Verbally Challenged

My boy is sick…again. He woke up two nights ago, barking like a seal and unable to catch his breath – croup. So off to the ER at 1am where he had a breathing treatment and some oral steriod so that he could breath comfortably, and get his little voice back. Croup is terrible. It’s the first time that we’ve had it and hopefully the last – but I’m really not that naive.

I hope that Addy doesn’t get it – I’ve read that it can be pretty contagious.

September has been a month full of sick kiddos. School is definitely back in session.

Any guess as to what the following sign means?

Liam whipped it up this morning. Now much to my dismay, Liam isn’t into art. He doesn’t love to paint or color and usually only draws the alphabet. The kid loves letters and numbers. So this was a real surprise. And apparently he was letting us know that he didn’t want the lights turned on. See the chain hanging from the floor lamp, and the “no” with Ghostbusters sign (that’s what I call it) below…yep…no lights. HOW he came up with this is beyond me. I asked him exactly what the Ghostbusters sign meant…he had no idea. But the sign makes sense. I’m still shaking my head at how the four year old mind works.

And then lately he has been saying some odd things. Like if there is a word he doesn’t know, a big word, it must be Spanish. For example, he told me the other day that “concerned” is the Spanish word for “no.” Um…ok. That obviously prompted a discussion about the word concerned. It turns out that his teacher at school was “concerned” when two kids weren’t listening. I really need to watch what I say.

He also shared with me yesterday afternoon while running around the room that he did “mountain-a-cation today” in school. He’s four, and he can’t even say the word. But he sure as heck could tell me how to do it. Again, I’m scratching my head. I think that I was still trying to figure out how to color in the lines in Kindergarten. I think that I’ve been underestimating this age all along. Perhaps HE should be balancing the checkbook.

One week early of the nine month mark.

This was a big week for our wee lady!
*She has perfected the army crawl and is moving fast. It’s cute as can be, crawling on her elbows and pulling herself along. She’ll still get up on her hands and rock for a minute, but then plop down onto her elbows and take off. So funny!
*She likes to sit now and plays with stacked blocks or cups. Now I need to really watch out for the head bumps from her falling over not to softly. Oy.
*Feeding – she’s growing more independent in that department! She still nurses but for our solid meals she wants a spoon of her own. I don’t remember Liam doing this at all. She’d also rather have pieces of foods to feed herself – not too keen on the purees much anymore (except for cereal but I think that’s only because it’s mixed with mamas milk). *Playing – maybe it’s because Liam is in school three full days a week and we have the entire afternoons together – but she’s SO FUN to play with! She almost engages me now in things and has a super cute personality – and I think that she’s going to be a big goof ball like her brother. That’s cool.
*Sleep – I’m happy to report that she’s still doing awesome there. Last week was rough considering Liam gets picked up three days in a row – right in the middle of nap time. So that made her cranky. Apparently, she takes after her mom there and NEEDS her sleep. But this week we’re back to two solid naps and 11 hours at night. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

More later!

I CAN cook!

I’ve been validated by my almost nine month old. Ahhhhh…mommy can cook. I’m sure that I’ve mentioned it before that I make my own baby food. I steam the fruits and veggies (usually), puree and freeze them. It’s easy…sooooo easy and I know exactly what she’s eating. Plus with all of the fresh summer produce it’s a shame not to. My freezer is full of little baby food cubes in all shapes, sizes, flavors and texture. I almost need a bigger freezer. And while I’ve been building my food stash, I’ve discovered that my little girl doesn’t like a whole lot. She’ll dominate sweet potatoes and the dried cereals, she’ll tolerate peaches, bananas, pears, and blueberries – but that’s about all. And the fruits are only a recent change in her palette.

About a week (or maybe more) ago Nate commented while feeding her that maybe she didn’t like something about the homemade food. The texture, taste…whatever…and I started doubting myself. Maybe it was my cooking. So I went to the store and bought a few jars of organic baby food – ones that I had already tried and hadn’t met with success as well the sweet potatoes I knew she loved. I offered the peas that smelled much like my own batch – she gagged. I offered the apples that were a tad bit sweeter than mine – she spit them out. I offered green beans that looked much less colorful than mine – she wanted nothing to do with them. And finally I offered her sweet potatoes, her favorite food – she gagged AND spit them back out. I heated up a batch of my own sweet potatoes and she was happy again. She likes mom’s cooking the best. And I’m doing nothing wrong with my baby food making. I have been validated.

Today I made a batch of broccoli and cauliflower. The chances of her eating either one? Slim to none. I’m still going to try. I have discovered that she does better while feeding herself. So the purees may not be around much longer as we graduate to finger foods. Whatever works right?

And while I’m talking food, today I planned our dinners for this week. Hopefully we’ll be having vegetarian sloppy joes with salad, baked pasta with smoked mozzarella, pizza with salad (a new yummy salad) and egg sandwiches with my hash brown potato bake (breakfast for dinner). Four days of meals with one day for leftovers or something else. I’m writing it down to hold myself accountable. Wish me luck.

Today I:

*Made close to $170 at the scrapbook yardsale (got rid of LOTS of paper and embellishments)
*Froze my butt off while walking around an arts festival
*Took a one hour nap….the entire family slept…ahhhhhhhhhh
*Played candyland by the fire (it’s getting cold here, I’ll start whining soon)
*Didn’t cook one thing

It was a good day, even though I was cold (and still sick), and the kids were cold (and still sick). Nate is our own personal science experiment as he has been sucking back glasses of airborne and is still not sick. I’m taking notes.

See what I’ve been up to…

SALE!!!! It’s that time of the year again at my LSS where they have a HUGE yard sale. You package up your unwanted goods (if you could only hear the laughter in my head right now), slap a price tag and table number on there and set it out for people to fight over. The fighting, I love that part – the packaging, not so much. But it does all pay off in the end. Last year was my first time participating and I made well over two hundred dollars AND cleaned out my studio. Nothing wrong there! And this year, I purged once again to the best of my abilities and that my attention span allowed and hopefully tomorrow it’ll pay off again.

Wish me luck and some CRAZY buyers fighting over sheets of beautiful paper!

When life hands you tomatillos (ok maybe not life but the farm fresh produce basket I get every week) – make chickpea chili. Really it’s good stuff and the prefect note to end my pretty darn good cooking week.

So last Sunday evening I went to the grocery store – sans kiddos – and did some serious shopping. Shopping that provided enough food to cook – all week. If you knew how our family operated, you’d know that we don’t plan. You’d know that I love the idea of planning, save recipes, attempt new food lists – but it never happens. In the past, if I wanted tacos, I’d stop at the store and get stuff for tacos. If we had nothing, there is always a frozen pizza to heat up. Basically, it’s inefficient – and near impossible now with two kiddos to fit quick trips to the store into my day.

This week, I committed to cooking good food for my family (and eating healthy lunches myself). We had lasagna with salad, vegetarian Reuben’s with farm corn (thanks to our produce box) and quesadillas with chickpea chili. Yum. We only had frozen pizza one night and enjoyed it. Tomorrow, we’re eating out. But we have enough leftovers to eat for another full week.

I hope that I’m not setting some sort of standard here for my family. Because next week, I may go back to my lazy crap eating fend for your self-attitude again.

I’ll be testing out the ol’ blog spam filter with this post.

So Halloween…I’m thinking ahead just in case I have to make something. Liam keeps changing what he wants to be about every two weeks. I’m thinking that I’ll stop asking once he decides on something that I like (bad mom). At first (announced way back in June and staying with him the longest, August) it was a stapler – “so that I can staple things.” You can’t argue with that logic right? And then last week is was horse – “so that I can giddy-up.” Again, can’t argue. Yesterday, it was a candy cane – “so that people can lick me.” Now that one, I have a problem with.

Sigh.

Maybe I’ll try again but I’m almost afraid to ask.

Tonight I’m feeling a little sad, school starts tomorrow. AND tomorrow he’s eating lunch there. Sigh. I’ve been dreading this day all summer. I KNOW that it’s good for him and the school is FANTASTIC. I’ll just miss him. He’s my buddy.

I made this book using the new Chicken Little collection by Piggy Tales to document bits about school this year. And to write his name every month so that I can see how it evolves.

And for the record, I made the little lines for Liam to write on BUT if I had to do it over I’d use these.

It’s a few days late but I’m trying to keep it up.

I think she changed quite a bit over the past week. She’s starting to play games. She’ll throw her head back wanting to be held upside-down. She can now do so big which is really nice during dinner when she’s eating something orange! She is however expressing interest in feeding herself so I’m going with it – and it’s REALLY messy. She has a dainty little pincher grip going on and if I give her a food puff she’ll get it. Gosh I love the concentrated look she has on her face trying to get it into her mouth! She *can* sits but still prefers not to. She got up her hands and knees and rocked for the first time YESTERDAY. I’m not ready for mobility yet. She’s more receptive to different foods – pears, peaches and apples are OK – not great but ok.

That’s a lot in one week eh?

More later!