six week checkup

Hard to believe it’s been almost 6 weeks already. Here’s the latest crop…

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wedding crasher?

Buried in the first column of our wedding ketubah, we just noticed the signature of this character a few weeks ago. And he didn’t even stop to say hello…

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Scenes of Snuffy

Here’s an assortment of photos from the last week and a half…

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the official 611 baby movie list

These movies have kept us well entertained during and after pregnancy. Not many surprises in here, but hopefully one or two that you haven’t heard of…

Kebab Connection — a cute German movie about an accidental pregnancy with subplot of Turkish-German relations. (Available on Netflix, in case you’re wondering)

Away we go — Dave Eggers is never as good as I think he should be, but this might be an exception. Not too hip, just funny enough, not too syrupy, this movie strikes a lot of the right notes.

Where the Wild Things Are – We laughed, we bawled. Beautiful puppets, if you can call them that (ok, so they’re computer enhanced), and beautiful scenery. The last three weeks have given a whole new meaning to the words “We’ll eat you up we love you so.”

Planet Earth — Amidst the breathtaking nature filming, there are lots of reminders of the parenting that goes on in every corner of this world every day. We’re still working our way through this series, but it has helped put our nesting instincts in perspective.

March of the Penguins — Ditto above, but even more so on how they make human parenting seem like a frickin’ walk in the park. We might lose a few hours of sleep here and there, but there’s none of this standing out in the cold for four months without food crap.

Babies — Okay, so we haven’t seen this one yet, but the trailer makes it look like a whole lot of fun. And it may or may not have reduced one of us to tears in our post-partum, sleep-deprived delirium.

No new Oscar pictures. Or rather, we just haven’t uploaded them yet. More are on the way, we promise.

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and for my latest trick…

We’re not expecting to see this one again for another few months…

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cranberry sauce recipe-off

Enough is enough! For the last three years, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I’ve dug through the blog archives for that recipe for cranberry relish/sauce that I love. And I always come up short, because I’ve never blogged it. Until now…

And this year, for the Baltimore turkey, I’ve made three sauces. Recipes below. Audience reaction will follow in a few days.

Sauce 1: Cooked cider-cranberry sauce [link]

Ingredients

• 6 cups fresh (or fresh-frozen) whole cranberries
• 1 1/2 cups apple cider
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 2 or 3 long strips of orange zest
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Instructions

1. Combine all the ingredients in a large, nonreactive saucepan or medium-size covered casserole. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and cook at a very low boil for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.
2. Transfer the sauce to a serving dish. Cover and refrigerate (it thickens as it chills) until serving. Test Kitchen Tip: If the sauce seems too loose at serving time, spoon off a little of the liquid. Makes 10 or more servings.

[Chilled for 24 hours before thanksgiving dinner.]

Sauce 2: Raw cranberry-apple relish [link]

Ingredients

• 2 cups washed raw cranberries
• 2 skinned and cored tart apples
• 1 large, whole (peel ON) seedless orange, cut into sections
• 1 to 2 cups granulated sugar (depending on how sweet you would like your relish to be)

Instructions

1. Set up the grinder with a medium-sized blade on the edge of a table with a large roasting pan or bowl to catch the mix as it grinds. These old fashioned grinders tend to leak some of the juice down the grinder base, so you may want to set up an additional pan on the floor under the grinder to catch the drips. If you don’t have an old-fashioned grinder you can use a grinder attachment on a KitchenAid mixer, you can chop by hand (though that will take a lot of work), or you can chop in a food processor (be very careful not to over-pulse, or you’ll end up with mush).
2. Run fruit through a grinder. Use the entire (seedless) orange, peels, pith and all.
3. Mix in the sugar. Let sit at room temperature until sugar dissolves, about 45 minutes. Store in the refrigerator.

[Chilled for 3 days before thanksgiving dinner.]

Sauce 3: Raw cranberry-ginger relish

Ingredients
[nb: I doubled the cranberries and ginger but not the lemon and eyeballed the sugar to a little more than 1 c]

• 1 bag fresh cranberries (12 oz.), rinsed, sorted and patted dry
• grated peel from 1 lemon
• 2/3 c. sugar
• ½ c. crystallized ginder, coarsely chopped
• ¼ t. ground ginger

Instructions
Put everything in the food processor. Whirl just until finely chopped. Cover and chill at least four hours. [Chilled for 24 hours before thanksgiving dinner.]

And, if you’re still reading, here are some Week 2 pics of the sleepy little cranberry.

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Sir Burps-a-lot goes to Nippletown

The adventures continue. It’s pretty amazing how much laundry one small person can generate. And very little of it is clothing. His collection of onesies has (so far) escaped the worst. We’re just waiting for the serious blow-outs to start. Last night, after downing way to much milk way to fast (we thought it was a lot but didn’t know better to slow him down), he fussed a bit but we burped him and changed his diaper. Lying down in his crib, he was making the strangest sounds — the usual little snuffles and sniffles but with an occasional gurgle thrown in. I went over to comfort him, only to see some white stuff dribbling out of his mouth. Picking him up was a mistake, as he proceeded to spit up around two cups of liquid. The first cup landed squarely on the sheet and sleeping pad of the bassinet and the rest landed on two pillows and in Johanna’s Dansko sandal on the floor. This is where we need a dog to be on clean-up duty! As we’re cleaning it up frantically, I look over at the bed where I’ve set Oscar down. His eyes are closed and he’s snoring away.

We’re embarrassed to say that this exact same thing happened a few days ago as well. Must learn the warning signs of the milk geyser…Maybe we’re not burping him enough, but what’s funny is that we often just get a big ole loud burp out of him and no spit up. But when he spits up, he really lets ‘er rip.

He typically has two periods of alertness during the day, each lasting a few hours, where we get some good Oscar face-to-face time. As he gets more expressive, we’ve been working to get more good face shots. Here’s a selection…

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diurnal confusion

Oscar has taken to sleeping during the day and being alert at night. Not a great combination for mom and dad, but we’re weathering it okay so far and hoping things will switch up/smooth out in these scattershot first few weeks.

In talking with some folks via email and on the phone, we realize that part of our announcement was perhaps a little misleading. While Oscar arrived just after 6PM on Wednesday, after just 30 minutes of pushing at the birth center, Johanna had been in labor since about 4:30 that morning. She did a lot of the hard work at home and even [gulp] in the car. We’re working on writing up a birth story with full details and while we won’t post it online, we’re happy to share it with friends. Send us an email if you’re interested in reading it and we’ll pass it along once we get our act together.

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Mr. Snuffles

It’s been a whirlwind few days. We’ve barely had time to sleep and eat let alone take photos and blog. But here are a few from days 0-2 in the life of Oscar, who was known as Mr. Snuffles until we decided on a name.

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dad’s you tube education

I was up at 5am, not 11 hours after Oscar’s arrival, all anxious that I didn’t know how to swaddle or put on a pre-fold cloth diaper. You Tube to the rescue!

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