They’re chewy, they’re moist, and they’ve been compared crack. And now you can bake these delicious treats in your very own home:

Ingredients

• 1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 c firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c granulated sugar
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 c bread flour (yes, BREAD flour. this is important.)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I use Penzey’s Vietnamese cassia, very strong stuff.)
• 1/2 tsp table salt
• 3 c oatmeal, uncooked
• 2 c raisins

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Beat together butter and sugars in stand mixer with flat blade. Add egg, egg yolk, milk and vanilla; beat well. In separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add flour mixture slowly to batter; mix well. Stir in oats and raisins; mix well. Using ice cream scoop, drop batter onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Chill in refrigerator for at least an hour. Bake 14-17 minutes in a 350°F oven. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack. Makes 24 cookies.

So, we go to the mall last night to pick up a few things, and don’t get home until 9:30. Then it’s the nightly fun of putting the kids to bed.  Hooray!

So what do I do afterwards? Why, finish putting Christmas lights on the cherry tree out front, of course!

I only did this last night because it was 60 bloody degrees outside, and a cold front was going to be moving in overnight. So it was either do it late at night in the drizzling rain, or some other night this week in the cold. I chose late but warm.

They’re on a timer, so hopefully they’ll be lit when we get home tonight. Sammy should like that. He gets really excited seeing any house with Christmas lights and will point out each and every one!

(I’ll try and get a better picture up this weekend.)

I’ll spare the gory details of the entire weekend, only that we’re in the midst of holiday cheer.

However, I will relate the story of Sammy vs. Santa Claus. For weeks I’ve been telling Sammy that we need to go see Santa Claus so that he can tell him what he wants for Christmas. We even wrote a letter Sammy could give him detailing his preferences. And finally the day came, Sunday, when we were off to Lakeforest Mall with, I believe, one of the best Santa layouts in Suburban Maryland.

Sammy was reasonably good in the long line, as was Sasha who didn’t get fussy until we were approaching. A little nosh (yes, while standing in line) seemed to appease her. As for Sammy, I let him play with my iPhone for a little while, which backfired when it was our turn and I had to yank it out of his hand when he refused to give it back to me.

Sasha, who has been plagued with both separation anxiety and stranger anxiety lately, was a perfect angel. She gave Santa her biggest toothless smile and did everything she was supposed to do. Then there was Sammy.

I tried placing Sammy on Santa’s lap. His response was to start crying and then hop off. I gave Sammy the letter he had written, which he then threw at Santa and tried to run off.  Finally, after coaxing from the photographer and from me, he stood sort of next to Santa clutching a tiny basketball squeaky toy, and then finally sat on my knee as I kneeled down next to Santa.

At one point, he gave the photographer one of his “I’m in pain!” smiles. I tried to tell her that that was his smile and that she should get the shot off quickly, but I don’t think she quite believed me.

We managed to get off a few passable pictures which we got in prints and on a USB key (a cool l feature that I think is a smart way to go), we were done, much to Sammy’s relief.

Greetings from the Rottons:
Mark, Tracy, Sammy & Sasha

It’s been an exciting year for the Rottons.
On July 11, at 2:43 in the morning, we
welcomed Alexandra Elaine Rotton into the
family.  She weighed in at 8 lb 8 oz and is a
healthy and active bundle of energy.  We
call her “Sasha” (it’s the Russian equivalent
of “Alex”).

Sammy is now a very precocious three year
old.  He recently switched to a new
preschool located in the same building in
which Tracy works.  With Sasha there too,
the whole family gets to be together every
day.

Mark and Tracy are still working for Discovery Communications.  We invite everyone to enjoy the fine programming on the Discovery Channel’s family of networks. You can keep up with all our happenings on our newly relaunched blog: http://family.rotton.com/

You can also follow us on Twitter! Mark is @atarinut, Tracy is @taupecat and Sammy is @sammyrotton. (Sasha will get her account when she learns to talk. 🙂 )

To reach us in more traditional ways, call or email us:

301-460-6466
us@rotton.com

I subscribe to several news video podcasts (such as the NBC Nightly News) that I listen to at work. I subscribe to the video feeds because I like to have the video option available, although 90% of the time I’m content to just listen to it. And since this is at work (and I don’t keep an iPhone cable with me), I’m often concerned about exhausting the iPhone’s battery before the end of the day.

So, in order to keep power consumption at bay, I’ve found a trick to turn off the video on a video podcast yet still listen to the audio content. By default, you can turn off the screen on audio content and continue listening, but to do so on any video content will also turn the audio off. Here’s the way around that:

1. Go to Settings > General > Home Button and check “iPod” under “Double-clicking the Home Button goes to:”. Also, set the slider for “iPod Controls” to “On”.
2. Go into iPod mode of the iPhone, choose the video content you want to listen to and begin playback.
3. Turn off the screen by clicking the power button on the top right of the iPhone. Audio and video playback will stop.
4. Double-click the home button on the iPhone. The iPod controls will appear underneath the clock.
5. Press the “Play” triangle. The background screen will change to the title screen of your video content, the audio will begin, but the video will not begin playing.
6. Click the power button on the top right of your iPhone again. The audio will continue, but the screen will go dark.

This will work for music videos as well as video podcasts. I’m presuming that it will also work for TV shows and movies, but I don’t have any content like that on my iPhone so I can’t test it.

Unfortunately, once you go back into your iPhone (that is, move the unlock slider from left to right), the iPhone will immediately resume the video playback, and if you try to leave iPod mode to go do something else, the audio will cease again. (This stinks because I often need the calculator while working, and hate having to stop and start my podcasts all the time.) At least, however, this is a way to conserve some battery life when you really don’t need to see the video in your video podcast.

I think Sasha’s “Flippy, the Wonder Baby” phase is finally over.  For about three weeks, maybe longer, she felt compelled to flip to her tummy when put down on her back even the least bit awake.  Once there, she’d start to fuss, and then scream because: A) she didn’t want to be on her tummy and B) she couldn’t flip herself back over.  Once in the occassional while she’d finally manage to fall asleep on her tummy after fussing for a little while, but usually we’d have to flip her back after she worked herself into a tizzy.

Fortunately, I think she’s over all this.  She hasn’t tried to do the Flippy thing for several days now, and I think as a result we’re both getting a lot more sleep.

Following @veronica‘s example, I’m posting the sixth photo on the sixth page of my Flickr photostream. Here we see my mom’s cousin Connie with Sammy taken when she last visited us on January 21, 2007.  Sadly, the focus on this picture is a bit off, but the look on Sammy’s face is priceless!

Mommy and I had a great day yesterday. She took me to Baltimore to the Port Discovery children’s museum. There I got to climb and play and have lots and lots of fun.

There are some days, when leaving my son at day care, I get the Mommy Guilt.  That, instead of working a job pushing pixels on some website, I should be raising my son and spending his formative years being his mommy.  There are some mornings when I regret taking a full time job, leaving the care and early education of my child to strangers, that I should be there for him.

And then there are mornings like this morning, when I walk up to the door of Sammy’s day care and announce to the kind teacher who opens the door, “Take my child now.”