nathan and audrey

My kids have both recently undergone growth spurts.

I’m almost 29 weeks pregnant, and Lito should be about 2.5 pounds. Dude.

Banzo just grew significantly and is actually fitting into clothes that are his “suggested” size. He’ll be two soon, but at least he was in his 18-24 month pants for part of that time period. His feet also grew, which was kind of weird to see them jut out there and demand new shoes, but there you have it. I found a couple of pairs on clearance, so I picked up not only the size he’s in now, but the next size up too so I don’t get caught off-guard by future growth spurts.

Banzo’s personality has also grown as he’s becoming more independent and developing his own opinion. This has produced more conflict for us, but most of the time, I find him adorable enough to not get upset by his random screaming or the sudden insistence that he has to do things his way right this very minute. Also, I find that not letting him bother me (read=ignoring him) often deflates his meltdowns, and he recovers quickly. He’s still not talking much, but in the last week or so he’s picked up a ton of sign language, so communicating is at least growing easier.

We are still cloth diapering, and we’re planning to cloth diaper #2 as well. I’ve organized the boys’ room, unloaded all of the little baby clothes, and am coming to terms with carrying around a diaper bag again. I’m also trying to get all of “my” stuff done before the baby’s due date, knowing that when he arrives, I’ll have to be a little more selfless and once again answer to the demands of a small helpless human being. At least this time I expect the first six months of his life to involve practically no time for me. I’ve taken up quilting in the last few months, and I really enjoy sewing, so I’m hoping there will still be occasional times for fabric projects.

But growth spurts mean hunger, and my big one needs a snack, cutting this update to a quick halt.

Nathan and I are expecting a second child.

Oh boy.

Things are about to change dramatically.

But we are incredibly excited!

The pregnancy is progressing much like my pregnancy with the Banzo Bean. I had some “evening” sickness until about week 12, and I’ve just started to feel the baby move. Our families are ecstatic, and everyone is hoping that this Bean will be a girl. We will all be happy with a healthy baby, but man! They want a girl!

Until we discover this new Bean’s gender, we’re referring to the baby as Beansprout. If the baby cooperates, next month we should have a gender-specific Bean name. Cross your fingers for November!

My son is learning life skills with a gusto that ceases to amaze me.

At nearly thirteen months, he can:

• Cram up to eight cheerios in his mouth. (Without choking!)
• Remove his own pants.
• “Hide” from Mom by holding a blanket in front of his face.
• Pretend to offer Mom or Dad food, almost deposit it in our mouths, then yank it away at the last minute with this adorable grin on his face that prevents repercussions.
• Redecorate an entire room by yanking everything off of tables, shelves, and chairs to make a more eclectic and “lived-in” sort of feel. He’s genius, really.
• Open cabinets and drawers and pull out their contents to add to his design scheme. His granola bar work is relatively unheard of–a new design strategy sure to catch on, probably first in Europe, then the States.
• Use his uncanny “sense” to zero in on everything that Mom doesn’t want him to touch.
• Work on Mom’s patience levels by massacring her books.

And:

• Smile so dashing and sweet that I am glad every day that I have such an amazing son.

Today my son completed his first year of life! I generally have an indifferent feeling towards birthdays, but this one is worth distinguishing. It has been a year full of the wildest ups and downs. The most challenging and also the the most rewarding. I’m very proud of him, and all that he has learned and achieved. It is amazing what a baby learns in that first year. Knowing nothing but the warmth of mommy’s womb and being fed then out of nowhere he is thinking, perceiving, talking, crawling, laughing, crying, and loving. This is his experience, and it is truly amazing.

This picture is our first time in the swing on his first birthday! Yeah baby!

So my son I hope the best for you in the second year of your life, and I pray that I will never be too focused on other things to really experience you. You are precious to me and nothing is more important than you (although some just as important, like your mommy ).

::n::

Our son is getting big. At nearly a year, he is pulling himself up, standing, and taking steps with the aid of furniture or mom and dad. He is starting to look like a boy–no longer a baby–and I would be lying if I said that I don’t get mushy and sad at the thought of him getting older.

But he’s not completely grown up–not yet. I used to sing to him a lot when he was much smaller, but that practice has dwindled. Today he was fussy at naptime, and it seemed like a good idea, so I sang my version of a lullaby to him.

Je t’aime.
Je t’adore, mon petit fils.

Tu t’appelles Noah,
mais je t’appelle Banzo.
Tu es mon petit prince.
Tu tiens mon amour.

When I started singing this morning, he lay his head on my chest and fell asleep. Good thing for me, my son still needs me.

Hey All!

We had mice… yesterday. Today, hopefully we have none. That is because last night I set up some mousetraps for the first time. It was a bit weird. I have never done anything like it and felt kinda bad for the little guys, but alas they were threatening to eat us out of food and home. This morning when I woke up we had caught two of them, but there appeared to be evidence of more. Tonight we will execute mission Mousetrap II, wish us good luck.

Onto other news, the banze has his first tooth breaking out! It’s really exciting to see him grow. It is both a great joy and a bit sad. Sad because he is our little baby and I want to keep him this size forever. There is a bond and intimacy that only last for a while. We will miss that, but it is a joy to see him learn new things and become a person capable of changing the world.

The last portion of this post is about my sadness that the big 15 inches of snow didn’t happen, as you can see in the picture. Note that it did sleet for a very long time yesterday, which reduced the total accumulation. The snow was really cool though. It was like a dense wet sand. You couldn’t make any snowballs out of it, but really neat. I was expecting to wake up this morning to the several inches of thick snow, but it appears as none ever came.

::nathan::

Learning from mistakes is really exciting isn’t it? Well today I learned a valuable lesson: if you want to ride your bike after some extended time in weather such as this photo make sure everything works.

Last winter I underestimated, or rather didn’t know, that in the midwest metal rusts, fast, especially bike chains. I got on my bike and this awful clicking and lack of motion hit my bike. So this winter I was prepared for the chain issues and have been keeping it well oiled. One thing I did not consider though is that shifting functionality could be affected by the freezing temperatures as well.

As I first tried to shift today I quickly found the err in my way, but was too far along on the trip to turn back (< 1 minute in). I’m pretty determined like that. So I write this post to tell you if you want to ride your bike after some extended cold weather time off, make sure to check that your bike is capable for the next trip. I’m hoping next year I don’t need to learn the same way for my breaks .

::nathan::

Okay, so I went home for the holidays and attempted to make a family favorite plachintas. Well, for some reason the whole thing was a mess. I couldn’t get the amounts of the ingredients right and the thing just didn’t work. At that moment I committed myself to overcoming my failure and make amazing plachintas someday. Well tonight was the night and it was awesome! I still have no clue why the plachintas failed in NM, but for whatever reason I have now succeeded and do not feel so bad. The Banze had a very interesting response to my success, “yay daddy! that was an exsquisite example of how to cook plachinta!”

On a side note I have looked into what exactly a real plachinta is, and it appears as though I have been a bit confused. A plachinta is a German Southern-Russina dish that is a turnover like pastry thing with filling. You can see a description of it over at fastrecipes. What I had been calling a plachinta is something a bit more like a crepe. So I’m sorry to all my friends who I have confused with my plachina talk, but nonetheless I will still considered them plachintas.

::nathan::

This weekend, we had a chile/chili showdown! Actually, it wasn’t so much a showdown as an opportunity for me to explore another version of chili and to provide some tasty green chile chicken enchiladas to my friend J who had 1) never heard of green chile, and 2) never heard of enchiladas! (Oh, what a sad sad world it is to know there are people who haven’t heard about or tasted enchiladas.)

And of course, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to take photos, but once again, I failed at remembering to use my camera, so you’ll be stuck with my verbal descriptions instead.

It was a lot of fun, and it was the best chili I’ve ever tasted. J made an Italian version seeing as how she’s Italian, and that’s how she rolls. It had all sorts of tasty stuff in it, like ground beef and beans and tomato juice and brown sugar, and I was a little surprised when she served it over curly macaroni noodles, and then added oyster crackers and cheddar cheese to it. The oyster crackers seemed a little overboard–aren’t we satisfying the chili carb requirement with the pasta?–but she persuaded me to try the crackers too. They…were…wonderful! They added a nice crunch to them, and I went back and got another very large handful.

Now, to the enchiladas. I busted out my daddy’s recipe, and instead of plating them individually, I made a tray because there was a large group, and we were serving food more pot-luck style than sit down dinner. I’ve never rolled my enchiladas, and a 9×9 tray sufficed for the six of us partaking. Green chile sauce from El Pinto Restaurant had to serve as my green chile addition since I didn’t have any plain green chile on hand. It seemed to work out okay, though I had to use 2/3 of a jar to get them even a little bit spicy.  J watched as I made them, and when I had finished making the enchilada sauce, I layered the baking tray with the tortillas, sauce, shredded chicken, and sharp cheddar cheese. About that point, it occurred to me that flat trays of enchiladas are like a Mexican lasagna, and, to make things even better, J was thinking the same thing!

Now, I need to beg her to share her family’s chili recipe with me. It was tasty!

I write tonight to inform you, my readers, as well as make a commitment myself, that I’m going to start blogging in a different style. I think one of the reasons (one of many that is) I haven’t blogged for so long is that I was concerned with the fact that I was putting information onto an open forum that other people will read. As such I think I raised the bar too high (as another post discusses) and made it more about work and not about relaxing and just talking about what’s on my mind and heart.

Therefore, I am going to focus more on just blogging. Blogging about what is going on in my mind and my view of the world. This viewpoint is indelibly and ineludibly going to be fraught with frivolous and incorrect statements, but I’m not too worried about making that mistake. I think in life we are in a constant state of uncertainty — if not on the minor scale there certainly exists larger issues and concepts — and in such a state we must take each of the inputs in our lives and use those to come up with some type of worldview; an idea of how we perceive, think about, and react to the things we are seeing. This is the approach I intend to take on more things in life. I must begin to live in the now and not be concerned with the mythical concept of a perfect or right way to do things. I simply must be and do the best that I can.

I also want to explore language too. I really like the use of the exact word, and hopefully I will achieve these results in my writing. So if I use something terribly, please let me know. Okay?

::nathan::