Going to CA

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

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.

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

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...

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

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.”