Happy Second Birthday little guy! I can hardly believe its been two whole years already. Andy is about to enjoy a homemade cupcake here from the ridiculously easy recipe I found in Baking Illustrated. The cupcake came out a little crumbly, but very tasty. The homemade chocolate frosting was the best part: semi-sweet chocolate chips and heavy cream. I think I had the proportions a little wrong, because it did not whip up the way it was supposed to. Still tasted awesome though.
“You dig my shades?”
Yesterday morning it was cold and rainy. Then out of the blue (so to speak) the sun came out and it warmed up to about 78 degrees outside. I found these pink flowers on a bush right out side our kitchen windows. Right next to a tree that had leaves on it!
Andy’s go to word these days is “apple”. It’s the word he uses whenever he’s not sure what the word is, but knows that he should say something. This leads to frequent conversations like this at our dining room table:
“Who am I?” I say, pointing to myself.
“DADA!”
“Who is that?” I say, pointing to Laura.
“MAMA!”
And who are you?
I ask, tapping Andy on the chest.
“…dada?” Andy asks very quietly, clearly unsure that this is who he is.
“No, I’m Dada, who are you?” I ask, again tapping Andy on the chest.
“…apple?”
I just finished upgrading Movable Type on my server. In fact, I just changed kovax.org over to a new webhost as well. Now I can cut out $20 a month in needless expense. Hooray!
What are you going to do with your tax refund this year? I put aside way too much money this year for taxes, so I get to give myself a very substantial refund
. Guess who's getting a new camera?! I still haven't decided exactly what I'm going to get. I guess that's something I'm going to have to nail down. I definitely want to try to get at least one really good lens, and an off-camera flash. So hopefully in the next few months I can get back into the swing of posting pictures. Maybe I'll even take a few of something other than Anderson! Unlike this one:
A year ago today we arrived in a city we had never even visited before. With help from an awesome friend we brought the barest of essentials: our cats, a suitcase, a small tv (for watching the Oscars!), a portable crib and every toy we owned. I mean, one of the first things we had to do when we got here was go out and buy a litter box for goodness sake!
Now, a year later, we're finally starting to get settled. We've finished buying furniture, and we're going to order some rugs soon. There's only 1 more room that we need to repaint. And now that Andy isn't totally scared of strangers, we're starting to meet other families around our neighborhood. For a while I wondered if we had made the right decision in coming here, but then I took a walk yesterday afternoon, in the middle of February when it was a balmy 73 degrees outside. And I noticed that the trees around here are starting to bloom, just like they were when we first arrived. Then I realized that right now there isn't any place I'd rather be.
Some say that you're either a pie man, or a cake man, but I'm still not sure which I am. I've only got a few of each under my belt (and a few that got away as well). But in the latest Cooks Illustrated, there was a recipe for a truly foolproof pie dough. The secret? Vodka. Apparently the alcohol inhibits gluten formation, but still makes the flour wet. The upside is that you have an extremely rollable dough. If this keeps up, I might find myself squarely on the side of pie in the years to come.
It's pretty sad that just two posts down from here, I'm talking about Andy walking. That's hardly news anymore. Andy is walking up a storm, even climbing up stairs. He's endlessly fascinated with being outside, and gets quite upset when he's denied. Hey, sometimes its time for a bath. And today we caught him dancing to a pirate song that was playing on the Backyardigans. He's already got more rhythm than me, that's for sure.
I went up into the attic yesterday in an attempt to see how easy it would be to install some ceiling fans. This was the first time I've been up there actually. There's not much to see. Part of our central air-conditioning is up there so there's not really much space for anything else. So, all was well, until I looked at a gable. There, in the soffit vent were about a dozen bats!
It was day time when I was up there so they weren't moving around very much. So I didn't immediately freak out. However, as I stood up there longer I wondered if there was actually anything between me and them. I had to run back down the ladder and grab a pair of binoculars in order to confirm that there was, in fact, a screen between me and them. So, phew. That would've been totally creepy.
So, we've got bats. I should probably check to make sure that screen stays intact. Plus, I'm not entirely sure that having bats is a bad thing — after all they're probably keeping the mosquito population down.
As for the ceiling fans — the insulation prevented me from seeing anything useful. So I guess I'll just have to unscrew some chandeliers and see what's going on.
We've got a little walker in the house. He started doing a few steps here and there the other day. Now he'll take several steps, stop, turn and walk to something else. He doesn't walk to us when we call him, but he's always been stubborn like that. I'm glad I got to see it all happen. Because it would be just my luck that he'd do it when I'm away this weekend!
As Laura alluded to earlier, last night was one of the worst nights I've ever had as a parent. Andy woke up after a little more than four hours of sleep, and then he basically refused to sleep for the rest of the night. Believe me, this is highly unusual for him. He hasn't refused to sleep like this since he was about 4 days old. He would scream whenever we lay him down in his crib, and he would jerk himself awake and scream whenever he dozed on my lap. My first thought was that he had a nightmare and was too afraid to go back to sleep. (Interestingly, one of our baby books lent a little credence to my theory — babies between 12 and 15 months are just beginning to actively dream). It was a good theory, but probably not correct. It turns out that he's cutting at least three teeth at once — an incisor that we already knew about, and at least two molars as well. We gave him some ibuprofen, on doctors orders, and he's been sleeping since lunch! Which is a darn good thing because he certainly needs it. I know I did!
