New tricks~

Updates on what Gwen can do and how she amuses her (easily amused and surprisingly sappy) parents:

--She has found her hands! She very much enjoys nomming her right hand these days, even when not hungry. It was confusing to us for awhile, thinking she was hungry. These days she sucks on them at night the last two nights. Self-soothing here we come! Yay! ... Also, seems she has an idol in Miss Piper. She's started, sometimes, doing the "horns" that Piper does. Luke got a picture of her -almost- doing it, but not quite. I'll see if I can get him to post it, but I'm not sure it's very clear.
We need a link to Piper, showing her how to do it!

--She's also started staring at her hands and feet, which someone told me was good.

--She scoots alllll over in the night in her crib. Ends up 180 or 240 degrees rotated from what we put her at . This is a bit disconcerting at times!

--She is smiling and giggling and making a lot of faces these days, starting to make more when you make them at her. Likely the smiles are still just gas, but they're fun anyway. She's a ham sometimes.

--All sorts of funny little noises coming from her these days. We crack up listening to her. Who knew Luke and I would be so sappy.

--LOVES her K-state mobile. LOVES it. She will stare and stare and respond to it.

--She's sleeping longer, sometimes 5 or 6 hours at night. -I- still have to get up and "provide for the child" (as Aunt Susi put it!), so that's tiring.

(TMI and not as cute! Read at own risk!)

--She's also converted to a (Luke said it!) "pooping very rarely, but HUGELY" . It's freaking us out a bit. She's still eating 100% breastmilk (Geez, I hate pumping. So much. But she never took to eating well, so bottles it is). And when she has stools, they look like normal breast fed stools. The doctor told us not to worry too much, but we can't help it!

Merry Christmas! (and old medical news!)

It's Gwen's first Christmas!

We spent Christmas Eve evening with Luke's family last night and Gwen got to meet many family members for the first time. She was a bit fussy, but we go back there today, hopefully she's more her usual social self then.

Merry Christmas all!

_______

In other news: Gwen went to the eye doctor two and a half weeks ago, and everything is going well! No rechecks for 6 weeks, we're just monitoring everything.

Also saw the pediatrician the week after that: Everything going well here too! She was 8 lbs and 6oz then. Really getting "big!" ... Of course, she's still in the 5%. So "big" is relative. I just remember the "not even 5 lbs!" baby when she was born, so she seems huge now.


We'll have some pictures soon!

ZOMG - A Post Not About Gwen!

I know this is primarily a cute baby blog, but I figure I need to put something else up once in a while.  In this case, I threw a little shindig this past weekend for the sole purpose of consuming massive proportions of meat.  Two years ago, some friends and I made a turbaconducken.  I decided that two years was entirely too long to go without another such monstrosity, so here we go. 

WARNING: This post is not for the easily squeamish or for the vegetarians out there.  You have been warned.

We didn't take anywhere near as many pictures this time around.  The overall procedure is about the same as last time, so look here for details.  The primary differences are listed here:

Less bacon: Believe it or not, there really was too much bacon last time, so this time we used less than 3 pounds.  However, I had bought extra, so during the assembly on Saturday we fried up a pound and ate it by itself.  Because while there may be too much bacon in a single dish, there really isn't such a thing as too much bacon overall.

We used the top three packs of bacon on the birds - 2ish pounds of an apple-wood smoked that the butcher recommended, plus a pound of different apple-wood smoked.  They imparted a very nice flavor to the creation.  The 2 pounds underneath were eaten and the leftovers frozen for later enjoyment.

Making a Brine:  The major problem with the bird last time is that the turkey breast, being so close to the surface, dried out pretty badly.  By using this brine, we were able to help reduce that problem a bit (see here for an explanation of the chemistry involved).  I don't think it succeeded as well as I'd hoped, but it did certainly add a whole buncha tasty goodness to the process.

I read a useful tip somewhere - by using the large turkey roasting bags, you can brine the bird in a safer and more sanitary fashion by keeping it in the meat drawer of your refrigerator. I never could convince myself to use a 5-gallon bucket and some ice instead...

Side view, pre-ice.

The brine ready to head into the fridge.

All safe for a 9 hour soak!

Todd and Jason did most of the assembling again this time.  Here's the final product before wrapping it up with twine:

Wrapping the outside with bacon

Entering the oven on Sunday morning.  I have a vastly better oven this time around, and it definitely showed in the final product.

Hot out of the oven

Nowhere near the fat that I had to take out the last time.

After the savages demolished yonder beastie

Jessica posted some more pictures of the event.  Since I was covered up to the elbows in the fats of assorted animals, I didn't get any pics of the initial cutting.  I've stolen these ones from her:

Tastiest.  Drumstick.  Ever.

The bacon has made me mad, MAD I tell you!

And now, it is time for the random pics:

My latest creation: Noggachino!
Yes, those are raw eggs.  Yes, they are tasty.  Nom nom nom.

Nolan and Gwen

One of the more ... interesting ... appetizer trays I've seen.

Epic knife work.  Really, Todd was just wanting to make sure that if we chewed up the countertops it'd be my fault.  Todd is a very smart guy.

Extracting the bird from the pan.  Pre-cooking, the strings were so tight we couldn't weave much bacon underneath them, now look at the amount of slack.

Wes and Gwen.  They always seem to get along so well.

This is a strip of bacon.  On top of an M&M cookie.  Not my idea.  Sure does look a bit like nigiri though...

 
I don't have many pictures of the event itself, and I'm really, really tired, so I'm just posting the few I have with Gwen.  Since this is "her" blog, after all.

If at First you Don't Succeed...

It's always fun when your subject is making all kinds of cute, happy faces, you run and get the camera, aaaaaand the cuteness is gone.  :sigh:

For example:

Now for some cuter ones:

Another Visit

Last Saturday Gwen got some visitors just slightly (OK, 8 months or so...) older than herself.  The Tipton twins were quite interested in her, of course.  I mean, who wouldn't be?  ;)

I think this is Natalie, "helping" Jenni feed Gwen.

Jessica, holding...  Piper?  I think?

Robert, the proud father.  He's actually pretty well lost it, as you can see. 
Taking care of twins will do that to you.

Happy Baby

I know, I know, no posts in forever.  Nothing terribly exciting going on, but I did manage to get some pics of a happy Gwen.  She's been smiling a lot more and seems to be turning more social overall.  We went over to my mom's (Grammers's) this morning and Gwen was quite happy to visit.

OK, so she's not as happy in the chair...

Gwen's very first Christmas present, from Amelia.

Happy baby time!

Random pics

Just a few pics we've got laying around:

I Need a Translator Please

Well, Gwen's been a bit grumpy with us recently, having many bouts of crying even when she's fed, changed, warm, etc.  I realize this is just what babies do, but it would be sooooo much more helpful if there was a more descriptive method of communicating her needs than crying.  When she gets into this mode, I've been referring to it as a "General Baby Fault" event.

Ever since Windows 3.0 became popular in 1990 or so, I've been fighting with the dreaded General Protection Fault (GPF).   For those of you less technically oriented, the simplest definition is "a program did something wrong, now I give up".  It's also been called Windows' "General Default Error", since generally there is absolutely no useful information displayed to say what really went wrong.

Here is a screenshot of the GPF as shown on Windows 3.1 (from here):

And here is Gwen's default messagebox:

And now it's time to play "decode the error"!  Try to guess what Gwen's upset about here:

 

Yeah, we didn't know either.