Two HUGE Accomplishments in Recent Days

Last week I accomplished two of my lifetime goals within a few days of each other. The first was to read Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I finally finished the monster! Back story: My junior year in high school we were assigned to choose works to read from classic American literature, eventually ending up having read a thousand or so pages or something for the semester or year. Do you like how clear my memory is? Anyway, I chose Moby Dick largely because it had a lot of pages. Six hundred and fifty-five, to be exact, in the edition I had. I started off, and was immediately bored. I didn't make it beyond a hundred pages. Sadly, for perhaps the only time in my entire school career (that I can remember anyhow), at the end of the semester I added all the pages to my list anyway, telling myself it would be fine because I would just finish reading it after school was out when I had more time.

Fast forward several years. My good intention to finish reading that book still had not happened. I picked it up again several times, but each time I never got anywhere. My guilt loomed up, but the promised boredom that would result in my actually taking the time to read the thing loomed larger. Finally, two years into my marriage and a month after having my baby I bit the bullet and took Moby Dick off the shelf for the long haul. Maybe after having a baby I was more convinced of my ability to do hard things. Maybe I just finally had a bit more time on my hands whenever I sat down to nurse Peter. Whatever it was, I plowed doggedly through Moby Dick, and do you know what? It wasn't half bad. Ha ha! Turns out Melville is an engaging writer, although perhaps one with too much time on his hands. The actual story of Captain Ahab and the white whale is told in about one hundred pages. The rest of the five hundred and fifty five are dedicated to describing every aspect of whales and whaling in the 1830's you could possibly desire to know, all of which are found to be proper metaphors for varying aspects of life, and are linked by Melville as such. But by Jingo, I got through every word of the thing, and I'm a better person for it.

The other major goal I accomplished was to make sourdough bread. Maybe it doesn't sound so momentous a thing to you, but for me it is as though I have arrived when it comes to bread-baking. I was pretty nervous to try it, because making and feeding my own starter (called a levain) sounded daunting, and the whole process required about a full week before I could even attempt making the bread. But one evening I made a pre-ferment which only needed a 24 hour rest before being used for focaccia bread. The next day I ended up sleeping instead of making the bread, but we still made the meal and ate it without it, so suddenly I had this unused ferment lying around that I ought not to waste. I had read enough about making a sourdough starter to know that the pre-ferment was the beginning of one, so I thought, "What the heck?" and started feeding it regularly for a few days. On the sixth I made sourdough bread, and it turned out beautifully!


The loaves pictured above are half whole wheat flour, half white flour, and have lovely crispy crusts and tender insides. A hit! A veritable hit! Next I want to make sourdough rye bread, and then I will truly have arrived. Ha ha!

You may think I'm done posting, now that I've documented my two achievements advertised in the title. Not so. In my life these days I've got to strike while the iron is hot! So I will tell about a few more current events.

My baby will be three months old next week! I can't believe it! Here are a few pictures of our perfect little guy:






Me, loving my boy:



Peter in some of his cute outfits:



I also wanted to do a post on some of the techniques Luke and I have learned that work well with Peter. I was hoping to have pictures of everything, but for now I only have two. First we see Peter on my back in the Kozy Carrier:


There were days in the beginning, when Luke and I were still figuring out how to be parents, when Peter would cry inconsolably at night. I now realize he was probably over-tired and hungry, but at the time I was a naive new mother and didn't know what to do. During those times, one of the only ways to calm him down was to strap him onto Luke or I and take him for a vigorous walk. He loved it! We actually usually would strap him on in the front to begin with, but recently I have figured out how to get him on my back, and it's really nice for doing chores, such as the dishes.


It's hard to see in this picture, but here Peter is nicely swaddled in a blanket my mom made for us to accommodate his growing size. He sleeps best when he is swaddled, and sometimes when I know he is tired but he doesn't want to nurse to sleep, I can swaddle him up and bounce with him, and his little eyes will roll and droop, and finally close in surrender to sleep. What an angel!

Next, as mentioned above, is bouncing. Peter LOVES bouncing. Preferably on one of those big blow-up exercise balls, but the edge of the bed works too. This is another very good trick for calming him when all else fails. Sometimes he needs a triple-threat: swaddling, nursing, and bouncing all at once. Ha ha!

Peter also loves white noise. Really LOUD white noise. I'll have to post a picture of his face while our vacuum is going or when I hold him right next to the monitor. It's amazing! Several times I have been driving home from my mom's house and Peter has started to protest. Being unable to do anything else, I have turned the radio to static and blasted it in the car, and miraculously Peter has stopped and even fallen asleep. Amazing! Luke and I are now connoisseurs of good static, and have found the stations on either side of 89.1 to work quite nicely.

There remains only one more event to tell now. The other night Luke and I were doorbell-ditched with a plate of Halloween goodies and a poem accompanied by a picture of a ghost informing us that we had been "Boo-ed" and now needed to pass it on, posting the ghost on our door so other phantoms would know to keep away. We'd had things like this go on in my family neighborhood growing up, and I loved it! I had forgotten about it though, so I'm quite pleased that someone else started it in our neighborhood now. So much fun! If anyone desires to initiate such shenanigans themselves there's a website called BeenBooed.com where a ghost and poem print-out are all ready to go.

Here is a picture of the treats our phantom left:


We made oatmeal cookies with candy-corn jack-o-lantern faces to give. I was going to take a picture but I forgot in my haste to remove them from the house so we didn't eat them all instead.