January 2006 Archives
On Saturday I got to go to King Arthur Flour's baking classes in Round Rock. I got to see both the Sweet Bread and the Artisan Bread demonstrations (Elizabeth joined me on the second one).
I'd been to one of these classes before, but it's always nice to have a refresher. Once again, I was jealous of the beautiful dough that the presenter manages to make. There is something sensuous about a smooth, soft, slightly springy -- nay, almost bouncy -- voluptous bowl of yeast dough after a couple of risings...
The stuff I learned was that you really want to keep your dough wet and to handle it gently -- aparently I put way too much energy into my kneading.
I also got to see a couple of gadgets that might come in handy seeing as my birthday is approaching... Specifically the microplane grader and dough whisk are pretty cool.
Magda's spoken vocabulary is increasing nicely. She can say "Kah" for Kayleigh and does so whenever she sees her or as soon as we get close to Elizabeth's house. She also recently started saying a nice long "Roooh" for Rose. I wonder how confused she'll be when she comes across flowers called "rose".
Now that she's vocalizing, it makes it more difficult for me to speak in Czech at her. When she was just using baby sign, it was easy enough to confirm her expression (sign for a "ball") with the Czech word ("míč"). Now her "ball" sign is accompanied with a spoken "bah" so it's kind of hard to reinfoce it in Czech. Actually, in the case of a ball, I can use a similar Czech word ("balón"), but for most of her spoken words this doesn't work.
My plan is to simply keep using the Czech words. Hopefully she'll interpret it as me confirming that I noticed the object she's pointing out rather than that I'm confirming her vocalization.
We took advantage of a "baby-sitting and movies" Xmas gift on Sunday. We dropped Magda at Elizabeth's and went to the Drafthouse. Despite my preference for more acclaimed fare, like maybe BB Mountain, Munich or even Harry Potter, Jennifer insisted that we see The Ringer. I suspect that she'd developed a crush on the lead actor during his last movie she saw.
The movie was cute, if a bit on the fluffy side, but we felt the ending was a letdown. It felt like they run out of production time and only had a day left to come up with the end. Still, it was enjoyable enough.
My absolutely favorite part was in the cafeteria when "Jeffy" asks one of the guys whether "he can pass the catsup". His response was exactly the same as my usual response to such a question -- which I though was special!
Magda is starting to get focused on height. She still doesn't stand or walk on her own, but she is oh-so-close. Her favorite activity is to demand "Go, go!" and to walk around while holding on to your hands. Yesterday, after Jfer's prompting, she stood up and actually walked with her walker on her own -- in the past she'd always been pushing it on her knees.
She also likes climbing on the couch and the big red chair. Something that Jfer, for some irresponsible reason, is encouraging. She needs help to make it up but is getting pretty good about laying down on her belly and sliding down feet first on her own.
Outdoors, her new fun activity is holding Homer's leash and letting him pull her in the stroller. She'd like to do the same with Rose but can't quite handle her acceleration.
And finally, she's started stacking blocks. We have little wooden cubes with letters on them that we stack into tall towers and let her destroy. The other night I cought her amids her blocks, stacking them three-high and then pushing them over. I can't wait for her to be old enough to get started on KAPLA.
Doug and Luca had invited it to their Rose Bowl party and we all had a great time. I think this is only the second game I saw this season and, well, we were on the edge of our seats till the very end. While exciting is cool, I think I prefer the more boring blowout games. It's better for my heart rate. And frankly, I wasn't as optimistic as some and was thinking of heading home after the Trojans' last TD.
One of the more exciting parts of the game was with about four minutes left in the game. Doug and Luca's cat Pumpkin strolled through the cables behind the gigantic TV and somehow managed to turn it off! You can't imagine how quickly Doug scrambled to reconnect the TV while people were pouring out onto the cold porch to keep watching on the backup TV.
All things ended well and we didn't miss anything important and Pumpkin escaped the wrath of footbal fans. Magda slept through a big part of the last quarter and barely opened her eyes during all the whoopin' and hollerin' of the final touch-down.
On the way home (close to midnight), we saw the Round Rock Academy from the highway. Their parking lot was full, with a line of cars waiting to get in. There was also a loooong line of people already in the entrance waiting for their chance to get a championship T-shirt. Totally nuts, if you ask me. Doug was actually going to do the same thing, but he later confessed that they turned around when they saw the crowds.
