Bathtime Laughs

This was the scene tonight during Bright's bath. Andy was squirting him with water from a rubber duckie and Bright was just loving it!

Multi-Media Extravaganza

Here is Bright's latest trick. Chest up and buns up too! Tonight he did a little bit of rocking back and forth in this position. It was a little chilly this morning so I had a hat on him. Looks like he should be working on the deep sea fishing boats.








Here is a picture of the pie that I made. Tasty!












Here is another video of Bright. Still working on getting it to be less grainy. We have a digital video camera, but it usually is packed away and by the time we get it out and all set to go, Bright's special moment is over. But I will keep working on it. This one looks a little bit better. He's such a smart kid- when you get out the camera, he knows it's time to pose and look cute.

Baby swim class was cold again tonight. Finally one of the lifeguards admitted that yes, the water truly is getting colder with each session. Great! Ah well, two more sessions to go. Tonight I did not do such a stellar job of packing our bag to go to the pool. I forgot a towel for Bright and even more devastating, a dry diaper! We walked him back in his little fleece track suit without incident. Phew!

Pie recipe

Here is the recipe I used for the grape pie from Lisa's Kitchen at http://foodandspice.blogspot.com/2007/09/concord-grape-pie.htm

Concord Grape Pie

Concord Grape Pie

4 1/2 cups of Concord grapes (about 2 pounds)
1 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of flour
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1 unbaked 9 inch pastry shell

Streusel Topping

1/2 cup of oats
1/2 cup of packed brown sugar
1/4 cup of flour
1/4 cup of butter

Squeeze the end of each grape opposite the stem to separate the skins from the pulp. Set the skins aside in a medium-sized bowl. Put the pulp in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Press the boiled pulp through a strainer to remove the seeds. Add the seedless pulp to the bowl with the grape skins, along with the sugar, flour, lemon juice and salt. Stir well to combine. Transfer the mixture to the pastry shell.

To make the topping, combine the oats, brown sugar and flour. Cut in the butter with two knives or a pastry cutter until crumbly. Sprinkle the topping over the filling. Cover the edges of the crust with foil.

Bake in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove the foil, and continue to bake for another 20 minutes or so, or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack before serving.

For the crust, I made a Flaky Butter Pie Crust. The key to a good pie crust is to ensure all of the ingredients are cold.

Flaky Butter Pastry Shell

1 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/8 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 cup of cold butter, cut into 8 pieces
3 - 4 tablespoons of ice water

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder. Cut in the butter using two knives or a pastry cutter until the butter is reduced to very small pieces. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of ice water over the dough and combine with a fork. The dough is ready for rolling once it holds together when you squeeze it. If the dough is too dry, add more of the ice water.

On a floured surface, roll the dough out into a flat circle shape with a floured rolling pin. Gently fold the rolled dough in half and transfer to the pie plate. Trim the dough and fold to make the crust edge. Crimp the edges.

Where did the weekend go?

Well, I made the grape pie the other day- and we ate the whole thing in a day and a half. Apparently Andy has decided that grape pie is not so bad after all which meant less for me. Rats! This weekend we bought more shelves and put them up and finally unpacked our cds. I think that takes care of everything from our move. Bright has been up and down with his sleeping and has been a supreme fussypants this weekend. The top teeth are working their way down and I think that is the cause. Poor lil' guy wants to be held all the time, which is rough but we did our best to distract him when we had to put him down. He is working on getting his buns up in the air while pushing up on his arms. He was able to do this several times tonight followed by lots of grunting and squealing. This coming Sunday he will get Baptized at 9:30 mass, right smack in the middle of his usual fussy time before a nap. Wish us luck!

Grapes of Wrath

Today was full of ups and downs. I had been planning for two weeks to attend a La Leche League meeting in town and was excited about going. They are only held on the third Wednesday of the month so I knew if I missed it I would have to wait a long time for the next one to roll around. So while I was excited and trying to not look like the frazzled mom I am, Bright was fussy and just wanted to nap. Why they hold meetings at 10:00, prime napping time, is beyond me. The car ride was brutal. Bright cried and cried, I was less than patient. Enough said. We got there and were the only ones there other than the leader. Oh well, we chatted and chatted and when it was time to home Bright fell asleep in the car. He took a great nap when we got back. I did learn a few things at the meeting. A: we are not the only family here that co-sleeps (although we do it less and less), B: Bright is sleeping like a typical breastfed baby and C: if you want good children's books, go to the Branchport library. Branchport is about three miles from us and if you blink you will miss it but they have a new library there and it has better books than the one here in town. Yahoo!! We went this evening and loaded up on board books and DVDs. Bright really loves storytime at home and will sit and watch the pages for about 15 minutes. He has some definite favorites- Baby Panda Learn ABC with Me is his all time favorite and we keep it in the car for solving all meltdowns there. He also likes Runaway Bunny, Pat the Bunny, Tumble Me Tumbily, The Bear Snores On, and Goodnight Moon. We have a pretty decent collection here at home and make sure we do storytime every day.

The past week or so I have been smelling grapes in the air every night. At first I thought it was someone's laundry detergent or something they were cooking. Then I realized that it is all of the grapes in the vineyards around us. There apparently so many vineyards here that this country grows the most grapes east of the Rocky Mountains. We need to go get a grape pie- if you have never had one they taste a lot like just eating jelly with a crust thrown in for good measure. I love sweets so it's right up my alley. Andy does not.

Video Trial

I have been trying to figure out how to put video on here for our older than dirt digital camera. Here is just a trial clip. I will figure out how to make the next one less grainy. Hard to believe this guy had a mess of shots a few hours earlier...

Ouch!

Bright had his 6 month shot series today. Andy took off a little time from work to go with us- so nice to have an extra set of hands to pass him back and forth while we were waiting for them to get things set up. He was 17 pounds, 7 ounces today. I can't remember exactly how long- the sheet is in the car- but he was long for his age. No wonder his sleeper outfits don't fit him. He took his shots pretty well- lots of tears, but settled right down after he got a chance to nurse and then fell asleep in the car. Thank goodness for the boob and its calming abilities! Those shots must just send his system into overdrive and exhaust him. We seemed to have gotten an A on everything except, you guessed it, sleep. Things seem to have taken a gigantic leap backwards lately with very little sleeping happening for any extended amount of time here. All three of us are tired and I think the cat is getting annoyed that we keep getting up and down in the night too. So we have some new strategies to try... I guess and we will see if things get any better. The other thing we need to step up is how much food we are feeding him. We need to start giving him more solids and cereal, and crackers too. That sounds fun and messy. Still planning on breastfeeding him until at least a year old. The other day I was reading a breastfeeding website, looking for some kind of answer to the sleep situation. I was thinking that maybe if we caved in and gave him a bottle for formula around bedtime he would sleep better, like other babies we know. Nothing I read supports that idea so I guess we won't need to open up those sample cans we were flooded with when I was pregnant. It's interesting how the manufacturers market their products- they sent us lots of samples- 4 large containers of formula: soy, advanced, easy to digest etc, and also sent us "checks" regularly for 7-8 dollars to get reimbursed for buying the stuff. On the website I was reading, it said that if I was breastfeeding him exclusively for these past 6 months, I would have saved about 1000 dollars because we did not need to buy formula. That sounds crazy to me! Thank god we were successful with the process, I don't know how poor mothers can afford to not breastfeed. Not that it came easy- his tongue tie made it incredibly painful each time he latched on for the first week, until we had it clipped. Nothing like having bruises there to make you not want to stick with it at all. Luckily we had the most excellent midwifery group with 24/7 lactation consultation for a year that made home visits if needed. Janie was amazing and I miss her and the group terribly. We have made a promise to try to stick with it for a year and so far it is going well. Thanks again Andy for going with us.

pictures, pictures and more pictures

Here are some of our more recent pictures of Bright. He goes for his next round of shots on Monday the 17th. Wish us well. We had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa tonight before they head off for vacation in the Outer Banks. Bright sure seems to know who they are and was on his best behavior there tonight. He fell right to sleep when we got home.

baby swim is cool....

Last night was our second baby swim class. The pool was much cooler than last week and we decided to only stay for 45 minutes. Bright was not as in to it this time- probably because he was so cold. I sure was ready to be done then too. We brought him home and gave him a warm bath and he fell asleep nursing soon after that. Wish he would have stayed asleep. He has been waking up every two hours or so for days now...
Sunday was his 6 months birthday! Hard to believe that he has been here that long. We definitely find out more and more about him every day! He has started to demonstrate some stranger wariness lately. This at least give us an excuse to not let every person hold him. He is rolling around the floor so well these days. Right now he is in the dining room, wrapped around a chair leg- need to go fix that.
This past weekend I got together with some friends from high school that I had not seen in about 14 years. One of them has 3 kids, two of which are teenagers. Some times when I am driving down the road I think of her and how she has teenagers sitting in the car with her while I have a 6 month old baby. Strange how life sends people on different paths.
We have Bright's baptism scheduled for the 30th of Sept.- another one of the milestones for him.
Well, back to active parenting. Tummy time is over!

Something Smells Fishy

This morning I did something I have not done in over 10 years- I cooked and ate fish. I have been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 10+ years for a variety of health and political reasons. The movie A Diet for a New America that was shown to us in one of my undergraduate courses really made an impact on me and opened up my eyes to the animal cruelty that happens around us every day. Whether it is buying eggs from poultry farms that house their chickens in inhumane conditions because we are unwilling to pay the extra buck to buy free range eggs, or ignoring the dog sitting in a sweltering car because we think that their owner must be coming right back, its wrong. Growing up in a rural farming community you can see instances of mistreatment of animals quite frequently yet no one out here seems to take a stand and call the Humane Society about it. I have always maintained that there is a special place in hell for those that abuse children and animals. The cases of abuse happen far more often than I can ever prevent but I have to believe that those that mistreat any form of life will eventually be held accountable for it.

Anyway, back to the fish... So now that I have spoken my part about animal cruelty, I have to explain the fish. Since having Bright 6 months ago tomorrow, I have been pretty much wiped out, as any new mom would be. But after doing lots of research and trying different things, I have decided to try to add some fish protein back into my diet and see if that does not give the extra energy that I have been missing. Apparently there are vitamins (B12) that you cannot get from plant forms and other things like DHA that are critical for neurological health and development of infants. I decided that while I have previously made the choice to not put those things into my body, I cannot make the choice for Bright and I must give him all of the best nutritionally until he is able to make decisions on his own. This does not mean that you would see anything that previously had hooves or a beak on our table and Andy still won't even eat the fish, but this I believe is the appropriate thing to do. Now if I can just get the fish smell out of the kitchen...

who knew

Well, it is 2:45 am and I am up with the baby again. He has not been sleeping very well. Right now he is happily playing on the floor. It is really difficult to be with him and "on" all day and also to have to be "on" at night too. Andy can't do it- he has to teach all day tomorrow. Seems as though this job is infinitely harder than when I was working with 70 kids on my caseload- and there is no boss telling you that you are doing it right or not. Sometimes I question the choice to be the At Home parent, especially at times like these. Daycare might have its benefits for him, he would get used to being with other people. As it stands right now he is is almost 6 months old and never been with a babysitter. Or this may be the perfect arrangement and the benefits for him just won't been seen for years to come....

He did it again!

As you can tell, Bright's sleeping pattern is of huge importance in my life. His sleep, or the lack thereof directly affects everything in our household- how happy we all are and how much more human we can begin to function is directly related to his sleep. Last night we put him down at 8:15pm and he woke up at 11:30pm. Andy picked him up and walked him back to sleep and he slept until almost 6:00am. Hooray!! That little guy can do just about anything that we ask of him. Love you Brighty Bear!!

Tonight was Baby Swim at the college. we met up with Christie and Brian there. Their little girl is a month older and much tinier than Bright- well really just a more delicate girl. He's like a tank compared to her. The pool area was super hot so we all had high hopes that the water would be super warm too. Not the case. It wasn't cold, just more like lukewarm. The swim class was taught but students that were lifeguards so to me, they look really young. Their activities weren't really tailored for young babies- so at least we weren't thinking that Bright was up for dunking and floating on his belly yet. The class lasted an hour and by the time it was done he was pretty cold. We walked home and I fed him, and he crashed out!

I think I hear him now though....

Tasty Cake

Bright's recent success in the crib was short lived. He has been only able to do a few hours at a time now and when he wakes up I just bring him to bed with me- it's the easier, but lazier way out. Of course once he is there he thinks the all night boob bar is open for business and wakes up to eat many times during the night. We'll keep trying though.

Last night was the Ring of Fire around the lake- at nightfall people put out several flares on their property by the beach and burn bonfires. It looks like the whole lake is lit up. Someone told me it was in celebration of the Indian Thanksgiving. Sounds suspicious to me. I will need to look into that. It was really nice though- chilly out so I brought hot chocolate with me and stood by the fire to warm my buns :)

Today was the apartment complex picnic. Andy went to Buffalo for his brother's engagement party. Brighty and I stayed home- he's not up to such a long trip in the car yet. My mom came for a nice visit and Bright was great the whole time. Andy brought home a huge piece of cake for me-Yahoo!! I love sweets! So much for losing 5 pounds by October 5... Tomorrow we start Baby Swim class. Just getting into my suit should shame me back into control again.