Ok, I fully realize that this is not even a tenth as exciting to anyone other than Jared and I lol, but I was just beaming with pride when he stood up by himself a few days ago, and then almost had a full on emotional breakdown when he took his first NINE steps unassisted yesterday! He was so proud!! It has been hilarious to watch this progression. For the last month or two, instead of crawling, he has been doing what we call, a “Mogli walk,” on his hands and feet. It made me laugh every single time that he did it. Then from there, he just shifted his weight back onto his hind quarters and carefully stood up lol. I know I say this all the time, but I cannot BELIEVE how fast he is growing up. Where does the time go?! Well, here is the evidence so you can all clap with tears of joy as you watch.
About a month or two ago, Jared decided to hire someone to help me with the housework. Only there is a slight problem… my new help is so so SO cute that I can’t stop watching him! It more than DOUBLES the time it would take me to do it on my own, but I just don’t mind. When he smiles at me, my heart melts. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I love him so much that I don’t even mind when he helpfully takes every dirty dish OUT of the dishwasher, to inspect it, as I put it there. He is so dashing that I don’t bat an eye when he impressively cleans out the refrigerator and throws all of its contents on the ground, requiring a 15 minute pick-up and occasionally cracking glass condiment bottles. He is so charming that I can only smile dreamily as I watch him re-wash my clean glass patio doors with his tongue, creating a blurry mess that I then have to re-clean. And I love the fun game that he creates for me, where he takes every kitchen tool/appliance/utensil that he can carry and carefully organizes them for me. In fact, he organizes so well that I often can no longer find them, even after several days of searching. Ahh, I am smitten. He is by far, the BEST housekeeper that I have ever had. I would recommend him to others but I’m afraid I’ve hired him full time for… well forever. My life is good.
A few weeks ago we got the first snow of the year. It started out of nowhere and kept on coming. It all melted by the end of the day of course lol, but I took Sammy outside to have fun. He was quite thrilled, just like his mommy!
What a fun Halloween! Our icy, frigid weather let up for a night and was just the perfect amount of warmth to let the kids stay out longer, and chill to keep the sweat off their brows during the workout that they experienced. We got to have Riley for this Halloween!!! Yay! We don’t usually get to have him when a holiday arises so this one was extra special.
We carved fabulous pumpkins, about which Riley said, “wow, we are REALLY good at this” lol. We all gutted, Jared drew the faces onto the pumpkins, and I carved them. It was a real team effort lol. We made a Halloween treat, Almond Roca Bars, that Riley said was “quite possibly the best thing I have ever tasted!” lol. We watched “The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” and then wondered why we watched “The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.” lol It is a classic cartoon that teaches kids way too many fun “names” to call each other, like “stupid”, “idiot”, and “blockhead.” Which we get to hear constantly all throughout the film. Plus they just yell at each other the whole time, mercilessly tease each other, and are really mean. I don’t think that will be one that we watch with our kids every year lol.
We allowed the kids to steal the spotlight and look fabulous! Riley dressed up as Shaggy and I was completely SHOCKED at how many people knew who he was lol. Sammy was a gorilla and made me laugh every time I looked at his tiny hiney. We snagged a family picture and in it, you can see Sammy going crazy over the blinking, red, self-timer light on my camera lol.
Sammy didn’t exactly go “trick-or-treating” per say, but he did get dressed up and we joined his cousin Max for a walk to grandma’s which resulted in a dum dum sucker. I think Sammy thought he had died and gone to heaven lol. He had it in his hand (wrapper still on) and I turned around, took a couple of steps so that I could get a picture, and he had already put it in his mouth and sucked completely THROUGH the wrapper lol. After he tasted “sucker” it was all over lol. He refused to look at me for any pictures or pay attention to absolutely anyone around him. When he sucked the sucker right off the stick, he cried and cried that I wouldn’t let him keep sucking on the paper. It was so cute. So after a quick 45 minute neighborhood jaunt, Sammy and I came home, I peeled off his now-soaked-with-drool-from-his-sucker costume, and I snuggled him to sleep while dad took the first shift and set out with Riley on the longest Halloween night of our life. They took our neighborhood by storm and came back after a respectable 2 hour mission, only so that us “parents” could swap places and then go back out for another 2 hours lol. Riley came back with more candy than I have EVER seen a child get in one night. His bag must have weighed 25 pounds! You couldn’t wipe the grin off his face for a million bucks. He was beyond proud. But instead of racing home to “dig in”, he raced home to “count” his candy lol. Such a great kid we have! He carefully counted for what seemed like hours and then proudly proclaimed that he had a total of 275! Halloween sure is fun when you have kids.
Last week we checked out the Scarecrow Festival at Cornbelly’s (Thanksgiving Point) and it was so much fun! Definately recommend worthy. All sorts of activities for kids and ample carnival food for the dads.
They had what was called “the giant pillow” that all the kids could jump on. Riley and dad took their turn and then Sammy wanted to join them so dad took him up there as well. He smiled cautiously the whole time but then when dad brought him back to me, he immediately threw up all over himself and me lol. Poor little guy.
It didn’t seem to phase him though, he wanted to get on the “cowboy logs” right away. Riley practiced his lasso skills, which seriously concerned dad lol. (click on that picture to enlarge it and then look at Jared’s face in the background haha) And Sammy was just happy as a clam sitting proudly on his wooden horse.
We got to watch piglet races, baby goat races, fall down slides with our legs crossed lol (we all laughed really hard that Riley was crossing his legs the whole way down), find our way through the corn maze, eat the biggest hot dogs I have ever seen in my life (I opted out of that one ), and take a hayride out to find the perfect halloween pumpkins that we could take home with us. All in all, a great day! I just LOVE fall!!!!
This post is dedicated to all my expecting friends out there! My wonderful sister in-law shared this amazing deal with me and I had to pass it on. Good karma and all. For a limited time, you can go to this website: https://www.uddercovers.com and add one of their gorgeous nursing covers to your cart (normally $32 each) and then when you checkout, enter in the coupon code “1FREE”. It will automatically take $32 off of your purchase. All you pay for is shipping, which is $8 and something cents. You can only get one free per order, but you can make several orders if you wish. I got two. Even if you aren’t expecting, they would made fantastic gifts and at only $8, that is cheaper than the material would cost to make your own. Enjoy!
I messed up this week. Big time. I swear sometimes I’m losing my mind… one day at a time. It’s like watching reruns of a TV show you have seen millions of times and finding new parts in it that you have never noticed before. It’s not funny… it’s almost disturbing. You KNOW this show. You’ve MEMORIZED this show. You’ve acted it out with your siblings. How can there be a whole scene that you have no recollection of??? Well I don’t know how but the older I get and the more times I get pregnant lol, somehow I just can’t hold firm to the once brilliant memory that I used to maintain. The victim this week: laundry. Not just any laundry. My baby boy’s ENTIRE wardrobe. That’s right. Everything he owns. I had put off doing his laundry for so long that finally I opened up his closet and there was nothing in it. I pulled open each and every drawer, just to find a toothbrush that Sammy had chosen to hide. No clothing. Then the lightbulb came on and I excitedly remembered a small box on the floor of his closet that contained a few articles of clothing that were one size too big. Those would certainly work until I had cleaned his other clothes.
So, I dressed my son in a long sleeved t-shirt that was enormous and a pair of new jeans that wouldn’t stay up, both had the cuffs rolled several times , while I gave in and finally threw everything he has ever worn, into the washer. This is where we enter the twilight zone. I immediately forgot about the clothes in the washer. Not as in, “I knew they were there but just got side tracked.” I forgot about the clothes in the washer, as in, “I had NO recollection of ever putting them there.” I still don’t. But I had to have. Jared certainly didn’t do it. I’m not even sure that he knows HOW to do laundry. And there they sat for almost a week. 5 days to be exact. I know because 5 new, way-too-big-for-my-body, t-shirts are what Sammy wore through until I finally started wondering, “where the heck is all of his clothing!?” So on day 5, I ventured downstairs to see if I had taken all of his clothes down yet. They weren’t in the laundry bin? Well where on earth are they!? As a reflex, I opened the washer and gasped as I saw a massive load of wet, mildewy, mini-sized clothing sitting there sadly.
The smell was horrible! I panicked. Had I really just ruined every single thing that I dress my son in, in one fail swoop? So I washed the load again in a desperate attempt to save hundreds of dollars worth of clothing. I washed it on HOT. When the buzzer sounded, I optimistically opened the door and all of my enthusiasm went down the drain. The smell would have stunned a horse. So I ran upstairs and grabbed the baking soda. Started the load again, this time added an overflowing cup full of baking soda. No dice. The smell remained. I repeated the load again, this time adding more baking soda. But the wretched smell stubbornly stuck around. Determined, I ran it again. Can we please not pay attention to the gallons of water that I am wasting on this project? Still nothing. So to my computer I ran! With Jared wondering how on earth we solved life’s problems before the it was invented. I searched high and low for laundry cures for “poor housekeeping”.
Most of the articles I found though were simply scolding us lowly housewives for doing such a pitiful job and reminding us to IMMEDIATELY remove clothes from the washer. Information that I already knew. I wasn’t trying to find out how to get your clothes to smell like mildew… I was trying to find out what do do once you’ve already accomplished that step. But finally I found an article that recommended using white vinegar, so I gave it a shot. Did ANOTHER load, this time adding 1 cup of white vinegar. When the buzzer sounded, once again I ran enthusiastically to the washer but only to sink into despair at the lingering scent. In one final ditch attempt. I decided to combine my efforts. I filled the washer for the 7th time and this time poured a cup and a 1/2 of baking soda over top of my load, ALSO filling the liquid bleach dispenser with a cup of white vinegar. When the end-of-the-wash signal was announced, I slowly sulked towards it, not expecting much. But to my gleeful surprise, that horrible, nasty, terrible smell; that for the longest day of my life had served as an awful reminder of my lacking household skills; was completely gone!! The clothes now smelled ever so faintly of vinegar lol, but that is SO MUCH better than mildew! I was so happy that you couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face for a million bucks. Ok maybe a million. So as a standing ovation to my dedication, I ran the load just one more time. This time with normal Dreft baby detergent and 20 minutes later, “Voila!” my baby’s entire wardrobe is back to smelling wonderfully of chamomile and lavender and now is also incredibly soft lol. You would be too if you have just sat through 8 baths.
So the solution if your clothes smell mildewy…. do 2 loads. 1st load- wash with 1/2 cup – 1 1/2 cup (depending on your load size and the seriousness of your stank) baking soda poured over top of them, as if that is the detergent. Also fill your liquid bleach dispenser with 1/4 cup – 1 cup of white vinegar. When the load is finished, run a second regular load with your normal detergent and you should be good! And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you are faltering on your household responsibilities.
Ok, CLEARLY I cannot post this under my “healthy recipes” link. So it has to appear on the main page…. darn it. These incredibly SIMPLE, EASY, and DIVINE little treats are truly heaven on earth. You will not be able to just have one though, so be careful!! You won’t be paying attention and then all of the sudden, “OH MY GOSH!!! THE WHOLE BOWL IS GONE!” Yes, it will be just like that. Along with maybe, “What the heck is the matter with my jeans!? Why won’t they button up anymore?!” LOL, yes I just realized that I used heck and gosh in the same post. Ok, so are you ready for your world to be changed: Here ya go!
Rolo Turtles
- 1 bag of pretzel snaps (the square ones that look like a grid)
- as many rolos as you would like (I usually buy about 10 packages)
- an equal amount of halved pecans
directions: preheat oven to 200 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Place pretzels on the foiled baking sheet and top with one rolo. Bake for 3 minutes. While baking, quick place pecans on a microwave safe plate. Cook for 30 seconds, stir around with your fingers, cook for another 30 seconds, stir around with your fingers, cook for another 30 seconds… repeat until nuts are toasty. Remove pretzels from oven and immediately press one pecan half onto each rolo. LET COOL for at least a minute or two or you will burn the crap out of your mouth! Once sufficiently cooled, pop one in your mouth and hear angelic voices.
