The Book Monster

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Oliver learned a new word. Oh boy did he learn it.

He’s been signing “book” for a while now, but somehow he just suddenly made the connection with the actual word. He pointed to a book and clearly said, “Book?” Evie couldn’t have been more stunned if he’d just spouted the Declaration of Independence.
Evie: “He just said book! No, he really said it!”
Me: “Yeah, he did.”
Evie: “It’s his first real word!”

He says other things (particularly “Nala”), so I don’t know why this stunned her so much. It’s certainly not his first word, but she just couldn’t get over it. Unfortunately, he can’t get over it either.

“Book? Book?” He won’t say anything else. All day long, “Book? Book?” I couldn’t even get him to stop saying it long enough to eat. It’s the way he says it too, always a question, with the voice rising at the end and the ‘k’ just barely pronounced. “Book? Book?” It’s like the cry of some exotic bird, echoing around our house 24 hours a day. It’s the answer to every question, and the question for every situation. “Oliver, what would you like to eat?” “Book? Book?” “Oliver, say night night!” “Book? Book?” It’s a noun, adjective, verb. It’s Oliver’s equivelent to “smurf.”

I guess there are worse things he could be obsessed with.

Quote Monday Goes Plural

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “I’m just a kid, I don’t know everything.” – She makes that easy to forget sometimes. I’m sure she’ll change her tune by the time she’s a teenager.

Evie: “I want Orlan to stay with me. I want daddy to be a part of your family instead.”
Lisa: “Oh yeah? How would that work?”
Evie: “They could just switch wedding rings!”

Evie: “But I only wanted jelly on the peanut butter side! I didn’t want peanut butter on the jelly side!”
Me: “Well, that’s not the way it works. You can’t have one without the other.”
Evie: “Humpf.”
Me: “…”
Evie: “I said humpf.”
Me: “Well, that was an entirely appropriate thing to say.”

I guess you hear that in books a lot?  She obviously understands the context…

Sara: “What is it called when you have more than one foot?”
Evie: “Feet!”
Sara: “What is it called when you have more than one fish?”
Evie, without missing a beat: “Twins!”
Sara, laughing: “What is it called when you have more than one sheep?”
Evie: “Lambs!”

Slow-Rise Pancakes

/ Shane / 2 Comments

The Reason:

As has been established previously, pancakes are very serious business in our house. Though we have a couple of good solid base recipes, we are always on the lookout to try something different. As always with new recipes, you win some and you lose some.

This one was a winner!

The Journey:

The interesting thing about these pancakes is that you use yeast. I’ve seen a lot of pancake recipes, but this is the first one I’ve ever seen that requires yeast. It doesn’t really rise, per say, but you do end up making something that is more of a dough, not a batter. It’s more like frying bread dough.

You can try to thin the dough with a little bit of milk, but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, so I don’t know if it is even worth it. Basically, the whole thing is just very different than making regular pancakes, so you can’t really expect the batter to be the same consistency.

The other very appealing thing about these pancakes is apple slices! Sure, you could put apple slices on any pancake, or you could put something besides apples on these pancakes, but they looked so good in the recipe, that I just went with it and it worked.

The yeast makes this like a chemical reaction, changing the consistency of things. I think it actually makes the dough sweeter, but it also makes very thick pancakes. You have to make sure you flatten them a lot when you flip them over. Also, because they’re so thick and chewy, they are hard to cook through, especially where the apples are. So you want to be careful to make sure they aren’t too doughy in the middle.

The Verdict:

These things are rib-stickers! Very filling, in addition to being delicious. The apples are a really good idea, though as I said, you could really do that on any set of pancakes. These won’t replace our baseline pancakes, but they are definitely now a part of our normal pancake rotation. You do have to start them the night before, so they take some pre-planning.

The Recipe:

The original recipie can be found at Vegan Yum Yum (which is pretty awesome by the way).

2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 T vital wheat gluten
1 1/4 t yeast
1/2 t salt
2 t sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
1 T oil
1 egg

Mix the dry ingredients first, and then mix in the milk, oil and egg. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge overnight.

If you’re going to be doing the apples, try to cut them thin so the pancake underneath will still get some heat.

The rest is just like making regular pancakes.

The Incredible Flammable Boy

/ Shane / 5 Comments

In order to keep Oliver’s eczema in check, he goes through a rigorous, full-body treatment of steroids and moisturizers, head-to-toe, twice a day. In the evening, we use Vaseline. In fact, we have gone through almost 4 of those enormous, should-last-you-a-lifetime Vaseline containers in the past few months alone.

Vaseline is a good moisturizer, but it leaves your hands feeling so greasy and gross, and it takes hours to get rid of it. Even washing your hands doesn’t help, because it repels water no problem. I hate having it on my hands, but I guess it is preferable to having it on my entire body.

All of this greasing up doesn’t go without side effects. All of Oliver’s clothes, and particularly his pajamas are slowly taking on a greasy sheen. It’s kind of like when you put grease on a paper plate, and it becomes transparent. His clothes are just starting to have a certain look.

In fact, his pajamas have gotten so bad, that they have developed a wet feeling and permanently weigh about 10 times more than they used to. Washing them is of no help; Vaseline repels water on clothes just like it does on my hands. When you feel this outfit, you want to wash your hands afterwards. The cloth is 100% saturated.

Vaseline is also known as petroleum jelly, and it is made from petroleum. If it is flammable, then there is no bigger fire hazard than our child’s pajamas. (According to what I found, the jury is sort of out. It’s not really flammable, unless it’s hot and there’s a wick of some kind. So it won’t burn, unless it does. Explosively.)

Just in case, lets keep open flames away from him (not that we were exposing our child to open flames very often, mind you). Getting rid of eczema is all fine and well, but not if it comes at the expensive of horrible burn scars!

Religion Makes You Fat

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It’s true. And it’s science.

Young people who are active in their religion are more likely to become obese by the time they reach middle age, according to a new study. Participants who go to church at least once a week were found to be about twice as likely to have a higher body mass index than those who attended infrequently or not at all.

Specifically:

Young adults age 20 to 32 who were on the high end of religious involvement were 50% more likely to be obese by the time they hit middle age compared with those in the “none” category. This was true even after researchers adjusted for sex, age, race, education, income and the participants’ body mass index at the start of the study.

The study didn’t give a very satisfying reason as to why this might be. Maybe there is some other correlation not accounted for. For example, people who tend to be religious might also tend to *ahem* live in a certain area of the country known for fried food.

Or maybe there are more calories in those host wafers after all.

Link via Sara, so you can direct all outrage to her.