Ramblings by Sam and Katie

Even The Most Devoted Baby Food Making Moms Experience Burnout

Katie — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:15:45 +0000

Ok, so I stole the title for this post, but I modified it a bit. Recently Kelly Wels posted about how Even The Most Devoted Cloth Diaper Moms Experience Burnout. Now I have to agree with her that when it comes to cloth diapering, no matter what at some point you will consider using disposables. I will be honest that I use disposables when we travel. None of our trips have ever left us with easy access to a washing machine. I will also admit that I have used some in between when I was a bit late in doing diaper laundry. So yes it happens, but I do cloth diaper most of the time.

But that isn’t what this post is really about. This time around it is about making baby food. With Tara I made all her baby food. She never had a bite of jarred baby food. Even when we traveled I brought food or made it there. This time around I have finally slipped. So Norah had a really bad cold and her appetite dropped. Then just as she was getting better she got another bug that kept her appetite down. Nicely she was nursing still really well, but she wasn’t wanting to eat much in solids. Since she wasn’t eating much, I wasn’t replenishing my stash in the freezer of lovely purees. Well she finally is back to eating and well, I was pretty much out of baby food and had no time to make any. So I sent Sam out to get a couple of jars to make it for the next day.

Well, then there is our upcoming trip. We are leaving in 9 days for Germany. Traveling internationally we will be using jarred baby food. I have given into that decision, since we won’t have access to a kitchen to make anything while we are there, and well I just can’t easily travel with that much homemade food. Now through research (i.e. my online Mommy Group), I have figured out a good brand of food to buy while we are there (Hipp baby food). It is organic, has fairly normal sounding combinations of food, and is available in markets not far from our hotel. Oh and thank you google translator for letting me understand all that is on the website.

But there is still 9 days before we leave. I will be honest that I have given in and bought jarred food for this time. Between needing to prepare for my talk in Germany (yes this trip is actually for work), packing for Germany, oh yeah and taking care of the girls, I don’t have a lot of free time this week. So yes, I am experiencing some baby food making burnout. I do plan to continue my baby food making when we return. The cost alone is a big incentive, but it is just nice to know that I know just what is going into my daughter at this early time in her life.

I am behind on updates

Katie — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:32:44 +0000

I know it has been way too long since I have updated. Sam has posted, but not me. But overall life is good. I will be happy when I have no sick kids at home. Speaking of sick kids, Norah has a cold and has been fighting sleep this afternoon. I tried to see if some cuddling would help but she crawled off of me. Instead she did this:
br /br /a href=http://weirdguy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/20120106-142957.jpgimg src=http://weirdguy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/20120106-142957.jpg alt=20120106-142957.jpg class=alignnone size-full //a

Music makes the world go funky

Sam — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:19:44 +0000

I like music. I know it’s hard to believe but there it it.

In high school, I was that guy who liked a ton of music. I had a bumping car stereo with obscenely loud subwoofers and I liked school dances. The reason I think about this lately is that I have spent many an hours on the train commuting and it’s nice to put on a pair of headphone (in this case a pair of Sennheisers) and completely block out the world and enjoy some great tunes. It’s nice to catch up on old music from when I was a kid and discover new music too. For as much “garbage” music there is, there is also a lot of hidden gems. I download the free iTunes single of the week every week and a lot of times I find a good song that sure enough ends up on the billboard hot 100 at some point in the future.

I am also relearning about sound quality. I have spent so long listening to MP3′s, AAC, or other compressed formats that I find I have forgotten how good CD quality sound really was. I have always been able to tell the difference between the compressed and uncompressed versions and it has become more apparent as I listen to some old cd’s. This of course brings me to a really interesting observation. There has been this resurgence of over the ear high quality headphones. Beats by Dre being the seemingly most popular. However I can’t for the life of me fathom why people would by “high end” headphones at $200 to listen to crappy quality music. By quality I mean compression ration, not taste is music because Lord knows that debate could range to the end of time and then some.

So this has led me to a new project for the year. I am going to re rip my entire 400 some odd cd collection into full quality AIFF format. This is the format that the file actually is on the CD. (Give or a take some quibbles) I have an unused 1 TB hard drive for this purpose and I look forward to enjoying all that music again in a high quality format. Of course this means I might have to go to a *gasp* CD store and actually fill in the blanks of some of the purchased stuff from online.

So compressed of not, I recommend starting off the new year with a rediscover of all that old music you love. So turn it up and get down with your bad self.

DaddyTrend blog post December 29, 2011

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 01:34:43 +0000

Starting them early
Just went to Buffalo Wild Wings for the first time in about 2 years. It’s as excellent as I remember. And probably a stereotype but a great Daddy restaurant to begin with. (even though my wife loves it here too:)

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DaddyTrend blog post December 25, 2011

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:37:40 +0000

Parenting Achievement Unlocked!
It’s Christmas Eve which can only mean one thing. Time to break out the tools, bleed a little and make a almost 3 year olds dreams of Santa come true.

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DaddyTrend blog post December 16, 2011

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 01:43:47 +0000

Stay At Home Dad
So this is a post I have been wanting to do since this blog started. I was a stay at home dad for the first year of my first daughters life. It was quite the experience. When my wife Katie and I lived in Arkansas, she was finishing up grad school and we thought it [...]

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DaddyTrend blog post December 9, 2011

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:32:38 +0000

Things they never tell you as a parent. Part 1 of 371,292 and counting
In no particular order… You will never have a vacation where you get away from it all. Because you always have to bring the kids with you. This in itself could be fun but one of the major stresses in a parents life, is in fact, their kids. They run around with tons of energy while you [...]

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Goodbye 1988 Mercury Tracer

Katie — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:09:32 +0000

Ok, so people who have known me for a long time know that for many years I drove a 1987 Jeep Wrangler. Well when I was pregnant with Tara I realized that wasn’t going to be the greatest car with kids. It would be really hard to get a kid out of the backseat. Well my parents had my grandmother’s old 1988 Mercury Tracer so we traded cars with them. At the time we also had Sam’s 2000 Ford Ranger pickup truck, also not a good family car. Well we did the cash for clunkers program and traded it in for $4000 towards the 2009 Nissan Versa we bought. Well the Mercury Tracer made it over 2 good years for us, but it started to leak oil like crazy. This is when we started looking at cars. Now we are big on not having debt, so we bought the Nissan with cash. We wanted to do the same this time around. We also wanted a bit more to the new car (larger, AC, and power locks). After some hunting and it being the time when 2012 cars were coming out we finally were able buy a 2011 Ford Escape. We did finance it for one month, but only so we could actually get more money off of it. That still leaves the Mercury Tracer. We tried to trade it in when buying the Escape, but they wouldn’t take it, it was so old. Our plan was to sell it privately then. Well I realized on a good day we might be able to get $600 for it, but we would have to get it smog checked again to sell it. Now we weren’t positive what would happen if it didn’t pass, so I started looking at the CA DMV website and found that California has a Vehicle Retirement program (i.e. very similar to the federal cash for clunkers a few years ago). The nice part was that it didn’t require that the car had failed the smog test. Nicely it gives you $1000. So we applied to the program. Many many weeks went by while the website had said 7 to 10 days. When we bought the Escape we had removed the Tracer from our insurance since we weren’t driving it. Well the state of California sent us a notice that mid December our registration would be suspended if we didn’t provide proof of registration. This got us quickly trying to figure out why we had not heard from the program. Sam finally called around and the local office said if we brought a new form to them they would have an answer to us within 3 to 5 days. So I brought it in last wednesday morning and by Saturday we had the paper saying are car was approved for the program. Finally yesterday I brought the car to one of the approved dismantlers and finally got my check for $1000. It was actually kind of sad to say goodbye to the car. It still smelled like my grandmother, but this was the best option for us.

Bringing Tara home from the hospital in the Mercury Tracer (yes I still look pretty pregnant at this point, but it is less then a week since I had Tara at this point).

You will be missed good old Mercury Tracer. Goodbye

DaddyTrend blog post November 29, 2011

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:36:46 +0000

Daddy Days
After a year as a stay at home dad I went back to work full time and my wife decided to stay at home. This worked out well especially since we ended up with another daughter at home. My recent job now requires that I spend an hour commuting on a train between San Jose [...]

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DaddyTrend blog post November 28, 2011

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:32:07 +0000

Outings as a family.
In the past few months, the family and I have gone on several outings as a family. We first went to the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose. It was a lot of fun but what I noticed more then anything was that a lot of the groups there were comprised of a lot of [...]