What we're up to

Eden's two teeth are making more of an appearance every day. At five months old, she's suddenly lots of fun to play with. Peekaboo is a favorite, along with any and every kind of roughhousing-- being thrown in the air, wrestled with on the bed, piled with pillows, hung upside-down. She's still really not eating any solid food, although we let her taste things on a pretty regular basis. Her favorites so far: butternut squash soup (more on that later), bananas, and chicken pot pie. She is also an incredibly fast army-crawler, so merits a lot of close watching.

This week and next, I'm off of school, so I've actually been enjoying some reading for pleasure (!!) again. Right now: Baby Hearts, Baby Signs, and The Grass-fed Gourmet Cookbook (thanks, Pam!). The latter is especially handy as we bought half of a grass-fed steer to share with another family this fall, so our deep freeze is full of steaks, roasts, and hamburger. We got an incredibly good deal on it and are enjoying incorporating a beef dish or two every week.

We're also preparing ourselves to move back to Iowa come September. While my preceptors haven't signed on the dotted line yet, we're not anticipating any complications and we're feeling like we've been called back in that direction. I'm actually hoping for a part-time job to open up at UIHC, and beyond that--who knows.

In the meantime, we're enjoying our last 50-degree Virginia December, and planning to visit Mount Vernon for Christmas since I work the holiday and so we'll be staying in town. Matt has a little time off and so I'll be picking up a few extra shifts and I'm sure we'll find a way to justify going out to eat once or twice as well.

All she wants for Christmas

Eden has TWO TEETH!! One showed up on December 5th and the other one the very next day. She doesn't really like anyone looking at or feeling them (let alone taking pictures of them), but take our word for it: they're here!

Settling back in

from Tristan & Isolde

After a few days of rough starts and not wanting to take a nap or nurse following our Thanksgiving travels, Eden seems to be back on track. Thank goodness! She usually takes a morning, afternoon, and evening nap and then goes to bed with us between 10 and 11pm and wakes up at 6 to go potty, then goes back to bed till around 9. Last night, she fell asleep around 9pm while we watched a movie (Tristan and Isolde--one of our favorites, for its beauty and simplicity and come on, how not to love someone with James Franco's versatility?) and slept through until almost 8am. It seems to have reset her somewhat because she woke up smiley and happy this morning, then fell asleep for a morning nap without protest (or excessive amounts of bouncing, back patting, and singing, which is what it sometimes takes).

On top of Tristan and Isolde, last night was also made special by the cooking of a fantastic batch of spaghetti and meatballs, which we've made before, and while this time the meatball mix seemed a little wet and ended up somewhat disintegrating when simmered in the sauce, it still made a delicious rich ragu to ladle over homemade spaghetti. We have this pasta roller and we like it quite a bit for simple, delicious, and relatively quick homemade spaghetti and fettucine. It's also by far the cheapest pasta roller we could find, but it works great for us. If you haven't made fresh pastas--I'd really recommend it! Ours calls for a recipe of 2-1/2 cups of flour (we use 100% whole-wheat) and 3 eggs (sometimes it seems like I need to add a fourth--probably depending on the size of the eggs). And--a bottle of red wine. We are unabashed fans of the $3.29 Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe's, and last night felt like we might just have something to celebrate. I have been working for over a year to try to set up midwifery clinicals somewhere--Virginia, DC, Maryland, Iowa, Wisconsin, just somewhere! It now seems like it might be possible that I may be able to work something out with a midwife near Iowa City --you know, where it all began. My sentiments about this echo the same mix of sadness and excitement I had about leaving Iowa City in the first place--but then again, that's not news.

Back home for the holidays!

My apologies to the Hellenbrand clan for not having as many pictures of them--I lost my camera for the first 2 days of our visit. But rest assured, a good time was had by all at both locations (even if the transit between was a little rough).

We're here.

After a crazy, at times uproariously funny and at times frustrating trip, Eden, my mom and I arrived safe and sound. Some brand-new stranger anxiety and a major, major meltdown later, Eden is finally sleeping soundly. It's great to see everybody, but nobody ever said it would be easy.

Let the holidays begin!

image by redstamp.com

Today is Matt's birthday and his mom's. Happy birthday, guys!

My mom also arrived today.

Thus, we're officially kicking off our holiday season.

My mom is here to help out with Eden while Matt's on his annual business trip next week. (Last year Eden, the size of a tadpole, and I went along. The year before I did not.) So Matt will fly out to San Diego on Friday, then my mom and Eden and I are flying back to Cedar Rapids on Saturday. Matt will join us from San Diego on Tuesday and we'll have Thanskgiving dinner with my family. On Wednesday, we're headed up to Wisconsin to have Thanksgiving and Christmas with Matt's family. Then Matt, Eden, and I will fly back home Friday night. Got all that? And of course, there will be a number of meet-and-greets while we're back in the midwest--not the least of which will be Eden meeting three of her four aunts for the first time!

It will be interesting, to say the least, to travel with Eden. She hates being in the car and has difficulty eating and getting to sleep when there are interesting new people around. We're looking forward to going back and seeing everybody, though! Should be an adventure no matter what.

Other holidays in November:
My mom's birthday (November 23)
Pam's birthday (November 30)
Our Restonversary(November 30 I believe)
Our Pamiversary (earlier this week--November 15)

What a fine and festive month it will be.

Falling

How many more posts can I do on how the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same? Once again, like last year, fall finds us marveling at the beauty of autumn in Virginia, and reflecting on new beginnings and fresh starts and trying to find a place to put down roots. Of course, we're so lucky to have so many places to call home, and so many people laying claim to us (okay, mainly to Eden). But it does make life tricky in a bittersweet sort of way.

Anyway, enough of that. Here are some pictures of fall in Virginia this year.

I realize this one is a little Bigfoot-sighting-esque. But it's the first time I've ever seen a (live) fox in the wild and thought it bore magnification.