County Fair!

We met some friends at the Waukesha County Fair last week. Here is a picture of Mary and her friend Matthew that Matthew's mom took. Aren't they adorable? They were holding hands and walked right into this pole. They thought it was so funny and laughed and laughed about it, and then said, "Let's do it again!" and proceeded to run into the pole over and over again.

Here is a shot of us walking together. Joey is once again loving the view from my Beco.

And here is Mary, Matthew, and Cal on one of the rides. They had a blast. I love the fair!

Hip Mama Diaper Bag

I recently sewed this fabulous diaper bag for my sister-in-law who is due with her first baby in September. I am so proud of myself - this is the first serious sewing project I have ever completed, and I did it all by myself! It has a zipper pocket on the back, magnetic snap closures, four velcro pockets all around the outside, and two elastic pockets on the inside. I think it turned out fabulously, thanks to this great tutorial from A Mingled Yarn. I love that it doesn't *look* like a diaper bag, so you can keep using it after baby is older. Plus you feel like a "hip mama." The outer material is outdoor weight canvas fabric from Jo-Ann and the inner is vinyl - easy clean up! Here is a view from the front:

And here's a look at the inside:

And one more angle:

So there! I can sew! And did I mention I did it all by myself? Next step: sew one up for myself!

Berries (and cream!)

We have wild raspberries in our backyard that are ripe! We've been picking a handful every day for quite some time. Here is Mary showing off a bowl full. Joe has been playing this video for her lately and she has pretty much memorized the whole thing. Their little joke is that whenever someone says "berries," they say, "berries and what else?" and Mary makes the crazy smile face at the end of the video.

In other news, Joey had tooth number eight finally poke through today. Finally! Maybe now he'll start sleeping a little better. He has also mastered his first animal sound - Moo! - and learned how to dance! He's getting to be a lot more steady on his feet and it won't be long before he's running around the house.

Strawberry Season!

After a long hiatus, The Yatzeck Family Journal is back in action!

A couple of weeks ago we went strawberry picking at the Barthel Fruit Farm in Mequon. We ate lots and lots of strawberries and picked lots and lots more. Here is Mary sampling a juicy ripe one as daddy works on picking berries.

I carried Joey on my back in my new Beco Baby Carrier, which I got for my birthday and absolutely love. Joey seems to like the view from up there too. Here he is enjoying berry picking.

Here's Mary and Daddy with our flat of strawberries. And Mary eating another one. We had about twelve pounds of strawberries! We also picked sugar snap peas on the farm. I love fresh peas out of the pod! Mary and Joey really like them too. Joe is weird and doesn't like them. I think they are so sweet it is like eating candy!

So, what to do with so many strawberries? Why, make jam, of course! We had never made jam before, so after a little online research we formulated our own recipe. We didn't have enough freezer space to make freezer jam, so we decided to make cooked jam and can it. We had never canned before either, so we had to research that a little too. Here is what we did:

1. Wash and hull strawberries. Chop up in food processor until desired consistency is reached. We ended up with about 4.5 cups of mashed strawberries.
2. Put the berries into a large pot on the stove and stir one package of no-sugar-needed fruit pectin into the berries. We used Sure-Jell (in the pink box) for the first batch.
3. Add 1/2 teaspoon of butter (helps to stop foaming).
   
4. Bring to a full boil.
   
5. Add one cup of honey and one cup of 100% juice. We used pomegranate juice, as that's what we happened to have on hand in the fridge and I thought it sounded yummy.
6. Bring it back to a boil and boil hard for 2 minutes.
7. Fill canning jars to within 1/4 inch of the top. We sterilized the jars and rings first by running them in the dishwasher for a little while. For the lids, we boiled some water and then let it cool a little before adding the lids and left them in the water pot on the stove. We pulled the hot jars out of the dishwasher and poured the hot jam into them. It was a little messy, but we just wiped any spilled jam off the top, seated the lids, and tightened the rings around them.
8. Place jars into large pot of boiling water and boil for 7 minutes. Keep the jars covered with at least 2 inches of water and keep the water boiling.
9. Lift jars out of the water and let them cool. It usually takes overnight. Once the jars are cool, check that they are sealed verifying that the lid has been sucked down.
   

Ta-da! Jam! I think it is absolutely delicious. Mary loves it too. Joe didn't think it was sweet enough, so we made a second batch using a more traditional recipe - 3 cups of mashed strawberries, 2 cups of mashed mango, 7 cups of sugar, and 1 package of regular Sure-Jell to make Strawberry Mango Sweet Jam. Much too sweet for me, but Joe likes it better. Now we can have a little taste of summer all year long!

Sorry it's been so long since the last post! We had a major computer melt down, lost everything on our hard drive, and ended up buying a new computer. We ended up getting an iMac and we really like it so far. Joe was a little wary of making the crossover from the PC world, but we've both been surprised by how easy it's been.

Mary has grown up so much since my last post! She is definitely very mobile right now, and loves to get into everything. She really started cruising around at the end of August. Here is a picture from late 8/23/06 showing her early crawling method: get up on your hands and then lunge forward; repeat until you've pushed yourself towards the goal - in this case, a tower of blocks mommy made.



Here is Mary gearing up for football practice with her dad. My old high school started up a football team this year for the first time in over 20 years. Three of my brothers are on the team. Go Indians!




Here is a picture of Mary after a nap standing up in her crib for the first time. After I walked in and saw this, I immediately made Joe lower the crib mattress down to the lowest setting. In this picture you can also see the little curls she gets on top.


Here you see our little mischief maker caught in the act. I was trying to do the dishes, and let her crawl around. All of the crumpled up papers you see scattered around the floor and magazine pages she ripped out and spread all over the room. She also managed to find the soda cans, get one out of the box, and proceed to "drink" it. She's a smart girl - she figured that out all by herself.


She likes to climb up inside our end tables.



She also pulls up and stands on everything. It started with the couch, but now she stands up along the walls too. This picture is from earlier this week. She can't stand on her own yet, but I don't think it will be long before she's walking all over the place. For now, she walks along the furniture.


In other big news, in the first week of October, her bottom two teeth came in! I was really surprised at how all of sudden they just appeared in her mouth. She really didn't seem any more fussy than usual to me.

And finally, here is a picture I took in the bath today. So cute!

In case you haven't noticed, many of the pictures in this blog will become enlarged if you click on them. Just a little tidbit to enhance your viewing pleasure!

Mary tries out her high chair for the very first time! She seems to like the view sitting up by herself in such a high place. No food yet, but she did watch me do the dishes from here. We're planning on introducing solids in a week or two, after she turns six months old. I'm thinking avocados or sweet potatoes would be a good first food. I'll let you know how she likes it!


I bet you all can guess who was the mastermind behind this picture! Believe it or not, she was perfectly content to be rolled up like this. Mary and her daddy sure do some interesting things together...


Here's a nice closeup of how pretty her eyes are. They are very blue, and seem to be staying that way. Joe and I don't have blue eyes, but Joe's sister Carli does. Wherever she got them, we like them!


Happy baby grin! Mary rolling around on the floor at home. This picture is the most recent, taken just last night. Mary giggles a lot now, and it's so much fun to make her laugh. Plus, here you can get a good view of the cloth diapers we're using. We use these mostly at home, and use disposables at night and while traveling. I've noticed that she's a little more reluctant to pee in a cloth diaper than in a disposable diaper - I don't think she likes how it feels wet against her skin in the cloth diaper. According to our cousin Eric's science experiments, some disposables can hold up to a liter of fluid! That's a pretty big bladder for such a small little baby! Or I suppose you could just let them pee in it over and over and over and over....eeeewwwww!


Some more big news! Mary has finally decided to roll from her tummy to her back! She did it for the first time yesterday. She's been rolling from back to tummy for a couple of months now, which is somewhat odd since I read that most babies learn to roll from tummy to back first. I think Mary could have done it much sooner, but she just didn't want to. Yesterday she rolled from tummy to back several times, piece of cake. It was like she was just showing off -- "Hey mom, by the way, I just wanted to let you know I can totally roll wherever I want now." She's definitely getting closer and closer to being really mobile. She climbs up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, and sometimes she'll even stand up on her hands and toes, sort of like a downward dog yoga pose

Here's a big smile from Mary. We were having dinner on the grill in Grandpa and Grandma's backyard.


Mary has never been much of a thumb sucker, and she won't take a pacifier at all either. However, she does seem to enjoy her index finger. Here's a thoughtful pose:


Here's another picture of her "caught in the act." She doesn't really suck on that finger; she just sort of holds it in her mouth. We don't think she's teething yet, as she hasn't begun drooling and doesn't seem to be fussy about it.


Here's a picture of Mary at the Firemen's Picnic Parade. She caught some "love beads" early on and wore them for the whole parade. She really liked watching all the floats and people go by.

 

Some of you might already know that we're doing elimination communication with Mary. We started when she was 3 months old, and it works like a charm for us. Whenever we see that Mary has to go to the bathroom (when she wakes up, when she fusses in a certain way, etc.), we take her to the toilet. We save so much money on diapers. Since we switched to using cloth diapers at home, we also save ourselves a lot of laundry. We went from using 20-25 diapers per day down to 5-10 diapers per day. Right now she pees on the toilet about 60% of the time, and poops on the toilet about 90% of the time, and she keeps getting better. It is soooo much easier to clean her bottom after using the toilet than after going in a diaper, and she really seems to like using the bathroom. However, she still is a baby and still has "accidents" - here is a picture of the guilty party after pooping and peeing all over the place while daddy was trying to change her diaper!

Just lounging around the house with dad. Joe watches Mary three days a week while I work in the Biochemistry lab finishing up my senior thesis project. I should be done by the end of August. Woohoo!


We went to the zoo last Friday with Mary and met a friend and her two year old there. Mary gets worn out easily when we're out walking around, and usually falls asleep in the wrap. I don't think she really "gets" the zoo yet either - she's happy to look around at anything new, and since the zoo is a whole new place she looks around at EVERYTHING and I'm not sure she even notices the animals in particular. Plus it was really hot that day, so most of the animals were inside or just laying around, which makes them harder to notice. Mom and dad like to go the zoo anyway though!


The lions were all hiding, but luckily we brought along our own little lion for Mary. This is a picture of us at the park after visiting the zoo.

Mary also got to take her first ride down a playground slide. Hooray!

Mary is starting to push up on her arms now. She looks like she's getting ready to crawl! She doesn't really move anywhere yet, just up and down. And she can spin around 360 degrees when she's on her tummy. It won't be long before she's cruising around the house!


We went to visit Joe's parents in Genesee and they had this great blue ball that Mary LOVED to play with. We brought the ball home with us, and it always makes her laugh when we play with it.


Another new thing has been TOES. Mary "found" her feet and loves to play with them now. She'll sit there grabbing her toes, and once in awhile even pops them in her mouth.

We went to the fireworks in Waukesha for the 4th of July. Mary really liked the show! I was a little worried she wouldn't like the loud noise, but she didn't have any problems at all. The mosquitos weren't very bad at all either. She didn't make a fuss the whole time we were there. Here's a picture of her watching the fireworks with her daddy.

The fireworks were a little past her usual bedtime though, and even though she tried really hard to stay awake, eventually she just couldn't keep her eyes open. It was so funny - she would open her eyes to see a firework, and then they would slowly fall shut, and then she would open her eyes to see the next one, and then they would fall shut. Eventually they opened less and less until she was finally asleep. Daddy covered her ears so the booms wouldn't be so loud, but I don't think anything could have woken her up, she was so sleepy.

Mary with a little "turban" her dad gave her. She's four months old now and getting so big! We especially love to make her giggle.


Here's a picture of Mary and mom with our New Native pouch carrier. We like it a lot for short walks, getting Mary to take a nap, and discreetly nursing in public.

For longer walks (like when we went letterboxing), it gets to be a bit of a strain to carry the baby's weight on one shoulder. Also, sometimes it isn't as convenient to have a baby on the front side of you. So I looked into some other options and ended up making myself this wrap. I bought five yards of fabric at Jo-Ann's, cut it in half the long way, opened up the sewing machine we got as a wedding gift, and used it to hem the edges. I ended up with two wraps. I sold one of them for the cost of the fabric, so my wrap ended up being free! How's that for a deal?


It's super comfortable for long walks, and Mary likes to look around from this vantage point. It sure beats staring up at the sky from the stroller seat! Plus this way we can go places strollers can't!


I haven't mastered using the wrap to carry Mary on my back yet, but I'm working on it. I've had so many compliments on it while taking walks around Madison - even requests from other moms who want one too!