I think I want one of these, even though I’m not sure how useful it would be.
You were spared from a glut of garden blogging and pictures this year. We did pretty well. Anna watched something on TV about how carrots and tomato plants have a certain symbiotic relationship – so we did tomatoes and carrots together. And it worked out well.
There was also fortuitous timing by Owen’s favorite cartoon, PBS’s Curious George. You see, George planted some carrots, and grew a perfect carrot, which he fed to bunnies, or something. I may be missing a plot element or two, but not by much. So Owen really enjoyed having carrots out there to pull out.
I think this sensor could be useful for our vegetable garden and other plants around the yard. Anna and I have already decided we’re going to try a lot harder in the yard next year. Maybe this tool would be useful towards that?
I’ve always liked making pizza.
Growing up, mom and dad always made ‘American’ style pizza. You all know it – think of any of your typical delivery pizza chains. Red sauce, lots of toppings, a thick crust. That was pizza for most of my childhood. I still love it, and on very cold days, the thought of a thick, tomato-laden pan pizza from Pizza Hut is very warming.
At some point, I think via the Bertucci’s that opened up by Springfield Mall, I was introduced to brick-oven pizza, which is really more of a neopolitan style. Coincidentally, that’s also where I had barbecue chicken pizza for the first time. I liked it a lot – the crisp, chewy crust with light topping and char.
Since then, I have done a lot of experimenting with different doughs for neopolitan style pizza crusts.
My new favorite, though, is a recipe we got from the Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! class we took at Cook Street here in Denver, where the instructor told me, “You win the class.” It helped that I had a lot of self-taught experience. (I love taking classes at Cook Street – we also took the Fish Tale course.)
And really, the recipe isn’t much different than the second dough listed above – but really more the techniques used to make the dough and prepare the pizza. Basically, you try and work it as little as possible to get it to come together, and let the yeast do its thing. Flour hasn’t mattered, the quality of olive oil hasn’t mattered – at least not yet.
The class taught a pizza-making fanatic like me that I really do need a pizza peel. It also taught us how to make Flammekuchen, which is a white pizza sauce made with bacon, butter, and cream.
We cooked our pizzas in an actual wood-fired brick oven that was running at about 750 degrees. The way to get pizzas in and out of there was with a peel. It made great pizzas – the extremely high heat charred the dough and made it crisp and melted and singed the cheese and toppings. The char is what tastes good.
Sadly, we only have a Pampered Chef pizza stone that isn’t approved for temperatures higher than 425 degrees. I was reading about this, though. That may be something to try one day.
My current technique is to put the stone in the oven to let it get hot. Pull the stone out, then try to work the dough quickly into a circle. Then put the dough on the hot stone – at which point it starts to become inelastic as it starts cooking when it hits the stone. Next, quickly top the pizza before the dough gets overcooked from the hot stone. Load stone and pizza back into the oven. It has to be done very quickly, which means that there is a huge margin for error. This is true especially when trying to shape the dough.
We were taught in the class to make the pizza on the peel, and then use a quick flick of the wrist to unload the pizza from the peel into the oven (or in a home case, the pizza stone). Saves some frustration and stress, since I wouldn’t be trying to very quickly assemble a pizza to avoid overcooking.
I always thought I wouldn’t use a peel, or didn’t think it was necessary. I also thought it wouldn’t work in our house, since our oven opens towards the island in the center of the kitchen – but turns out, I’m wrong!
Now I want to eat pizza.
I’d really like to play Skyrim. It’s a new release, so it’s a full $60 to play right now.
The problem with Skyrim, though, is that it’s a single-player game. Well, that isn’t the problem so much as the fact that Skyrim is also a huge, immersive role playing game. That means, in order to properly get into it, you have to spend lots of time playing it. It’s a giant open-world map in the style of the other Elder Scrolls game (which I have also played) that are huge, time-sucking games where you feel like you’ve only played for a few minutes, and instead, hours have gone by.
It’s an open-world game that truly lets you create your avatar in the styling you choose. If you want to be a fast-talker, you can do that. If you want to hit everything you see with swords, you can do that, too. If you want to be a sneaky assassin that pokes people in the ribs with sticks and runs off … well, that’s less effective, but it can be done. It’s neat. I generally sneak around and horde things.
It also features flower picking.
I played Oblivion when we had just moved out here to Colorado, when we didn’t have kids, any real social network, or other obligations. Anna watched for a bit over my shoulder once, when I was running through a flowery field and hitting the ‘take item’ button. You see, in this game, you can be an alchemist who picks herbs, flowers, roots, and other such items and combine them together to make salves, potions, spells and the like.
I didn’t do any of that – I just ran through fields snagging whatever flowers I could with the intent of selling them. She got a kick out of that, and so it became the flower-picking game. I guess you could say that this game would be Flower Picker 2.
Another fun thing you could do was go into a store, steal everything in the store, and then sell it back to the store owner. I think they fixed that later, though.
I want to play the game. I don’t need to play the game – and I certainly don’t need the time sink. To be honest, if I’m going to play Xbox, I’d rather play online with buddies than pick flowers. But, it’d be nice. Even if it takes me Troy-like time to finish the game.
It’s the last day of November.
Normally that’d be the demarcation line between “Christmas” and “not Christmas”. But you know how that goes these days. The Friday after Thanksgiving seems to be our new acceptable date to put up our Christmas stuff, mostly because it’s convenient – no work, and with family in town to help out. So most of our stuff is out, and we’re getting our first of two Christmas trees this weekend.
The other tradition that starts around good ol’ schwarzer Freitag is the answering of the question, “So what do you want for Christmas?”
I’d like to be clear – this is a wonderful problem to have. First, I have people who actually want to buy me presents. I’ll never overlook that or take it for granted. The problem gets better – I don’t really want anything, or at least much of anything.
Most things I can think of that are are very much “stuff” – things that would be nice to have, but that I don’t really need. I don’t think this is a unique station in life for a thirty-something dad with a wife and kids, and I’m probably just an echo of some continuous noise on the internet on this topic – but dammit, I’m trying to get back into writing, and possibly even capturing some interesting things about my/our lives for my kids to read one day.
The things I can think of that we need are an entirely different, and mostly expensive subject.
So, with this post, I intend to announce an well overthought forced blog-march. For the next week or two, each day I’m going to pontificate and loudly overanalyze a few things I’d like for Christmas. It may be general or specific. The challenge to me will be to think of things that aren’t just stuff. And things that aren’t directly (or at an angle) for the kids. Like this, or this. Side note: see? Expensive.
For instance, I think it’d be really neat to have one of these – but it is expensive, and I honestly have no idea what I’d do with it.
I’ll start later this afternoon.
Today’s thing to not forget: Christmas lights.
Few things brighten up Owen’s eyes more than a single strand of Christmas lights. Luckily for me, and him, we have a giant pile of light strands.
He noticed other neighbors had lights up and had begun asking me, “Daddy, where are our lights?
This year, with his dexterity and communication enhancements, he’s much more interested in ‘helping’ daddy with the lights.
Next thing to not forget – when Owen is generally interested in something and trying to help and or win appreciation from me, the word ‘daddy’ gets used frequently. And of course, it works. When we were testing the lights, one particular globe-light strand was his favorite. “Daddy, maybe test those ones!” So we tested those first and then after switching bulbs and globes as necessary to get a full working strand I unplugged them. So they turned off. Which to Owen – means that they are broken.
I go to the bin to get the next strand to test, and hear “Daddy, I fixed it!” He’s taken the strand we’ve just repaired, and plugged it back in, and is genuinely proud of himself for fixing these lights that were oh so dark just a moment before.
Then, last night when the lights were on I took him outside so he could inspect our handiwork. Big grin for a short while – but then he had taken upon himself the monumental task of inspecting each individual light. This required him to point to each light and to name the color aloud in order to ensure that I stayed up-to-date on our Christmas light status. And I was happy to listen.
On a less parent-bragging note: the last two years, we’ve been taking advantage of Home Depot’s light recycling program to pick up some LED lights cheaply. These bulbs are supposed to last forever, don’t have the series problem, and use less electricity. One of the strands failed this year after only light use last year – half of the bulbs don’t light up, even after switching bulbs, multi-metering, and other such things to figure out why these more expensive lights weren’t working.
I mean, I guess I shouldn’t expect a lot from these inexpensive LED bulbs… but I guess I want to.
This is to remind me that I only get a few more Halloweens with the kids where it’s new and exciting and fun.
Owen has been begging to wear his monkey costume around the house. Today I think I decided we should let him if he wants – he won’t ever get a chance again to be this monkey. Nor will I get that chance back.
Also, I need to remember to be thankful for the family we have. This is Owen’s third Thanksgiving and Lily’s first – we only get a guaranteed handful together, so I need to try to make them count.
This may sound melancholy, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s happy – just remembering to experience things versus trying to capture them all.
I need to start using this thing again. Google+ has been neat, but it’s not for everybody, and Anna doesn’t really have a way to share facespace pictures. I don’t think. And I’m still steadfastly refusing to join facespace given things like this.
Mostly I need to capture things I’m thinking. I was really good about that in the before times. Now I keep forgetting stuff that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to forget.
Right now I want to remember Owen’s rocket jammies and how excited he is about them. They have stars on them that glow in the dark.
The evening routine is the same, but now when I turn out the light he lifts up his blankets and excitedly exclaims “HERE THEY COME!” as the stars start to glow. He’s actually somewhat excited for lights out! This is the kind of magic I want to remember. Glow in the dark stars on his jammies are currently the coolest thing in the entire world to him right now.
Lots of stuff has happened since the beach. Namely, family life.
Some milestones we may have missed:
8 months old!
Lily has been nothing short of amazing. She’s doing all the things she’s supposed to do and is very close to rearing up on her hands and knees and starting to crawl. She’s kind of crawling right now, only backwards. She has no difficulty getting to where she wants to be, it’s just … unorthodox. For adults and toddlers, anyway.
She likes to eat.
Owen is learning to play the digiridoo:
Halloween went well. Owen wanted to go trick or treating every night from 1 November to about 7 November until he finally realized it was really more of a “once a year” thing. One day I look forward to telling him stories of how entertained he was by two of his favorite things – doorbells and candy.
I never get tired of this picture.
And Lily also was seven months:
Big wheel keep on turnin’ … kind of.
Pampers diapers have a rewards system, where each package of diapers has a code. You enter the code at their website, and they credit your account. We just recently hit the upper ceiling of what you can carry as a balance. In two years of diapers, we received enough points to get a $80 big wheel for “free” – or if you’re keeping score at home … two boxes of diapers.
What sucks is that OVL is very far away from being able to ride this bad boy. The box says three to seven years of age – but I figured as a tall two-year old, he’d be able to make it work. Instead, it appears you have to be a giant three-year old to make it work. His legs are still a good 8″ from the pedals, but this doesn’t stop him from kicking it around the room.
It was a good long weekend. It makes me appreciate the upcoming two-week vacation just that much more.
I have a ton of pictures to post and things to say, but haven’t really had time to devote to the old interblag.
It’s been a busy few weeks. First, you all know about Lily, and that takes up quite a bit of time. What you may not have heard yet is that for the first week of her life she didn’t sleep a lot and was extremely fussy all the time. One of the biggest user complaints against babies is that whenever something is wrong, the only have one way to convey the message – crying.
So she was crying a bit. About one week after she was born, her skin started to pick up a yellow tinge, and she hadn’t pooped in about 36 hours. We figured maybe it was jaundice, considering both Anna and I were born with it.
Turns out she wasn’t getting enough to eat. Anna thought everything was going swimmingly with feeding. Unfortunately there’s no good way to know until your baby starts turning yellow, since the cries are hard to differentiate. When they weighed her, she had lost another six ounces on top of the first, initial quick post-birth weight loss of six ounces.
That was hard news to take. Essentially, we were starving her. She was fussy all the time, and not sleeping, because she was so hungry.
Unfortunately, because we missed the cues, Anna’s supply had started to dwindle as well. Lily wasn’t taking much, so Anna stopped producing as much. This was also hard news to take, considering that with Owen and early with Lily, Anna was a prize cow in terms of milk production. This means we had to do the following things:
This had to be done every two and a half hours. And it was important, because of the dramatic weight loss, to wake her up and feed her in order to fatten her up. And it was super effective – in forty-eight hours, she put on six ounces. Yesterday she had an informal checkup when we brought Owen in for his two year, and had put on a full pound in a week. Anna’s milk supply is back up, and we’ve stopped using formula, which is mostly symbolic, but matter of pride and importance to Anna.
And, Lily isn’t as fussy anymore, and is a joy to be around when she bothers to be awake!
So things are getting better. We don’t have to wake Lily up to feed her anymore, though she’s doing enough of that on her own as she’s continuing to grow. Eventually when she gets a bit bigger we should be able to lessen the frequency of bottle feedings, which is important to me because it means I can sleep some more! Anna is ambivalent about that particular milestone.
Note that I haven’t even mentioned Owen, and how he’s been doing or acting. Just assume that through all the above visuals you’ve created for my words, that there’s a two year old toddler running around doing toddler things, which I will address later.
Friday morning, Anna had her thirty-nine week appointment. Not much happening in the dilation department, but some effacement. She had her membranes stripped. I promise you I don’t know anything about what any of that means, other than that the doctor said she could give birth today, or that she could give birth in two weeks. I guess you know what happened.
She had some contractions on Friday, but nothing for us to be really alarmed about. There was no pattern or consistency to them. We had dinner with friends, and went to bed.
Around 11pm, Anna had more contractions, this time with a bit more frequency, but not a lot going on otherwise. She noted that when she stood up, the contractions were pretty close together. But when she laid down, they spread out considerably.
After about 12:30 on Saturday morning, we decided to go ahead and time the contractions. One minute, forty five seconds. Um, we better go!
And go we do. With a quickness. In short, we got to the hospital around 1:35 in the morning. The funny thing about planning is that – even though we had packed and had a plan and everything, it still took us a considerable amount of time to get out of the house. We had to wait for someone to come watch Owen. We had to make sure we had everything, and of course we didn’t.
Anyway, we got there at 1:35 in the morning. Last time, the process required us to go to triage and be checked for dilation and such. This time, we got to triage … and there was nobody there despite repeated cries of pain from Anna and me testing the constructed limits of the bell you ring for help. I’d guess we waited for about ten minutes, but it’s hard to gauge that kind of time passage given the situation we were in. The nurse at triage just gave one look at Anna and said “oh yeah, we need to get you up there pronto.”
She was admitted at about 1:59 AM and was dilated at seven cm. Everybody on any surrounding floor within a 100 yard radius knew that Anna wanted an epidural. By about 2:05 AM they had her strapped in and hooked to monitoring equipment while Anna howled in pain and crushed my hand. At about 2:00 AM, she was at eight cm. Still no epidural. At about 2:10 AM she felt like she had to push, and the nurse said “OK, go ahead and push!” and also “it’s too late for an epidural.” Anna responded something loudly with a paraphrased “Gee, that’s too bad” and then almost bit my hand off. At 2:15 AM and with only four pushes, Lily bloomed.
As the husband and father, time kind of stopped for me at that moment. I had an exhausted, hurting, and excited wife. I had a healthy, shrieking baby girl. And there was a lot, lot, lot of blood. The adrenaline kind of disappeared, or possibly peaked past what I could take at that point, and I almost passed out. The last thing you want to be doing when you have a new tiny baby that you’re excited to meet, and a wife who needs counseling, reassurance and praise, is to be sitting down because you’re trying not to faint.
Anna never felt her water break, but apparently it had broken at some point. Our best theory is that it happened when she sat down to pee and had one of those timing issues that you read about in medical dramas but never actually seems to happen to real people. Also, it apparently ruptured in such a way that some of the amniotic sac adhered to the inside of her uterus. I am told that during normal delivery, the uterus shrinks after birth to minimize the risk of bleeding. Something about the quickness of the labor and the remnants of the amniotic sac kept Anna’s uterus from shrinking, and also from properly expelling the placenta. This means, in short, that there was a lot of blood.
The fix required them to scrape the offending matter from the inside of her uterus with an unceremonious tool that looked like a peeler. This, according to Anna, hurt much worse than the actual delivery – and is even more horrible when you’ve got a screaming, brand new baby newborn who needs her mama.
Factor on top of that – passing out aside – there is literally nothing I can do, to help my wife or daughter.
Once the bleeding got under control a bit, things streamlined into something I would say is more normal for the delivery process. Anna is fine, Lily is fine.
The post-game report included the instruction from our doctor that we’d probably have to stay in the hospital for forty-eight hours, because they didn’t have a chance to apply the necessary antibiotics to Anna before delivery. They didn’t have time to do a lot of things!
I’m biased, but because Lily is probably the perfect baby and Anna was designed for baby making, we got discharged early and have been home since about four o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, and are desperately trying to find a new “normal”.
Owen has finally acknowledged Lily. I think he’s slowly starting to realize that the baby is here to stay, and not just visiting. He’s getting more curious and assertive with her, and now really wants to touch her. This normally wouldn’t be a problem except that he’s got a cold, and we’d really like to avoid Lily getting this cold. As many of you are aware, it is a delicate dance.
My girls.
This is the best family photo we have right now:
