MaustsOnToast » Baby

Call him butter…

Drew — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 01:51:17 +0000

…because he’s on a roll!

Henry turned 6 months old yesterday.

Learning Language as a Big Baby

Drew — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:35:19 +0000

Quirky quotation on language learning that our little Henry makes particularly relevant to us:

“When you study a language in the field, you do so as a big baby. Like a baby, and like a drowning person, you hungrily seize new linguistic data and associate it with what you know. Only, unlike a baby, you are contaminated with one or more native languages, whose grasp upon the mind is fiercely jealous, blocking your view of any other language system. So if you come to understand your field language primarily in terms of your linguistic knowledge, the overwhelming influence of your native language inevitably wins, no matter how good a field worker you are. For the most part perhaps, it does not matter since the greater part of any language is universal grammar, or so we think. But it is a mistake to be too sanguinr about this. We cannot easily avoid mistakes.”

Quotation from pages 92-93 of Maria Bittner and Ken Hale. 1995. “Remarks on definiteness in Warlpiri.” In E. Bach, E. Jelinek, A. Kratzer, and B. H. Partee, eds. Quantification in natural languages. Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 81-105.

H.A.M. on Toast

Drew — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:40:36 +0000

Announcing the birth of our son Henry Andrew, born September 2 and weighing 7lb 11oz.

Time For A Good Old Fashioned Vote

Emily — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:56:35 +0000

I went to the Dr’s yesterday and everything is moving along. I just really need baby boy to stay put for 4 more days until my parents arrive on Monday afternoon, once they are here he can go at it. So while we wait I thought we could have a little poll. The question that’s been on my mind is:

Will baby boy enter the world with as much hair as Poppy did??????

I’m just having these strange images of him needing a hair cut in his first month of life lol.

So in the comment box leave your vote. And just to remind you (or give you an idea if you didn’t know Poppy as a newborn), I have put some photos below.

Minutes after birth

Listen Very Carefully

Emily — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:22:30 +0000

Watch the video to reveal the gender of our next child!! Carry on listening and hear Poppy say it too without prompting, so cute!

One Hour Poppy

Drew — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 22:42:49 +0000

While searching through a box of junk this afternoon Poppy and I found Mummy and Daddy’s first digital camera. A 6mp Kodak that even had video capabilities. Lucky for us, the battery still had a charge. We had a look at what was still stored on the camera’s internal memory and found the following video: Poppy one hour-old.

My Heart Beats for Mummy

Emily — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:20:40 +0000

Today Mummy heard my heart beating for the first time. I just know she enjoyed the reassurance that I am doing ok in here and enjoying the ride. I could hear through muffled voices that my heart sounds great and the doctor even used the word “perfect” at 150-160 bpm. I could make out that Daddy and Poppy weren’t there because they are always so noisy, it was nice having a bit of peace and quiet with it just being me and Mummy.

Finding Out We're Expecting

Emily — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:57:33 +0000

It’s fun thinking about how we have all found out about baby #2. For Drew and me it was the day after we arrived back from England. I had my suspicions and when the test showed positive, we threw a little party for three! I then wanted to think of a fun way to tell our families and seeing as they’re all dotted around the world it was going to be a bit of a challenge. So, I found this shirt that Poppy could wear and after I had been to my first doctors appointment and had the pregnancy confirmed, it was time to start announcing the big news.

We Skyped with our parents + Uncle Justin and had Poppy dressed in the shirt. When a good moment arose, we held Poppy up to the camera so they could read her announcement! We also did the same for Aunty Hannah in England. Needless to say there were some gasps and some yelps and some yippees. It was hard to tell all our siblings face to face. So from there we made a few phone calls and had an instant chat with Uncle Simon. My sister Sally is working in Zambia for a year so I phoned her cell phone on Skype and caught her going to sleep for the night. She sounded soooo sleepy and I was worried she wouldn’t remember our conversation in the morning but I’m sure she did.

So we are excited to let everyone know that we’re having another baby!! My due date is September 1st which makes me 11 weeks today. When the baby is born, Poppy will be two years and two months old. We’re hoping that she is going to love being Mummy’s little helper with the new baby.

I took some photos of Poppy in the shirt I got for her and our good friend Rhea Hickok designed an announcement for us!

Snack Tray

Emily — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:44:53 +0000

Poppy’s favorite thing to do/play with on her exersaucer is taking off the lid to the snack tray and chewing on it. When we looked at the reviews for this exersaucer alot of people complained that the lid came off, well heres one mother whos glad that the lid does come off because Poppy loves it. Recently we have been trying Poppy out with different snacks, as you saw earlier we have tried the ‘puffs’ that look like Cherrios but Poppy isn’t very keen on eating them. So I found a coupon for the Gerber’s graduates lil’ crunchies and bought the cheesy ones, they are yummy! And we have successfully found a snack that Poppy likes. They are bigger and longer so obviously she can pick them up more easily but she also likes using her teeth on them and biting down to snap them in half. Its funny how the smallest things that your child does makes you feel so utterly proud, I’m embarrassed to say that Poppy using her teeth to eat these lil’ crunchies makes me feel so proud of her. A side note to all new parents or parents to be: every intsy teeny weeny little milestone/progression/step/achievement brings on this rush of excitement and joy towards your baby, its such a lovely feeling. Anywho, today I decided to put these lil’ crunchies in the snack tray on her exersaucer and watch her find them and gobble them up.

Here is the story of Poppy’s snack discovery in pictures.

Poppy Meals

Emily — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:00:25 +0000

It’d never really crossed my mind that buying baby food in jars from the supermarket was a possibility. I guess I assumed it was for people who had a lot of money or for people always on the go and fed their baby’s out and about. But then again had I ever really thought about the prospect of making my own baby food? What was baby food? I think this was a question I asked myself the first time a friend said, “are you going to make your own baby food?”. I came to realize that the first foods for a baby were just straight fruit and vegetables cooked until they were soft enough to mash up with a fork. Easy. The hardest part of making your own baby food is how time consuming it is, but if you don’t have anything else to do (other than study for the biggest test of your life that is) then you’re laughing! So this morning I came downstairs with Poppy and tucked her into ther high chair and started making her breakfast. I realized I needed to cook the sweet potatoes and broccoli we had bought for her before they went bad. So I wrapped the potatoes in tin foil and stuck them in the over at 450 for an hour. They were massive sweet potatoes so I thought an hour was needed for these beasts. Then I got the steam thingy out and popped it into the saucepan, filled the pan with some water and chopped and threw in the broccoli. I fed Poppy her breakfast (warm oatmeal and pear) and pottered around until the broccoli was soft. Then I threw it into our mini food processor and voila! a few whizzes later and Poppy has herself a weeks worth of dinner! When the sweet potato was ready I peeled the skin off and threw that into the food processor too and voila! a few more weeks of dinner. To store everything I do the whole ice tray thing and freeze it. Every meal time I pop a cube out, give it a spin in the microwave and its soft and warm and ready to eat. Poppy loves sweet potato and broccoli. Today I did something a little different too. I keep hearing about how you should start introducing different textures and stuff. So I decided to boil some brown rice, chop it a little further in the FP and add it to the sweet potato. It was a trial run and Poppy wasn’t too sure tonight when she tried it but don’t they say you have to introduce new foods to baby’s about 10 times until they realize they actually like it. So I’ll keep giving it to her every night before I switch to something I know she likes like straight and plain sweet potato. Here are a few photos as always!!