Roll On

Yay!

Raven rolled over today at daycare!  I'm so excited!  I haven't seen it myself yet... but I hope we see it before the night is gone.

erin

Five

Today Raven is five months old.

It is hard to comprehend that she has been on the earth (outside of the womb) for that long already.  So much has happened in the last five months of our lives and yet it seems like only yesterday that she entered our lives.

Raven is a laid-back baby and easy to "figure out"... she has a routine now which is a blessing.  Not that she hasn't seemed to be pretty easy going since day one...!

If you knew with Julia, you would know that we are "late" swaddlers in that we swaddle well past the intended time (usually around 3 months).  We figure, if a baby is going to sleep better swaddled (and thanks for the encouragement from our doctor!), then stick with it until it doesn't stick anymore.  Julia was swaddled till about 7 months and rolled over about one week after she was done being swaddled.  Raven can already get completely out of her swaddle, but still lets us swaddle her to put her to sleep and sleeps most of the night wrapped up.  She is pretty active on the floor during play time, but no rolling over yet.

We decided not to start Raven on rice cereal since she was fully on formula, and she seems to be doing well with the bottles.  We will start her on baby food when she turns six months; hard to believe that is in a few short weeks from now!  With Julia it was new and a novelty to feed a new baby; it will be interesting how it is to feed Raven.  I have to confess I'm not really looking forward to it.  :)

What else?  Raven loves to giggle at Julia (and they still get along well) and she has started to "talk" more too.  I still love having a baby so I don't want her to grow up too fast, but she is growing before our eyes!  I'm sure Julia might have some different feelings for her when Raven figures out how to get into her stuff.  :)

Well... I know I've been a slacker on blogging but once I get though the 450 pictures I downloaded tonight, I'm sure I'll be back at it good again!

Hugs!
erin

Sister Love is Living On

I wanted to post this picture to show how very much Julia still loves her sister.  We are experiencing some mix of 2-year-old-itis along with what-the-baby-isn't-leaving-anytime-soon-ness, but overall things are well and good in our household.  Julia increasingly wants to try and hold Raven, and I snapped this picture of them sitting together watching a Baby Einstein video; so cute!  (And so the 5 minutes of down-time Mama needed to *just breathe* for the day...)

I'm an Auntie!

Last night my sister-in-law Claire (Adam's sister) and her husband Dan welcomed their first baby, a boy!  His name is Dex Ronald.  He was born last night (Monday, January 25th) at 8:01 pm and was 8 lbs 7 oz and 20 inches long.  He is healthy and everyone is doing well.

I'm so excited to say that we will be able to visit and meet him for the first time this coming weekend... yay!  How wonderful and exciting!

Congrats to you, Dan and Claire!  Much love from your family in Iowa!

erin

Raven's 4 Month Check Up

Raven had her 4-month check up today at the clinic.

Today Raven weighed 15 lbs even (that's a 2 lb 6 oz gain) and is 25 inches (+1 inch from her 2-month) long.  She is 80% for her weight and 75% for her height.  She still has a smallish head (40%) at 16 inches, but that seems consistent with our family head size.

Otherwise, she is fine and well, minus a goopy tear duct which should eventually clear itself up (we have some salve to help when it is extra bad).

She is drinking 6 oz bottles now (she nurses about one time per day and otherwise drinks formula).  She is sleeping 8 - 10 hours a night, which is a blessing.  Last night I tried her out in the crib for the first time and she slept for about 7.5 hours straight before waking up hungry as a hibernated bear.  The doctor said today that it was up to us if we wanted to give her cereal; she doesn't need it since she is getting plenty of iron from the formula.  I think we will hold off on feeding her cereal for now; she's obviously gaining weight well enough and seriously, feeding a 4-month-old is not the most fun in the world.  Ha!

Yay, Raven!

(Pictures in the next few days, I hope...)

erin

ps.  Our doctor and his wife are due with their 5th early this summer... fun times there!

What Raven Loves Best

 

Being completely... unclothed.  :)

New Approach to Bathtime

For about a month now, Julia has taken a strong dislike to baths.  In order to keep her clean, I've been showering with her, but it's not fun for either of us and she has taken to saying, "NOOOOOO!!!!!!!" when asked if she wants to take a bath when just a few months ago, she would hike up the stairs in a hurry.

Earlier this week I decided both girls needed a bath and was not looking forward to but was willing to listen to Julia scream and holler the entire time.  Then I got an idea... if I put Raven's tub in WITH Julia and asked Julia to help me, maybe she would settle down.  Sure enough, though the first few minutes of her bath were horrendous, I finally was able to get her to "help" me bathe Raven and was able to get her clean as well.  Today I tried it again and this time she stood in the tub (no tears!  yay!) begging me to bring Raven and her tub in.  A nice additive is that it takes less time than it had been taking to bathe both of them, and by the end of bathtime, Julia was back to her normal slip-sliding self in the tub.  Yay!

erin

Bunkbeds

(It's been a long week...!  I've been meaning to blog this for days, but sometimes life gets in the way... especially when it gets in the way in the form of a stomach bug!  Here's to hoping that I feel "normal" again soon and that Adam doesn't ever come down with what Julia and I had this week.)

About two weeks ago, Adam finished the bunkbeds and we moved them sans mattresses to Julia's bedroom.  We had been planning on traveling to Des Moines to purchase mattresses during our "annual" early-January shopping trip.  Julia thought it was super fun to have bunkbeds in her room, and on January 2nd, we finally purchased mattresses.  It was pretty cold that day, so we left the mattresses in the living room to warm up overnight, and then on Sunday, Adam moved them to Julia's room.  She had a blast bouncing around on her new bed.  On Monday I stripped her crib, washed everything, and made up her new bed with sheets and blankets.

Considering how much Julia loved her new bed, Monday night was a surprise when she freaked out as soon as we tried to put her to bed.  You mean I have to actually SLEEP in that thing?  NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!  But, after some coaxing and crying and lots of book-reading, Mommy was finally able to get Julia to lay down in her bed, and after a trip upstairs to rescue her from a blanket mountain that she had piled on her bed and then proceeded to scale, she fell asleep and slept till morning.  And, so have been naps and night time since then... what a Godsend!  She loves her new bed and when you say, "Let's get in bed!", she scrambles into her room and crawls right in!  :)

erin

Words for Thought

I received word of this AMAZING blog from a friend this week... and I have been lost.  But, along with being lost on the blog, I have also been lost in thought... GOOD thought!

Before I go further... the blog: Pioneer Woman

Aside from wanting to BE this woman (yes, I even asked Adam if we could move to the country and get some animals and he responded with, "How about cardboard cutouts of animals?"), various words of her made me remember my New Year's Eve blog about being more intentional this year... making each day count.  And, I am happy to say that I feel like I am actually trying to do that so far this year... all of six days... but she also made me wonder how I make small changes to *be* more of the person I want to be without causing undue stress in my life... and I think it's doable.  But, it requires planning and sacrifice and love and honesty and God and goals... well, it requires some change, but good change.  Change of thought, change of deed... but doable change.  So... again... I'm really looking forward to this year and seeing where it takes me and my family.

(Thanks to my friend who sent the link to this blog out in a blog post of her own... I joked with her that it was evil because I was so lost in the blog, but truly I love it and it is good for the soul...!)

erin

Neufchâtel and Baguette

This week our family hobby of making cheese took us into the world of Neufchâtel.  Neufchâtel is a soft cheese; according to wikipedia.com, a soft, slightly crumbly, mould-ripened cheese made in the region of Normandy.  (One of the things I have enjoyed about our cheese making is reading the history of the specific cheese... check out the link to the wiki site!) 

Many of us equate Neufchâtel to cream cheese; I learned that isn't actually so, but is used as a substitute at times.

We began making our Neufchâtel the evening of the 30th; it required a gallon of milk, a pint of heavy cream, and a few "starters".  We let our concoction sit overnight, and around noon yesterday (the 31st), Adam cut the curd and we began to drain the whey. 

 

Last night around midnight, Adam transferred the cheese to a strainer and put it in the fridge overnight.  This afternoon he unwrapped it, mixed in salt, and voila, we have Neufchâtel.  It is tasty!

 

During some email discussion yesterday, Adam suggested that a Baguette would go nicely with our Neufchâtel, and I agreed.  I spent a bit of time researching baguette recipes online, and I found that it can be an easy and yet troublesome bread to make.  Again... more interesting history here... it seems that the French have a bread "law" much like the German beer law, the Reinheitsgebot, regarding what ingredients determine a true bread... in the case of the French bread, that would simply be yeast, flour, salt, and water (and oil is allowed in the raising process to keep the dough from sticking to anything).  So, while researching recipes, I decided that I would stick to those recipes only using the basic ingredients... and see what happened!  (While I haven't made a lot of bread in my life, I'm not *new* to bread making either... or, at the least, not new to the theory of it.  Ha!)

This morning around 9:30 am, I began the baguette recipe. I used a recipe found at the Food Network site.  Following the recipe along with hints left in the reviews/comments, throughout the day I did various kneading and rising sets.  Around 3:45 pm it was ready to go in the oven, and again, if you look at the recipe, there is a trick to the baking as well.  There isn't actually a whole lot of work involved... the rub comes from the fact that you spend the entire day watching your bread rise and preparing it for baking, and then you rely on those last 30 minutes or so of baking to work magic and produce your baguette.

After allowing the baguettes to cool, I cut one up and we spread Neufchâtel on them.  Umm... DELISH!  Tonight after Julia went to bed, we cut up a second baguette, spread butter on the pieces, toasted it under the broiler, spread Neufchâtel on them and... yah.  THAT was a treat!  We paired it with New Glarus' Raspberry Tart.  This aperitif was an excellent way to ring in the New Year... thee aren't many words outside of YUM! to describe all of the flavors we were tasting in our mouths... it was a perfect blend of sweet and sour, soft and chewy... salty... tangy... oh, man.  :)

Definitely a cheese and bread recipe to keep for the future!  What fun we are having with our new hobby!

erin