Yummmmmmy Sauce

Here at the Robak household, we have experienced several kicks in the pants over the past week. I will spare you the details but suffice it to say, when the going gets tough, Rachael gets to eating! Which may explain why I still have 10 pounds o' baby fat hanging on my midsection when the child is almost 13 months old. When the midwives said I was a little under weight to begin my pregnancy and said they'd let me gain an extra 5-10, I took it to heart and pushed it to 15. Oh well- still at 130 I must weigh less than most of America given the images I see on tv news about obesity. Andy and I often comment on how body image has changed ion tv in regards to how happily married couples look. On the sitcoms you see now days it apparently is the norm for the wife to nice and thin and well dressed, while married to a tubby dude with a baseball cap. I am not sure that this pairing would happen that often in the real world.

I will tell you that one of our kicks in the pants has been that our super sweet flat screen HD tv has crapped out on us after only 2 years of service. No, we did not get an extended warranty on it, our mistake. But come on, should you really have to buy something extra like that beacsue the company cannot make a product that lasts more than a year? Now days you can get the same tv at 2/3 of the price which is a whole other gipe, but back to the original gripe. The repair shop called to tell us that the cost would be, hang on here folks, $800 to replace the "main board" on it to make the sound work again. Wonderful. Who pays that for a repair on a tv?? Not to mention that this tv had issues early on with turning on and off by itself which was truly freaky. For the longest time I thought Andy would leave for school and forget to shut it off because it would be running when I came home from work, or that the cat had some how managed to regularly turn it on and off on her own, and in my own conspiracy theorist mind, that someone in our apartment complex must have the same tv and remote and was just messing with us. Anyhow- that got fixed with some software update covered under the warranty. Now this...great.
Dad suggested a potential fix to the problem or a way to get our sound work by routing it through our stereo which we will try once we make the hour trip to get it back. One of the many inconveniences of small town living.Hopefully it will solve the problem and we will keep it, or donate it to the Rochester School for the Deaf where I used to work. It works great with the captions and looks terrific, I am just tried from the past 3 weeks of reading all my shows.

On to good news!
Since leaving Eugene there are many things we miss about that town. Yumm sauce being one of them. A box shipped would be about $48 with overnight shipping and that is just crazy for 6 jars. So I looked on the internet and low and behold a recipe for Yumm sauce exists. It may not be 100 percent the real thing but close enough that we will stop whining about not having it anymore. Hot dog! Yumm bowls are on the menu here tonight! If you want the link let me know.

No new pictures- Bright's been a bit fussy, probably feeling the vibes off of our woes. Baby swim starts this week Thursday. Here's hoping that the gnarly Walmart bathing suit I bought doesn't dissolve in the pool!

Shhh... Bright's sleeping. Thank goodness. The last few nights he has been waking up around 10pm and again at 4:00 like clockwork. He's easy to get back down at 10- well, Andy does that and hasn't said it was tough, but the 4am one is tricky. He seems to be ready to go and start the day. Us, not so much. Today I nursed him and walked with him for about 20 minutes and passed him off to Andy who thankfully finished the job. We all slept in until 7:30. That meant nap time was a bit off but he went down pretty easy. I am always hopeful that one day he will just be able to be put down in his crib and fall asleep on his own, but until then I am happy if he goes down our regular way without much work.

Moosewood or bust

Today we made to the Moosewood restaurant in Ithaca, finally. I have been cooking tasty vegetarian treats from their cookbook for years and while the restaurant is only an hour from here it has taken us far too long to get there. Bright did great in the car on the way there with me sitting in the back with him. Makes me a bit car sick in the back though. It was a bajillion times colder and windier there than we had planned on and ended up buying Bright some new kicks just to keep his feet warm enough- we had left his in the car figuring he wouldn't be out walking around and his socks just weren't cutting it. Now he has 4 pairs of shoes that he will wear. Yahoo for the minor accomplishments. So we arrived about an hour before the place opened and used that time to walk around the Ithaca Commons which reminded us of Eugene. Ithaca is the home of Cornell University and so as a college town there were a lot of boutique shops and tasty eateries there to tempt us. Bright was a total champ in the moderately fancy restaurant. We dined on Mushroom- Leek Gruyere Frittata on whole wheat Phyllo dough and a stew that Andy can't remember the name of now. Bright had some great bread from there, grated cheese, and his food from home. Thankfully there was no sippy cup throwing, food spittage, or meltdowns. Hot dog!! He fell asleep in the car midway through a story book holding Andy's hand. Bright has become such a snuggler as of late. He loves to dive into you and give hugs with pats on the back and full open mouth kisses. Yesterday was the first day that he said Mama and had any meaning to it. Darn near brought tears to my eyes after all these months of him calling Andy Dada. All in all I would rate today a 10!

Bath-tastic

Tonight had to be bath night after the ravioli dinner face painting session. Here's a few shots of our boy!





Then, Andy is working on a set of experiments in his lab for home school kids to do. Here is a picture of some of the different colors that you can make with cabbage juice at different pH solutions (acids/bases). Really I don't know what it's all about other than what acids and bases are- I just like the colors.

Thanks Easter Bunny, Bawk Bawk

These two commercials always make me laugh- too bad they don't show them anymore. Happy Easter everyone. Bright and I made it to church and he was GREAT the whole way through- a major accomplishment!

Happy Birthdays

First up- this is a birthday heavy week for our family. My brother Kyle's birthday is today and his wife Pamela's birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday guys!! I am assuming that since Ky was not at home when I called him he must be or should have been out enjoying his day by catching some waves! Here's a picture of the last time we all got together right before we moved in July.
Then on Wednesday it is my dad's birthday- an early Happy Birthday to you Pop- we'll be bringing by some treats for you later this week.

This past week had been giving me headaches. Here's why...
Bright LOVES lids- oh my gosh... Every lid in our house has been given to him because the poor child begs for them, and I do mean begs! Even the tiny lid on top of the tea kettle has been given to him. Then he discovered that they fit on top of the pots and the cacophony began. Every day he starts by begging us to unlock the pot and pan cabinet- we had originally locked it so he couldn't pull them out and get hurt by them- silly us. So a crash comes as 7 pots and lids of various sizes fall out onto the linoleum floor at 7:30 in the morning. Ugh! Thankfully no one is currently living below us. Then Bright systematically takes each lid and tries it out for size on each of the pots until he finds just the right one- not necessarily the one that it actually fits on, but the one that seems to make sense in his universe. Let me just say that during this process Bright does not have a light touch. So yesterday I had about enough of the noise. Even though he will take them into the living room and play with them on the carpet, his favorite spot is right them in the kitchen. I took the area rugs from the living room and put it into the kitchen so now the pots fall a bit more quietly onto the rug before the lid sorting begins. We have also placed a lid quiet hours into effect- none before noon.
On a shots update- He is doing better now, although the naps are still a chore. Last night we put him down at 7:45 because he had missed his afternoon nap and his morning nap took so long to get him down his schedule was wacked. He didn't make a peep until 7:15 this morning. The night before that was very similar and we were able to take him from his room when he work up around 6:30 and bring him to our bed and all snuggle while watching his new Peter Rabbit movie. That was pretty sweet. So things are once again getting back to normal. Thank goodness.

Shots Stink

Bright went for his first year checkup on Tuesday. He was in the 50th percentile for head circumference, 75th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight- which I don't believe to be too accurate since he wouldn't sit nicely for the weighing. (He really detests being weighed there for some reason...) His checkup went fine. He is doing all of the things that an 18 month old should be doing which is really cool. Things here have been really pretty amazing. He had been sleeping from 8pm until 6 am without a wake-up for several days in a row, then came the shots. I really hate the shots, probably as much as he does, but for other reasons. I have maintained since his first set of shots that they change my boy for a good solid week. I think when he was really little I said that they used to rob me of my boy. His personality would change and it seemed like skills he was working on were a bit off from what they had been, he was more clingy and would cry much more so than usual, and would really throw off his naps and sleep. Then came the 9 months visit where apparently he wasn't supposed to get shots but got them anyway due to the doctor not reading his chart appropriately and seeing that he had had some shots already from Oregon.. That was just a fiasco and while the doc apologized for it it didn't seem to bother her as much as it did me. The only thing I really recall from all of that mess was her saying, "Make sure he doesn't get a tetanus shot again before he turns two becuase he could have quite a bad reaction from it." So this time around I double checked and asked her to double check his charts before getting any shots and he got the MMR and chickenpox shots. Now I would have said no to the chickenpox shot- I guess I don't see the fuss about that, but here it doesn't appear to be an option, or they don't tell you that it is. Then I read some not so pleasant things about the MMR vaccine and now really wish that I had asked for that one to be given in separate visits. Dr. Sears has a book out on vaccines and gives an alternate schedule for vaccines and I think I need to buy it and look into doing the next round differently. The past two days since his shots he has not been sleeping well or napping well. He has been super fussy at times during the day and bitey. Yes, it could be teething, but he had been doing so well before his visit on Tuesday. There is always the same behavior right after them- crying and then the blank stare in the car on the way home, followed by sleep. Poor guy.

The other thing I have been thinking about is if many children that have been given the educational eligibility of Autism might actually have lead poisoning instead? I saw on the internet that cases of autism were up 11% in Oregon since just last year. I don't know that that issue had ever come up as a possibility during any school evaluations. I know that it causes many of the similar behaviors. Just a thought. One school here in Rochester, NY said that 41% of the students were coming to school with lead poisoning. That just blows me away. This topic is of interest with me since we found that Bright has low levels of lead- still well within the normal range though- and have lead dust in our apartment, but no lead paint. Where is it coming from? It's a nearly impossible task to figure out.

Other crappy news is they will be raising our rent to almost $700 dollars when our lease is up for renewal. And we got a nice NYSEG (electric) bill for $245. I called to find out how that was possible since our other bills were 40, 70 and 100 dollars. They said they are only required to come out and read the meter once a year so the other figures had been estimates and now they were getting caught up on our real energy usage for the past few months. Great.

First Year

We are pretty sure that Bright is just telling everyone how old he is in this picture and not the beginning of a new gross phase.

Andy is currently trying to put Bright down for his nap- it's not going well. Thanks a lot Daylight Savings Time... I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that he's been here a year. How time flies when you are having fun, changing diapers, getting no sleep, feeding, and watching a little guy blossom. Happy Birthday Brighty!!

The Easter Outfit that Never Was

Last summer before we moved from Oregon, we stopped by KidStuff in Eugene and bought a huge amount of pants, tops, etc for Bright in larger sizes than he needed at that time just so we would have some clothes for when he was older and had outgrown all of our hand-me-downs. We picked up- or I should say that I picked up this outfit because I believe that Andy was totally opposed to seeing his boy in it-this cute Easter outfit figuring it would be the perfect size this Easter. Tried it on yesterday and couldn't fit him into it comfortably. Dang! Andy wins again.

No News is Good News

Nothing to report here. Bright didn't sleep that great last night but he made up for it in naps today- I think about 3 and a 1/4 hours all together. We are waiting on an ice storm tonght- had to make a last minute dash to the market for diapers before the rain came. I can hear the ice pinging on the windows now. This afternoon I saw that Brett Favre had retired and I immediately though of Jess out in Oregon who loved him and the Packers. I checked her blog and she had a post about his retirement. How funny- I remember trying every year to keep my speech kids from taking her Brett Favre football card from the window ledge near her desk in the speech/psychologist room at Meadowlark.

Unbelievable Day in Babyland

Just after first time with shoes outside- still wearing his jammies- and dad's hat.

His smile says it all!

Time to go in??!!

We had an amazing day here at the Robak house. It started at 5am when Bright woke up after sleeping for 9 straight hours. After all that sleep he was ready to start the day and we had a big day ahead of us but didn't even know it. Today it was supposed to be about 50 degrees and it actually got up to 60. Those of us living in the cold tundra don't squander these days foolishly. We went out for a walk to the post office after a two hour nappy, then watched some fool on the semi-frozen lake do some icefishing, then I set Bright down in the snow in his snowsuit and he cried.. Too cold on the feet that still aren't wearing shoes. So I explained to him all of the fun things we could do today if he would just try the shoes on and then we went in. Now over the last few days he has been getting his shoes and trying to put them on himself and if we tried to help him he would bail on us. Today I took his shoes when he was trying and with minimal fuss he let me put them on him. He started to cry but I quickly took him outside and put him down and he was off like a rocket. Then when Andy came dressed him up a little better and fussed only a little again and he loved it! You can tell from the smile on his face. Pure joy! What a milestone- first day with shoes on and walking outside.

Bitey Brighty

Trying to get into something he shouldn't...


I just couldn't resist taking this picture. He gets so sweaty when he's sleeping that his hair starts to curl. Luckily the flash- oops- didn't wake him up from the nap.


Andy's doing.... Crazy Sock Hand on the loose, running through the house....


Outside today in the snow.


Phew! Thank goodness today is mostly over! Bright's teeth must be getting the better of him because by 7pm he was biting or trying to bite just about anything within his reach. First it was me, then the coffee table, then the desk, then me again and then Andy. Then we gave him a zwieback toast. Duh. That seemed to solve most of the problem until he crammed the end of it in his mouth and nearly choked. I took away that piece and since his teething was in full force tonight, his emotions were runnin' a bit high and a major meltdown was on. A follow up biscuit seemed to cheer him up a bit. Fortunately Sir Chomps Alot is now sleeping.