[Ronin in a spider mask made for a five year old.]

I got my yearly fix taken care of and subsequently Ronin had her first IKEA experience the other day. That store is a whole new experience with a child because that one section at the end I never paid attention to, that in fact I raced through at top speed to avoid all the screaming kids going apeshit over all the stuff to touch and throw and strew and trip passers by? That section is GREAT! I found myself wishing Ronin were five years old so that she would be able to play with THIS or, awwww, a fresh little newborn again who could snuggle in THAT. In the end, we got off relatively easy in that, as usual, IKEA was out of everything we wanted.

We spent hours in that store, trying to remember what it was we came for, got Swedish meatballs and mac-n-cheeze and gave Ronin bites of everything, and at last managed to escape one Poang, two Rasts, and a lot of miscellaneous Kalas-Leka-Titta-Prompt-Erslevs richer.

[The best thing we got were these six stacking plastic bowls. Ronin likes to stack them up (and knock them down) and put things in them.]

Behold the adorableness that is an authentic Tahitian dancing girl outfit sent to Ronin from my pregnant sailor buddy Antonia, who bravely puked her way into the wilds of the South Pacific, where tubs of Deep Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream are few and far between, and who is now living in New Zealand. (And who is also no longer pregnant, by the way.) Upon opening the gift I immediately started lactating over The Cute.

Ronin was sort of crawling last night around, oh, 4:26am in her cradle. First she’d rock violently, making the structure squeak and quake, then she’d lift her butt into a ‘downward dog’ yoga pose a few times, and finally she’d crawl back and forth, all the while crying miserably with her eyes squeezed shut. We didn’t know whether to shrivel up and die from the horrific assault on our nerves or get out the video camera to record this special moment. In the end, Joshua crawled down to the foot of the bed to suffocate himself under the bedclothes and I got up and nursed her. She sacked back out shortly thereafter.

While I’m bitching about sleep habits, I think I’ll chime in on this teething thing because I think it’s going to kill me. Half the time I can’t tell if the tylenol is even doing anything because she is still frantically screeching and generally behaving like a rabid animal. I went to the store today and picked up some Hyland’s teething tablets, which are basically chamomile, sugar, and monkey oil or some such. As far as I can tell, they are not working either. I sincerely hope the remaining 18 teeth all break through at once so we can be done already.

Another (non) bonus: with the teeth, I get bit. I don’t know how to discourage the biting thing; she just wants to tear into pretty much anything that gets near her face. My boob is of course NOT an appropriate teether. Hollering in pain, telling her not to bite me, and what the books say to do (mash her face into your boob so that her nose is covered and she lets go–I’m totally serious, that’s what they say) do not work. She finds it all hilarious and just bites harder.

On the plus side, I have discovered a way to get actual non-milk food into the baby: a straw. She’ll suck anything down a straw. It’s quite miraculous. She still objects to spoon feeding the majority of the time but has finally figured out how to pick up food bits and put them into her own mouth. You would think this might be second nature, what with everything else she touches immediately going straight into the mouth. However, she just knows when something is food and when something is not and the thing that she wants in her mouth is the dirt clod/sock/pebble and not the pea/apple/sweet potato. But at last, she made the leap (or decision) and stuck a bit of freeze-dried pineapple in her mouth. And then more and more until she had a mouthful of dessicated fruit bits sticking all over. We’re working now on the actual ingestion of the food.

Ronin is surprisingly mobile for not yet really crawling (she only does that in the wee hours) and I’ve been working on “baby-proofing” the place. Basically I let her have the run of the room and everything she goes for, I take away and put in a higher place. I turned back around after putting the last of the floor debris (Joshua’s gnarly old slippers) on a shelf to see her gnawing on the corner of our iron bed. Also, what IS is about outlets that fascinate babies so? She spots these from across the room and just beelines right for them; today I saw her eyeing the flashing power strip with curiosity. Unfortunately, I think the likelihood of growing a second set of eyes in the back of my head is more realistic than making the entire apartment completely safe for a baby.

About three weeks ago, we went to Eugene to raid Joshua’s mom’s apple trees (and her plum tree, and her baby pear tree which yielded four delicious pears, and her rhubarb, and the volunteer basil, and the local blackberry bushes, etc.) and we returned with probably fifty pounds of produce. I washed and froze six quarts of berries, a couple quarts of plum/rhubarb pie filling, and so far, three quarts of apple pie filling. We still probably have 20 pounds to go.

[Deer hanging out under the plum tree.]

We have been making a lot of apple pies and here’s the recipe I’ve been using. I tend to prefer a spice-rich pie.

APPLE PIE

Crust (this makes a full top and bottom crust):
* 2.5 cups flour.
* 1 teaspoon salt.
* 2-3 tablespoons sugar.
* 1/4 teaspoon mace.
* 2 sticks butter.

Cut the butter into the flour mix (quickly), ball into two blobs and wrap them as flattened discs (quick! quick!) and get them into the refrigerator for an hour. Once I was lax on the speed and only refrigerated them for maybe 4 or 5 minutes. I was not in a pie waiting mood. The pie was good but the crust was a little tougher than usual.

Filling:
* Lot of apples. Enough for a pie.
* 1/2 cup sugar–half white, half brown (the recipe I looked at originally said one full cup, which seemed excessive and I made the first pie with maybe 3/4 cup total. It was too sweet and even 1/2 cup is maybe excessive depending upon how tart your apples are).
* 1/4 cup flour
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1/4 teaspoon each allspice, cloves, and mace
* 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
* 3 tablespoons lemon juice

Mix it all together until apples are coated. Some prefer to precook the apples first in order to avoid the gap under the top pie shell or to make the pectin do something to the apple which helps it hold its shape when baking (I read something somewhere once…). Whatev. Doesn’t matter if you do or don’t.

Has it been an hour yet? Get one of the pie crusts out of the fridge! Roll it out and plop it into the bottom of the pie pan, load with the apples and stick back in the fridge. Now roll out the top part of the crust and stick it over the pie. Crimp edges decoratively, cut holes in the top, decorate as usual, brush with milk or egg whites, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, etc. Whatever you do.

Bake in the oven at 400 for 1/2 hour, then turn it down to 350 for an additional 40 minutes. My oven is tweaky–as a matter of fact, I’ve NEVER had an oven that worked properly–and so I have to do a lot of checking toward the end.

[Perhaps a little overdone; I did not precook the filling in this one and had a gap under the crust.]

[More pie! This one possibly a tad underdone but no less tasty.]

[Right after a nap.]

I take back what I wrote last week about how Ronin’s sleep was getting better because it’s not better anymore. She has been doing the whole spastic scream, scrub at mouth with fist, tear into fist with the gums like a rabid animal, then cry miserably thing again. So I get the Tylenol, which, I should add, Ronin really likes. Baby acetaminophen is an acrid grit suspended in grape-flavored mucous; both Joshua and I tasted it to be sure there wasn’t something we were missing out on but it’s pretty much disgusting. Disturbingly, Ronin stops crying and opens her mouth wide when she sees the dropper. Kind of makes me wonder what sort of an eater she’ll eventually be.

Or maybe the problem is crawling. She takes hours to get to sleep but can’t stay asleep more than 40 minutes it seems lately. We hear strangled sleep-cry noises and go in to find her on all fours, rocking. Half asleep, super tired, and just miserable and crying. Poor thing.

At any rate, we keep trying to get a photo of the teeth but every time we approach with the camera, she clams up or tries to get the lens cap, leaving us with tight-lipped blurry photos. I did find this one though where you can sort of kind of see them.

[In lieu of sleep, we just spend a lot of time lolling around the bed. Trying to learn to crawl, etc.]

A fuzzy close-up of the teeth. They stick up about maybe 1mm now. Slow going. I can’t believe we have to go through this for all twenty teeth. I think the bags under my eyes will be permanent by that point.