Fab Three

Moving on...

2006-01-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

...from this blog to another. E-mail me or leave a comment if you'd like to know where it is!

2006-01-07T23:33:00.000-05:00

Upgrade last post's "mild cold" to "severe cold and tummy bug." Ugh. It seems to be improving and John somehow skipped the crankiness that normally accompanies illness. Once his slight fever subsided, he seemed perfectly happy to lose his milk then crawl away and play with a book while I cleaned up the mess. I've done a bunch of laundry today and he seems to be holding things down again, so the healthy baby is back besides, still, a mild cold.

We got John's band off for good on Friday. He looks great and has somehow managed to avoid banging his head despite the bad habits he gained while "banded." While in the baby swing (which he's too big for) during supper, he stuck his head between the side bars as he frequently does to stop, but he wasn't going fast enough to get hurt. Yesterday night he demonstrated grabbing the bars to stop, so there may be some hope for him even when he's going fast.

I've been practicing guitar this week and my hands *hurt*. However, I think I've gotten much better. A light went on and I realized that changing chords is much easier if I don't watch my hands. As I've developed that habit, my chord changing speed has increased greatly.

We're off to AAS tomorrow night. Maybe we'll meet up with some of you there!

Back in out of the rain

2006-01-05T21:09:00.000-05:00

We go to California and get wet! How crazy is that???

We ended up skipping the Rose Parade due to the torrential rain. (Well, it seemed torrential.) Sandra Day O'Connor was the Grand Marshall. The last time a Supreme Court Justice was Grand Marshall was in 1955 when it was Earl Warren. That was also the last time it rained on the parade. Coincidence? You decide.

We drove from Pasadena to the Bay Area on the afternoon of the 2nd, driving through tumble-weed storms (Dan took a great picture of a car-sized tumble-weed crossing I-5. Don't they know to look both ways?), heavy rain, and very strong winds (we even saw a trailer that had blown over). John was pretty calm in the car; I was pretty distraught.

John cut his eighth tooth and looks so grown up! He's still a cruiser and I know it is time for bed when he falls over while pulling himself up. He loves nursing (and I'm glad of that!). John just got his first cold. How many parents can say that their child's first illness is a mild cold at 10.5 months? Does nursing boost the mother's immune system, too? Before John was born, I remember getting sick more frequently than I do now. Dan's had two colds since John was born, both of which I've also had, but they lasted about five days each for Dan and only one day each for me.

Beth and I taught ourselves to make Pearl Milk Tea while in CA, but Dan doesn't like the pearls. It's basically really sweet tea with a lot of milk. IMO, the pearls make drinking the tea a lot more fun.

My favorite present was a sourdough cutting board and bread knife from Beth. The knife's design makes it really easy to cut the bread straight and the cutting board has grooves so that the crumbs don't spill all over your kitchen table. Thanks, Beth!

Have you ever milled your own grains? What did you think? Have you sprouted grains? So many things to try...

Going to CA

2005-12-23T12:02:00.000-05:00

We're off to CA for Christmas. If you're going to be in Pasadena around the 1st/2nd, we're planning to go to Trinity for church and then to lunch afterwards. You could also help stake out a seat on Colorado! We'd love to see anyone who is there!

Fridge cleaning

2005-12-20T20:14:00.000-05:00

We're going to CA on Sunday so the fridge needs to be cleaned out - and I need to control myself and not buy any pretty new fruits and vegetables this week.

This morning, I started working on the mango. (I bought it after getting a short lesson on fruit enzymes. I also bought a pineapple, but that was easy to finish.)

Tonight, I made the Hot and Sour Soup from Jan 2006's Cook's Illustrated magazine with two pieces of chicken (I left out the tofu) and kale-onion pot stickers to go with them on the side. I'd made pork dumplings in the past, which of course earned rave reviews from my "21 Reasons I'm not a Vegetarian" hubby, but these were received reasonably well considering that the main ingredient was kale. The Hot and Sour Soup was great, especially since I usually don't order that in Chinese restaurants because it is frequently packed with MSG. The only time I've gotten and MSG reaction (and quite a bad one at that - the people I was with called Poison Control) was from Hot and Sour Soup, so having a certifiably MSG-free soup at home was nice.

Indoctrination

2005-12-19T08:28:00.000-05:00

I read Laura's post about baby propoganda on Saturday before heading to Dan's Astrophysical Sciences Winter Solstice Party. (Yeah, it really is called that.)

One of the very senior researchers in Dan's department reminds me of someone from Caltech. He wears his hair to his waist and never wears shoes. Well, I did see him in shoes once - in flip flops during a snow storm. This is Princeton, home of the preppies, though, and quite cold at times, so its pretty strange.

He decided to try to indoctrinate John on Saturday night. At first, whenever he saw John, he said, "Bessel function" with the justification that it'd be pretty neat if a child's first words were that. Then he changed to "Half a tooth fairy." (A "tooth fairy" is an unjustified assumption made by a scientist.) By the end of the night, he was alternating between "Bessel function" and "J-zero."

He told us, "Neither of my daughters said 'Bessel Function' as their first words, but you two are *both* scientists, so there's some hope for you."

Outdoors and marketing

2005-12-16T17:54:00.000-05:00

The snow melted (for a few days, at least) and we went outside on a walk! Woo hoo! It feels so much better to be outside at some point during the day.

Christmas cards are starting to arrive and it is a lot of fun to hear about how friends are doing. One friend sent a photo-collage that was about 3x5 of her wedding and honeymoon - what a fun way to see a lot of photos when you can't be there. (She doesn't know about this blog, so it is alright to say that I'm glad she sent it because I'd lost her address and now I'll be able to sent that birthday card to her that the postman returned as undeliverable - *blush* - about two months ago.)

I picked up some exotic cheeses and four beautiful candles at the Amish Market yesterday. I like the Amish market - it is only open Thursday through Saturday but is setup like a mini-mall (indoors). There is the diary, a smoked-meat butcher, a pork/beef butcher, a poultry butcher, a bakery, a produce stand, some furniture, and a pickled-foods stand. The pickled foods stand is interesting but I haven't bought anything from it yet. Ever heard of pickled kielbasa?!? I tried it yesterday and it was delicious but then I thought about what all is in it... As long as I drive and don't farm, I don't think I can eat like the Amish, though I'm seriously thinking of buying a rabbit for a special Christmas supper.

Ten months

2005-12-14T15:10:00.000-05:00

John is ten months old today and I am extremely proud of him.

We went to physical therapy as usual this morning, and a four-year-old girl was using a swing of sorts. It is a long bench, attached to the ceiling by two ropes at each end. Sitting at the end, between the ropes, it is just like a swing except that the bench continues on behind you. The therapist decided to let John sit on the swing in order to distract him while she manipulated his neck. So far, normal.

John grasped onto the ropes and Cindi (our therapist) started giving him pushes on the swing. At first, she cautiously kept her hands near him, but he showed no signs of falling, so she continued pushing and he did great. He alternated taking hands off the rope on each side and then started squirming. She slowed down the swing, interpreting the squirming as a desire to get off but he instead stood up, holding onto the ropes, and she let him swing, standing up, for another ten minutes. I guess we'll be skipping the kiddy swings at the park next summer.

Wow! Some of the big kids at therapy get scared of standing up on the swing. If I hadn't given birth, I'd wonder if this guy was related to me!

John has seven teeth and loves saying da-da-da. He says many other syllables, but that is clearly his favorite. In the past few days, his speaking has become much more inflected, such that it sounds like normal conversation and not just syllables. He plays with stars, broccoli pieces, and bananas if I put them on his tray, but he doesn't actually want to eat them. He continues to nurse a lot but we're both happier now that he's sleeping more. He is becoming deliberate about taking things off of shelves now and I'm beginning to wonder whether I ought to begin teaching that things can also go back onto shelves.

What do people in cold climates without gym memberships do for exercize?

What a difference 3 degrees makes...

2005-12-13T21:32:00.000-05:00

To say John hasn’t been sleeping well lately is a bit of an understatement.

He’s been sleeping terribly. Therefore, I’ve been sleeping terribly.

He had decreased his average amount of sleep per day by more than 4 hours and was waking up at night at 1, 3, and 5 (5:30 if I was lucky!). I put him in our bed and he’d wake up more frequently, full of milk yet unhappy. He went from three naps to one, and a short one at that. He started getting anxious if I left the room and people stopped making comments about how I had the most well tempered baby they ever met.

Then, Saturday night, I said, “I can’t take this any more!” I read a pep talk about mothering and I turned up the thermostat by 3 degrees. We don’t even pay for heat, but I feel like I shouldn’t be wasteful, so I was keeping the thermostat at a temperature were I would be comfortable in a sweater. Maybe John wasn't quite so comfortable despite all his layers and footed pajamas.

Now, John is sleeping well again. (Too well, some might say. He’s consistently sleeping through the night... by “consistently” I mean three nights in a row.) He is taking a two hour nap as well as two forty-five minute naps. He follows me around the house instead of crying when I leave the room.

I think the extra heat is worth it.

Richard Scarry updates

2005-12-12T10:27:00.000-05:00

I grew up reading Richard Scarry books, as did Dan, and as will John. We enjoy "The Bunny Book" - which isn't the one I find when I search on Google but a different one!

Some of his books have changed, though. One person documented the changes in his "Best Word Book Ever".

The world, in my opinion, is a much less interesting place when men cannot be heros and women cannot be pretty.

Three for Gub'ner

2005-12-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

We (Dan, John, and I) visited Drumtwacket, the New Jersey Governor’s Mansion that is located just outside of Princeton, about four miles from where we live, this week. Garden clubs from around the state had each decorated one room on the ground floor. Our favorite room was the dining room, which was designed to look like a 19th century dinner party complete with place tags for people who had likely dined with the first owner. We also learned about New Jersey inventors and were told that the last private owner of the home had invented Latex.

John likes to pump in his baby swing. I don’t think the swing had batteries when we were given it, but if it did, I know I never replaced them! The swing is in our dining room and is a handy place for John to sit when we dine in there instead of in the kitchen. John pumps very well and sometimes gets going high enough to cause me and Dan to be somewhat nervous.

Unfortunately, John has developed a bizarre way of slowing down. Since he currently wears a band on his head and can’t feel any head impact, he simply places his head between the side bars and lets them bang his head to slow himself down.

He’s going to have a rude awakening when the band comes off for good!

Let it snow, let it snow...

2005-12-09T15:26:00.000-05:00

But now when I'm on the road getting groceries so I can make cheesecake for Dan's 25th birthday!

When I spent an exchange year in Germany (in Saxony, where it got quite cold), my host family taught me to turn off the heater in the morning and to open my window. This way, the whole house aired out every day. When I came home from school in the afternoon, I went upstairs, closed my window and turned on the heat in my room then ran back downstairs to sit in the kitchen while my room warmed up. Since them, I've been very sensitive to what Germans call "bad air" and have kept up the habit.

Speaking of Germany, I bought some kohlrabi at the grocery store the other day. It was something which we ate all the time with my host family in Germany but which I hadn't eaten in the United States until four days ago. I can't remember how it was prepared when I lived in Germany, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to have them.

And for one last bit of nostalgia - I have my a bunch of Stollen recipes and hope to make one of them next week...

No Rauchermaenner are up in our home, though - I forget to pack them when we moved to New Jersey.

2005-12-06T09:38:00.000-05:00

John pulled himself to standing and cruised a few steps yesterday on Dan’s computer tower in his office. He’s racing around the house crawling. The topology of our house makes this very fun because a complete circle is possible by going through the hallway to the bedroom and to the living room and back into the hallway again.

Unfortunately, the kitchen is currently off-limits because of a chicken waste spill that happened right before we needed to leave for a potluck. I have not yet decontaminated the whole kitchen. Since things were already bad, I decided to clean the whole kitchen... now you can barely walk in it. I’ve purged the fridge of spoiled leftovers and am clean its interior. Somehow, mountains of dishes have accumulated (I think that is what happens when your sink gets full - you can’t clean anything and then it all piles up) so I’m running the dishwasher currently. I hope to finish this episode by tomorrow afternoon.

To motivate myself, I’ve been setting the timer when I go into the kitchen.

“OK - Emily, you don’t need to be intimidated. Just clean for 15 minutes and you’re free to do something else.”

If I felt like I had to finish the task when I went into the kitchen, I’d never go in! But usually, after my 15 minutes are through, I set the timer again for five or ten more minutes and clean happily away. One thing making this task especially hard is that I can't really do dishes when John is sleeping because the dishes noise wakes him up.

Unfortunately, Dan and I decided to work on a hard Sudoku last night after my first cleaning session... I never got to a second one!

My Dad

2005-12-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

Now that I’m a mom, I realize how commonly people make comments, which imply that a child is a bother. I'm glad my parents didn't do that!

When I was in high school, we were in the middle of a four-week cross-country drive when my father flew to join us because he couldn’t take four weeks off of work.

While in Chicago, we happened to meet a group of frat boys who were taking the entire summer to bicycle across the country. My dad started talking with one of the (very buff - they’d started in San Francisco!) young men. My father used to bicycle a lot, and expressed some envy, saying, “I wanted to bicycle across the country, but when you have a family, you can’t take six weeks off of work.”

He paused a moment, before continuing. “Now, with my wife and children, I can have six weeks worth of fun in two weeks!”

I knew I was weird, but...

2005-12-02T15:31:00.000-05:00

PBS has a website you can use to determine how common your surname is in America. I searched for my married name, my maiden name, my mother’s maiden name, and my mother-in-law’s maiden name. Not one of theses made the top 55,000 most common American surnames!

I guess we’re a weird bunch.

The other option would be that our ancestors were creative spellers and that most other people with their surnames spelled them differently when they arrived. Take your pick.

In craft news, I packed away a lot of yarn that I’d picked up from garage sales this past season. Now that I have sufficient wool covers (and felted wool sweaters) to cover diapers until John gains another five or more pounds, I’ve lost interest in knitting. I didn’t realize how much yarn I had until I packed it up - sigh - it really does pay to be organized.

Garlic Ginger Butternut Squash Soup

2005-12-01T22:17:00.000-05:00

I made Garlic-Ginger Butternut Squash Soup today because Dan has a cold and it turned out great. We ate it for supper with whole wheat bagels and cheese.

Here’s the recipe:

2 TBSP butter
1 large onion, minced
5 large cloves garlic, pressed
2” piece of ginger, cut into small pieces
1 large butternut squash, cut into 1” pieces, discarding skins and seeds
5 cups chicken stock

Melt butter in large soup pot. Add onion, garlic, and ginger and cook over low heat for about 25 minutes, stirring every five minutes.

When onion, garlic and ginger are soft, add squash and stock. Bring to boil and cook 20 more minutes.

Stir heartily (to break up squash more) and stir.

We ate the soup in the middle of watching “My Man Godfrey.” Upon being late for a lunch meeting, butler Godfrey apologized, “It’s hard to make bed with people still in them.”

College rivalries

2005-11-29T09:21:00.000-05:00

Dan’s cousin-in-law, who studied at MIT, gave us some hand-me-downs for John this past weekend.

Sorting through the piles of clothes, she came across a Cornell t-shirt.

“Take this! It's downright ecumenical!”

2005-11-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

My mother-in-law has a wonderful stash of magazines. She keeps issues for a number of years and I enjoy looking through her collection when I visit during the holidays. This past weekend, her stack included Country Life, Southern Living, and Better Homes and Gardens.

I copied down a dozen or so interesting recipes this time, but after reading Amy Laura Hall’s Better Homes and Children a few weeks ago, my admiration for the well-decorated “country” and “southern” homes faded. Instead of seeing well-coordinated living rooms, I saw child unfriendly environments. In place of comfortable throw pillows and impressive collections, I saw stainables and breakables. Most of all, I noticed the phrase “partner” all too often in the copy describing the owner(s) of the abode. It is no wonder that homes are not ready to receive children when child-hostile groups provide the inspiration for home decoration.

My mother-in-law, by the way, has a beautiful home which was very ready to receive my son. She is tidy (much tidier than I am!) and, besides the magazines, very few things were low to the ground. Her well-waxed wood floor ensured that John couldn’t travel far enough to get into trouble (not that he's very fast yet!) before someone caught up with him. Besides checking the plants for dropped petals every few hours, letting John explore her living room was much less work than letting him explore mine.

In the country, on the farm

2005-11-26T10:24:00.000-05:00

It is a beautiful day today. The sky is clear and blue and the sun shining in the large living room windows has warmed the floor. Sitting on the sofa, the windows provide a picturesque view of trees on the ridge. A few evergreens color the otherwise gray hillside.

The Blacksburg area is beautiful. The roads wind through working farms and mowed lawns of expansive yards. There are open fields with horses, cows, and sheep surrounded by thickly wooded forests. There are also rolling hills and steep slopes.

Being here is like being in another world. We went to breakfast at a local “hang out” today. Camo and hunter-orange were the most prevalent color schemes and we ate our greasy breakfast biscuits next to chainsaw grease and fishing flies. Two (dead) deer were in the truck bed next to our Toyota.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law parked out of sight.

Dan’s uncle asked them, “Is your car American made?”

“Yes… Why?”

“It is usually better to park foreign-made cars by the window.”

Yet another reason to breastfeed

2005-11-23T11:16:00.000-05:00

Now that John is so big, I get more and more comments like, "He still nurses?" or "What do you mean, he doesn't eat food?"

My parents are exceptionally supportive. My father reminded me that no college students nurse, and that while some babies stop at 18 months, others nurse significantly longer.

But, for other people, here's one more reason to nurse: Breastfeeding may lower mother's risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

Back from John's therapist

2005-11-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

John had his ninth physical therapy session today and he is bushed.

We started going for his neck (torticollis - “wryneck”) in September but it seems that neck problems are far reaching, so the therapist has worked with him on crawling and related skills, also. I think the connection is that as you crawl, the shoulder muscles get stronger and that helps the neck. The other connection is that a baby would go crazy if only its neck were stretched for an hour. Also, I would go crazy if I had to pay a co-pay of $10 for fifteen minutes of neck stretches. So, we see the physical therapist for an hour each week.

I thought that John’s exit milestone was crawling, which he mastered last Monday afternoon. Apparently not, however, because today the therapist worked with him on crawling up stairs. Note: John now not only likes crawling up stairs, but he also thinks falling off the side of the staircase is fun. I guess it is Mommy’s job to teach John that falling is scary. It wouldn’t be good for other patients to see one patient in the therapy room howling while he was learning that falling off the stairs could hurt.

I like the therapy room. It is bright with large, opaque windows all around, and with blue and red mats. Ropes hang from the ceiling to which inventive therapists hang “boats” for patients to use to catch velcro fish. Huge balls and wedges and steps of every primary color line the perimeter of the room. The therapists have many toys which light up and talk, but I am proud of my son when he grabs for the stacking cups instead of the talking Elmo steering wheel. I am even more proud of my son when he climbs up the stairs to smile, one by one, at everyone who walks through the room, unaware of the steering wheel telling him driving is fun and instead delighting the other patients.

We going to visit Dan’s parents this weekend. They live in a split-level house, so I’ll be running after John instead of posting.

I’m feeling crafty

2005-11-22T09:46:00.000-05:00

I’m exceptionally good at starting craft projects.

I’m quite bad at finishing them.

I’m working on getting better!

Current works (in order of importance to me):

1. Jean quilt started September 2004: I have all the squares cut out and am edge-stitching each square so that the they will not fray in the wash. I hope to finish the edge stitching by early December and start piecing the quilt by early next year. It will be twin bed sized for the bed in John’s room. Since jeans are so heavy, it is common not to use any batting but instead to have a thick backing of either flannel or fleece. I’m leaning towards flannel - opinions?

2. Butt-sweater longies started November 2005: I had a number of wool sweaters from garage sales and a wool dress that no longer met my standard for modesty, so I felted them in the wash and am working on making them into longies and soakers. Do longies work all right for crawlers? I don’t think John will be a crawler for very long, but it would be a shame to have a pair of longies ruined quickly. However, since the cost per pair will be about $2 and an hour of sewing, I don’t really care. I’ll probably use the longies for pajamas, which will minimize the wear and tear while keeping John warm, and well diapered.

3. T-Shirt Quilt started October 2005: Amy, along with a pile of can’t-dispose-of-but-can’t-wear-either t-shirts inspired me to start this project. So far, I’ve only reduced the size of the pile (by cutting away the useless parts of the t-shirts). I don’t plan to work on this again until the jean quilt is finished.

4+. Needlepoint tablecloths started 1997: These kits were given as a present while I was an exchange student after I finished needle pointing (is that a verb?) another tablecloth my host-grandmother had started over a decade beforehand while on vacation in a foreign. She had lost interest in the project and never finished it. Guess I’m just continuing the tradition!

Pictures to come... the batteries to our digital camera are currently in Dan’s bike lights.

Nifty baby-wearers

2005-11-21T12:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't become a baby-wearing addict by any means. I think I have the most content son *ever* and, since he's totally happy playing on the floor with blocks by himself for two hours, I don't feel like a negligent parent when I let him play on the floor of the room I'm in while working around the house. However, I think it is good in principle and will probably wear John's siblings around (even if they are content - to protect them from big brother).

Today, at Princeton Mommy's group, a set of very old Chinese grandparents wore their maybe seven month old twins to baby group (couldn't figure out the exact ages - the grandparents spoke not one word of English). It is getting cold here, so the baby carriers were doubled up blankets (maybe 2.5'x4') with one long (5'?) strap from either end of the to short side. The grandmother had no problem with the back carry, but the grandfather needed some help and didn't look quite as comfortable. The hefty blankets making up the carrier seemed to make a lot of sense for late fall and early winter.

OK - I do live in New Jersey, so it is rare to even see a sling here, so seeing these in action was neat!

Leaves, leaves, more leaves

2005-11-19T14:15:00.000-05:00

After living in places where I had no yard work to do for over five years, renting the second floor of a house on .6 acres in New Jersey has been an eye opener. We have over 18 full size trees on the property as well as probably another 10+ bushes which are over 10 feet tall. There are, of course, many smaller bushes, but I won't count those for now!

I've been raking during many of John's naps over the past few weeks and was frustrated - an hour of raking seemed to not make the least of a dent! Argh. Today, there were six people raking the yard for two hours. They didn't even touch most of the side yards, but at least the backyard isn't covered by layers and layers of leaves anymore. I'll continue raking the side yard that my kitchen window looks out on and the area of the backyard that I want John to be able to play on next summer (good grass only grows in well-raked areas). Hopefully, the mower will be fixed next summer so that I can keep down the grass in the play area (drat those fleas).

John has been nursing more recently (probably because he started to crawl! Until this week, keeping him latched on for more than 5 minutes at a time was impossible, but now he'll nurse for upwards of 20 minutes) so I picked up a book on tape from the library called, "Mother Tongue," about the development of English. If the mega-nursing spell continues for a while, I think I'll check out Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples.

I've got to put a word out for Reformed Praise's new CD, "Cross Centered Worship". David Ward is the owner of Reformed Praise and he wrote the songs on the CD; he also used to lead worship at our NJ church. He has since gone to seminary and now is a music minister in Minnesota.

I thought I'd stopped blogging, but...

2005-11-17T11:30:00.000-05:00

My mom told me about an article in the San Jose Mercury News ("Murky News", as my parents like to call it) about the increase in C-Sections. I'd told her some of the information when I was preparing for John's birth and had decided on a CNM instead of an OB, but it was nice to have a fairly mainstream newspaper address the high rate of C-Sections.

I've found a lot of mothers I know are misinformed about C's, not recogonizing it to be a major abdominal surgery and considering it an easy way to avoid the pain of labor. I can't really say much - having only had a few hours of labor, I don't think I can encourage someone who might be in labor 20+ hours!

Speaking of misinformation, I'm a bit frustrated about breastfeeding misinformation, too. I still exclusively breastfeed my 9mo son (by his choice - he doesn't seem to want food) and many moms say to me, "Oh, you're lucky you have enough milk! I don't have good milk production. I wish I could exclusively breastfeed." Most of the moms who have made such a comment had their babies sleeping 10+ hours without eating by 6-10 weeks of age! Now, I'm not dead-set against a baby sleeping through the night early, and I've had friends whose babies have done just that without a milk supply problem. However, one shouldn't teach their child to sleep through the night and then complain about lack of milk.

A second article that I want to recommend from this month's Books and Culture prompted me to start writing again! I'd love to hear people's reactions.

John is Mr. Inquisitive. He started crawling Monday and pulled himself up to standing on Tuesday!!! His favorite toy is his tool truck (complete with wrench, screwdriver, hammer, and saw). He has six teeth.