Still Not Dead Yet

Hello! My name is Jen and I am a blog abandoner.

Sorry about that. Seems that trying to avoid every post having to do with Henry meant not posting, since life pretty much revolves around him. Topics of conversation at home include his eating, pooping and sleeping schedule. So, not very interesting. But there are a few things to mention, so here they are. In the future, I will try not to be so distant, Internet. We need to make this relationship work.


Henry is 5 months old now, 17 lbs 1 oz. He's laughing and interacting and can roll around like crazy. Still doesn't sleep through the night, but he doesn't need his swaddle wrap (baby straight jacket) anymore, so that's progress. I can't believe he is this old already. I guess I can't keep blaming a new baby on the reason why I don't go out much and my house is a mess. I think that is a slipperly slope and, next thing I know, Henry is 12, and I have to take off a week of work to clean up enough for guests to visit. Though, now that I think about it, I didn't go out much or have a clean house before I had Henry, so maybe I should just go back to the excuse that I used back then. Booze! Kidding.


Larry and I had dinner tonight at The Awe Shack, an Afghani restaurant in Crofton. Chicken and lamb kabobs, fried baby pumpkin, tandoor bread, and an appetizer called aushak (where the restaurant gets its name) - dumplings filled with leeks and jalapeno and topped with mint-garlic yogurt and spiced ground beef. Delicious! Thank goodness that we are getting some more diverse restaurants. We have as many chain, chinese, and mexican restaurants as is humanly possible, so its nice to get something different. And it's the AWE shack, so of course, Henry approves.

Speaking of food, last weekend, Larry and I had a party for friends to meet Henry, watch the Terps game (FAIL!) and try out this crazy fruit I saw on TV. It's called miracle fruit and its from Africa. The fruit has a protien in it called miraculin that, when chewed and kept on the tongue for 30 seconds, causes your taste buds to block acidic tastes and make foods taste sweeter. I purchased tablets that are made from the fruit, to avoid having the pain of keeping the fruit from spoiling. It's a little concerning to buy a random box of tablets of some fruit that is going to mess with your senses. It's also concerning when they are manufactured by "Taiwanese PanBiotic Laboratory". The box said "Miracle Fruit Tablets" and the envelope inside "Mysterious Fruit Tablets". Also concerning. But we just kept telling ourselves "We bought them online from ThinkGeek, they aren't drugs!"


We had limes, lemons, grapefruit, bleu cheese and Guiness for the tasting. Watching twelve people pass around a box of strange tablets, eat them and start swishing them around in there mouths was odd. Then we tasted the citrus. Very odd, indeed. It was not sour. I loved the limes and grapefruit the best, others liked the lemons. They all tasted like an "aid" version of themselves - lemonaid, lime-aid, grapefruit-aid(?). Guinness tasted like Guinness, but smoother and hoppy beer like Long Hammer tasted like water, almost. It completely cut the bitterness of the hops. Not good when you like hops, but interesting nonetheless.

The tablets lasted about 15 or 20 minutes before they started to wear off (not the 30 minutes to 2 hours that Tawainese PanBiotic Laboratories suggested. I swear. If you can't trust the claims of a shady, foreign laboratory that sells you "mystery" food, who can you trust?) All in all, it was a cool experience and I am glad I was able to share it with my friends. I few days later, my newscaster (Amanda) sent me this article on CNN. Cool that it is getting more attention and being used to help people.

Terps had a poor performance that day, thus ending their season, but their Number One Fan did show up, thanks to Aunt Amanda and Uncle Andy and their Christmas present.


I love that boy.