Articles by Jason

Detail of right sidelight

We finally took the plunge and took a look under the plywood panels above and to the side of our front door this weekend (with a very helpful hand from Missy’s dad). We weren’t very optimistic prior to the treasure hunt, since we figured who in their right mind would cover up sidelights and a transom with painted plywood. Thankfully we were wrong!

Underneath the plywood panels was a great condition transom (the part above the door) and two leaded-glass sidelights — the right one in very good condition and the left sidelight (facing to the street) needing some minor repairs. That must have been the reason for the plywood, since it looks like a baseball went through it and destroyed two of the panels. Looks to be easy to fix, however… so you have to wonder why the previous owners did not fix the panels. It could have added a couple thousand to the asking price, easily, as they look to be in pretty great condition and original - so like 80 years old.

Anyway, it made our weekend. Now we have to tempt fate again and see if the previous owner told the truth when they said the hardwoods under our carpets are in great condition. (Yeah, I know, don’t ask… we’ve found enough weird things in this house to not question anything any longer!)

Larger right sidelight

Transom above door

Today at work I listened to an episode of This American Life while working. The episode was #364 - Going Big and the first act was called Harlem Renaissance. A very fascinating story, especially given that we have three kids under two years old right now.

From the This American Life site:

Paul Tough reports on the Harlem Children’s Zone, and its CEO and president, Geoffrey Canada. Among the project’s many facets is Baby College, an 8-week program where young parents and parents-to-be learn how to help their children get the education they need to be successful. Tough’s just-published book about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem’s Children Zone is called Whatever It Takes.

The biggest takeaways from the study they mention:

• Kids in ‘professional’ families hear 20 million more words than kids living in poverty during their first three years.
• The kids in the professional group hear 500,000 words of encouragement during this time and 80,000 words of discouragement. The poverty group was pretty much the opposite: 80,000 words of encouragement and 200,000 words of discouragement.
• The role of language in the first three years is more important than race, parent’s education, and economic factors in how kids develop and gain skills to be successful in the future. And those skills get increasingly more difficult to obtain as kids get older. So much so that job training classes (usually thought of as the way out of welfare for adults) has very little impact, if they don’t have the skills normally gained during their youth.

Really underscores the importance of reading and talking to your kids. And gives us hope that the cycle of poverty can be broken for many kids in the future. A lot of focus has been on pulling the parents out of poverty, but in reality it’s much simpler: it’s all about language.

I have to share this! We made it for the second time tonight and it is simply amazing.

Ingredients:

1 (10-ounce) Italian cheese-flavored thin pizza crust (such as Boboli)
2/3 cup Wegman’s Memphis BBQ sauce
2 cups chopped roasted skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 2 breasts)
2/3 cup diced plum tomato
3/4 cup (3 ounces) shredded extra-sharp white cheddar cheese
1/3 cup chopped green onions
1/4 cup Asiago cheese

The recipe was originally was from Cooking Light and called for Tomato Chutney instead of BBQ sauce. I lucked upon the sauce listed above, as it was the only BBQ sauce we had in the necessary quantity. I know Wegman’s isn’t every where, so you can substitute any sweet and smokey Memphis style sauce, although I do recommend the Wegman’s store brand if you have one near your area. Also, I added the asiago cheese since we had a little left over.

Here are the instructions:

Preheat oven to 450°.

Place crust on a baking sheet. Bake at 450° for 3 minutes. Remove from oven; spread chutney over crust, leaving a 1/2-inch border.

Top chutney with chicken. Sprinkle diced tomato, cheese, and green onions evenly over chicken. Bake at 450° for 9 minutes or until cheese melts. Cut pizza into 6 wedges.

Super easy and super good.

Lucy Dancing from Jason Dettbarn on Vimeo.

In addition to the swimmies picture, my aunt sent over these two great pictures:

Stella sleeping

Zoey wide awake!

No Swimmies!

My Aunt Chris sent us this picture today in response to Melisa’s ‘Swimmies‘ post. She didn’t see the picture in the email at first (read the email on her Centro), so it was even funnier when I pointed out it was me when I was little! Thanks for making our night Aunt Chris!

Finally got approval to post some pics!

Mom and Zoey

Mom and Stella

I was importing today’s pictures into iPhoto and decided to go back and look at Lucy’s birth pictures. Very interesting! Take a look for yourself - no resemblance or anything, huh?

Lucy right after she was born.

Stella right after she was born.

Zoey right after she was born.

The twins have arrived!

Zoey resting in the NICU

Stella exhausted after a long day

Zoey Isabelle Dettbarn arrived at 3:23pm today, weighing 4lbs 13oz. Stella Elizabeth Dettbarn arrived 3:35pm, weighing 4lbs 11oz. Amazingly exciting, happy and terrifying all at once. I’ll fill in more detail later, since it is kind of late and I am beat… but it was a long day. If you are interested in the story in 140 character increments, check out my Twitter page for the updates!

More coming soon. The real adventure begins now!

Thanks for all the well wishes and notes. We really appreciate the thoughts and support from all of our friends and family. It really means a lot to both of us!

(And Melisa is resting and doing well. I’m sure she’ll sleep good tonight!)

I’m currently in the waiting room as Melisa gets her epidural. Seems like we’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately, but at least things are moving forward at a faster pace now. We fully expect to welcome the two ladies into the world this afternoon!

For keeping up on our progress, I’d recommend checking my Twitter page (twitter.com/endonend) for the most up-to-the-minute action. I’ll also post pictures to our Flickr page (see thumbnails below) as I can. Camera phone pics are easier to get up the quickest, so the better quality ones will most likely be updated over the weekend.

Stay tuned! The fun is just beginning.

The name guessing game sparked a lot of interest, both offline and online! Very cool. There have been a lot of guesses so far, with a handful of people getting both names correct and most getting at least one name. I have also been surprised by the reaction to the names. Not what I expected, as they have been overwhelmingly positive!

To help the remaining guessers, I’ll release two more clues - one for each name. Happy guessing!

• What name connects Will Ferrell, Douglas Adams, Jason Schwartzman and Janis Joplin?
• What name connects Nanny 911, Michael Ian Black, Bette Midler and two kinds of beer?

These will be the last clues I’ll be giving out, as they are getting easier and I have a feeling the babies will be with us soon!

Good luck.

After “what are you having?” and “when are you due?”, I’d say the next most common question we get asked is, “what are their names?” I wonder how many couples divulge the names prior to the birth? I can’t imagine many, or at least not in a wide spread manner. Maybe it’s just us though? I know we’re a little hesitant because we’re not sure what family and friends will think of the names. It’s easier to spring the name when the baby is born because they don’t have time to think about or judge the name - the cute baby is most important, so judging the name is an afterthought. Or at least that is what we tell our self!

With the twin’s arrival on the horizon, Melisa and I took to the task of narrowing down our name list to the final two selections last week. This time around was much harder than our first daughter for a number of reasons, mainly because we created a much larger pool of possible names to choose from in the beginning and that made agreeing to the final two much more difficult. We both had names we liked more than others, so it became more of a negotiation than the “yeah that’s it” moment we had with Lucy. I know Melisa will say we didn’t pick her name until she came out, but I don’t agree. We were very set on Lucy for a good portion of the pregnancy. Yeah we had backups, but I don’t think there was a doubt about Lucy. And the funny thing is, the backups aren’t the twin’s names either - so I guess we didn’t like them very much! (Although they were in consideration this time around.)

So, with all the questions I thought it might be fun to throw out some clues to see if anyone can guess the names of the twins. Entertaining for us, at least!  Below you’ll find some clues, so do some research and come back to this post and submit your guess in the comments. They’ll be held in moderation, so we’ll leak out the guesses a little at a time in the lead up to the big day. Who knows, you might actually find out for reals before you get a chance to guess!

So here we go… the clues:

• Find what name connects Charlie Parker, Jerry Lewis, Interpol, Blanche DuBois, a U.S. coin, and the Beatles?
• What name connects a South American tribe, Juliana Hatfield, Pokemon, Doctor Who, M. Ward, and Britney Spears?

One clue for each name… sorry these had to be so hard. The interweb makes these kinds of things too easy.  I’ll release two more clues in a few days…

Ready? Set? Go! Good luck.

Final re-post of old videos:

Lucy and her walker from Jason Dettbarn on Vimeo.

Another re-post:

Lucy Crawls from Jason Dettbarn on Vimeo.

Re-posting here on the new family blog. From a couple months ago:

Introducing Lucy and a Big Announcement from Jason Dettbarn on Vimeo.