Uh-Oh!

Ready to crawl!
Originally uploaded by Raspberry World.

Can you guess what's about to happen at our house? This picture should be a good clue!

Hi!

At the doctor's office
Originally uploaded by Raspberry World.

Here's a big boy at the doctor's office. Alex's six-month appointment is next week, but today we went in to see about his stuffy head. You can see from the picture that he was in a great mood. Believe me when I say that there were other times today when he was not feeling so chipper. It's got to be tough to have a head full of snot when you don't even know how to blow your nose! Poor kid.

Tonight I uploaded a few pictures to Flickr and also some videos to YouTube: Wrestling a Lamb, Patting a Ball, and Giggling and Wiggling. Check them out!

Friday Update

I dreamed last night that my shower was haunted. Or maybe not haunted, but definitely malevolent. In the dream I refused to bathe Alex in the bathtub because the shower was so evil. It was spraying water around the corner at us.

Weird.

Marty has been traveling a lot lately. Let's see... he's spent six of the last eight nights away from home, in three different states. Alex and I have done fine by ourselves, but we're glad he's coming home from Oregon today. As far as I know, there are no more trips being planned in the near future. So that's good.

Yesterday, Alex and I had a nice outing with Laura. No, not in the airplane! We drove up to Eastford, where here parents live. It was fun to walk around in their beautiful garden and see their cool house. I liked the lake, too. I feel like I got to see the settings that go along with many of Laura's stories. Alex enjoyed it, too, especially looking around outside. And on the way home, we stopped at Kathy Johns. That was really special, since I hadn't been there since before we moved to Germany in 2002! Strange but true!

Recently I've started baking again. It seems like forever since I baked anything. Last year we started doing the South Beach Diet in February, so I pretty much quit baking for that. Then I got pregnant and I didn't feel like baking for the first trimester, and then it was summer and it was too hot to bake. Then I had gestational diabetes and had to control my carb intake. After the baby came, I had gallbladder problems and had to eat a low-fat diet. And even after I had my gallbladder out, I didn't really have time to bake. So baking has been out of the picture for quite a while.

Now that my diet is not so restricted, and Alex is on a more flexible schedule, I'm enjoying it again. In the last two weeks I've made banana bread, chocolate chip cookies with dried cherries, and blueberry muffins. I have a whole container of blueberries in the refrigerator from Laura's mom, so I need to do something special with them, too. Maybe I'll make Mamie's blueberry cobbler.

Blueberry muffins

Blueberry muffins
Originally uploaded by Raspberry World.

Last week, I got some local blueberries at Draghi's farm market on Route 16 between Portland and Glastonbury. So this morning I made some blueberry muffins. They're so easy and delicious!

Ingredients:

2 cups white flour (divided)
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 Tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 375 deg F. Butter muffin pans or use paper liners.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the flour over the blueberries and mix together. Set aside. (The flour will keep the berries from sticking together when you add them to the batter.)

In a large bowl, mix remaining flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add egg, milk, and butter, stirring only to dampen all ingredients. Batter should not be smooth. Finally, add blueberries and fold in carefully.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each about two-thirds full. Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes at 375 deg. Makes 12 - 16 muffins, depending on size.

Recipe Link

I just found this gorgeous recipe site: Nordic Recipe Archive. I don't want to lose the link! So I'm sharing.

The baked goods look especially great, although some are not particularly Nordic (brioche and cornbread?). But the sponge cake is a real Euro-style sponge, with equal parts egg, flour, and sugar, with the eggs serving as the only leavening agent. Lovely.

I love that most of the recipes include photos of the product. Yum.

(Not planning to make those liver hamburgers anytime soon, though.)

Sitting Up

Sitting up and playing
Originally uploaded by Raspberry World.

Alex is sitting up great now, especially on the floor. (The bed is softer, so he tips over more easily.) Sitting up certainly opens up more options for play! He can reach for things, take toys out of a basket, and see what's going on around the room. I think he likes it!

He's also starting to get down on his belly and scoot. The other night he made his way over to a toy he wanted, which was a few feet away from him, and he was so tickled when he got there that he laughed out loud.

Watch out, Ziggy!

P.S. There are new photos from the last few days up at Flickr.

Hair today...

I was just looking at this picture from three months ago (April 7), and I realized that Alex used to have WAY more hair than he does now. Or maybe it just looks like that? I don't know!

I do know that between two months and four months of age, his head size jumped into the 95th percentile. Maybe his head just got much bigger and the amount of hair on it stayed the same. So it just LOOKS like he has way less hair than he did before.

Weird!

A bunch of firsts

Meeting a new neighbor
Originally uploaded by Raspberry World.

Alex turned five months old on July 1. It seems like the last few weeks have been full of firsts!

He flew on an airplane for the first time during our trip. Now he's been on five flights. We had a great time visiting everyone, but we're glad to be home!

He rolled over from back to front last Saturday when we were visiting his Nana in Georgia.

He got a high chair when we got back home and has also started learning to use a sippy cup! As you can see, he doesn't quite have the hang of it yet.

He went on his first outing to the beer garden. We were prepared to entertain him with toys and food, but we didn't need to!

He went in a swimming pool for the first time, at Nana's house.

He met his first dog! Our new neighbor is nine weeks old. She is a pug/beagle mix and her name is Maggie.

And on our first night back at home, Tuesday, he slept through the night for the first time. From his late feeding until 6 AM. And he's done it every night since then.

Hallelujah!