

I tried a new vanilla filling recipe and Dan loved it. I didn't taste it before filling the cake, so when Dan came home from work I gave him a spoonful to try. "Do you like it?"

"It tastes like ice cream!"

Great! Cooks Illustrated always comes to the rescue!

2007-04-20T04:57:00.000-07:00

We met Grace and Andrew the December after we got married. They went to UCLA, attended the same church as my sister, and got married at a church down the street from ours here. Dan talked with Andrew a lot because there aren't a lot of young, technical guys at our church. The also have two littles, a boy and girl, just a bit shifted from ours.

In January, Andrew was diagnosed with cancer. He and Grace blog about it at graceandrew.blogspot.com. It isn't an encouraging, easy read, but it is a helpful read as he and Grace lean on God during this difficult time.

A goat?

2007-04-19T13:57:00.001-07:00

We live in the suburbs. On Saturday night, a neighbor we had never met came over to our house quite late at night to ask us if we had heard a scream. We had not. The neighbor seemed quite upset and repeated that she had heard what sounded like a child screaming.

This morning, I saw a goat in my neighbor's yard. That neighbor lives in a house, which, like ours, has been split into multiple apartments. Maybe the other tenant was keeping a goat in their kitchen... I'm not 100% sure it was a goat, but last time I checked dogs didn't have horns or eat grass!

Potty Learning Time?

2007-04-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, John started giving me a sound kick to the ribs everytime I tried to change his diaper. Consistent discipline didn't deter him, and a warning as I picked him up onto the changing table only encouraged him ("Remember, you'll be disciplined if you kick Mommy," was followed by a WHACKKKK straight to the ribs). I told a friend about this at church on Wednesday night and suddenly the light went on. John doesn't WANT to be in diapers anymore!

Something similar happened about six months ago. John was consistently throwing food from the high chair. Warnings (like above) and discipline were totally ineffective. We moved him to the table on a booster seat, gave him a normal plate and silverware, and the food stopped being thrown.

So, after considering this Thursday, I put him in underpants on Friday afternoon. He had NOT ONE accident until Daddy came home, at which point life was too exciting to bother with the potty. He's done fine today (2.5 hours). He can pee on cue, though we haven't had a poop yet. He peed in the potty five times yesterday, three times today so far. I'm worried he'll have an accident so I offer the potty about once an hour! The first time it took him about 5 minutes, now it takes about 1.

The speech therapist comes every Monday. I am learning things, but I also notice that John's behavior is worse when she is here. For example, he throws his toys every time she comes. She has given me "strategies" for dealing with toy throwing, but he doesn't throw toys if she isn't here. I'm not sure if it is because bad behavior like toy throwing means I just put him down for a nap immediately or because her desire to talk about everything he does encourages toy throwing.

If John threw a toy when she wasn't here, I would say, "No, we don't throw toys. You probably need a nap." End of it. No more toys get thrown for days. (He has thrown one toy once in the past week - it was in the afternoon after she was here. When she is here, he might throw ten things before he calms down.)

When the therapist is here, she says, "John, toys don't fly. Can you find something that flies? Airplanes fly! Birds fly! Toys don't fly." John might say, "fff," and that would be rewarded with a response of, "FLY! That's right, toys don't fly!"

Well, that toy DIDN'T fly; John threw it. It was John's fault, not the toy's!!!

On the other hand, she has had a few suggestions that have been helpful. John's nose was running and I had a wash cloth within reach. I grabbed it to wipe his nose and he started crying and turning away. She told me that John recognizes that a washcloth is for washing, not for nose blowing. She grabbed a tissue, held it up to his nose, said, "Blow, blow, blow," and that was that. I've consistently used that "method" since then without a single fight.

2007-04-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

The cakes are from the last four weeks in the order I made them. I still have a ways to go, but I think I'm getting better.

Isn't Anna big? John is too, and he loves hats!

Culture clash

2007-04-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

Overheard at church between a woman raised on a farm and a city girl:

Pam: While we were driving, we hit a deer.
Steph: You hit a deer?!?!
Pam: Yeah, but Troy wanted to get our money's worth so he put it in the car so we could butcher it.
Steph: He put it in the car?!?!
Pam: Don't worry, it couldn't have been much bigger than Bambi.

Dan's been on a publishing streak (hopefully it'll be about four papers in two months, if I count correctly). He's finishing projects which have been in the works for months and it is great! We've got a steakhouse lined up to go to when the fourth gets submitted for publication. Dan's advisor is a perfectionist and exceptionally successful so Dan's been working diligently to get this last paper up to his advisor's nearly unreachable standards. I think he's almost there... When Dan gets excited about papers, he wakes up early (between 3 and 5 am), goes into work, and works until dinner. He sometimes does this two or three days per week. This work schedule has greatly increased his productivity, as you can imagine. I appreciate Dan being home in the evenings so this works well for our family.

Anna is a mover now. I don't bother to put her on blankets anymore because she moves off of them so quickly. She can move 8' in a few minutes by a combination of rolling and scooting. Dan thinks she'll just stand up and walk one day because of the wild gymnastics she does all the time. I'm busily baby-proofing the house. John never needed much baby proofing - he holds things but doesn't put them in his mouth. Anna loves it when John sits on her. (Hey, it is attention from HIM!)

I hope to post some pictures of the kiddos and my recent cakes this afternoon when I post some shoes for sale on E-Bay. Hey, I wear a weird shoe size; I think there must be someone out there who wants some barely worn women's size 12 black pumps.

Second speech appointment

2007-04-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

We had John's second session on Monday. The therapist was speaking to him in very short phrases (not even sentences!) and I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Hadn't she read the report about John and his receptive language? Maybe she was just used to children who had problems with expressive and receptive speech.

I verbalized my opinions to her (thankfully!) and she told me, firmly, that the point isn't what John can understand during speech and recognized that he can understand *a liot*, but what he can repeat. She told me that although he understands and carries out long commands, he doesn't repeat them. She suggested I limit myself to three (!!!) word phrases as much as possible. I guess he'll still get a lot of complex speech from our family times...

At the end of the session, she pointed out to me that John repeats "Bye-bye", which means that it is time to give him a longer phrase by adding a name at the end. So as he repeats my short phrases, I can add more words.

Mommy brain

2007-03-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

What do you get when a Mommy tries to bake a "Perfect All American Chocolate Butter Cake" with two kiddos in tow?

A "Perfect All American Chocolate Cake" and two sticks of butter sitting on the counter.

Oops.

The first layer came out of the oven and tastes pretty good. It is a little on the sweet side, but exceptionally good considering I forgot a title ingredient and the only fat in the cake is in the egg yolks. Still, I might give it another go tonight once the kids are in bed and I can concentrate better! I plan to decorate this cake (practice for my sister's wedding cake) and take it to a church potluck on Sunday. I'm trying to see if it'll keep a few days - a requirement for a wedding cake!

In other news, John has his first speech therapist appointment tomorrow, but I think he's already made a lot of improvements. When they tested him, his speech included "No", "Da", and "Da-Boo". Now he says "sssshoezzz", "ssseee", "Bye Bye", and appears to be mimicing (or trying to mimic) about 30% of the time. (A problem the speech evaluator noticed was that he didn't care to mimic facial expressions or noises.) We've set up one mirror in the living room that we make faces in and have been doing things like blowing in straws and blowing on food for facial imitation.

John loves Anna! I moved her carseat next to his so we could sit an extra person in the car last week and kept it there because they do so well together (SHOCK SHOCK SHOCK!). He can't quite touch her face yet and hasn't figured out how to do so with his feet (Jane!). He basically holds her hand when she cries and smiles at her to make her laugh. I tried to nap them in the same room today, but that was quite a failure.

We love the stroller and go out a lot. John isn't satisified by walks of less than 90 minutes, and I say the more the merrier. My diastasis seems to be healing better now that Anna is no longer in the front carrier and causing extra stress on those muscles. John also has taken a liking to baths and is getting a long bubble bath about four times a week now.

Crazy week

2007-03-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

This has been a crazy week.

It started last Saturday morning, with John throwing up in my lap at a Ladies Prayer Breakfast at a friend's home.

This was John's first real ickiness. In December he was throwing up but acting normally, this time it really hit him and he was exhausted. We all stayed home Sunday, first because I needed the car to take John to the doctor and then later because it was snowing/freezing raining.

Monday John seemed better so we kept our appointment to have him evaluated for an early intervention program on Tuesday. Although we are only concerned about speech (he still hasn't said "mama!" - boohoo!) the evaluation was in all categories. It turns out that John is significantly ahead in receptive speech (what he understands) but is considered 10 months behind in expressive speech, so he qualifies for no-cost-to-us early intervention until age 3.

During the evaluation, one therapist gave him a set of 10 nested cups, took them apart, put them back together (to demonstrate what to do with them) and then put them on the floor randomly. John put them back together correctly! When he got one wrong, he took it out and fixed it carefully. The therapists sat there amazed and said, "We've never seen a child finish this task before." They said most children dump all the cups out if they make a mistake or just give up.

On Wednesday we drove an hour north to purchase a Baby Jogger City Double. I took it out today and love it. It is so nice to have a double stroller and be able to take both children out easily. Since we'll be living in an urban environment next year, I expect to do a lot of walking. After losing a wheel in Vienna last summer when the frame suddenly broke, I decided a lifetime warrently on the frame was worth spending more for.

One reason for the trip Wednesday was that the boiler for the home EXPLODED at 1 am Wednesday morning and we were without heat and hot water until 10 pm Friday. Who wants to be home for that???

On Thursday, I went grocery shopping. I wasn't in a rush to get home (see above) so when I couldn't find a car cart, I decided to let John walk next to me during the shopping trip. He did amazingly for the first 3/4 but wanted to be carried by the time we reached produce. I think the non-linearity of the produce department was difficult for him. Also, by that time, he had been walking for 45 minutes. The comments I received were interesting. Three old men said very positive things like "I see you've got a helper" or "You're a good son for your mother." Young women generally looked like they were upset that I was taking so long to get through the aisles. John carried my list and helped me get applesauce. He did a fantastic job of staying with me.

The repair men were here today for 14 hours. Yay for them! They left just after 10 pm, but not before coming upstairs to make sure everything works. Whoohoo! It is warm and cozy now.

Tomorrow a local Moms of Multiples group is having a rummage sale. I hope I can get there to buy clothes for next year for the kiddos!

Personality!

2007-02-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

John wants to do things FOR HIMSELF. Fairly typical for a two-year-old, I think.

He does NOT like diaper changes. Frustrated, one night, Dan gave John the diaper and said, "Go change your own diaper!" So John did, sort of. He took the diaper and carefully laid it out on his changing table. He found Dan and asked him to put him on the table and then he nicely sat down so that his diaper change could be completed. Amazingly, it has worked about 95% of the time since then. Crazy.

Anna is scooting like crazy as well as lifting up onto her knees. Maybe she'll be an early crawler.

Postdoc!

2007-02-05T04:50:00.000-08:00

After a number of discouraging weeks of no or disappointing information, Dan was offered a postdoc at his first choice institution.

If all goes as planned, we'll be moving to the Boston area in late August or early September. (And we have a generous moving allowance so I don't have to do all the boxing!)

Time to go buy some warm clothes at those after-winter sales...

2007-01-31T06:14:00.000-08:00

I wrote the last post when I was (crazily) trying to wake up before my family and make up for it with a nap in the afternoon. Silly Emily, you're not a napping person! Despite being exhausted, I was unable to fall asleep and would only get a few minutes of terrible rest, even when forcing myself to try to sleep for 40 minutes. Once I scrapped that AWFUL plan, I felt much better.

I also made a few other changes.

1) I put the computer in the very back of my walk-in closet. (I'm on Dan's right now - and it goes to work with him.)
2) I started doing my devotions at the beginning of the kids mutual nap time.
3) I began doing chores ONLY when John is awake. (OK - I still clean the bathroom when John is asleep, but nothing else.)

The third was Kendra of Preschoolers and Peace's suggestion (but I can't find it). Additionally, when my parents visited, my dad let John help him build a table. My father is so patient! Later, when my dad saw John spill crackers, he told me, "Em, John can clean that up." It took some patience on my part, but sure enough, he could and he did. Since the three above have been implemented, the house has become very clean and I have become a lot more relaxed!

I've also let John help me make dinner - he can spoon liquids, stir mixtures, and watch me cut. That has (generally) helped dinner prep be a lot less stressful. When he gets tired of that, I have some special table toys for him. For us, table toys are toys with lots of little pieces that I don't want him to cart around the house, like a pegboard or magnet puzzles.

One last thing. I've been reading Montessori's books and have realized that these describe how John learns. I'm prepping right now to do some organized Practical Life work with John during Anna's morning naps. In Montessori classrooms, the children learn to treat the materials respectfully and to put them away so I've been requiring John to put things away which he takes out. "Please put away the 'Christmas Story' before getting out 'Ten Minutes to Bedtime'," I tell John IF he forgets. My living room is so pleasant now!

Happy New Year!

2007-01-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

I've been in a bit of a funk for the past few days. Maybe it came about because of people posting New Year's goals on their websites or because of the difficulties of settling back into a routine after the excitement of Christmas and travel. It might be due to just seeing my incredibly talented sister-in-law or my amazingly organized mother-in-law. (She gave me articles to read about children that she cut out before my husband was born - and I nearly lost them in two months! She astonishes me! WOW! Organization is a point I'm working on.)

There are few things which help me out of parenting/homekeeping funks like reading a bit of one of Nancy Wilson's books. So, here goes. From "The Fruit of Her Hands", page 75:

"Many years ago I was the busy mother of three children, ages four, two, and under one. Life was full, with hardly time to sit down. I was occupied with many mundane things like diapers and laundry and crayons and play dough. Once in a while I would wonder just what happened to my "ministry" that I had enjoyed when I was single and working with a Christian organization. This was simply the very old "the grass is always greener" temptation.

One night as I was washing the dishes (which was the last hurdle before tucking in the little ones), my mind wandered off in that direction. Shouldn't I be leading Bible studies? Shouldn't I be involved in more active evangelism? Couldn't I "disciple" someone? Didn't God want me to do something for Him?

Immediately I realized what He wanted me to do. He wanted me to do the *dishes*. But I wondered if there was something *else* He wanted me to do. And I realized that, yes, there was something else. He wanted me to do them *cheerfully*.

As I reflected on this, I realized what I had known all along. God had called me to be a wife, mother, and homemaker. Because of this, all the mundane things I did were sanctified, holy, purposeful, and honoring to God, and I should offer them all to Him. "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1). Not only that, I should also find contentment and satisfaction in knowing I was doing these things unto the Lord."

Now I think I'll go clean the bathroom and sort some laundry. Maybe I'll even clean out the fridge. But not only that... I'll try to do it cheerfully.

Parenting

2006-12-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

We took a two week toddler parenting class at church during October with three other couples. Most of what we learned was fairly standard but the discussion was useful and I'm sure we would have wondered what we had missed had we not attended.

There was one list, however, that shocked all couples in attendance.

The pastor authored the material and included a list of "Top Four Things You MUST Teach Your Children."

The first three were very standard, something like: Teach them about God. Teach them to love God's Word. Teach them what God says about parents and children. OK, very standard.

The fourth caught *ALL* of us off guard. "Teach them that racial predjudice is unacceptable." HUH??? I won't disagree with the statement, but it didn't seem to belong in the Top 4 of what you need to teach your children.

A mexican woman raised her hand and asked, "Where did that come from???"

Dan and I discussed it on our way home. This is the most racially diverse evangelical church we've been to. (OK, maybe Foursquare was close, but...) Black families, hispanic families, Asians, Pacific Islanders, people from the Caribbean, etc. It is a small church, too, so it is quite striking. The pastor's oldest daughter is married to a man who is half Puerto-Rican and his middle daughter is married to a Pacific Islander. His son is dating a Mexican woman.

As strange as the fourth "commandment" was, it seems to have impacted the church quite positively. I'm not sure it belongs on the "Top 4" list, though.

A final note, in our 3+ years at the church, that was the ONLY mention of race. Maybe that's why I forget that our church is racially diverse until someone visits for the first time and points it out to me.

Two very good days

2006-12-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

My two have been taking morning naps at the same time. Anna naps about an hour more than John, so I get some good one-on-one time with John while she's asleep. We use the time to play together. We read on Monday, built blocks Tuesday, and I taught John to pour and scoop lentils today. (Boy, did he love that! He didn't want to stop, but I could tell he was exhausted.)

I also have had time for Bible reading, dinner prep, laundry, other reading, and, you guessed it, blog updating.

I'm still keeping my kitchen clean. I started after my ankle healed (mid-September) and now it bugs me if it isn't clean. I clean up after each meal meticulously. Although there may be dishes drying on the counter, they don't sit in the sink dirty anymore. It is a habit now!

Kids are fun!

2006-12-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

We had dinner at a friend's home last night. Their almost-five-year-old, E, was nearly done with dinner when this conversation began.

E: I'm done with dinner.
Dad: OK.
E: I don't think I'll have any dessert tonight. (There was a chocolate cake.)
Dad: OK. Why not?
E: I haven't eaten enough dinner.
Dad: Alright.
E: I think I should eat some more chicken. (Goes on to finish some more chicken, and later, to eat dessert.)
Dad: Isn't my son great? He parents himself!

We got home and Dan and John spent some time playing with John's letter blocks. (John was mainly playing, Dan mainly videotaping.) John can build a tower of nine with 1" cubes on carpet! Right before Anna was born, a tower of four was about all he could manage.

Dan said to me, "Given John's rate of progress, and the rate at which the World Trade Center rebuilding is being delayed, John may end up being the contractor for that project."

2006-12-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

It's Dan's birthday today, so there is a cake in the oven. He is 26.

We went to a "Holiday Party" for Dan's department yesterday. A man who has a son who is just a bit older than John came over to talk with us. Dan began throwing John into the air and flipping him about and the guy's chin dropped. "WOW!" John loved it. The man suggested that this was good training if John wants to be a pilot or astronaut.

Anna found her thumb and wants to suck it. She would nurse about 24 hours a day if I'd let her. John was the opposite - 5 minutes of eating every three hours was enough for him most days. He put himself on the three hour schedule pretty effectively. (Which is why she is about two pounds heavier than he was at 6 weeks.) Anna too is on a three hour "schedule" of sorts. I know she'll wake up from any nap if it has been three hours since eating. She then wants to eat/suckle until she falls asleep again.

I have the two kiddos napping at the same time in the morning. That's how I'm baking a cake and updating the blog!

First Grocery Trip

2006-12-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day shopping with both kids!

I absolutely love my nearby grocery store, Wegmans

. The first time I went shopping there, I turned around about ten feet past the door and left. It had beautiful murals, classical music playing in the background, and attractive displays. The place would break my tightwad budget, I thought.

Thankfully, a friend told me I should give it another try.

Wegmans appears to have a different philosophy than most grocery stores. Instead of sending out flyers each week with loss leaders while pricing basic goods very high, it doesn't reguarly send out flyers and consistently prices basic goods very low. I cook from scratch most of the time, so this is perfect for me. The customer service is flawless and everything is well-managed and well-organized.

Today, though, I was near and Aldi and decided to stop in. I had heard that Aldi had low prices and thought I might be able to save some money.

Nope. Eggs were 10 cents a dozen more. Milk was 30 cents per gallon more. The line was long, the lights glared, and a panhandler nearly approached me in the parking lot. (I overheard the *large* man loading his car next to me tell the panhandler, "Don't you dare go over to her" as I was buckling Anna into the car.)

So, Wegmans it still is. If only I can stop impulse buying...

One more plug for Wegmans - they treat their employees well and are consistently ranked among Fortune's 100 Best Companies to work for.

2006-12-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

The interim pastor at our church in college, RW, described his grandbabies to us, saying, "You constantly service one end of the intestinal tract or the other."

Anna only cries for three reasons: she is hungry, she is trying to poop, or she is uncomfortable because she just pooped. I then change her, and she wants to eat again. I guess that's why she has a double chin and thunder thighs...

John has done wonderfully during the last few days! We moved him to the big table yesterday and he seems to like being there.

2006-11-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

This is my last easy day because tomorrow my mother flies back to California. Tomorrow afternoon will be my first time alone with both kiddos.

Things my mom and I have accomplished during her stay:

- cleaning out two closets, all clothing drawers, and the pantry
- taking a few trunk loads of stuff to donate (I had a *lot* of unsorted through hand-me downs)
- cleaning out my desk
- cleaning clutter from desk top and table tops
- packing my freezer with almost-ready-to-eat meals
- getting John on a new bedtime routine with his "lovey", a metal bucket (don't ask me, but it helps him go to sleep! We started incorporating it one day when he picked it up off the dresser by his crib and he went to sleep really easily.)
- organizing all the grown-out-of kids clothing
- Mom says she cleaned the basement - I don't know, I haven't done any laundry since she came!
- cleaning out and vacuuming the car (it looks good!)
- decorating for Christmas
- getting portraits done with the kids

I told Mom that next time she stays for four weeks, it needs to be when we move in, not when we're six months from moving out.

We ordered our pictures for Christmas cards. If you'd like a Christmas card, please e-mail me at emilyw [at] ugcs. You know the rest! We have plenty of picture cards but don't have very recent addresses, so please send you address if you've moved in the past three years.

2006-11-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

My mom is staying with us til the end of the month! Yay! I feel like I'm on vacation.

This article on personal space struck a note with me. On the first afternoon of my first trip to Germany, I asked a man for directions to the elevator. Not only did he smell "European", he stood less than half a foot from me. As I backed up to regain my personal space, he stepped forward.

I made a Mai Tai this summer and Anna seems to like it. She doesn't like being in a cradled position but prefers to be upright, so it is great. I also put some padding on the shoulder straps, which I like.

Anna's Birth

2006-11-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

Short story: Anna was born naturally after about 16 hours of (mostly) easy labor. She started nursing right away, roomed in, and we came home (by choice) thirty-six hours later.

Long story - for those who like birth stories and don't mind details: When I woke up Sunday morning, I noticed that I was having stronger BH contractions than normal. Normally, I just felt like my belly was tense, but that morning I felt like my torso was being elongated. It wasn't painful, just different. It continued this way, even after a shower, with one twenty-second-long contraction every ten minutes or so, so I told Dan about it at breakfast. We decided to go to church but started timing contractions.

We kept timing during Sunday School (which, btw, was on 2 Peter 2:2 and longing for the pure milk of the word as newborn babes!). After SS, we handed John off to our friends who had agreed to take him when the baby was born. I still wasn't sure this was the real thing, but Dan convinced me we could pick him up at evening service if the baby didn't come. Dan called the midwife who suggested we go home. Since John was born after 4.5 hours of labor (2 hours of which was pushing), she thought it was wise to be close to the hospital. (Our church is an hour's drive from the hospital.)

We drove home and the contractions slowed down to about one every 30 minutes. We called the midwife who suggested we take naps, which we did. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the Chronicles of Narnia and timing contractions, which began picking up again around 4 pm, so we decided not to go to evening service.

The contractions were still light - I could easily read through them and didn't need to try any pain management - so when Dan suggested ordering pizza at 6 pm, I agreed. I ate three slices of five-topping Papa John's pizza with garlic sauce during labor!

We kept reading and timing after dinner (I think I timed the whole day until we went to the hospital so I have quite the record of labor) and around 8 pm the contractions started to increase in intensity; however, laying down was enough to cope with them so I kept reading while laying on my side.

A bit after 10 pm Dan suggested we call the midwife (before she went to sleep!). Contractions were about 45 seconds long and 5 minutes apart and I was concentrating on breathing during them. (These were still incredibly light compared with the types of contractions I had had during my *whole* labor with John.) I wasn't so sure - I thought I was probably only 5 cm dilated and had 12+ hours to go. However, the midwife convinced me that the jacuzzi would be nice and that one is allowed to labor at the hospital. Anyways, who wants to sit in a car while in strong labor? OK - we decided to go.

Labor intensity increased like crazy in the car! My legs started shaking uncontrollably and I got mad at Dan for not perfectly avoiding potholes. I stopped a few times while walking to the way to the elevator to the 3rd floor, but I walked in on my own. (With John, I was either in a wheel chair or on the floor in fetal position.)

Once signed in, the nurse used the U/S to measure the baby's heartrate (great!) and then the midwife checked me - 9 cm dilated! Wow! She told me my leg shaking was due to the baby being so far down that she was pressing on my nerves. I think the surprise of being 9 cm despite my manageable contractions helped me relax. For the next hour or so (? here my recollection of time gets really fuzzy), standing up during contractions was enough to handle them and the apprentice midwife told me that I didn't even appear to be in labor. We joked around between contractions and I asked some questions about the equipment in the room. Contractions were still much lighter than the whole labor with John.

I think the last forty minutes were the hard part. I couldn't stand very well anymore, so I held onto Dan. The leg shaking was worse. Finally, I pushed Anna out in about 10 minutes. (Dan claims it was 10 minutes - it felt like an hour.) Pushing was much more painful than with John but no part of stage 1 was as bad as the whole time with John. I was glad to be somewhere that I could yell. I had told my midwife that I never felt an urge to push with John but was "coached" through it. She told me afterward that she carefully held her tongue so that I would push properly. I found that kneeling was the best way for me to push.

Anna was born at 12:36 am on October 30. I had been praying that I would go into labor on a Sunday or a Wednesday night (when we go to prayer meeting) so that we could drop John off easily and God answered that prayer request! We had prayed there would be no traffic on the way to the hospital, a request that was answered, too. It also appeared that Anna had been paying attention in Sunday School - she began nursing fifteen minutes after birth and has had quite an appetite since!

Announcing Anna Jane F.

2006-10-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

Anna Jane was born on Monday, October 30th at 12:36 am. She weighed 8 lbs and measured 21 inches long. She latched on fifteen minutes after birth and has been going strong since. Birth story to follow in a few days; in some ways, it was totally different than John's!

38 weeks, 3 days

2006-10-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

I had been warned that having your first early is tough because you get antsy earlier with subsequent babies! John was born at 38w2d - which was yesterday - so now I feel like I'm post-term. Argh.

Raising boys

2006-10-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

Since when was jumping off slides considered an extreme case of ADHD?

I thought that was healthy boyhood behavior. Goodness, I'm surprised all little boys aren't drugged if that is considered extreme.

My brother is eight years younger than me and we've been blessed (?) with a record of his growth - yearly casts due to his adventures. Whether it was climbing trees or trying to go down a fireman pole without hands (oops), Geoff managed to make frequent trips to the emergency room.

Once again, from "Future Men", on faith and boys: "Say a boy breaks a chair because he was jumping on it from the bunk bed. Unbelief sees the cost of replacing the chair. Faith sees aggressiveness and courage, both of which obviously need to be directed and disciplined."

And, from the cover: "When Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school for a time, a boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting and on a Sunday too! He told the future president that a bigger boy ahd been pinching his sister, so he fought him. TR told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The stodgy vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go. What a loss. Unbelief cannot look past surfaces. Unbelief squashes, faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside and tells him that this part of what he did was good, while that other part of what he did got in the way. 'And this is how to do it better next time.'"

The clean kitchen, con't

2006-10-13T08:57:00.000-07:00

Five or six weeks ago, someone linked to this article. As I read it, I became angry at the author. I thought, "She's confused cause and effect! My dishes are dirty *because* I cook at home! Dirty dishes cause wealth!" I vented to Dan, who listened nicely but didn't say anything.

Now, over a month later, I concede. She is right. Our kitchen has been clean (except for yesterday's high chair tray incident) since my foot healed and we haven't eaten out once. I use about twice as many dishes each time I cook because all my dishes are always clean. Having everything available means that preparation times are less and no longer stressful. I never have to clean out the sink to fill a pot with water and the proper pot is always available.

In the past, we have eaten out once every three to four weeks. We would decide to eat out on the spur of the moment (because I was too tired to cook) and pay big bucks because we were eating out at dinner time.

Now, we haven't eaten out since the day after we returned home from our trip (when I sprained my foot on the way to the grocdery store). We can decide to eat out at lunchtime (when it is much cheaper) and research the restaurant beforehand so as to avoid lousy meals.

Finishing

2006-10-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

Laziness may start tasks, but it doesn't finish them.

"A lazy man does not roast his prey, but the precious possession of a man is diligence." Proverbs 12:27. It isn't that the lazy man doesn't hunt, but that he doesn't follow through and cook the goose!

As I've worked on my chair covers, many admonitions have come to mind "Measure carefully, cut once" and "A stitch in time saves nine" are two of the most common ones. I have been applying these to other areas of my life, too. Dishes that are done immediately after a meal take a lot less time to clean than ones that have been sitting out for 24 hours. Try cleaning a tomato sauce pan the minute the sauce is done cooking - it is practically no work at all! Try cleaning it the next day and you'll be scrubbing and soaking for twenty minutes.

Today John gave me a good object lesson of these handy prinicples I've been espousing. I didn't clean off his tray immediately after lunch but just put it on the table after cleaning up everything else. We got distracted and it sat around on the table. A while later, I sat down to drink a glass of milk at the table and John began playing with his toy car on the table. He had some trouble reaching it as it drifted towards the wall and climbed onto a chair, accidentally upsetting his tray with its rice. Had I cleaned up the tray immediately, the job would have been done in thirty seconds. Waiting meant I had to clean the scattered rice off the floor as well as the tray.

John helped - I told him why this work was harder, what we could have done to prevent it, and he gathered the sausage bits and put them in the garbage.

Time for me to go follow through on my chair covers! I'm about 70% done. I think ten more concentrated hours should be enough to finish them.

I'm raising a man...

2006-10-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

...not loading the dishwasher.

Doug Wilson addresses this in his book, "Future Men." I can't find the quote, but here's the paraphrase.

Townspeople noticed that a wealthy farmer's sons were working in his corn field. Surprised, a man asked him why he made his sons labor in the field. "Friend," he replied, "I'm not raising corn, I am raising men."

In the same spirit, when John began loading our silverware into the dishwasher a few weeks ago, I was excited. I'm raising a man! He's learning to work and take on responsibility!

John takes longer to load the dishwasher than I do and now that loading silverware is established as his "job", it sometimes takes work to help him remember. He's learning to load plates (using a garage sale stash of Corelle we keep in the pantry), and, as a result, we frequently have random Corelle plates throughout the dishwasher. When I load the dishwahser now I explain what I'm doing and why and am kept accountable by John - I can't simply skip cleaning the kitchen because I'm tired because that would model inconsistency to the little one to whom I'm trying to teach consistency.

So, as we load and reload the same dish for the third time ("Concave side towards the center." "Be gentle to the plate when you put it in.") I remember that I stayed home to raise a man, not to load the dishwasher.

Yummy Kale "Chips"

2006-10-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Wash and tear kale into smallish pieces.

Get a little vegetable oil on it.

Sprinkle salt on it (I like more rather than less).

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

These are better than potato chips! And oh so easy. I think I'll try this on bok choy tomorrow. We're getting *tons* of greens again in our CSA share.

Speaking of CSA shares, when I got my blood work done in early August, everything (including blood iron levels) had improved since the beginning of my pregnancy and I had an awesome glycemic response. I hadn't actively worked on improving anything, but the midwives told me to continue whatever I was doing. Maybe that's what happens when you drastically increase your weekly intake of vegetables because someone else decides how many you "need."

2006-09-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

Eating in Europe was quite tasty, but our eating schedules were erratic and lots of planning was required to get John to eat anything milk related. (Many restaurants looked at us as if we were crazy if we asked for milk for John. The few that didn't gave us a cup of creamer for coffee.) My solution? Yogurt. Since I know that yogurt is cultured by leaving it at room temperature for 10-24 hours, I figured that leaving yogurt in a backpack all day long wouldn't hurt it.

In Germany, you can buy "Edel-Rahm" or "Sahne" yogurt which is yogurt made from a mixture of cream and whole milk. Since John wasn't too thrilled with some of the new foods and was often exhausted and frustrated by the time restaurant food was served, these high calorie yogurts turned out to be blessings. Whole milk is usually 3.5% fat, heavy cream is 36% fat, and whipping cream is 30% fat. Edel-Rahm yogurt had to be 15% fat and Sahne yogurt was required to be 10% fat. By the end of the trip, eating two of these yogurts per day, John seemed to be gaining weight faster than he was growing vertically. However, in the USA, getting whole milk yogurt is difficult and higher fat yogurt is absolutely impossible. He seems to be back to his normal, slender self, despite my attempts to spike his milk with cream. :-)

Interestingly enough, I give him cod liver oil supplements, which he absolutely ADORES. I have to put the bottle away immediately after giving him his teaspoonful. He won't eat anything else if he can see the CLO bottle but will simply point to it and, in his way, ask for more.

2006-09-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

I was in a rush to get out the door this morning, so when John brought his book, "The Napping House", over to me I simply began reciting the story without thinking. "There is a house, a napping house, where everyone is sleeping..." I kept going as I hurridly made the bed and tied my shoes. A minute later, I was at the end and hadn't missed a word. (I thought I had mixed up the description of the cat and the mouse - one is slumbering, the other snoozing - but I hadn't.)

I can do the same with Dr. Seuss's ABCs, which Dan finds funny, so he "tests" me. "What begins with J?" he asks. "Jerry Jordan's jelly jar and jam begin that way," I say, without missing a beat.

I wonder what other books I've memorized without realizing it...

For the women's study at church, we're reading John Piper's "When I don't desire God" which I think is poorly named but I highly recommend. (I think anyone can benefit from reading it, but I think the title makes it sound like it is only appropriate for one going through spiritual depression.) This week's chapter is on the importance of Bible memorization. This morning's easy recitation of "The napping house", a book I never intended to memorize, showed me that if I'm not memorizing scripture (which I'm not), I really don't have an excuse. If I can remember that Y is for a yawning yellow yak and that young Yolanda Yorgenson is yelling on his back without effort, I need to work on filling my mind with things that really matter, too.

Am I nesting?

2006-09-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

I don't remember nesting with John. We'd moved less than two months before he was born. My back hurt, I didn't feel comfortable cleaning, and I was exhausted everyday after work. It was the dead of winter, which didn't help, and everything was gray and dreary. (Or so I remember it!)

With this little one, I feel great! My back basically doesn't hurt (except when I throw it out - but now I only wear sneakers and Birks, so hopefully that won't happen again! No high heels for me!), my ankle is mostly better, I have a ton of energy, and I eat better. The weather is great and we go outdoors hours every day.

This time, it appears, I have the energy to nest. Here's what I've done and am doing:

1. I cleaned the kitchen two weeks ago... AND it is still clean! No junk on counters and I put the dishes in the dishwasher immediately after every meal. Last night I hastily made spaghetti (mess of messes!) and had to clean out a drawer that had gotten liquid jello spilled in it. I actually cleaned it all up before goofing off!!!
2. I tidied the bathroom a week ago... AND it is still clean!
3. Halfway through knitting a pink dress I basically started on Monday.
4. Done with patterns for my six slipcovers, 75% done with the first one. (Bought fabric on Monday - finally - kept hurting myself on the way to the fabric store before!)
5. Sorted out the second-hand clothes I have gotten by month; sorted out gender-neutral baby clothes and blankets from when John was born. (Jane - I bought four beautiful designer baby dresses at a rummage sale last week, and only one was pink! The others: white, green, and navy blue.)

Goals:
1. Finish slipcovers and baby dress.
2. Clean the living/dining room like I did the kitchen and bath.
3. Sort out John's summer/winter clothing.

I'd better get busy!

2006-09-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

The foot is healing quickly and well and I'm now two weeks overdue for my midwife appointment. I scheduled the appoinment a week late (due to travel), then canceled due to not being able to drive. Today's was canceled due to two women in labor at once... not a very likely given that the midwives only have a small handful of women each month, but that's OK. I feel great and the baby continues to squirm if I'm not walking around.

We took John to the zoo in Munich. I'd taken him to a zoo once before, in May, when he was 15 months old, and he really didn't get it. (I think he might have noticed the sea lions who were swimming immediately in front of him, but his reaction could also have been due to gas.) As he's grown, he's become more and more delighted with anything moving. He loves bees and giggles whenever he sees them (wait til his first sting!), anything in the backyard, butterflies, and, of course, dogs, cats, cows, etc. Munich claims to have the largest zoo in Europe and it certainly was impressive. John was beside himself with delight: whether in regard to ducks or bison, monkeys or lions, he thought it was great. When an animal would catch his eye (and, for the first two hours, it was a rare animal that didn't catch his eye), he would start bouncing, point, and say, "dadadadadada". In the petting zoo (we looked, didn't pet), John didn't know whether to be thrilled or scared when a cow mooed 6" from his face. John reacted by grinning from ear to ear while pushing back as far away from the cow as he could in his stroller.

The German word for "bite" sounds like the English "bison." I know German, but not well enough to tell John all the animal names in German. (And we're working on English, anyways!) A little boy overheard me telling John, "BISON. BISON." A minute later I heard him frantically asking his mom if he would get bitten. Oops.

There were a lot of kids at the zoo. That was a pretty rare sight!

Another note: they still know how to build really cool playgrounds in Europe! It appears German playground designers try to build things children will delight in. At the zoo, the playground had a sign warning that, "Parents are responsible for their children." (Novel thought.) The playground also had, among other things, a 30 foot high climbing structure. If it hadn't been totally swarmed, my brother and father would have climbed it themselves. There also was an American-style playground, labeled "For Handicapped People."

Dogs

2006-09-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

Dan and I think John will be asking for a dog soon. He doesn't talk yet, but he points out *every* dog he sees, whether in print or on the street. He prefers books with pictures of dogs and his (current) favorite book involves a young boy, his dog, and a frog. He literally spends 15+ minutes each day looking through the boy and dog book to point out what the dog is doing in each picture. Did a dog bark a few blocks away? He'll point out the window in its direction. We've firmly decided we won't get a dog before he asks for one, but as his fascination with dogs grows, the idea that we'll someday get a dog becomes more and more normal to me.

Before we left on our trip, I looked into raising a guide dog puppy because I have no idea how to raise a dog and having the help of an organization would be good. Once I got to Prague, though, the idea of having a dog became a lot more reasonable because I was exposed to pleasant dogs. People in Prague raise really good dogs. In ten minutes on the Munich subway, I got barked at more than in two weeks in Prague, yet there were about 5-10 times as many dogs in Prague compared with Munich. In Prague, people rarely use leashes, the dogs walk by their owners instead and do not even sniff at strangers, much less bark. (John did get sniffed at once, but that was after I spent five minutes talking with the dog's owners.)

The best illustration of how well-behaved Prague dogs are happened on my sixth or so day in the city. I had just gone to the grocery store and needed to wait for a tram across the street from it. Before I left the store, a woman had leashed up her dog to one side of the grocery store door. Though I strugged getting the stroller out through the door, directly next to the dog, the dog totally ignored me. I walked across the street to wait for the tram (which I just missed - so I had a 10 minute wait for the next one) and spent the time watching the dog. Not a single bark, sniff, or pant in the direction of an exiting or entering customer. Coming out of the store right before the tram arrived, the dog's owner took the leash off, put it in her purse, and the two walked away together.

I think could handle a dog like that.

Home again, home again.

2006-09-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

We're back home after a great trip. Dan met the people he hoped to meet and has a lot of work to do on his thesis. We enjoyed spending time with my parents and brother, saw a lot of new things, enjoyed great food, got to know central Prague well enough to not get lost, and had a great time. Maybe I'll blog on some specifics in the coming week or two; there won't be any pictures from us, though, as the camera was lost on the way there by the airline.

A few fun notes:

1. Mommas in Europe have huge strollers! When I brought my Graco, I thought I'd have the biggest stroller in sight and stick out like a sore thumb. Nope! I did stick out - because my stroller was so small. Later, I stuck out because my stroller lost the front left wheels and the Graco became three-wheeled stroller with a right-triangular wheel arangement. It still worked fairly well. I'm glad I read the travel websites which recommended taking a full-sized stroller so that it could double as bed for naps and as a high chair.

2. We don't normally co-sleep, so there was a bit of a learning curve. Thankfully, the beds we stayed in were all fairly low to the ground. One night, John started out at the head of the bed between me and Dan. By the end of the night, he had managed to fall off the foot of the bed twice. We are pros by now, though.

We walked about five miles every day and I was careful to eat a ton. I only had sneakers with me and wore them everywhere. Today, on the way out the door to the grocery store, wearing slides as a change from sneakers, I fell while carrying John down the front porch stairs and sprained my ankle. Thankfully I fell well (something I learned as a junior high school high-jumper) and fell on the diaper bag side instead of on John. A cloth-diaperer's bag can sure be soft! So much for today's list of to-dos.

18 months

2006-08-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

John turned 18 months yesterday and is climbing *everywhere*. If I leave the living room for a minute with the curtains raised, he climbs on top of the arm of the sofa so he can have a better view of the back yard. He can climb out of the bathtub and also into the the driver's seat of the car directly from the ground. Our entryway contains a full flight of stairs and I usually let him climb up it while following behind. John would rather not have me follow, it appears, so he sort of runs in place at the bottom of the stairs until I go upstairs, after which he quickly climbs up the stairs. (I'm not so sure I'll be letting him do that again for a bit...) He looks really cute at the bottom of the stairs, though, sort of like Road Runner spinning his feet before racing after Wiley Cyote (if I am remembering my childhood cartoons correctly). He's happiest on days he runs around a lot and gets clingy on days we stay inside.

He loves to be read to and we often read 10+ books a day, a couple of times each. He'll sit through Dr. Seuss's ABCs (the unabridged version) once or twice a day. I think it is a good ABC book because the letters are used in a variety of ways (for example, "Camel on the ceiling"). I also like that uses of "x" are listed instead of the word "x-ray". "X is very useful if your name is Nixie Knox. It also comes in handy spelling ax and extra fox." (My MIL is a reading teacher and has given me criteria for evaluating ABC books!) John also likes looking through a Proverbs for Boys book which has oil paintings on each spread depicting a boy, his dog, and his frog doing a wise or gracious thing. Last night, the two of us looked through the book for twenty-five minutes. John doesn't appreciate the rhymes yet, but points out the dog, frog, and maybe a ball, apple or pumpkin on each page. I name the objects for him and then he turns to the next page. When we get to the end, he starts all over again.

Taking after his father, my uncles, my cousin, and other male relatives, John hasn't started talking yet. I would have been rather surprised if he had, and given the family history, the pediatrician thought waiting until John's second birthday before taking any other steps was reasonable. He also noted that while everyone nowadays is worried about autism, John was way too clingy and involved with other people for that to be a concern right now. (Dan's first word, sometime after the age of two, was "Awesome." He said it in response to some skateboarding kids nearby. He didn't even bother with "mama" or "dada" first! My father's cousin didn't talk til after three, at which point he said his first words to his mother, "Stupid ---, you shouldn't have done that" in response to his mother breaking something or stubbing her toe.)

As we expected, the pediatrician was concerned about John's lack of weight gain. He's now 90% in height and 10% in weight, so he gave some suggestions of how to increase John's food intake. I'll be ordering some Ellyn Satter books online after our trip (I think I'd like to own the resource - I just got it through interlibrary loan before). The two things I'm implementing now are an extra snack during the day (John naps so much that while I want to do two snacks a day, he usually only gets one - Ellyn suggests two) as well as taking a short break (~5 minutes) between when he rejects food at a meal and offering it again. The doctor suggested that John may not be full but may just need time off. Also, I'll be making our hot breakfast cereal with whole milk instead of water!

2006-08-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

While driving yesterday, I heard two men on the radio who were angry about the rise of "fundamentalism" in the USA. They were on the radio for 10-15 minutes. In those 10-15 minutes, they used three colloquialisms that could only be understood within a culture that has a Christian background. I wonder if they'll blush when they listen to a tape of the show.

Argh.

My back seems to be 95% better - Praise the Lord! I remember my back injury from basketball taking a lot longer to heal. We still need to get our train passes, but all passports have arrived safely.

Back, part II

2006-08-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

I had a PT appointment today, but was feeling much better before I went.

On Monday, the PT had made a number of comments about how the question was "When" I would get a back injury, not "If", because I was so weak. Weak??? I carry a 25-pound toddler everywhere! (Well, not quite - but few people spend more than 30 min/day weight lifting, so I thought I was better off than most American couch potatoes.) According to the PT, child-carrying increases strength in a few muscles (biceps, quads) but doesn't strengthen the trunk. Also, most child-carrying is done by shifting your frame instead of by using muscles, so it doesn't count towards exercise.

Anyways, my strong quads appear to be trying to compensate for my weak trunk and that was likely the cause of the injury. Today, I found it nearly impossible to do the exercises without tightening my quads (though tightening my quads decreased my range of motion and increased my pain) so that is what I'll be working on over the next couple of weeks. The exercises should be easy to do at home since only a few required special equipment.

2006-08-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

The gas station up the street has a banner advertising AC tune-ups:

"Sometimes 'You look hot' isn't a complement."

Wow, it is hot here. Today's high is over 100 with humidity above 70 and no letup in the forecast for the next few days. I'm camping out in the living room with the AC on.

Unfortunately, I've also got a hot pad on. I did something to my back on Sunday (actually, I didn't do anything unusual, just walk down the stairs from church while carrying John) and now everything hurts. Thankfully, our health plan includes on-campus PT for no extra charge, so I'll be going twice this week. I need to heal quickly - our 3-week European tour starts in two weeks. GAH! Not only that, but John and I will be joining Dan there a few days in, meaning I have a three-leg flight with John and no Dan. BAH!

To add to that, Dan has been having pain while typing - early CT. He's seen a doctor and gotten "Workplace Health" to do a workstation evaluation. He picked up a new keyboard today, he'll be getting a new chair soon, and has been doing stretches and exercises to help. I've told him I'll type for him if he needs it for some of his write-ups; so far, though, it has been somewhat of a blessing because he's breaking up his work-day more.

Busy week and this and that

2006-07-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

We've had a busy week! Jane and family visited for one night last weekend (Yay!) and now we have another houseguest this week. Dan loves the Kelty Kids frame backpack we bought back in June for our hiking trip that he's been coming up with uses for it and prefers it to the stroller. (He even suggests we take walks around the neighborhood, a new development.) We broke down and bought an AC when I heard that the highs here would be 99 degrees a few days in a row. (A pregnant woman can only deal with so much heat!) The heat is helping my tomatoes, and the first one should be ripe in just a few days.

Hmmm... time to go back to work!

Life with a toddler

2006-07-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

I realized one day, while frustrated with my dirty living room, that I had picked up about 150 books that day. Not 150 different books, but thirty books, five times each. Thirty books? Who needs that many out at all times? I got some 2 gallon freezer bags, labeled each with a day of the week, and divided the books among them. Thus began the book rotation. However, I haven't stuck with the days of the week but just change the books if I get tired of them. I kept Dr. Seuss's ABCs out all of last week and have it memorized now ("barber, baby, bubbles and a bumble bee"). I also put away some toys that I was tired of, though I put them all in a clear container so John sometimes points to ones he misses. I do have compassion if I realize he actually misses the toy and isn't just pointing at it because he wants to move onto another activity.

Since John enjoys looking out the window at the wildlife in our backyard, I took a blanket outside yesterday with the idea that he'd enjoy the wildlife from outside and I'd "read" a book. John took my book and sat down to read it. Hmmm... we could do that inside... Mosquitos started swarming around John and I killed a few that landed on me. After five minutes, John started bringing me leaves and sticks, but our presence in the back yard kept the bunnies and birds at bay. Oh well. We ended up staying outside for about half an hour, but maybe next time I'll try to go to a park that is far from bodies of water.

Cool bird

2006-07-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

We live on a .6 acre wooded lot near a bunch of open space. John loves pointing out birds and bird songs to me, so I've grown to notice them (in the past, I "subtracted" them from the background noise). I just saw a new-to-me bird, a yellow warbler! Cool! I wouldn't even have had the eyes to see it (or the ears to hear it) before.

2006-07-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

Laura's post about vinegar as a cleaner made me laugh. My parents were good at teaching us kids various things that not all children are taught and that I've only realized might be family-specific since getting married.

For example, my mom was very concerned we would get poisoned, so we learned that all cleaners were poisonous and could send you to the hospital and we were all careful not to touch them EVER with bare hands. (I think I put on gloves to pick up the bottle of bleach.) Since getting married to a man who didn't have precisely the same training, I've actually read the bottles and learned that some cleaners I thought would kill me are not even marked as poisonous.

Whenever we were near a truck, my father would remark, "Left side, passing side. Right side, suicide." The phrase still goes through my head when I see trucks on the freeway.

John points to bicyclists. Following my parents' lead, I say things like, "Bicycle. The man looks like a professor, but he must be rather stupid because he isn't wearing a helmet."

John also points to motorcyclists. Once again, I repeat the things I heard growing up. As the motorcyclist zips around cars, I mention offhandedly, "Look, John. There's an organ donor!"

Weird

2006-07-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to Germany since 2002 (yes, I was there to enjoy the German enthusiasm for the last World Cup when Germany was beaten by Brazil - I was also there in 1998 for that round of enthusiasm!), but I still can speak and understand German well. How do I know?

While I was eating breakfast around 7:30 am, the phone rang. The woman sounded confused and I was confused, too, until I realized she was speaking to me in German. It took a few minutes of me speaking to her in German to convince her that, no, I am not "Thomas Rolf". She called back again at 9 am and I had to re-convince her. She never asked why my German was so lousy, though it probably would have been a fair question.

Good thing I got the practice. We've only got about 6 weeks until our trip abroad!

Yippee and what I'm listening to

2006-07-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

Dan bought me a Jamie Soles CD for mother's day and I love it! I'd heard of him from my cousins and, although it is aimed at older children, I like having children's music on that can be stimulating to adults, too. I can listen to this a few times a week and be edified and I hope John can learn something, too. Try doing that with a lot of other popular children's music and you'd go crazy.

Most Christian children's music focuses almost entirely on the New Testament and on things which are "nice". Jamie Soles introduces children to the whole testimony of scripture. What other children's musician introduces his audience to the account of Jael and Sisera or Eglon who was king of Moab, Israel's opressor? (In this particular series of songs, the chorus is, "So may all your enemies perish, but may the righteous shine like the sun." That's straight out of scripture, folks!)

Thanks to Jamie Soles, I've got the Apostle's Creed by heart and am almost done with Jesus's lineage according to Matthew.

I'm glad I decided to post about this tonight - when I opened up his website, I learned that he has recently released an album of Psalms as well as an album of memorial songs. I know what's going on my birthday list, Dan. :-)

Glass cups

2006-07-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

Murphy's law says that the day after you write about your son drinking out of glass cups, he'll break one.

Ironically, he broke it because I had handed it to him to entertain him while I finished reading an article about how some experts think celebrity fanaticism has gotten out of hand recently among children because of parents not spending time with their children. (That conclusion wasn't stated until the last paragraph, which I read after cleaning up the broken glass.)

On the plus side, John did a great job of drinking a half cup of milk on his own without spilling in the hours before the first broken glass.

For those wondering, I buy the 2 or 3 for a $1 glasses at Ikea whenever I drive by one. I break glasses a lot, too!

Cups

2006-07-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

We haven't used a sippy cup successfully with John.

WHAT??? No sippy cup???

Yes, I typed that correctly. No sippy cup. We began without bottles (except when John was under the bililights). He totally rejected pacifiers when we offered them at two months. I tried sippy cups on and off, but those got rejected too. Usually, John just shook them upside down like he was trying to water his high chair.

Frustrated, we let him take sips out of our own cups. He was eating off our plates, so why not drink out of our cups? He did a great job. At the same time, I was reading some books about Montessori education that said children should be offered glass cups and real plates as soon as they start eating. What a bizarre idea - no special plastic stuff?

Since John was doing so well with our cups, we started pouring him his own drink in his own glass, though I keep them in the kitchen and off of his tray if he isn't drinking.

John is pretty good at taking a cup off the table and bringing it up to his mouth without spilling as long as the cup isn't too full. Unfortunately, after he's satisfied, he appears to forget that the cup may indeed still hold liquid and turns it upside down. Oops.

Last night, John held up his cup multiple times to ask for more milk. Each time Dan poured just over one sip worth. John brought the cup to his mouth well, drank well, and then poured milk onto his tray. We were splitting at the sides while trying to be respectful of John as he learns this new skill.

I've got to agree with (one author at) Slate.com. Children are funnier that the best movies.

2006-07-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

I read Meredith's post this morning before Dan left for work and I left to pickup our vegetables and found it very convicting. Maybe I have been having no "luck" at garage sales recently because I'm seeking to satisfy wrong desires in spite of my husband and in spite of our budget instead of seeking to honor him.

For a change, I asked Dan what he would like me to buy.

"A bike helmet for John and 6 chairs."

On the way to the boxed share, there was a garage sale where I got 29 books, mostly Caldecott Honor books or books I remembered from childhood, for $5. Dan didn't specifically mention them, but I knew he would like them.

On the way home, I drove past our house - just one more street! But then Click and Clack were discussing a problem in a car one model year later than ours but that our car has been having, too, so I continued on another few blocks, hoping to see some more garage sales. One sign was a bust (last weekend, maybe?), another was a bunch of teenagers, and the third appeared not to have much stuff.

I got out at tht third anyways and there was a Kettler tricycle for $4. Not bad! But no bike helmets. I noticed an ice cream maker very similar to a trash-picked one Dan and I are storing but which doesn't work. $2? Great. A little boy who was missing two front teeth was selling lemonade, so I asked his mom about helmets. She hadn't been planning on selling any, but maybe she had some. Sure enough, she brought out two! I put one on John and thought it fit OK, but the father came up and adjusted it until it fit perfectly. Price? $4.

I couldn't have used more than 1 gallon of gas, so my total cost for the day was $18, at least $7 less than a Wal-Mart helmet which has been on the memory-list for about a year - since the time I bought a child trailor for a bike for $10 at a garage sale.

One deciding factor for buying the tricycle is that our new landlady has three sons, 4, 6, and 8 and has decided to fence in our yard (the Home Depot guy came on Thursday). With the .6 acres, it'll be like living in a park.

Now to cook some freezer beef so that I can make sorbet!

Toddlers and Detergent

2006-06-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

I enjoy reading (a few) Works for Me Wednesday posts, sponsered by Rocks in my Dryer. I've laughed at that name, but was a little taken aback to find blocks in my washer. I guess that is what happens when a toddler who loves to "put in" sees you putting dirty laundry into a hamper.

Has anyone tried Charlie's Soap? I had to try it when I read that they'd done a test using cotton prefolds to see if it built up over washings. I *think* I like it. You only use 1 TBSP per load, so my bag of 80 washings is smaller than a first grader's lunch sack. My diapers are softer than ever and my wash seems nice and clean. I think this would be a great detergent for an apartment dweller or elderly person because you need so little of it.

(For cloth diaper users.)
Unfortunately, diapers seem to be smelling like ammonia really quickly. I have changed my wash cycle from a hot wash with an additional detergent-free hot cycle to a hot wash with an additional detergent-free cold cycle, so that could change things. Also, the weather has been super-duper-hot and humid, which would also encourage the ammonia reaction. I also have been using the full 1 TBSP of detergent though I had previously used about 1/4 the recommended amount of detergent. 1/4 TBSP just seems like so little to me, I can't quite believe that it would actually clean anything! Any thoughts?

Mourning

2006-06-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

I live on a busy street, so I ignored the sirens this morning despite their apparent proximity. I noticed them, because John did, and said, "Do you hear the fire truck?" We frequently have stopped traffic in front of our house; I'm surprised there aren't more rear end collisions.

When I went to get the mail around lunch time I noticed that soberly-dressed young men were around. Did any of my neighbors need a security clearance, I wondered?

I took John next door to return the key I'd been using to feed the cats while my neighbors were on vacation and learned the news. Their almost six-month-old daughter died last night, apparently of SIDS. The mother was holding her son, the daughter's twin, as her own mother told me the tragic news.

I cannot begin to comprehend. I cannot begin to understand. I came home, sat down in the arm chair to nurse my own son, and prayed to the God who does.

Cooking follow-up

2006-06-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

The 3-meals in one night went really well yesterday. John napped late (and everytime I dropped a dish I prayed he would stay asleep because his room is right next to the kitchen) so he was only awake for about 5 minutes of the hour-long process last night.

The three meals took an hour total instead of the thirty minutes I had predicted. This was partially due to a last minute menu change when I realized I needed to use some chard so I made an onion-chard-potato fritatta (requiring onion and chard to be chopped and cooked) instead of a zucchini-potato fritatta for which all the ingredients were prepared.

I think I'll try to do this frequently in the future. I like cooking, but not everynight. I would do some things differently, though. I should have had an afternoon snack before starting because I hadn't eaten for four hours. I also should have read the recipes beforehand.

The pizza was great (we ate it last night). Tonight will be fritatta with bread and maybe I'll make some cottage cheese dip for the broccoli and zucchini we got in our boxed CSA share today. Still - no oven! Tomorrow will be squash custard. I'll cook this week's chard share to go with it on the stove, which will take about 10 minutes.

You know you're doing better when...

2006-06-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

... your toddler brings you some dust he's collected and instead of moaning, "What a horrible housekeepr I am!" you get out the vacuum.

... your vacuum eats a toddler sock and instead of crying you say, "What good suction this vacuum has!"

Good baby, Part II

2006-06-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

We went in for our second U/S on Tuesday because they couldn't see the spine properly at the first one. This time we had a more experienced technician who, it seemed, believed in "Aerobic U/S" - she had me flipping over and over again to try to get the baby to move. They can tell that there aren't any funny things growing out of the spine that shouldn't be there, but they have not been able to get a picture of the full spine. We'll talk with the midwife in July about whether to get another U/S done.

Dan was at the U/S with John. John did pretty well, although he *really* wanted to touch some buttons. As the technician tried and tried to no avail to get the baby to move out of her preferred position, the baby just kicked and pulled to stay in place.

"Is your son pretty mellow? He seems like a good boy," the technician said.

"Definitely."

"Good - because you're going to have your hands full with this one. This girl is stubborn!"

Why humidity is great and other musings

2006-06-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

I haven't exactly been on top of the laundry lately - instead, the laundry has been on top of the floor, so when Dan went to put on a pair of pants he had balled up the night before and added a balled up shirt, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. "You aren't going to wear that!!! It's all wrinkled!" I said.

"No problem, with the humidity, it'll look nice by the time I leave."

It did. His co-workers probably think I iron his t-shirts.

We got back from camping/hiking on Saturday and I was totally bushed, but didn't sleep in the car. Dan napped when we got home but John would have nothing to do with napping (he'd slept in the car) so I stayed awake. I had a fun time camping but definitely need a better pad before going again. I woke up every 30-45 minutes all night. John did a great job falling to sleep and only woke up once during the night. He loved climbing on the rocks - if this trend continues, he'll be in gymnastics and rockclimbing by age 3.

Because of that bad night of sleep followed by a couple more, I've been pretty exhausted this week and have been having bad mood swings. I checked out a book about cooking ahead and think I'll cook two pizzas, a frittata, and a squash custard tonight as long as I've got the oven on. I cooked the zucchini and potatoes to go in the frittata on Wednesday afternoon while making that supper, so the prep time for what will easily be three-four meals plus leftovers today should be about 30 minutes tops.

As frustrating as this week was, though, I shouldn't complain. Many women are this exhausted all first trimester but, besides this week, I've felt extremely energetic. I still was able to get dinner on the table every night - though we tried to go out last night, the wait was going to be 40 minutes so we came home, cut up an apple and two leftover chicken breasts, added yoghurt-mayo-mustard sauce with walnuts and dried dates on it, and put all that over tons of lettuce. Add some of the morning's fresh bread, and we had finished eating before we would have been seated.

Last night John woke up at 5 am and I tried to nurse him, but my milk has dropped a lot and he tends to chew more than nurse now (can you say ouch???). He was frustrated and screaming every few minutes, so Dan got him up and gave him a cup of cow's milk. That calmed him down and he went back to sleep and slept in til 9:30 am!!! I even woke up on my own this morning instead of to baby hollering. Maybe now I'll be able to get out of my exhausted funk.

We're going camping!

2006-06-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

Back tomorrow night! Maybe we'll go for longer later this summer if it goes well!

16 months

2006-06-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

I guess John turned 16 months yesterday. What a fun age! I find myself continually surprised at what he is doing and laughing like crazy at his antics.

I bought John a set of 5 lacrosse balls last week and he enjoyed watching me toss two of them between my hands, so I asked Dan to show him juggling. Now John frequently brings me three balls, not at all deterred by the fact that one of them always ends up falling down. This morning, one fell in my room. I went to the kitchen to start making breakfast while John looked for it. I came back but couldn't see him and did a quick scan of the house. Where was that kid? A more thorough scan of the house revealed two little feet peeking out from under the quilt - he had sat down under the bed with the balls!

We have a puzzle of different types of cars and emergency vehicles. I've made up different noises for each of them, so John loves bringing me pieces so I'll make the noises. The motorcycle says, "Vroooom Vroooom." On Tuesday, John started making the motorcycle noise every time he picked it up - "ooom, ooom" - with his lower lip sticking out. It is so cute! As I was making dinner last night, he brought me his toy airplane (which has three large wheels) and pushed it along my leg while saying, "oooom, ooooom".

When we walk, I've always pointed out the trees (and there are many) so when John started pointing at things near trees, I assumed he was pointing at trees but that he had bad aim. This week it dawned on me that he has been pointing at animals or animal noises. Unfortunately, he seems to have picked up on the word "tree" and says "eee" while pointing at barking dogs, flying birds, playing squirrels, dancing butterflies, and the window if birds are chirping outside. Oh well - so much for veterinary school.

Good baby?

2006-06-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

Amy’s frustration with being asked whether Leo was a “good baby” made me think about that designation - one that has frequently been used of John.

Many woman, old and young have told me that John is a “good baby.” I don’t think the opposite of a “good baby” is a “bad baby” but a “hard baby” or “difficult baby.”

Two general groups of women have made the comment about John - much older women, in their seventies and up, who have observed John for at least 45 minutes and women about my age who also have babies or toddlers.

I just got the comment a week and a half ago after John sat through a ninety-minute university tree tour without complaint. “What a good baby you have!” an older woman remarked. Good? I couldn’t have held him during the tour because my back was hurting a lot. If John had complained frequently during the tour, I would have simply gone home. Would that make him a “bad” baby? Certainly not. But more work? Yes.

Another older woman made the comment after observing me at the grocery store for forty-five minutes. (She was going through at about the same speed as me.) John was happy to play with bag of tortillas while I shopped.

Women my age make the comment, I think, in order to keep me from becoming proud. “You’re not a good parent, you just are lucky to have a good baby,” is what they are really saying.. The subtext, “Poor me, my baby is hard and you’re just lucky. That’s why I am exhausted, frustrated, and on birth control.”

“You have a good baby, that’s why you’re willing to have another one.” (Someone really said that.)

I appreciate the comments from older women about John being a good baby. I appreciate allowing John to be seen as pleasant by others. I do, however, think that I contribute at least a little bit to it. John has a sweet temperament, but he also gets really cranky when tired. I tried taking him to a formal banquet after a few days of travel once, and we both were miserable. No one there told me I had a good baby! Usually, however, I prioritize naps and that seems to keep him happy.

Despite John’s good temperament, I do not have much sympathy for people who complain about their babies’ crankiness (while telling me how lucky I am) and yet won’t change their lives enough to let their babies nap. Somehow, John’s good temperament makes me the brunt of many complaints - maybe because they know I’ll just be quiet and let them complain. Oh well.

A little sister for John!

2006-06-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Now to decide which girly project to do with the 10 oz of DK weight pink wool yarn I got for $1 at a garage sale...

:-)

Toddlers are... JOYFUL!!!

2006-06-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

John ate applesauce, bananas with peanut butter, and milk for breakfast this morning. He ate the peanut butter by taking it off the banana and putting it into his mouth, a thoroughly messy affair. Afterwards, Dan gave him a shower and I got him dressed for the day.

As I was thanking Dan for giving him a shower, saying, "When a toddler eats peanut butter with his fingers, he NEEDS a shower," I heard a gleeful giggle from the next room.

There was John standing in the kitchen next to his high chair, peanut butter surrounding his mouth, giggling like crazy.

What happened was that when John had told me he was finished from breakfast, there was still one banana slice with peanut butter on his tray. I had put it down on my chair and had planned to clean it up later. John cleared his tray for me and was quite proud of himself. I knelt down and started giggling, too, at which point he gave me a big hug, making a clothing change necessary for me.

Toddlers are great!

2006-06-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

When my country music station suddenly became hard rock a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to look for a new radio station. Surfing around, I found a local radio station (the type where the DJ says "Ummm..." every few sentences and programs sometimes start late because the DJ got stuck in a meeting at work) that has a wonderful variety of bluegrass, old country, and oldies from the twenties to sixties.

Today, however, the DJ played a number of news tracks from June 6, 1944. 4,000 boats and 11,000 planes crossed the Channel that morning. One paratrooper interviewed told the newsman, "I know my parachute is packed correctly because my mother checked it. She works in the factory in Connecticut."

Words cannot express my gratitude to that generation. May we also rise to the events which will face our generation.

Growing up and eating vegetables

2006-06-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

John only nursed once today... One time. That's it. Wow. If someone had told me how fast he would go from not eating to eating everything back in February, I wouldn't have believed it.

John's sleeping now. We ran around the fields for two hours this afternoon while Dan played softball with his department. He ate a lot of rice and bok choy leaves from the stir fry I made tonight and then fell asleep quite easily. I guess that's what happens when you run around in the fresh air for two hours chasing crickets and funny colored spots of grass.

We're into the second week of CSA vegetables. We had a really, really, really dry spring, causing later plantings than normal all through the state, otherwise we'd probably be in the fourth week! We have a beautiful vase of flowers on the kitchen tables (the CSA has a cutting garden) as well and one quart out of five quarts of organic strawberries to go. I gave away two heads of lettuce because we got lettuced out last week. Four heads between two people in one week?

On Saturday, I make spanikopita (uses one pound of spinach), tonight, stir fry with bok choy. There's still a lot of broccoli, kale, collards, and sage (what on earth does one do with sage?), in addition to the lettuce I kept. I never thought I could eat this many greens, but one goal in joining a CSA was to increase our vegetable intake.

John loved the bok choy. I think he is a green vegetable baby. Don't ask me where he gets it from!

Sold!

2006-06-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

They sold the house we live in yesterday.

The agent called on Tuesday to say that the walk-through would be on Wednesday. I rearranged the pantry on Tuesday so that it would be orderly and then did some deep cleaning Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I even mopped the kitchen (my most hated household task, though every time I do it I remember that it is fairly easy and quick). I felt like I was going on a job interview. I prayed most of the morning, as I mopped, that the new landlord would be a good landlord and would be moving in her/himself. (Who wants a bunch of college kids renting near you... oops - I was that college kid once!)

I kept humming the music I know my scriptures to - about how God will work all to good, even if He does have me and Dan wander around Princeton like Abraham in the desert (if we moved, this would be our fourth move in three years).

The agent and buyer came at 2:10 (about 40 minutes after John should have gone down for his nap). The buyer told me she has three sons, ages 8, 6, and 4 and that her boys are looking forward to having a back yard and that they all love babies. She went on to say that she was so glad the baby's room is in the front of the house because that means her boys can yell all they want while in the backyard. Wow!

The took down the For Sale sign yesterday evening.

I'm looking forward to getting to know my new neighbor. Now to continue praying for the new neighbor for the house next door.

Cyotes???

2006-05-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

I live in Suburbia, in an area developed increasingly between the 1920s and the 1970s. It is bounded on one side by a freeway, on the second by a set of train tracks, and on the third and fourth by industrial buildings with huge open spaces. The actual developed area is about 1.25 miles by .25 miles and consists of (mostly) single family homes on .3 to .6 acres. Since I never go into the open spaces (they are marked "No Trespassing") and they don't connect to my walking routes, I forget that we live on the edge of some forests.

I was slightly surprised today when a woman yelled at me from her car, "I just saw a cyote!!! Be careful!"

I've been yelled at once for walking on the street (there are overgrown bushes which crowd the sidewalk), but never before warned of wildlife. Hmmm. I do remember that the correct defense against mountain lions is to look big (thanks to trail running in high school). I wonder if that is the correct thing to do in the case of cyotes.

John loves books

2006-05-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, I considered posting a question about how to get John interested in being read to. He had no desire to have books read to him, though he loved flipping through them on his own. Then, a week ago, something clicked. Now he brings me about five different books each day and wants me to read each of them to him five times. Some are normal baby books - "I can count!" or "Paddington's ABCs" or "Goodnight Moon." Some of them are normal children's books - "Curious George" is his favorite. Some are just books that my mom got at garage sales and I read him an abridged version - "Turtles and Snails" or "Flowers" or "The Children's Atlas of the Universe" has a short paragraph on each page. Since he wants to turn the pages before I am done, I usually just read a few sentences before letting him turn the page. He gets all the information each day since we read it through *many* *many* times. These books are designed to teach elementary school children about nature and I learn things, too. I used John's book about "Trees" to figure out what trees we have in our backyard.

At church yesterday, the nursery coordinator brought in new toys. When I picked John up after Sunday School, the lady watching him exclaimed, "He just wanted to read!!! I couldn't interest him in the new toys!" It makes sense - that's what he sees me and Dan doing all the time!

A new type of pizza

2006-05-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

I found a pizza recipe which used hummus instead of normal sauce. We liked it!

I carmelized onions on the stove while making hummus without olive oil (I figured there would be plenty of fat from other sources). After precooking the dough, I put on hummus, mozarella cheese, and the grilled onions. If you like salty/sweet combinations, you'd probably like this. If not, keep looking, or at least don't use carmelized onions.

Sourdough

2006-05-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

After Laura's sourdough blog, I decided to see if I could revive my much neglected starter. It worked and we had delicious bread!

This is how I did it.

For about a week, I let the starter sit on the counter, feeding it every few days. The last day I added four cups of flour, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, and 1 cup water to 1 cup starter. I kneaded it and let it sit for 8 hours (until about midnight). Then I kneaded it again and shaped it into skinny (fast cooking) loaves). When John woke me up the next morning, I started the oven heating at 400 F. After John nursed, while Dan showered and we got ready for the day, I let the bread cook for 25 minutes.

Aha! Fresh bread in the morning IS possible without a bread machine.

15 w, 2 d

2006-05-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

I had my prenatal today; the second prenatal for this baby.

My weight was good (gained 1.5 lbs), but while I was testing for sugar and proteins, John figured out how to flush one of the toilets and stuck his hands it in. AAAH!!!! We then spent a few minutes figuring out how to get John's hands really really clean, although I still freaked out when I saw him licking his fingers in the backseat of the car on the drive home.

Dan and I plan to get an ultrasound done, but I'm in the habit of saying no to every test offered me. Additionally, on our initial "sign up" form, I was asked what preferences I had for care and wrote that I regard the baby as a human being from conception and would not consider killing it, so to please treat it that way, too. Thus, when the midwife said, "You don't want any testing, do you?" I answered "No" without thinking about the 20-week U/S.

BTW - a number of acquaintances have used their 20-week ultrasounds to save life rather than kill it, so I'm not opposed to it. One girl was found to have only three heart chambers, so her mom decided to deliver at the region's best children's hospital so that she could have immediate heart surgery. Another friend who waived all prenatal testing didn't find out about her son's missing heart chamber until it had caused secondary damage around one year of age and after numerous painful tests for all sorts of other ailments... Yeah, it is anecdotal, but I know these people (wives of grad students at the University, though both children were born pre-U), which makes it powerful for me.

So I guess I'll be calling them to get that prescription. I'll be twenty weeks at my next appointment!

Shameless promotion

2006-05-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

Given Ellie's recent gripe about people promoting items like Pampered Chef and Mary Kay, I wavered regarding whether I should write this entry, but decided to write it anyways. I love this product, and it is unique, so I'll promote it. I don't stand to gain from it, but I have found it really helpful so I'll write about it.

Note that as I write about this I'm sipping dark coffee.

I found out about Shade Clothing, a Mormon business, about six months ago while searching for modest clothing. A week ago I took the plunge and bought some maternity shirts. Being 6' tall, I war with my shirts to cover my belly even when not pregnant, so it's even worse when pregnant. The first few months of pregnancy are awful because maternity shirts fit like tents and maternity pants fall down, but I have to play tricks with my normal pants to keep them up. The "tricks" also require that the top few inches of the pants be covered, which is not an easy task!

I bought two undershirts (which is what they are - unless you want to advertise your figure to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who walks down the street) and really like them. Right now, I'm wearing normal pants (held together with rubber bands), a brown "undershirt" which goes down to the bottom of my jeans pockets, and a lightweight beige sweater which, currently, goes about 2" below my belly button. Without these undershirts, I'd be relegated to maternity shirts, which get boring fast enough without adding an extra couple months of wear at the beginning.

I'll probably buy some more undershirts (maternity and normal). I may get the maternity three-pack and then get 3-5 normal undershirts which I'll cut nursing slits in. The maternity undershirt is a really trim fit, made to stretch as your belly grows, so I don't currently feel like I'm wearing a tent.

What a great product! Even if I don't have special underwear to hide.

Nursing entry

2006-05-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

If you don't want to read about nursing or John's potty ability, please skip this entry entirely!

John is pretty good at using the bathroom, despite our dismal attempt at elimination communication when he was young. We half-tried for about three weeks, but John didn't like being naked - our house is really drafty, which might account for that! He was much more comfortable and happy wrapped in layers of clothes. Besides taking him when I go, he signals to use the toilet a few times each day. He often signs during dinner, but those mean something more like, "I'm done eating and want to go play with my bathroom toys." However, if he isn't in his high chair when he signs, it usually means he really does have to go. Today, while making lunch, I heard a grunt. Dan took John to the bathroom and John went. We're "catching" about 90% of #2s (which we have a lot of due to our very-high fiber family diet) and about 20% of #1s. I'm encouraged about the #2 catches due to horror stories I've heard about toddlers having a hard time learning to control #2s. John also squats down to go #2, so I think he'll have a reasonable time transitioning to a potty chair.

If you don't want to read about nursing, please skip the rest of this entry!

I read the synopsis of this book a few minutes ago and found the last "law", that babies outgrow breastfeeding, particularly appropriate right now.

John expects to nurse every morning, but goes down for naps and night time without nursing. He only nursed twice yesterday, and the second time was because I offered it to him. (Granted, the day before he nursed six times for a total of about 3 hours, but he also didn't nap well and nursed for about 1.5 hours before bedtime.) More and more frequently I realize that he has only nursed a few times each day. If Dan is home, he'll nurse for about three minutes before wondering where Daddy is. He loves climbing and would rather climb up the stairs or climb on and off of the bed or couch instead of nursing. At twelve months and no solids, it felt like nursing would never end. Now, I can't believe it is tapering off so sharply.

Pillows

2006-05-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

Noting that John frequently lays down on a pillow or stuffed animal for part (1) of above, I started wondering when I can give him his own pillow in his crib. Anyone know?

Body language

2006-05-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

Remember movies where a kid has chocolate smeared all over his face but can't figure out how his mom knew that he ate the chocolate chips cookies?

John is just like that when he goes to sleep. He has a "Big 3" of body language that he does as he gets tired (in this order, too, like clock work, for naps and bedtime).

1) Kneels down, puts head on the ground and rear end in the air.
2) I pick him up and he puts his head on my shoulder and starts patting my back.
3) He picks up his head from his shoulder and rubs his eyes.

With these three accomplished, I know he's exhausted, so I say, "Nap-nap time, John," which makes him start to cry. I put him in his crib and he cries for a few minutes and then he's out for 1-3 hours and wakes up, once again his normal teaser-baby self.

(My parents say John is a teaser baby because no other babies are as happy as he is.)

Pizza success!

2006-05-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

Craving good pizza Saturday afternoon, I went to the web and found the secret of good pizza at home:

Prebake the crust for 10 minutes before putting toppings on!

I make a pineapple-onion-pepper pizza this way to take to potluck on Sunday night and everyone loved it! Now I won't be tempted to buy premade pizzas anymore.

The crust was thin and crispy, just as it should be.

Laundry and lists

2006-05-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm only doing laundry three days a week now (when my neighbor bought the new machine she asked me to not use it every day) yet it seems like I am doing more laundry than ever! To stay on top of things, I need to do seven loads of laundry a week. I only wash 15 diapers at a time because my neighbor is worried about the machine being overloaded, so I need to do three loads a week. (That number is decreasing with John's increased use of the potty - notice that a decrease of two diapers a day equals one less load each week!) I wash sheets once a week, bath towels every other week, and kitchen towels every other week. That leaves two loads for clothing, which is reasonable unless we decide to go out for ice cream.

When I was doing wash Monday to Friday, if I put in an extra load on a day when I washed diapers, I felt like I was getting ahead. Now, I need to do three loads of wash on two of the days to not go crazy on Friday.

Two weeks ago, a friend gave us a ton of clothing for John - about six loads worth. What a blessing! Unfortunately, John is allergic to their laundry detergent. That brings up the laundry over two weeks from 14 loads on six laundry days to twenty loads on five laundry days (I'm going to go to the zoo on Friday). Both on Monday and today I did four loads!

I've started writing to-do lists each night with my difficult tasks for the day. This is day three and I'm on track to finish today's tasks. I've been breaking up difficult tasks into pieces; for example, I'm cleaning and organizing the disaster of a dining room this week. Each day I wrote to spend twenty minutes on the dining room and associated stuff. Miraculously, I am almost finished. Why did I procrastinate for four months on a task that in reality would take little over an hour and greatly improve my life???

More to come on lists and how using them is changing my life in the coming weeks...

Do what I do...

2006-05-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

Dan and I both read. A lot. (Others are addicted to soaps, I battle book addiction.) So John likes to "read" and frequently sits down with whatever book he can find: "I can Count!" or, at a friends house, the teen novel, "Al Capone does my Laundry", or maybe "Advanced Statistics." As long as it has two covers and pages between them, he's happy, pictures or no.

Our neighbor (who has 4-month old twins who were born 9 weeks early and is therefore ALWAYS home) has a huge television which is always on. When we visit, she leaves it on for background noise, I guess, but John doesn't really know what to do with it. We don't have a TV, and if we watch a movie, it is on a tiny computer screen. He isn't mesmerized by the screen but is curious about the new machine. Last time he hit it before I could get to him. (Last time was a hard visit: he wanted to touch the babies, hit the television, and play with the cell phone and remote control.)

Sometimes I'd like to kick a TV, too, but I haven't told him that.

More than you want to know about John's pee Part II

2006-04-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I started signing "Bathroom" each time we went there. The sign, the way I do it, involves putting your thumb between your pointer and middle fingers while holding your hand in a fist and moving your hand to the right and left. Yesterday, about forty minutes after a nap, twenty minutes after lunch, and a few minutes after nursing (read: he should have been super-happy), John began fussing and wouldn't let me hold him. I looked more carefully and noticed the "Bathroom" thumb position and promptly took him. He didn't "go", but he sure had fun playing with his bathroom toys!

Today, after running some errands, John did the same thing (slight fussiness, hand in the "Bathroom" position), but this time his diaper was dry and he went within 5 seconds of being put in the tub.

"By George, I think he's got it!" Sort of, at least.

Warning: More about John's pee than you want to know

2006-04-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

(Title copied from Amy.)

On Monday, I decided to start changing John's diaper in the bathroom instead of on his changing table. It seemed like a good first step in connecting the bathroom with the bodily functions which our society expects to happen therein.

Well, it appears John has already made that connection. Out of the first seven changes in the bathroom over a course of two and a half days, he went #1 or #2 within thirty seconds of me taking off his diaper during all seven of them. By the fourth time, I began to believe this behavior was statistically significant, since he normally doesn't "go" between diaper changes, so Wednesday afternoon I bought six more pairs of training underwear.

We've established a sort of routine: I take him to the bathroom with me whenever I need to go (which is frequent, being a pregnant nursing mamma) and about 20 minutes after a meal. If we're going to go out, I put a diaper on him. He isn't comfortable sitting on the potty seat yet, so I just stand him in the bathtub and wash it out afterwards.

Today, we had two wet diapers (last night's diaper and a diaper we had him in for an outing), a wet pair of training pants, and a dry pair that had stayed dry for a 5.5 hour time period which included two mini naps! Since trainers are so much smaller than diapers, this is equivalent to cutting my laundry to a third compared with a regular day!

Will it keep going? I hope so! With the weather warming up (though today it was 45 degrees!) I won't be needing to put layers on him, making the bathroom trips easier than before. I try to make bathroom time fun since diaper changes were generally quite fun, involving singing, dancing, tickling, rhyming, and kisses. We have bathroom only toys and I always sit in there with him. Now that I've established a routine (unlike Thursday when I was just figuring this out and made many many trips to the bathroom) it doesn't really take any more time than diapering would.

Bad Science

2006-04-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've been correcting a lot of bad science recently.

Bad Science 1: A friend was worried her husband would get more cavities because he had replaced his frequent Cokes with Kool Aid. She thought Kool Aid was more sugary and worse for his teeth. In reality, the carbonic acid in soda works together with the sugar to cause tooth decay. Additionally, Coke is just as sweet, but the carbonation makes it taste less so. Coke ranks around 2.2 in pH.

Bad Science 2: "I only swim in shallow areas because they are cold and sharks like warm water." I think this girl has lived in both New Jersey and California and thinks that the top layer of water "blankets" the lower water to keep it warm.

Another friend thought a 2-liter soda was the same size as a gallon of milk. I guess it is packaged in a way that makes it look bigger...

First appointment

2006-04-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

John and I went to the first appointment with the midwife this morning. The appointment started about 10 minutes late and mainly consisted of talking about John's birth and my family health history. She ordered a few blood tests, including iron when I mentioned that I feel like I've been doing olympic weight lifting if I am not vigilant about protein consumption for a day. The tests will be done at Princeton's health center which waives the lab costs for people on the student plan. We heard the baby's heart beat which was wonderful, although I think it disturbed John when he saw me sitting on the exam table. He began yelling but refused to be held (I think he wanted to be the one using the doppler). At the end of the exam the midwives suggested a book for me to read from their library so I checked it out.

All the midwives were wearing skirts today! (There were three of them there - one of the main midwives and two students who will be having babies this summer and who will be on maternity when this little one is born.)

On the way home, we stopped at a farm and bought about 10 pounds of grassfed beef, which should last us a while. We also bought some eggs, which happened to have been laid the previous day by the chickens I drove by on the dirt road.

Into the mouth everything goes

2006-04-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

John started putting everything in his mouth this week. Before now, he stuck to blocks so I let him play in the pantry and with some miniature ducks my mom had. I became lax and there are little things all over the house.

Yesterday, in the pantry, he started yelping and I found him with a socket cover stuck in his mouth!!! Today, as I was washing dishes, I saw the hand go to the mouth and bobbed down to find a NAIL in his mouth!!!

Goal for today, tomorrow, next week: Get the floor spotless! Argh!

A week of firsts

2006-04-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

Following yesterday's first pair of shoes, I gave John his first hair cut today.

A few too many people told me what a beautiful little girl I had (while he was in navy blue and sitting in a navy blue stroller!) so I got out the shears. I've cut hair since I first gave Jane a haircut my freshman year at Caltech and I estimate I've done over 100 haircuts. At Tech, I saw it as a public service - the guys needed haircuts and some hairdos was painful to look at. Now, I just cut Dan's (and now John's) hair. Unfortunately, John started trying to grab the scissors as time went on, so I'll have some touchup to do on his hairdo tonight when Dan gets home and can entertain him. On the bright side, John didn't seem to mind at all. I think he spent the whole time playing with a socket cover that the handyman had taken out of a socket this morning.

I've read about nursers being broken into three categories:
1) Weight falls off immediately
2) Very little change for 8-12 months and then it falls off
3) No weight loss until nursing ends.

With John, I was in (2), but since I hit the 9 month mark, I've been getting skinnier and skinnier. As of January, everything pre-pregnancy fit again, but, according to my Target scale, I was still heavier than pre-pregnancy. Dan was also at his highest weight since our marriage. While in CA, however, I tried my parents scale (which was much more expensive and has been checked against their doctor's!) and magically "dropped" 15 pounds to a number which seemed to make a lot more sense!

I'm starting to count protein grams and cups of milk, but clothing seems to be getting looser everywhere except at the belly, where buttons no longer shut. But, then again, I didn't gain any weight during John's first trimester and more than made up for that by the end!

2006-04-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

What happens when you dream about making marmalade on Monday night and find organic oranges for $0.50/lb on Tuesday? You make marmalade! And candied oranges! And everything else involving oranges you can possibly think of!

I broke down and bought John a pair of shoes today. I have great shoes in sizes 5-1/2 and up, but John is currently in 4-1/2 and doubling his walking distance every day. Ouch. Shoes are expensive. In New Jersey, clothing isn't taxed, but shoes designed for crawlers (I couldn't believe such a thing existed!) are taxed! I guess they are accessories, not clothing!1

2006-04-08T18:14:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed if you’ve read my blog for any period of time, I tend to blog about upbeat and trivial things. For me, an internet diary isn’t a place to share intimate emotions. I don’t think sharing deep emotions online is necessarily bad, I just don’t have the writing skills to make my emotions appear as serious at they really are.

Today I’ll take a break from that format and write about something that really matters.

I was about to start this log by writing that today was a day of giggling, which it was. John and I had a splendid time today with lots of stacking blocks, balancing toys on mommy’s head, and playing chase around that house. He got more than his fair share of bloopers (this is our family name for blowing on someone’s skin) and we just generally had a good time. It was a day of giggles.

Now that John is asleep, though, it is a day of tears. My grandmother, whom I called “Gram”, died about three weeks ago. At the time, I was in California. I was able to see her the day before she died, but she couldn’t see me. Today was her memorial service.

I think few people are blessed with such close relationships with a grandmother as I had with Gram. My family lived with them for a few months (when I was three) until my parents were able to find a house about 1.5 miles away to move to. She taught my sister and me how to bake from an early age, including us in all the holiday baking rituals and building up recipe boxes of family recipes for each of us. We often stopped by during weekday evenings for ice cream. During the summer, there was always my favorite kind of iced tea in the fridge (mostly Lipton’s Black but with a token raspberry tea bag). She volunteered with a charity league that ran a costume rental and brought home rejected costumes. Her house was a dress-up playing paradise!

She was the bookkeeper for the family furniture business, which employed about thirty people when I was in high school, and in ninth grade I began working for her every Saturday as her assistant. At the beginning, she always drove me, but after I got my permit, she let me practice driving if the weather was good. She often told people that I was the reason she was able to retire.

Dan lived with my grandparents for one summer while we were dating. We spent many Sunday afternoons that summer enjoying my grandfather’s soups and open-faced sandwiches for lunch. My parents also entertained at their house nearly every Tuesday evening that summer, weaving my grandparents into many of their friendships.

There are so many more things I did with her that were special, like holiday outings, or special because they were so normal to me, like coring apples to dry, but I'll reflect on those on my own.

Although there are many things I admire about Gram (and my grandfather), I think their ability to make and retain friends is remarkable. Gram was a founding member in a bridge club that still meets today, 55 years later, and a supper club of the same age.

Gram’s grandmother never took off her wedding ring. Gram followed her tradition, getting a plain white gold band that she never took off. I too have a white gold wedding band, for the same reason.

Snow!

2006-04-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

It is snowing today and it is beautiful! It is wonderful to be inside!

We went to a used book sale today and picked up a box of books for $5! The sale was through the Seminary so many academic libraries had been emptied for it. I focused on cook books, children's books, and education books. I bought a book my MIL recommended on family customs and the La Leche League book in addition to an Indian cookbook and an Italian cookbook. Today was the last day of the sale and it was basically a free-for-all, so there wasn't much time to look at books before buying. If we only like half the books, we'll still have gotten a great deal.

Our new faucet has been installed and is wonderful and has a better design than the old faucet! It would have been a great improvement even if the old faucet had been working perfectly. What a blessing.

2006-04-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

It is so easy to think whatever problems you have are the most annoying ones there are! If your washer is broken and you cloth diaper you think that is the worst thing ever. If your faucet starts leaking because the pipe gets a hole in it, and it makes your kitchen stink while you are pregnant, you (I) decide that is probably the worst kitchen problem there could be. If there are piles of rotting leaves in your yard on Friday and rain predicted for Saturday, well, there seem to be few yard problems more annoying.

Sin is so easy, isn't it? Pitying myself and imagining that my "needs" should be foremost in everyone's minds comes naturally. I complain about the rotting leaves in my yard instead of visiting my homebound neighbor. I angrily and bitterly mop up the pool behind the sink while snapping at the handyman (who doesn't even know about the problem) instead of praying for his sanctification since he confesses the same Lord I confess.

The story ends better. I confessed my anger, not loving my neighbor, considering myself higher than others, and prayed for resolution and contentment. Dan helped me clean up the leaves on Saturday and take them to the curb for pickup. Our neighbors paid for a new washing machine and refused to let us pay for any of it. I told the handyman about the broken faucet today and he said he would buy a new one at Lowe's tonight.

The roof still leaks, but the hole in my joy has been fixed.

2006-03-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

I finished my cake decorating class tonight. I enjoyed meeting new people and learning new techniques but won't take another class until the smell of sugar doesn't disgust me anymore. ICK! I was worried that taking the class would lead to excessive snacking, but it has led to the opposite - it has led to disliking cake and things associated with it. I used seedless raspberry jam for my cake filling and even that tasted gross to me when I tried some on a piece of toast.

The weather here has been beautiful and I've gone walking three times this week, each day seeing a few of the mammas I've met in the neighborhood. The trees aren't blooming, but the the grass is tufting and the first yard pickup day of the year is just around the corner! This is my favorite time of the year in New Jersey.

2006-03-29T14:09:00.000-08:00

I've been online a lot recently. Today it is to deal with some credit card fraud (argh) but mostly it has been at night while unable to sleep. I don't think the fraud and not sleeping are related, but now that I see them together in writing I think there could be a connection.

I'm eight and a half weeks along today (and expecting this little one to join us by early November) and haven't slept well in four nights, though John consistently sleeps through the night now. (If he can't have orderly naps, at least he can have orderly nights). Everything seems exactly like last time so far - no sickness and a bit of tiredness but nothing extreme. I'm taking a cake decorating class and the smell of frosting is a bit gross to me, but at least that means I don't have any desire to eat the cake afterwards :-).

I'm thinking about changing midwives this time, so that's what is on my mind now that I'm home from CA. We talked with one yesterday who is super-experienced (she's been at over 1000 births) but who is a bit of a 1970s-style "free-spirit". We're sorting through what criteria to use in evaluation. She teaches in local midwifery programs and trained some of the midwives in the group I went to last time. She practices with a second midwife (who wasn't there yesterday) who seems, from her background, to be a little more "normal".

2006-03-29T01:46:00.000-08:00

If I remember correctly, last time, insomnia didn't start until the third trimester...

Random

2006-03-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

John and I have been back from CA for four full days now. He's back in cloth (so nice - he had been in paper for a few weeks before our trip because the washer broke and it took a while to figure out whose responsibility it was to pay for a new one), but he is quite exhausted so I'm exhausted, too. Now it is time for the hard work of getting him to sleep again - I think he's dropped from an average of 14 hours of sleep per day to 10, which makes for a grouchy baby (and frustrated mama). He's moved his bedtime from 7 pm to 9:30 pm (we're working on moving it back) so I don't have those quiet evening hours to do taxes. Argh.

We figured out how to eat mango a few weeks ago and have been feasting on it since. Tonight we'll be having black bean cakes with mango-ginger salsa and green salad. John eats everything right now and appears to be angry if he is given different food than what Dan and I are eating. The other day, he even ate an onion-tomato quiche with me for lunch.

Dan has posted some new photos of John on his dotPhoto account; check out Dan's website for the link or e-mail me if you need it.

2006-03-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

John and I are at my parents' house in California currently and John has connected my parents' "Bonzai Panther" with the word "cat" and says, "ATTT! ATTT! ATTT!" while ruthlessly chasing the cat around the house and up the stairs. The cat has kindly allowed John to pet him three times.

2006-03-17T20:59:00.001-08:00

2006-03-17T20:59:00.000-08:00

John signed "milk" tonight!

2006-03-10T05:20:00.000-08:00

The weather here is beautiful and springlike. Due to some dark clouds, I put off walking until 3 pm yesterday. What a blessing! It turns out most mammas go walking at 3 pm and not at 9 am (my normal time). I met five mammas, got invited to a play group today, and was invited into one woman's home to sit and talk for a few minutes yesterday while her 7-year-old daughter doted on John. What a blessing those dark clouds were!

2006-03-06T05:21:00.000-08:00

I worried that giving John a Flourless Chocolate Cake for his birthday cake (ingredients: butter, eggs, chocolate) might spoil his appetite for other foods, especially since he wasn't really eating much at that point. However, it seems to have been the turning point which convinced him that eating food is worth the hassle.

I took my first Wilton I cake decorating class last Friday night. It is at Michaels and there are only three students. :-)