January 2005 Archives

On Saturday, we had Magda's christening at Jfer's church. Compared to a Catholic wedding, a christening is a piece of cake. We only had to go to one preparation class that was attended by a ton of other parents.

We had a big contingent of guests, mostly Jfer's family, but also a bunch of mine, including my parents who flew in for the occasion. There were three other babies at the ceremony, but it moved pretty quickly and was very low key and the priest encouraged people to take as many photographs as they wanted. Magda did fine most of the time, though she did not appreciate the cold water. Baptized or not, I have not noticed any changes in her sleeping patters; so that much for the "oil of exorcism's" power...

The reception after the baptism was a blast. We had reserved the "Cardinal Room" at Buca di Beppo (the "Pope Room" with the disconcerning torso of John Paul II on a Lazy Susan being, alas, too small for our group) and completely filled it up with over 30 guests. The food a Buca is OK, but we had way too much of it. We did seem to have estimated the wine much better than the food and the evening got nicely loud and boisterous. It was great having both families there (luckily the Karls don't need much of a reason to get together).

On Sunday we hosted a brunch followed by a nice walk in Walnut Creek Park. All of Jfer's folks bailed on the park and missed out on a very pleasant excursion -- makes me glad that my Czech relatives aren't a bunch of lazy bums :-)

Changing diapers was one of the things I wasn't looking forward to as part of parenthood. However, when Magda was born, she eased us into it nicely slow. She initially dispensed little fudge-like turdlets and then progressed to the more advanced mustard-type poo.

So for the first couple of months, ever other time her diapers needed to be changed, she'd have a little present. Nothing too big or too gross.

Some time before Christmas, though, her "schedule" has changed and she started saving things up. The nice thing is that for a couple of days you don't have to deal with poop. The other side of the coin, though, is that when it comes, it comes in heaps.

Last week we were actually starting to worry. She hadn't gone for close to a week and every time she squirmed or complained, we had visions of constipation, blockage and what not. The typical new parents thing -- even though baby books tell you that it's not unusual for breast fed babies to go sporadically. We were even planning to call the doctor once the week was over.

Of course, as it turned out there was no problem -- and I was the lucky one dealing with the overflowing (literally) mess. And there definitely was not any type of constipation, if you know what I mean. I think diapers should be sold based on volume rather than baby size.

I really hope she starts going more frequently again, for our piece of mind. And if she does save it up, she could have the courtesy to go during the day, when daddy's out at work...

It seems that some comment spambot has taken an obsessive liking to my site. I'd been getting comment spam at the rate of one very few seconds over the weekend (and continuing). I cleared out bout 3000 comment spams and decided to disable the comment script for now.

I'm sure I'll eventually come up with a technical solution for this. But right now I've got better things to do than fighting against this scum.

One of the cookies I made before Christmas were the Swiss Cinnamon Stars. They are a bit of a pain to make (the dough is very sticky) and I went from using fancy nested-star cutters, to a simple star cutter, to just using a pizza cutter to make diamond-shaped "stars". The problem with the sticky dough is that it would, well, stick to the damn cutters.

I remember my mom having a small cutting wheel with a pinked edge that she used for cracker-type cookies. I couldn't find anything like this at BBB, Willams-Sonoma and other local stores.

Then the other day, my Baker's Catalogue arrived -- and it didn't list one, either! However, I searched their online store and struck gold. Nay, platinum! Their Multi-cutter does what a handful of my mom's cutters could do.

So if somebody should want to give it to me for my birthday, I would not be disappointed. And they might as well get that Linzer Cookie Set, too, to make the best of their shipping charges...

P.S. Don't you just hate sites that prevent deep-linking because of the brain-dead eCommerce app that they use? Well I do!

The Christmas 2004 holidays are over, but they were a blast. As usual, Christmas in Houston turned out the way Christmas is supposed to be -- surrounded by family in great holiday spirits with snow falling outside the windows. Beside the baby, we brought our cookies and a Vánočka, which turned out great and was a big hit.

Magda enjoyed Houston, but the trips were an ordeal for us, with her crying half of the way going and coming. I do hope that she'll start sleeping on road trips -- I'm waiting for Jfer's car-sleeping genes to kick in.

I took most of the in-between time off, so we got to spend some quality time at home and rejuvenate. Our New Year's Day party was smaller, but nice, and we didn't even have too many leftovers.

I scored some cool stuff for Christmas, including the flash I'd been asking Santa for (woo, woo!). And both Jfer and Magda made out quite well, too. I'm actually glad that the gift-giving time is over, so that M. can grow out of her current clothes before she's deluged with more new (and hopeful less pink) wardrobe.