Sleepytown update: early mornings

Asher has slept all night 4 out of the past 5 nights. This is a dream come true! Literally. We are actually starting to have dreams again. You know how when you don’t get good, solid sleep, you can’t remember any dreams? After a long reprieve, I’m back to waking up in the mornings and getting to hear Collin rehash all of his dreams. (They are mostly about him being a superspy, running from the mob, or escaping from prison. Yes, I am serious.)

So hooray for sleeping all night. Here’s the downside: Asher has been waking up really early. This morning it was 5.40am. And he’s up for the day. :( I’m wondering if this early morning waking is due to hunger, since he was previously waking up for a brief feed anywhere between 2 and 4am. OR could it be because he’s just had enough sleep? We’ve been putting him to bed pretty early and he’s been sleeping around 11.5 hours. So maybe we should keep him up a bit later in the evenings? Or some other factor altogether?

Any ideas for us, mamas and daddies and grandmas and nannies and mannies out there?

Candice is funny

You really have to know some Ritchie Valens, Usher, Justin Bieber, and Rebecca Black to think these are funny… nonetheless, there a couple of things that Candice does every now and then that really make me laugh. Oh the joys of 8 1/2 years of marriage…

1. Candice can only sing the chorus to Rebecca Black’s “Friday”  if she sings to the tune of Justin Bieber’s “Baby”. It started out as innocent pop confusion… now she just does it on purpose: “It’s like Friday, Friday, Friday, Ohhhh!”

2. Candice is unable to say “It’s seven o’clock” without following it up immediately with “on the dot, I’m in my drop top cruisin’ the streets…” – 1997, people, that was 1997 and she still can’t stop after “o’clock”.

3. She refuses to sing the words to the song “La Bamba”… she insists on replacing them with whatever food we happen to be eating at the time… “Ma-ma-ma-ma ma mango, ma-ma mango, ma-ma-ma ma mango… ta-ta-ta-ta ta taco, taco taco, ta-ta-ta-ta taco.” Then later, “taaaa taaa ta-co, taaaa taaa ta-co” – c’mon guys, you have to sing along to really get it… she’ll have it stuck in your head soon. Her plan is to get it stuck in my head and make me look like a fool in the library, walking through the book stacks singing under my breath, “aaa-vaaa ca-do, aaa-vaa ca-do”.

Sleepytown, USA. I mean, UK.

Before Asher was born, I got a lot of sleep. I mean, A LOT. I always slept through the night, slept in when I could, and took naps pretty often. I just function so much better with a lot of sleep. So you can imagine the shock to my system when the little man was born. Sure, people had told us that we would be tired and would not get much sleep, but I don’t think I was really prepared for what it was going to be like to be woken up that many times in the night until it happened, not to mention that when you do wake up, you have to be somewhat functional in order to care for a tiny human who is demanding your attention. Anyway, the quality and quantity of our sleep plummeted so far and so fast, I didn’t think I would ever recover. (I like to be dramatic sometimes. :)) I would get frustrated when people would tell me to “sleep when the baby sleeps”, because my baby wasn’t sleeping for more than 35/40 minutes at a time! So by the time I got him down, had a drink or a pee, got myself settled and into dreamland, I was jarred out of sleep, only more groggy than before the nap. So I gave that up. It wasn’t worth it.

For several months I struggled with figuring out how to function without a proper rest. I know every new parent must go through this. (Please tell me I’m not alone.) In the past when new parents mentioned they were tired or sleep deprived, I gave a sympathetic nod, but more often than not, I didn’t give it a second thought. I read a book awhile back and the author said parents deserved a “ticker-tape parade” for their heroic, middle-of-the-night efforts. Maybe that’s a bit over-the-top, but for sure,the next time a parent tells me they are tired from sleepless nights, I will feel a true compassion for them and understand the very real need for sleep to happen in their home.

We are finally feeling like we are leaving that mind-numbing infant sleep stage. Those first few months after Asher was born were the worst, as one would expect. But Asher has now really gotten into the groove of sleeping well at night and for naps. There is no more holding and bouncing for an hour to get him to sleep. A few verses of “Tis so Sweet” and a kiss and the kid just lays down and goes to sleep (most of the time… not yesterday, though, when he screamed like a banshee). But this has got me feeling rather hopeful: Asher has now slept ALL NIGHT, without waking up, for three nights in a row. I’m talking nearly 12 hours a night. Three long, uninterrupted, glorious nights of sleep has made us feel a bit more human, but we still have a ways to go. You see, the problem is that our bodies have become so accustomed to waking up in the night, that even when Asher does sleep for a long stretch, we still wake up. We feel like we now have our own night waking issues and we’ll have to sleep train ourselves!

Still, it’s these small victories that keep us going in the sleep department. But I’m being reasonable; I’m not getting my hopes up because I know very well that today could be a totally different story altogether. He might decide naps are for the birds. Or tonight he could decide he actually does want to wake up 47 times. I know it might not be our new normal just yet. But it’s coming, I can feel it. :) Here’s hoping for night-o-bliss #4 tonight!

Gender reveal party

This weekend some friends got together to find out if Nicki and Eric are going to have a baby girl or baby boy this summer. The anticipation was building because they found out on Monday and made us all wait nearly a whole week before sharing the news!

We went with a bumble bee theme for the party: What will it Bee? I found most of the ideas on Pinterest and tweaked them to work for us. Pinterest is a gold mine for party planning and food ideas!

We had some great food. Several people brought yummy things to share:

My first attempt at decorating sugar cookies, modelled here by the new mama and daddy:

There were some fun decorations:

The spray painted jars ended up working perfectly:

Everyone wore either a moustache (if they thought the Appel's were having a boy) or a bow (for a girl):

The cake was a bit of an experiment, to say the least, but in the end it served the purpose:

Eric and Nicki getting ready to cut the cake for the big reveal:

It’s going to beeeee a:

BOY!!!

And because we are just that cool:

And because these are too cute not to post:

Amy and I even got to eat some food while these ladies entertained our boys. We love our Cambridge aunties!

Congratulations, Appels! Can’t wait to meet baby boy in a few months!

Ten things I’ve learned in the past ten days

10. It's okay to call for backup. I had been working on a few things that needed to be finished by Sunday, but by Saturday night I realised that it wasn't going to happen. That's when I sent a text to a friend saying, "Hey, do you have a few minutes tomorrow when you could come help me out? Please, pretty please, and please again?"

9. Room temperature eggs work best when making a cake. The eggs will fluff up and help the cake rise.

8. You can make your own self raising flour if you don't have any and you don't want to brave the cold to go to the store. You just add a bit of rising agent and a pinch of salt. Like I said, you can do it. Apparently, I cannot. From now on I will just find a different recipe. It's really better than throwing away two cakes and then starting on a third. Not that I did that or anything.

7. A hot, bubbly parmesan dip with crusty bread will meet the deepest needs of your heart. 

6. Baking sweet potatoes in the oven is a great way to prepare them for baby. It’s way easier than peeling, chopping, and steaming them. Just bake the whole potato, scoop out the inside, give it a quick pulse with the hand-held blender or mash with a fork. Annnnd, you're done. 

5. With a bit of motivation in the morning, we can have the whole flat clean, everyone showered and dressed, breakfast eaten and cleaned up, bed made and baby down for a nap by 9am. It makes the whole day more enjoyable. 

4. The Mentalist is an intense show. Sometimes we have to watch The Daily Show afterwards so I don't lie in bed thinking about how Patrick Jane is totally going to catch Red John one of these days.

3. Stephen Colbert is ridiculous and there's a good chance I would vote for him for President of the United States of South Carolina. 

2. Our 10 year high school reunion was just scheduled for this summer. Already? Didn't we just graduate?

1. Getting together with girlfriends in the middle of the week for no reason really makes my day.

The slow retreat

The world’s covered over, but here and there, the frost, in slow retreat, relinquishes its hold. The cold is no match for warmth; darkness no match for light; death no match for life.
And people say God is invisible… Nonsense.

What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup. —Frederick Buechner

Starting solids

This post is mostly for our own documentation, so we can look back and see what our little guy has been up to. Feel free to click away if you're bored with baby routines. :)

I'm super invested right now in starting Asher off with healthy foods and hopefully some healthy habits. Our little man is over six months old now and is such a big, strong baby boy. He's also a very hungry boy! We were digressing in the sleep department because he started waking up several times every night to eat. I thought we were finished with that! He was wanting more and more milk to keep up with his growing appetite (and his growing muffin top!), and the middle of the night was the only time he could get the extra milk. He was also starting to get very hungry long before the usual four hours between milk feeds. So we decided to get going on the real food! It's been a learning experience for all of us. (Isn't everything when you're a new mama?) I can't help but think that with our second (if we have a second) child, all of this will be so much easier after doing it one time around!

Here's the basic set up: I have a list of foods that Asher has already tasted and those that I'm going to introduce to him soon, as well as a good idea of the portions he is taking. I make sure I always have these foods cooked, pureed, frozen in 1 Tablespoon cubes, and tucked away in the freezer. (I'm working on the storage system for all of it... Ziploc bags are on the way!) A while before it's time for Asher to eat, I get the food out of the freezer to defrost, putting the cubes in individual ramekins. (I need to find some plates with separated sections.) While a lot of books and "experts" suggest mixing the stronger tasting vegetables together with some sweeter ones, we are mostly keeping it all simple and separate. I don't want Asher to never have really tasted broccoli or green beans because I always mashed them with sweet potatoes or whatever. We will get a bit more adventurous after he's happily eating the plain stuff. So far he hasn't rejected anything, so we'll keep it up as long as he's willing to chow down. (Then I'm certain I will start hiding the veg in pizza and chicken nuggets!)

For a while, Asher was super uninterested in anything other than milk. I think this was partially because we had the timing all wrong. With a few tweaks to his routine, he's now happily attacking the spoon (and any finger foods we give him) three times a day.

Here's his basic schedule right now at 6 months + 1 week:
6.30am (if we are lucky!) Asher wakes up and comes into our room for some sleepy snuggles
7am milk (lots of milk!)
8am breakfast (a bit of yogurt and fruit)
9am nap
11am milk (just a little, we are working on gradually eliminating this milk feed)
11.30am lunch (3 or 4 different veggies)
1pm nap
2.30pm milk
4.15pm nap (only about 20 minutes, just to push him through until bedtime)
5pm dinner (wholegrain rice and 4 grain baby cereals {Is there a better cereal for babies???} and fruit or veggies)
6.15pm milk
6.45 bed
Middle of the night milk (just once the past few nights, yay!)

I try to be flexible and not force him to eat or sleep at exactly those times, but the schedule above is more or less the one Asher has demanded for himself. We tried to do something a bit different, but he made it clear that this was the only way to go. Now that we’ve been doing this routine for a week or so, he will let me know if I'm off even by a few minutes! He is so predictable; hungry and sleepy right when I expect it. It’s funny, though, because I know right when I get this down, something will change and we’ll be re-evaluating again. But for the moment, it’s working well. Now I just have to figure out how I’m ever going to leave the house with that jam-packed schedule!

Anyone have ideas on how I can make the baby food adventure any easier/better? I'm all ears. You know, sometimes it's nice to have someone give an outsider’s perspective.

Spray painted jars

You know those women who are brilliant when it comes to making things, sewing, photography, etc.? Those ladies who whip up gourmet meals in half an hour, who sew crib bedding for their babes, who decorate their homes with ease? I’m not one of them. Sure, I can make a tasty dinner or scribble out some block letters, but I’m pretty useless with a paintbrush, a needle and thread, or a fancy camera. But I just can’t ignore all of those good ideas on Pinterest! So I’ve decided to embrace my inner craftiness (or lack there of) and give a few things a try. My current motivation is a gender reveal party we are hosting next week for some friends. They will finally find out if they are going to have a boy or a girl and a big group of people are coming over to celebrate! Fun.

I’ll tell you more about the details of the party after it happens because I don’t want my friend (hi Nicki!) to know all of my tricks before the big reveal, but one small thing I decided to do was spray paint some jars to use as decorations. Luckily, I had a few empty jars and bottles in the kitchen that we had been saving, so I scraped off the labels and used them for the project. (Tip: If you just cannot scrub off that last bit of adhesive that’s left on the jar, WD-40 works like a charm.)

We spread out some newspapers and Collin got to work with the spray paint. I kind of wanted to do it because spray paint is fun, but if you know Collin, this type of thing is right up his alley. Armed with enough spray paint, he could take over the world. (I saw that quote on Pinterest… so funny. So Collin.)

Then we had to take a break to get Asher down for his nap. I may have taken one too. It was an early morning, y’all. Collin headed off to the library and then when Asher and I woke up, I had to put these adorable leg warmers on the babe. Had to. I felt they were a necessity because they are just so darn cute. :) (These baby legs are also reason number 37 I want to learn how to sew.)

Back to the spray paint! Because I was inside playing with Asher, I didn’t realize it had started raining all over my freshly painted jars! I should have known; this is England after all. You can’t really expect it to not rain.

So needless to say, the rain made the paint a little less… shall we say… smooth? Oh well, I sprayed on one more coat and called it good. Good enough, anyway.

Embrace 2012

It seems as though friends in real life and bloggers alike have been focused on New Years resolutions more than usual. Or maybe not, maybe I’m just now tuning in, since I don’t typically make resolutions for the upcoming year. I know I’m a bit tardy to the party. But all of this goal setting amongst my friends has made me look at the year ahead with a bit more intention and care. There are areas of life that I’ve been thinking of tackling for a while and the start of the year is the perfect time to finally cement these ideas and get the ball rolling.

I don’t want to look back and think of what I could have done during this season of life. There are too many things that I wish I knew how to do, too many times I’ve thought of giving something or doing something for someone else but have not followed through, too many hours that have passed without purpose. So in the coming year, there are a few specific things I would like to accomplish, including learning how to sew, mastering the art of making nutritious baby food, documenting a bit more through the blog, as well as some creative and some relational things that I’ve been tossing around.

But mostly I want to embrace what we’re doing in life, as Collin is working on a PhD and I’m staying at home with the babe and everything that includes; I want to embrace our friends, most of whom are also very far from home and need community just like we do; I want to embrace our circumstances, living 5,000 miles from family, in a flat that has a mouldy bathroom. Sometimes I think, “When we move back to America, we’ll ______.” Or “If we lived closer to our families, then ______.” And I think that’s fine; it’s okay to dream and think ahead. And I’m not saying I won’t fall into lethargy or apathy from time to time, I’ve had far too much practice in those areas that it’s sure to happen, so I’m allowing lots of space for grace. But I want to be true to today, to this year, this first year of our boy’s life. I want to look back on this year in Cambridge and be able to see what I’ve learned, what I’ve accomplished and how I’ve grown and changed. I want to be able to see the ways in which we’ve made our lives more full and rich when we look back this time next year.

So raise your glass… here’s to embracing the important things in 2012. Cheers.

And if anyone wants to give me sewing lessons, that would be brill. :)

Just a glance at 2011

Today we were doing a bit of housecleaning, trying to catch up after a few days of neglect. I was vacuuming the stairs with Asher attached to me in the baby carrier, and I thought, “Hmmm… not the easiest thing I’ve ever done, yet it’s working and even satisfying.” And it occurred to me that this very thought might be the best way to describe 2011 as we look back over the year. We got pregnant (okay, true, that happened in the last bits of 2010, but let’s just go ahead and clump it in with 2011 for the sake of remembering), we moved flats (twice), grew a baby into a real, live, precious boy, birthed him (not so much we on this one) and kept him alive and thriving for 6 months (happy 6th months today Asher!), travelled internationally with the babe, and returned home to Cambridge to embrace another year here. And somehow we’ve come out on the other side, finding our normal again. A new normal, maybe. 2011 brought a lot of joy and celebration to our lives and we realise how blessed we were in the past year. On the flip side, it wasn’t always easy. Some of it was very difficult. Some bits came to us naturally, while other bits seemed foreign, things for which we were unequipped. But when I pause and look at my two favourite guys, I am reminded that this thing we have going, this little family of three, is working. And I love it and I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world than right here, making a pot roast and washing bottles. :)

New Year’s Visitors

One day Candice was talking with our very dear friend Tiffani, and they were discussing the sad fact that we had taken absolutely zero photos of Tiffani with Asher when we attended her wedding in November. They started joking about how fun it would be to spend New Years together… and what do you know?! The next morning when Candice and I woke up, our phones were abuzz with messages from Curby saying that they were buying plane tickets to come over here! A few hours or so later, Tiffani and Curby scored major “awesome points” by sending us the confirmation that they had, in fact, purchased plane tickets to come see us on New Years!

We were excited for many reasons, not least because our friend Rachael had planned a fun “Chopped” New Year’s Eve, and we were pumped to get our friends in on the competition. But most of all, we were thrilled to get to spend some good quality time with Tiffani and Curby, since during their wedding, as it is with all weddings, there was very little down time for hanging out and doing nothing with your friends.

In preparation for their visit, Asher donned his UCLA football shirt that he got from his Auntie Tiff…

We had a very low-key visit with them, which was a nice follow-up to the holiday hubbub (not that our holidays were particularly hubbubly). I always hate it when Christmas is over because you have that terrible after-Christmas letdown and it’s no longer “crisp and magical” outside, it’s just “cold and gray.” We made good food together, walked around Cambridge, visited a couple of ye-olde-English pubs, and had a rockin’ New Year’s Eve.

We walked into town wearing fun hats…

… we discussed important issues, like why we believe jackets with those shoulder loop things are superior to regularly shouldered garments.

We ate cinnamon rolls together on New Year’s day. We had some frozen from the batch we made before Christmas… they were still just as good and just as fattening. However, the barrage of New Year’s resolution posts from other blogs has me rethinking the whole idea behind eating cinnamon rolls on New Year’s day… it’s not exactly the kind of thing that fits with the “let’s eat healthy this year” mindset. Oh well, that wasn’t one of my resolutions anyway… and, in any case, I think you’re not really supposed to start doing the resolutions until week 2, right?

On the last day of the visit, we went to Anglesey Abbey (a National Trust site close to Cambridge) and saw the “Winter Garden” with the “Himalayan silver birch trees” (photo courtesy of Tiffani Piehl). It was good English fun despite the somewhat muddy state of the countryside.

It was a great visit. We were extremely happy to see our friends, and Asher was very happy to hang out with Aunt Tiffani and Uncle Curby

Chopped!

I’m a little upset right now because I wrote a fun, comprehensive, and, if I may, brilliant post about our New Year’s Eve fun… and I could have sworn that I posted it. Alas, it’s nowhere to be found :(… so I’ll do my best to recover from my memory all the cleverly worded anecdotes, but I’m afraid I’ll never, as no one ever does, live up to my preconceived, mostly imaginary, genius of the past.

Our friend Rachael planned a super fun get together for New Year’s Eve that was based on the TV show “Chopped”. On the show, competing cooks have to make something brilliant using a specific set of four different ingredients, and they’re graded on how well they “transform the ingredients” into one tasty dish.

Candice and I were assigned the following ingredients: 1) semolina, 2) Asian pears, 3) rose water, and 4) Werther’s Original hard candies. Our sole competition was the formidable Team Piehl (Tiffani and Curby)… let’s be honest, if they’re awesome enough to fly over on a whim and visit us on New Years, they’re probably awesome enough to make a killer “Chopped” dish.

Here’s Candice showing off our tasty creation. We made a “maple cheesecake on a Werther’s and semolina shortbread crust topped with roasted, rose water glazed, Asian pears.

And here’s the competition, “Werther’s toffee, apple, and pear crumble with semolina and ginger topping and rose water and pear ice cream.”

In the end, the judges decided to give the gold to Team Piehl instead of Team Bullard (lookout panel of judges! we WILL have our revenge!). While I am properly outraged at their decision, I actually agree that the competing dish was hard to beat. Overall, there are several things that we would do differently with our recipe the next time around. First of all, we were mistaken to trust in Martha Stewart for the original cheesecake recipe… it was “no-bake”, which I was wary of to begin with, but I trusted in her assessment that it was just as good. Let me just say, I’m sick of people telling me that “no-bake” cheesecakes are “just as good.” There is nothing as delectable as a genuine, original, don’t-mess-around-with-a-classic, baked cheesecake. No.thing. This is the last time I trust Martha Stewart… in the New Year, I’m putting my trust in Jesus (who is, in many ways, like cheesecake).

The rest of the night was as fun as the cooking competition. Rachael and Ben (a.k.a., The Organizers) made a really good gumbo for the main course, and after we were all stuffed, we chatted and traded fun stories until the fireworks went off in London (they were spectacular, by the way, I think because the Olympics are this year). Just look at this smiling bunch, how could you not have fun?

Here’s one with the guys added in, not nearly as pretty as the above picture, but fun nonetheless.

Cheers!