Our baby is a redhead!

Needless to say this has come as somewhat of a shock to us, but our baby Lizzy Jo is a redhead (so far at least).  This came as a pretty huge surprise to us because, obviously neither one of us has red hair.  There is red hair in Dave's family (a brother and a sister), but Merry's family doesn't have any red hair anywhere in the family that she is aware of (except maybe a very distant cousin).  Red hair is a recessive trait which means that it won't be expressed unless both parents pass on the recessive trait.  What's ever funnier is that Dave's brother Mike, the one who has red hair, just had a baby boy and he doesn't have red hair.  Ah, the ironies of genetics.

At any rate, the proof as they say, is in the pudding:

Also, please note that she appears to have rabies in this picture.  Her main enjoyment in life these days is blowing bubbles and listening to Dave's whistling.

  

Fusion cooking

We are taking a break from baby posts for just a minute to update our faithful readers on our continuing culinary adventures here in Mesquite.  Last week as we were making up our menu Merry mentioned that she would like Chinese dumplings.  I thought she was referring to steamed dumplings (Jiaozi) and I was just a little hesitant.  The filling is an easy mix of pork, cabbage, and chives, but the wrappers are made from potato starch and ground tapioca, difficult to find even in a booming metropolis like Mesquite.  Additionally, as anyone who has had dumplings can tell you, the wrappers are paper thin and very difficult to work with.  Nonetheless, I agreed to help her make them.  Merry actually meant (I later found out) that she wanted to make potstickers, which seemed a little easier.  Turned out, no one in Mesquite sells wonton wrappers either.  So...we ended up making our own.

The dough was not difficult to make; it consists mainly of flour and egg.  The hard part is getting the dough rolled out thin enough (which we did not do).

After putting the first "potsticker" into the oil I knew we had done something wrong, it looked waayyyy to thick.  After taking it out and taking a bite I realized that we had taken our first foray into fusion cooking and had combined two of my favorite aspects of latin and chinese food to make Chinese EmpanadasTM!  The spicy pork and cabbage filling blended quite nicely with the fried dough shell. 

They were so good that we've decided to add them to our regular meals.

Next week...back to pictures of the baby.
 

Our child is a prodigy!

Lizzie Jo is all rolling over! She's done it about ten times now, so, yeah, she's basically prodigy material.  Some of you may doubt the veracity of this account so we've included indisputable photogaphic evidence.

Lizzie Jo is also sitting up on her own and holding her head up.

 

Also, our baby did her first professional photoshoot.  Merry's friend Amy here in Mesquite did all the photos, as well as the props and the cute hair pieces.  If anyone has any interest, call us and we can give you her contact info.

Family Update (wherein Dave and Merry go crazy with the new camera)

We've had a new baby, in fact its our first one.  We are now conscious of our obligation to provide the world with a photographic record of Lizzie Jo's every move, smile, grimace, and cutesy dress up outfit.  We realized straightaway that our old dinosaur of a camera just was not going to cut it.  We are now the proud owners of a Panasonic Lumix GMX-F5K mirrorless 4/3 digital camera, which is capable of taking over four pictures per second.  Now, whenever Lizzie does anything, we will be there, camera in hand.

As some of you (mainly grandparents) may know, today is Lizzie Jo's first week birthday.  It's been a busy week; she's learned a lot, grown a lot, and has made some major changes in her lifestyle.

 She tried to kidnap us and ransom us for "one meeellion dollars", but promptly fell asleep.

 Her first attempt at whistling was not terribly successful.

 So then she flipped us both off for laughing at her.

 And then karate chopped us.

 She promptly felt badly and hid her face.

 And then started to cry.

 She likes to hang out with her dad.

 She also likes to hang out with her mom.

 First family picture (asleep)!

It's been a busy week for Lizzie Jo but luckily there is a mommy blog and a new camera to keep track of it all!

Happy 2013 (Baby Pics Abound!)

Elizabeth JoDene Gravett (the first) was born on January 1, 2013 at 7:55 PM.  She was the third baby born in St. George in 2013.  Although such a claim to fame would be too much for most newborns to handle, Lizzy Jo is taking it all in stride, mainly by sleeping, eating, and yawning.  Merry is doing great as well and sends all her love to all you peeps out there in the interwebs. 

We knew that 2013 was going to be different right away.  At 4:15 AM Merry awoke me with a hard slap to the face and said, "My water just broke!" (translation: "Time to get your wife to the hospital, WAKE UP YOU IDIOT!!!")  Our delivery hospital was in St. George and we live 20 miles away in Mesquite; not too bad of a drive.  However, we were not in Mesquite; we had gone to Pahrump to spend New Years Eve with some friends from our old ward.  So, we were actually just outside the California state line when Merry's water broke.  We jumped  into the car and drove like manics to the hospital.  When we arrived two and a half hours later, Merry was 2+ cm dialated and fully effaced with contractions coming about four minutes apart (again, I had no idea any of that meant until yesterday, I now know it means, "Buckle up folks, it's going to be a long day.")

Once we settled into the torture room birthing room, Merry declined an epidural and decided to go natural until she hit 8 cm dialation.  Which meant a lot of time in the the birthing pool and lots of quality breathing.  She was awesome and did everything right, I was so impressed by her strength and determination.  She progressed quite nicely, dialating about 1 cm every 2 hours.  At 2:00 PM she hit 7+ cm dialation and got an epidural so she could sleep a little bit prior to the "pushing" phase.  The labor nurse initiated pushing at 7:00 PM.  Seven or so contractions later Lizzy Jo made her entrance to the world kicking and screaming, at 7:55 PM.  Needless to say, we're happily sleep deprived and loving every minute of it.

**Edit**Vital statistics at birth: 6 lbs, 5 oz, 20 inches

Now what everyone skipped through the post for: pictures!

(Merry smiling through a contraction, what a babe!)

(Merry after getting the epidural, so much happier.  This is not an endorsement of epidurals mind you, just a statement of fact.  And, it turns out, the epidural did cause some problems with the delivery down the road.)

(Lizzy Jo getting checked out right after being born, giving a very vocal opinion as to the situation.)

 (Lizzy Jo with her mom, where she wanted to be all along.  For those of you troubled by the immodesty, deal with it, birth is an immodest experience.)

(Lizzy Lo and Merry, both a little tired by their recent battle with each other--perhaps a harbinger of teenage years to come?--but otherwise doing great.) 

(This just in! The center of the known universe has just been discovered!)