Aloha!

This week I felt like partying so we hosted a luau. Helen was very excited.

It is my birthday today, but we celebrated yesterday because Ryan is in the hospital today. Which meant one less day of the wrapped presents haunting me.Here are my presents. Helen's favorite were my new socks. I am really excited about the webcam. That means that grandparents and cousins all over the world can see Helen when we are talking on Skype. The book you see is fabulous. I have already learned all about lentils and lupines. The next chapter is on fava beans. If you have any questions about the previously mentioned legumes, you just let me know. I didn't realize that I was such a pulse fanatic until I paused and counted the types of lentils in my house. There are four: black, yellow, red and green. I am not sure if they come in any more colors.

Helen Claps

Sometimes you learn a new trick and it's so exciting that you fall over. This post is so that Ella-marie has a couple of videos to choose from.

Wild America!

Do we have a treat for you! We looked out our back window on Saturday afternoon and saw something amazing. We thought it would be perfect for "Wild America", so we called them up. Marty Stouffer must have been fishing on the Missouri, because within minutes he was at our house with the camera rolling. Here's a sneak preview of what just might be airing on public television soon . . .

If that wasn't exciting enough, Michelle found a great baby-backpack this week. After much searching, she decided on this one because it was the only one lighter than the baby (2lbs 9oz, and Helen weighs well over 3 lbs) and being a refurbished model, was 1/3 the cost of most others.

Helen on the Move

Helen has been on the verge of crawling since Christmas. This week she got all her body parts coordinated and has really taken off. Here is a montage of Helen demonstrating her super crawling skills.

Since she can get around now, we've insisted that she learn to pick up after herself...

Finally, I must show you the results of the bunt cake pan Michelle picked up at the Thrift store. I thought all bunt cakes should have a plant in the middle after seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Jealous

The purpose of this post is to make you jealous. First, I know that you all wish that your love seats were in this many pieces on your basement floor. Ryan has embraced this project since the last post about upholstery and has been using his super Google skills to find obscure couch fabrics and materials that we never knew existed.

Next, here's our Sunday dinner. Ryan got some special Indian seasonings from my parents for Christmas and we made...(drum roll please)...chicken tikka, tandoori naan and black dahl. I found the black lentils at an Indian grocery store I discovered in town. By the way, the owners are my new best buddies. We chit-chatted about India and our favorite foods for a good long time. If you ever need to make black dahl, black lentils look a little like small black rocks and take about the same amount of time to cook, but it was worth it.

The third thing to be jealous of is this nice lounging chair that Helen takes three of her meals in. Life just isn't fair.

Meacham Visit

This weekend the Meacham's came to visit so that Ryan could interview at UNMC. It was great that Max came along to play with Helen. He even taught her how to grow a tooth; he was already an expert after two successful eruptions.

I have to admit most of Helen's "milestones" have been approximated to the closest month in her baby book. But we were able to pinpoint the appearance of her front left tooth to between 10:15 and 11:17 am on Friday, January 16th. I know that she didn't have one before she went down for her nap and it was definitely there when she woke up.

Sarah taught us a new recipe for Ryan's sizzler pan. Now we can have brownies and sk'ookies every other night.

We went to the Omaha Zoo on Saturday. Helen made some friends while we were there.

Christmas Banner

On this day, January 14th 2009, I completed my very own Christmas Banner. My mom made one of these when we were little kids. I have fond memories of shaking hers so that the bells would jingle while we sang Christmas carols, that is until I got in trouble for making too much noise. Now that I get to be a homemaker, I had time to make one of my own, similar, but not identical, to my mom's and sisters'. Here is a close-up of Ryan's favorite square.

We are all ready for next year's festivities. I haven't decided when I am going to pack it away yet, it might make it until Valentine's Day. I certainly don't have a Valentine's Day Banner to replace, but I do have enough felt left over to make a banner for all major holidays.

New project

This week we started a new adventure together. We are reupholstering our couches. Ryan was very reluctant about tackling such and ambitious project. But I told him that all the successful couples I knew did projects together and then suggested some different options that I knew he would never agree to (quilting, cake decorating and preserving jellies) and all of a sudden reupholstering wasn't so bad. One of the first things that we had to decide on was the color. I thought that one of these colors would be a lot of fun.

But Ryan was more interested in one of these colors. We compromised and are getting one of the colors in Ryan's batch, "new mocha," but I can make the pillows as wild as I want. Not a bad arrangement.

The first rule of thumb when starting a project is to get lots of help.

This is particularly important because it appears that the people who did the original job were paid by the staple. Our love seat is now in about 20 pieces and 1000 staples all over the basement. This is going to be a good time.

Mom's Cheese Sausage Soup

4 medium potatoes
1/2 stick butter
1 onion
3-4 carrots
3-4 stalks celery
1 lb. sausage, cooked and drained
1 lb. Velveeta
3 cups milk
salt & pepper

Combine first 5 ingredients. Cover with waters and cook; do not drain. Add sausage, cheese, milk and seasonings. Heat, but do not boil.

(I would probably saute the onions, carrots and celery in the butter. Then add the potatoes and water.)

Christmas Cautions

Christmas can be a dangerous time. The number injuries from bad combinations of water, electric lights, and dry Christmas trees goes through the roof. We've avoided those perils so far, but below we have a couple of pictures of Helen caught in risky behaviors.

In case any of you are worried about Helen eating the infamous poisonous poinsettia - According to the Madison Poison Control Center, a 50-pound child would need to ingest 500-600 poinsettia leaves to suffer ill effects of any significance. Another risk at Christmastime is food poisoning. Luckily for us, we caught ours before we ate it. Unfortunately, it had already stunk up our refrigerator. Good thing the temperature dropped outside so that we could just transfer everything to the porch.

Mom, Dad and Hannah made it to our house safely, albeit a little cold. They were wide awake when Helen woke up in the middle of the night. I wonder if they noticed that I wasn't really awake when talking to them. They have since moved on to Iowa for a couple of days.

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

For Ryan's birthday I made him a delicious chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting and covered with some chocolate ganache.  He has been trying to let me eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

The story of Ryan's birthday dates back to last year when Ryan got a shredder for his birthday.  All last year he campaigned for a shredder and even enlisted the help of my brother Craig to talk about the merits of his "roommates shredder." Whether or not Craig actually had a roommate with a shredder has yet to be proved. Anyway, I gave in and got him a shredder for his birthday.  

But, three months ago this shredder became disgruntled with it's normal diet of addresses and went after my curtain.  The picture was not included because of its' graphic nature.  Once again we were left without a shredder and our risk for paper cuts on our hands increased exponentially as we began manually tearing up our addresses.  Thus the search began for a new shredder for Ryan's birthday.  Please note that I found something that won't eat the curtains on its' own.

In fact, this shredder is silent and does a much better cross-cut.  

First Meal

On Saturday Helen had her first experience with semi-solid foods. It was hard to tell if Helen or Ryan was more excited.

Helen didn't know what was coming, but she was more than happy to help put the spoon into her mouth, as it is one of her favorite things to do. Ryan decided that she was not helping very much so he gave Helen her own spoon to play with. This only complicated the situation.

Somehow a little bit of rice cereal still made it in her mouth despite the amount you see on her face. Surely you can also see by her expression that it was not nearly as sweet, warm and delicious as what she's used to.