Weekend Update 7.19.09

Hello again! Another week, another update...


This week seemed to go by really quickly, lots going on. We had a wee car issue on Wednesday (ahem, Hubster), but Scott installed a new air filter and everything was good as new by the evening. We got our canvas and print order from Peter's newborn session on Wednesday as well, so we spent some time hanging pictures and assembling albums, and I got the baby announcements out in the mail. Yay!





Thursday was the annual Lawrence Downtown Sidewalk Sale, so Scott had Peter for the morning and I was downtown at 4:45am, coffee in hand, waiting for the first store to open their doors. I got tons of clothes for Peter for the coming year, and found a dress to wear to his baptism. Scott got new Reefs and a KU winter hat. All in all, a good bargain hunting day :)


I also had my final postpartum doctor appointment. I have officially lost all the baby weight, but my goodness - when they tell you that your body changes after a baby, they are not kidding. I still can't button my pre-baby jeans, and my wedding bands still don't fit on my finger. Boo. So we need to work on a few areas in the coming months (although how one slims down a finger is beyond me...).


Peter visited the work folks this week, he did really well considering all the PEOPLE and the TOUCHING and the COOING and oh! but the FLUORESCENT LIGHTING. It took him about 2 and a half hours to finally lose his cool, which is a long stretch. And only one person confused him for a girl. Must be all that pretty blond hair and gorgeous blue eyes that the boy has ;)


We had tons of rain early in the week, then awesome cool temps this weekend. Where usually it's heat indices in the 110s and humidity so thick it looks like fog, we instead have cool evenings that dip into the high 50s and sunny, breezy days in the low 70s. Absolute heaven! We've taken full advantage, Scott worked in the yard (got some beets and pattypan squash planted), and we grilled out. In the evening Scott and I take the baby monitor (and a beer) and enjoy the weather on the back deck. Ahhhh, just lovely. Aside from the bajillion mosquito bites on my body, I can't complain :)

We made a home improvement update as well, one that's been a long time coming. When we bought the house, the kitchen had a new brushed stainless faucet. After we did our updates to the kitchen I would have preferred an oiled bronze faucet to match the light fixtures and hardware, but hey. New is new, right?

Well.

The "new faucet" started to have a slower and slower water flow. At first I thought it was all in my head, but basically the water pressure kept dropping until by this spring, all we could get out was a weak trickle. It took about ten minutes to get even warm water, and doing dishes was now a long, tedious chore. Heck, washing your hands, doing ANYTHING was a long tedious chore...

To make a long (long looooong) story short: we looked for replacement parts to fix the problem, Home Depot was of no help. Turns out that they have several manufacturers make their Pegasus brand, whomever is the cheapest at the moment. Making it virtually impossible to get replacement parts... Scott eventually found the part after months of searching, but luck would have it that it didn't fix the problem. We finally just went to Lowes this weekend and bought a Moen faucet. It's a lovely oiled bronze and cost quite a bit, but I'm sure it will last a lot longer than the previous thing.

Hooray! Running water in the kitchen, what a revelation! So: that's about it for the week. We'll see what next week brings; it's the last full week of Peter at home (we're starting daycare before I head back to work, so that everyone is used to the routine before I have to add working to this whole mess). As much as I'm ready to head back to work, back to some normalcy and a healthy routine for both me and Peter, it does make me sad to know our days together are almost over.

Better-Than-From-The-Tube Cookie Dough

So you know how there was the whole Salmonella contamination with the Nestle tube dough? That awesome stuff that tastes good straight from the tube but even better when baked off? The convenient, bake-as-needed shape and packaging? Yeah, I thought it was kinda sad, too. I'm not much for buying those tubes anyway, but I get their appeal. And after the whole Salmonella scare, I really don't want to buy the stuff for awhile.

If you are like me, though, you can just try this recipe and have no more worries. Who needs that prepackaged tube stuff when you can get the same out of this recipe? These cookies are freaking awesome. The shortening is the key to keep them soft while also to keep the cookies from spreading terribly. Plus it helps the dough to keep in your fridge for what I guess would be a good couple of weeks. I wouldn't actually know, because we blew through the dough I made in a few days. Cookies don't last long in this house.

Better-Than-From-The-Tube Cookie Dough
(adapted from this recipe)

Ingredients:
1 c. vegetable shortening
4 Tbsp. butter
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 c. bittersweet chocolate chunks (chop up a few bars)


Cream shortening, butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla and mix well. Add baking soda and salt and flour and mix thoroughly. Toss in chocolate and mix until incorporated.

Pull out a few long sheets of Saran wrap. Split the dough in half, and drop one-half of each on a Saran wrap sheet. Pat the dough into a longish log, then pull the sides of the wrap against the dough. Squeeze and shape with the Saran wrap until you've worked the dough into long tubes. Wrap up completely. Place in the fridge to chill, at least 1 hour.

When you are in the mood for some cookies: Preheat the oven to 350 F. Slice off cookies about half an inch thick and bake for 10 -12 minutes (no more than 12 minutes!). Let sit on pan for 5 minutes and then move to wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!

Weekend Update 7.12.09

Time for another update! Things have been pretty much the same around here, I'm still home with the baby and I think we're getting into a good routine. We ventured out quite a bit this week, scouted out potential daycares as well as took trips to the grocery store, post office, Target, clothes shopping (gotta get him trained on bargain hunting early)...



Scott bottled his 2nd batch of Robot Ale this weekend. We also got out to the Farmers Market for the first time since baby. One lonesome stand still had the yummy ripe peaches, the only one still selling the Kansas summer peach crop. So of course we picked up a few pounds.



On the Pete front: We got the baptism invites assembled, addressed, and out. He also celebrated his official 1 Month birthday on Tuesday. Happy birthday little man!


Yeah I know - he looks thrilled.

This week we were finally able to secure daycare - YEAH! That was a big hurdle. I really love this place, I think it'll be great for Pete - she coordinates with EKANS on educational programs, including working with infants, which is a bonus. We start in about 3 weeks, so we found her just in the nick of time.

On the gardening front - things are really starting to come around. The tomato plants have shot up, and we have a bunch of tomatoes starting to bloom and form. I'm super-excited about our tomatoes this year, we planted all heirlooms - Green Germans, Brandywine, and Yellow Pear. Also we now have an abundance of cucumbers. Scott started a few batches of dill pickles, and we've been enjoying cucumber salads. YUM. Kansas summers are totally gross, just hot and soupy and disgusting (you can't really do anything outside). So to me the best part is enjoying the garden goodies... inside. In the nice, temperature-controlled air conditioning. :)

Okay, off until next week. I've been baking A TON - however haven't been able to photograph everything. I hope to get a few recipes up next week, though.

4th of July Weekend

Fourth of July weekend! We got a lot done this 4th of July. Usually we'd head out to visit someone else if the holiday falls on a weekend (Lawrence has lame fireworks laws, you can only set off sparklers or those snake things). This year with the baby being so little, we decided it wouldn't be too smart to drag him around Kansas. Scott's parents decided to make a visit to see us instead, so we still got to see family.



Friday Scott bottled some beer in the morning, while Pete and I picked up the house a little bit. Scott's parents were gracious enough to watch Peter for the evening, so Scott and I actually were able to have an evening out. Yeah! We headed downtown and had dinner at Free State Brewery. It was a great evening weatherwise (rare for Kansas in July) and the Tour of Lawrence started that evening downtown, so we watched the sprints for a little bit. Then a nightcap at The Eldridge, and back home for us. Peter was showing off and only fussed for his grandparents for an hour. On his best behavior! So everybody had a pretty good evening :)


The rest of the weekend was spent baking, organizing closets (as FUN AND EXCITING as it sounds, folks), and watching Wimbledon. We had one other visitor - our bud Anna came over to visit Peter. She was able to witness The Fatness that is now our baby. Speaking of which...


So this weird thing happened on Saturday. I put him down for a nap, here's a picture I took of him after swaddling him for his afternoon nap:

And here he is right after his nap, when Anna came over:

Um, yeah. I am not sure how that happened. It's like he hides treats in his bassinet and snacks on them when he's supposed to be napping.

Weekend Update 6.28.09

Had a nice little weekend here in Lawrence - we planned on taking Peter to his first St. John 's Fiesta at church on Friday evening, but with the heat index it was 105... So we decided to wait and possibly go on Saturday if the weather was cooler.



Saturday day we ran errands, did some shopping. Peter is a champ when it comes to shopping, definitely takes after his mother. We got home and lo and behold - a cold front finally (finally!) came through, and the weather was cool and relaxing and perfect. Off we went to the Fiesta! We had some food and drink, enjoyed the band and atmosphere, and then headed home just when it started to rain. Glad we were able to get out to enjoy the festivities this year.



Scott wore Peter in the Bjorn, my current favorite piece of baby gear (the only way I get anything done at home). Scott found a way to enjoy his delicious taco and burrito while keeping any food from dropping on the poor baby:




Off to start another week! Hopefully we can secure daycare and get the baptism preparations started. And finish Thank You cards (oof), maybe send off announcements, and also take Pete to visit the neighbors... Yeah, another busy week ahead.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all those daddies out there! Here's a pictoral of Scott and Peter's first Father's Day.


Peter dressed up in his best pirate-robot gear.

Mom made from-scratch cinnamon rolls for dad.

Peter and Mom got dad an iPod Nano (in his favorite shade of green), so he can listen to some tunes while working in the yard. Ahem, Mom kinda sorta stole dad's old mp3 player, hence the need for something new...

After some phone calls to our dads (and Scott with some friends) and hanging out at home for a bit, we went out for lunch at his favorite place to eat and have a beer: Free State Brewery. Pete was a champ, never cried once the entire time we were there. It was total new parent alert: Scott and I spent half the meal staring intently at the baby, as if he would wake up and fuss if we dared to look away. Heh.

Then we got home and lounged around while Scott played with his new iPod. He was able to do a few feedings with Peter.

As a thank you: Peter pooped up the back and through his clothes. And his dad's clothes. It was rather impressive if you ask me (then again, I was a bystander and not really involved in the whole thing).

We spent the evening dropping off our car to be repaired - that was an adventure of its own, with me and Peter in the rental Yaris following Scott in the poor Focus; it was a 2-mile trip that took about 20 minutes and the ole' Focus almost died out a few times. In reality, it only died once. Good old car. We should have it back today, hopefully. We then drove around and scoped out potential daycares (our first choice has gone AWOL, unfortunately, so we're searching again). Then Sonic for dinner and off to bed.

A fun and busy day! To my dear husband: Pete's only 2 weeks old but you already have this dad thing down perfectly. From the help with feedings, the diaper changes, swaddling; to that total baby-calming move that you can eerily do in about 30 seconds (no matter how frantic and screamy Peter is when I hand him off)... I couldn't do it without you. Happy Father's Day, Scottie. You're a total natural :)

Newborn Pictures

Pete's Newborn Pictures are up on the Solars blog! We loooove them. Josh and Jenny did a bit more of a family lifestyle session, which turned out really, really well. You can check out the blog post at the following link:

http://joshsolarphoto.blogspot.com/2009/06/peter-newborn.html

Thanks Josh and Jenny! Fantastic work, as always :)

Photo link

For more baby deliciousness, keep an eye on the link below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/owdmueller/PeterRayMueller?authkey=Gv1sRgCJCXtNyC9K7YTQ&feat=directlink#

Compliments of Peter's dad. Everything is going great, we're getting used to new routines and still find a small bit of free time to eek out a baked good (in Nemmie's case) or brew a new batch of beer (in Scott's case).

I have got to say - yes, I'm tired. Getting up every few hours will do that to you. But it is nowhere near as bad as pregnancy-tired was for me. Whew, pregnancy-tired kicked my butt. This, I can handle. Mostly because coffee is now okay to consume in larger amounts ;)

He's here!

Hmmm, this is about a week late, but hey - that seems to be just my style these days...

Our little one has arrived! Peter Ray Mueller was born on June 7th at 7:13pm, weighing in at a rather large 8 lbs. 13 oz., but he's also a long little boy at 21 inches. Perfect in every way!

Our room at the hospital:

Nemmie takes time out from admiring her newborn to get on the old Interwebs:

And what you all came for - pictures of our new addition :)

Peter says: Live Long and Prosper.

Pretty blonde hair:

More to come in the next few days, as I'm sure you are aware. We can't get enough of the little dude.

Yeah...

We kinda dropped the ball on this blog, eh? Well, soon enough it will be used quite a bit, so I'm going to catch everyone up to speed (well, all two of us who look at the thing anyway).

Many things have been going on since we last updated - aside from the usual running around and the holidays and other fun things. Lots of time out with friends, visiting family, and working on the house (the yard is our main objective this spring/summer). In between that, Scott keeps busy with the beer making, I keep busy with the baking...

In late September, we also found out that we are expecting. Baby Robot is due in about a week, so we're in the home stretch! I actually feel really good, not really that uncomfortable, so I don't feel that GET IT OUT anxiety that most women have at this stage! Baby will show up when he/she is ready, I can wait. Scott, on the other hand, is a bit more impatient...

I imagine this blog will be updated a bit more in the future - I'm considering shutting down the food blog, it's already beginning to get ignored. And with a little one bopping around, I'm sure we'll feel the need to post pictures regularly :)

That's it for now, we should be updating again soon-ish. No more 7-month breaks. Promise.