Hattie's 6-Month Birthday

To celebrate Hattie's 6-month birthday we had our friends the Rookses and the Lundeens over to enjoy some food, wine, and my favorite Christmas movie, White Christmas. Natalie, Soren, and Hattie enjoyed crawling around and playing together (or at least near each other). In honor of the movie, I created an all-white menu. Sorry, no pictures this time. We enjoyed gorgonzola and carmelized onion tartlets, Italian white bean and sausage soup, bread, salad (technically that was green), white wine, and hard apple cider. For dessert: rum balls (which I rolled in powdered sugar), hot cider, and mulled wine. The food was not as striking as our all-black Halloween menu, but it was just as tasty!


Andrea made Hattie an adorable hat for her birthday. I had mentioned the other day that Ryan wanted Hattie to have a hat with ear flaps. My talented friend went home and invented a pattern for one, complete with ties that have become Hattie's new favorite chew toy. Thank you Andrea!

Hattie's Own Blog

There are too many adorable pictures of Hattie that don't fit within the no-color policy for this blog, so I started a blog just for Hattie. It is called The Adventures of Hattie Rose. Here I will chronicle her milestones and try to keep photos updated. I'm starting at the beginning with her birth. It might take me awhile to catch up with where she is now, but I'll get there.

Christmas Meme

Daja tagged me to write about Christmas by answering a set of pre-written questions about the holiday. If you want to learn about how I celebrate with my family and friends, read on. (Spoiler alert: Eggnog is involved.)

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?

Wrapping paper, color-coded by who the gift is for (my side of the family, Ryan's side of the family, and friends) to make sorting easier.

2. Real or fake tree?

Real. Even in our tiny apartment we had a real tree that was no taller than 2 feet!

3. When do you put up the tree?

When we have time to go together to choose one. Usually in the first couple of weeks of December.

4. When do you take the tree down?

We left one up so long that I re-decorated it for Valentine's Day!

5. Do you like eggnog?

I love it, but am very picky about it. My favorite is Strauss Family Creamery Organic Eggnog. It's not too sweet or too thick.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?

Once, when my Dad was unemployed and money was tight, my mom made us all rice socks--just festive toe socks filled with rice that could be microwaved (a huge blessing in a house with no central heat). Though I have had several replacement rice socks and bags since then, I still keep that one because it reminds me of how special that Christmas was and how much the Lord blessed us during that time.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?

Five, actually. I have a hand-carved wooden one that was given to me as a high school graduation gift from the parents of one of my sister's friends. There's also a glittery traditional one given to us as a wedding gift by the worship director of the church Ryan and I grew up in; a Vietnamese one with people who look like thimbles that Ryan gave me last December 1 (the day we always set up our nativities); a Playmobil nativity that I got for our then-not-yet-born baby last Christmas; and, finally, an African nativity made from banana leaves that Ryan got for us for this December 1. Ryan wants to collect nativities from around the world and hopes to get a new one every year.


8. Hardest person to buy for?
Bret Rooks.

9. Easiest person to buy for?
Ryan. I end up finding so may great presents around Christmas time that I put a few away for his birthday in January.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Some "lump of coal" jelly beans from a former employer in lieu of a Christmas bonus or even paid time off for Christmas day.

11. Mail or e-mail Christmas cards?

We will be mailing our first Christmas cards this year (kind of a requirement now that we have a baby).

12. Favorite Christmas movie?

White Christmas. I love the music and cry every single time I watch it.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?

December of the previous year. I always stock up on stocking stuffers at the after-Christmas sales. I also make a point of going to the end-of-summer sales in June to finish my stocking-stuffer shopping.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?

Yes.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?

Fondue on Christmas eve, and Ryan's chocolate chipotle cookies with hot chocolate made from scratch.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?

There can never be too many clear lights!

17. Favorite Christmas song?

O, Holy Night (especially when Ryan sings it).

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?

Travel.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?

Yes.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?

Star. I don't really like most depictions of angels.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?

I guess both. We open presents with Ryan's parents on Christmas Eve morning and my family on Christmas morning. Ryan and I usually open our presents for each other on Christmas night.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year?

The song Frosty the Snow Man.

23. What I love most about Christmas?

It is SO romantic! I also love purposefully and consciously preparing for Christmas through celebrating Advent.

Now, I tag Flo and Jen.

Baby junk food

I have been very proud of the fact that through my entire pregnancy--and the first few months of Hattie's life--we have avoided getting on any mailing lists for baby junk mail. However, a couple of weeks after applying for her birth certificate, when she was 3 1/2 months old, the mail began to arrive (it kind of makes you wonder what the government is doing with your personal information). Yesterday I arrived home to find a large, brightly colored box on my front porch. It was clearly from a formula company. The outside of the box contained the following messages, aimed at families with children 9 to 24 months:

"The fact is: Many toddlers aren't getting adequate nutrition." "He's growing--and so are his nutritional needs. Will milk keep up?" "The fact is, milk lacks some key nutrients toddlers need. Next Step LIPIL gives you a better alternative."

The clear implication to both Ryan and me after reading the outside of the box is that you are depriving your older infant of valuable nutrients by breastfeeding, and only this formula can provide proper nutrition for them.

In my anger and frustration, I opened the box to do some further investigation. Upon reading the fine print of the package insert (and what average person reads the fine print?), I found that the company is actually comparing their formula to cows' milk, not human milk--but at first and second glance you would never know that. The nutrients that this "toddler formula" claims to provide are Vitamin C, iron, Vitamin E, and DHA and ARA--all nutrients that are abundant in breast milk and healthy whole foods. Also, a closer look at the packaging reveals that those nutrients make up less than one percent of the total ingredients.

The ingredient list itself is printed in the tiniest font on the can of formula. It reads as follows (with my comments in parenthesis): nonfat milk (babies need fat for brain development), vegetable oil (probably to add fat), CORN SYRUP (gross!), and 29 other ingredients (yes I counted them) I cannot pronounce. They want people to put this garbage into the body of a baby!

On the package insert, they compare the nutritional content of the formula to several "commonly consumed" toddler foods. These foods were macaroni and cheese and chicken sticks, with nutritional figures that reflect the highly processed and pre-packaged variety. Again I say gross! I'm sure that comparing this formula to anything actually considered real food would leave the formula looking very poor indeed.

The whole thing just made me sad and angry at the state of our world--that something that can hardly be called nutrition is being sent directly to people's front doors and freely marketed as superior to good food choices. There is absolutely nothing that is nutritionally superior to breast milk and healthy solid foods for older infants and toddlers.

The real fact is that breast milk constantly adapts and changes to provide for every nutritional need of a baby from birth through toddlerhood and beyond, as well as provides support for their immune system.

What is worse, this formula costs $23 per can. Breast milk is free.

I suppose the only good thing that resulted from this mysterious package arriving at our door is that Hattie loved playing with the colorful cardboard box (which I can recycle after it has been appropriately chewed and mauled).

The end of the world as we know it

We arrived home Saturday night from visiting our wonderful families for Thanksgiving. After Hattie expressed much delight at being in our own home again, we placed her on the floor to play while Ryan and I unpacked an organized the house. Ryan called me from the other room and we both witnessed Hattie CRAWLING for the first time. She was chasing her red ball around the living room. She can now get anywhere she wants to go using her low to the ground combat-style crawl (technically, in the child development world, hands and knees crawling is called creeping). She can move surprisingly quickly when she is motivated. So, we spent Sunday cleaning and beginning to baby proof our house. This is the first time we have lived in a house large enough for a full sized Christmas tree and, now, gone are my hopes of having at least one Christmas without a mobile baby interested in touching, exploring, and pulling on everything.

To me, the transition to a mobile baby is scarier than transitioning from no baby to having a baby. Yes, Hattie changed our lives tremendously the moment she was born, but now she is changing our house. Ryan's beloved books will need to be moved out of arms' reach (and that reach will only get higher in the coming months), furniture that can easily topple must be removed completely, outlets must be covered and cords hidden, floors vacuumed and mopped much more regularly. I can no longer leave Hattie to play on the floor while I do the laundry, cook dinner, or run to the bathroom. She has already developed that bizarre baby ability to bypass the toys meant for her in order to find and insert into her mouth the one potentially harmful thing that I forgot to move off the floor (yesterday it was the phone book).

So, yes, this is the end of the world as we know it, but I'm sure the unknown and the joy of watching Hattie learn and grow will be far more rewarding that the comfort of everything being the same.

Avila Valley Barn

We went to Avila Valley barn this weekend with friends visiting from out of town. It was nice to be there without all of the crowds before Halloween. The kids loved the animals, even Hattie was smiling and kicking when she looked at the goats, emus, and ponies. Here are some photos of our adventures. Just chillin on some gourds.

It's a bird, it's a plane....

Hattie thinks her friend Nate is SO funny!

Delicious corn.

Ella the wild child!

8 (Other) Random Thoughts About My Kitchen

Sarah tagged me to write eight random thoughts about my kitchen, which is technically her kitchen. But I do visit it occasionally ...

1) We have two whole shelves devoted to nothing but tea, from Orange Dulce to Rooibos Chai. One day a few years back, we decided to become tea people, and have stocked up on the stuff ever since. We have black tea, green tea, white tea, red tea, tisanes ("teas" made without actual tea leaves ... basically anything floral or herbal or whatever), and a bundle of dried plants that Sarah calls "Greek Mountain Tea," though I've never seen her use it to make a drink.

2) Our freezer is stocked with Otter Pops. There's not much else to say about this one, aside from the personal slogan I developed for the product in college: "Otter Pops ... That's something my body needs anyway."

3) I keep the clock on the microwave set 10 minutes fast. For some reason, I enjoy looking at a clock and knowing that it's not really as late as the clock says it is.

4) When I was but a fresh-faced young lad, my dad cooked me pancakes practically every Saturday morning (and other times too, but the Saturdays were the best), and I've unofficially adopted Saturday mornings as the times I cook breakfast for Sarah. She--ahem--doesn't really like pancakes, but she does like scrambled eggs and omelets, so I oblige by making scrambled eggs and omelets that turn into scrambled eggs. I'm just not good at making omelets, but I still try.

5) When I cook, I cool by smell. This is not technically a thought limited to my kitchen in particular, but it's close enough. Sarah cooks by what "feels right." I use my nose, mainly for spices.

6) We have several different types of cheese graters, and since I enjoy grating cheese--it's so satisfying to watch that pile grow!--I'm almost always the one who shreds our cheddar or Monterey Jack or Gouda or what-have-you . My grater of choice features four sides, each with a different grating option, but I only ever use one side.

7) We have a cabinet in which we keep all manner of liquors (Kahlua, Irish cream, etc.), but I keep a few bottles used most often on top of the refrigerator: vodka, rum, and Scotch (which I drink neat).

8) I have long been fascinated by empty glass bottles, and our kitchen window sill is lined with samples of all shapes and sizes. There used to be more bottles, but I broke one or two when closing the window once.

Now, I tag Bret. And James Van Lommel, if he ever sees this.