white apples . a blog

a smattering of things

• Congratulations to Lindsay on her adorable new baby boy!
• Juniper made brief appearance over at Natalie's lovely little blog.  It features her beautiful handmade creations, including one of Juni's favorite play mats.  Natalie also made me a custom green and brown mat as a gift for a good friend of mine who is expecting her little one in a few weeks.  Want one?  Visit her shop.
• How much fun would it be to have this in the back yard?  For the kid, I mean...
• Care for some momtroversy?
• Swine flu.  Serious stuff.  Trying hard to resist puns involving the phrase "when pigs flu".
• Seven brands later, we finally have a winner in the which-baby-bottle-Juni-is-willing-to-drink-from contest.
• I have less than one week left of my maternity leave.  Let the grumples begin.

we've been exersauced

I was hoping to refrain from drowning our house in garish plastic toys.  I truly was.  But these days, Juniper wants to be upright as much as possible.  And she wants to explore everything around her with her chubby little hands.  Free-range organic baby toys and our collection of The Very Hungry Caterpillar paraphernalia can only go so far to entertain the child.  Not to mention, the allure of an albeit hideous plastic device that can contain/entertain her while I cook dinner or bake cookies or tickle her squirmy toesies was more than I could bear. 

baked and swirled

For St. Patrick' Day, I made this Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting from Closet Cooking.  The cake itself was deep dark deliciousness, but the Bailey's cream cheese frosting was the real star.  And since I now happen to have a bottle of Bailey's floating around my kitchen just begging to be used, I incorporated this same Bailey's/cream cheese combo into a swirly brownie recipe.  For the brownie base, I tried the much drooled-over Baked Brownie recipe from the fantastic Baked cookbook (thus spake Oprah).  I've never tried it on its own, but in this incarnation it yielded a dense, very chocolatey, slightly fudgy brownie that was a perfect foil for the creamy cheesecake swirl. 

a cold wind blows

I have been told over and over again that no one is ever quite prepared for what it means to become a parent.  In the past four months, we have not had to deal with any extraordinary lack of sleep (thank you, thank you), excessive crying, feeding issues, or any of those bag-eyed, craze-inducing horrors of newborn care, the stories of which are used to frighten soon-to-be parents into desperately grasping at those last few glimmers of child-free life.  No, Juniper has made it exceedingly easy on us.  Every now and then, we are even tempted to take credit for it, though surely we had nothing to do with her easy-going nature other than passing on our DNA.  After all, we have no idea what we're doing.

There are however, things that I was totally unprepared for.  I was unprepared for how helpless and untethered and full of hurt I would feel when my three day old baby, who was a stranger to me and yet unquestionably familiar, was checked into the NICU for 24 hours.  I was unprepared for the emotional weight of loving a little someone this much.  I was unprepared for how big a heart can grow and how vulnerable it feels to know that it can shatter into a million little pieces in a moment.  All we can do is live well and love well and be thankful.

Fly away little Thalon Bruce and Maddie Alice.  No one should get their wings this soon.

four months

Juniper turned four months old yesterday and she got a clean bill of health from the doc this morning.  She is currently weighing in at 16 lbs, 5 oz, with a height of 26 inches.  Lately, our morning routine has been a feeding around 8am, followed by some snuggling in bed and a nap (yes, all three of us sleep late... it's in the genes).  Juni was not happy about being yanked out of bed at 7am, bundled into the car in 50 degree weather, prodded at by the doctor, and needle-poked by the nurse.  Crankiness ensued.  However, after another feeding and some singing, she is happily napping away while I tidy up (a little) in preparation for my Mom arriving this evening.

it's a Bumbo thing or service with a smile

I walk to the counter at Babies r Us to pay for this oft-raved-about Bumbo Baby Seat.

Twenty-Some-Year-Old Cashier Girl:  (cue huffy, eye-rolling exasperation) "Ugggghh!!  This whole Bumbo thing is getting way out of hand!  I'm SO over it!  I mean, it's like just a CHAIR, right?  All they do is SIT THERE in it!  It's kind of stupid."

Me:  ???

Me:  That will be debit, thanks...

april is a promise

Juniper and her friends hope you had a lovely, restful Easter weekend!

a traveling song

We survived our first cross-country trip with Juniper (a week in Raleigh-Durham, NC, fishing around for a new little house).  She was an absolute angel on all of the flights, sleeping most of the time.  Charlie and I, on the other hand, were a total mess juggling all of the requisite baby gear along with a week's worth of clothes and supplies for the three of us (we are not light packers, people).  I almost got squished between two strangers on the overbooked flight from Salt Lake City to Raleigh-Durham.  These two strangers would have had to deal with our impossibly long and drapey almost-four-month-old stretching into their personal spaces and feeding as discreetly (or not) as possible in a area designed optimistically for a person the size of a meerkat.  Luckily the very nice lady sitting by the window traded her seat for Charlie's much less desirable middle seat a few rows back.  I would have kissed her if I didn't have baby spit-up running down the side of my neck.  In an unrelated note, turns out she is the winner of The Biggest Loser this season, so if you're a fan, I know who wins!