Spaghettastrophe

I have more pictures from Thanksgiving but I wanted to write about tonight before I forget about the battle of wills we had.

On the way home from day care Seth was signing/saying "eat eat" so when we got home I said he could have a couple of crackers while I heated up some spaghetti for him. Well he had some crackers and then wanted nothing to do with the spaghetti, he just wanted a banana. I said he could have some more crackers and the banana after he ate some spaghetti. This went on and on for quite some time and involved laying on the floor screaming and crying (Seth, not me, although I felt like it). I was very patient and even gave him a choice - he could either eat spaghetti at his Toy Story table or in the high chair. Lots of whining and crying but I said it was either spaghetti tonight or he was going to have a hungry tummy (thanks Mandy).


Finally at least an hour later I asked him again if he wanted some spaghetti and he said yeah so I heated it back up for him. He was standing on his chair alternating bites with a regular fork and one of his kids forks. Then I think maybe he was trying to get down, but he lost his balance and fell against the wall. The clock above us must have been just hanging on by a thread because it came crashing down right onto the bowl of spaghetti, flipping it up into the air and upside down. There was spaghetti everywhere, it was crazy. Amazingly enough there was a big pile right underneath the bowl so once I got Seth calmed down again I gave it back to him and he ate the whole thing and then signed "more." Ha! Mama wins! True to my word I let him have a banana after that.

I also wanted to mention that the last two nights he has refused to lay down in bed until he's gotten not one, not two, but THREE pacifiers. One for his mouth and one for each hand apparently. I don't know if he stashes them so he can find them in the middle of the night or what, but it's pretty funny. I keep thinking once he's two the pacifiers will have to go, but it seems like lately he's gotten more attached to them, not less. Still only in the crib or the car seat though, don't worry it's not like we let him run around at the mall with one in his mouth.

Thanksgiving Part 1

Well, since we left town yesterday I took 38 pictures with my new camera and ended up with a handful that I really like - meaning they look good to me personally. I have serious anxiety now about even sharing them, I have so many friends who are professionals. But I know they love me and won't judge :) I edited some of these just with Windows Photo gallery on my computer but they looked a lot better the first time when I fixed them in iPhoto on Eric's aunt's Mac.





I'm kind of wishing now I'd gotten the 35mm lens, it seems like I'm always too close to everything. But I can see the advantage of the 50.

Pictures from my phone

I got a new phone today since mine quit working. So I downloaded all the pictures and started flipping through them. Here are a few of my favorites in no particular order. I had to restrain myself from putting all 200 of them on here. Can't believe how much my boy has grown up!

In the motor home with Nana.

First smiles.

Sitting up!

Running with Mama.

At the river.

First ride in the shopping cart.

Hangin' out on daddy's shoulders.

Like father, like son.

First Spokane Indians game.

First celebrity sighting.

Playing with Max's collar.

Celery stick at the Sandtrap, Gearhart, OR.

Tiger for 1st Halloween.

Eating the tassels on his snow hat.

Not too excited about the monster hat. We must have taken that back because I don't remember ever seeing it again...

Max in a Christmas bag.

Trying on the new car seat for size. It fit!

Naked story time.

Checking e-mail on his laptop.

First time checking out the ducks at Riverfront park.

Reorganizing the bathroom drawers.

Self portrait with Mama. One of my favorites.

Stealing another kid's ball at Discovery Park.

Discovery Park

Daddy's black eye from Hoopfest 2011.

Auntie Jenny has a dirtier face than Seth!

Mama and Daddy at Belton Chalet, Glacier, 2011.

First day care art project (and last apparently, we haven't seen one since).

Enjoying some mexican food.

Loving the Fred Meyer shopping "car"

Biggest lump ever, slipped by the pool at the Hallmark Inn, Cannon Beach.

Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach

Trying on Auntie Natalie's Uggs.

Well that was a nice little trip down memory lane. I forgot how many good ones there were in there.

Seth 22 Months

Dear Seth,

You are 22 months today. What!? Only 2 more months and you'll be a 2 year old, which is crazy. More and more I hear people comment that you're turning into a little boy.

Here are a few random things I have to say about you:

You love singing and music. For a few days there you would put your hands over your head and wiggle your fingers at bedtime. It took me a minute but I figured out you wanted me to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider! That's always been one of your favorite songs but you must have learned the moves at daycare. Mostly you are fine with just listening but the one song I've heard you actually sing along to is Row Row Row Your Boat.

Finally you are answering in the affirmative! So when we ask you if you want a cracker you say "Yeah!" Even sometimes if we ask you if you want to go night night you say yeah, if you're really tired.

You've mastered the art of climbing and have moved on to launching yourself off of whatever it is you climbed on. Your favorite naughty thing is climbing up onto the end table and then jumping off the arm of the couch down onto the cousins. But you wait for us to see you standing on the table and say no no before you do it. You've also been known to leap off the couch down onto the floor.

We put away all the baby gates so you essentially have freedom to roam the house. You're instructed to stay on the main floor for the most part but sometimes you sneak down into the basement and when I come after you in the dark you giggle like crazy. A few times I have found your stuffed animals have been ejected out the cat door into the garage.

You now really want to get up where the action is and will move your chair around the kitchen so you can stand on it and see what we're doing in the sink or on the counter. Or just so you can reach anything and everything and blindly toss it over your shoulder.

You have discovered that it is fun to try on other people's shoes and walk around in them.

You give lots and lots of kisses to us and the cats and your stuffed animals. You still LOVE that crazy dancing monkey that you got for Christmas last year. One of it's legs is broken so it keeps falling over but that doesn't stop you from turning it off and on repeatedly.

You say "home" when we pull up to the house. Whenever there's a game on TV you shout "But-ball!" (football)

Last weekend daddy and I woke up to you laying in your crib saying "cock a doodle doo!"

Your life is already full of activities! You just recently finished your second session of swimming lessons. You are about halfway through your first session of Soccer Tots, and we're going to start up again at Baby Bugs (toddler tumbling) here maybe this week. Your participation in the classes is a little spotty but it's still really fun to see you run and play. Daddy takes you to the gym with him and lets you run around while he shoots baskets. When you see other people playing you look so amazed and say "WHOA!!"

You are starting to learn your letters. We have these foam letters that stick to the wall in the bath tub and so far you know O, Y, B, and D. You'll repeat a lot of others back to me but those ones you say without prompting. My little genius!

You don't really like to cuddle at bed time anymore. When you're ready for bed or a nap you want to go in your crib and be left alone basically. Some days you just hang out in your room during nap time and babble to yourself or throw everything out of your crib. Other days you actually sleep. Either way works for me. If I need a cuddle I have to get you up at night after you've been asleep for awhile.

At your last doctor's appointment you weighed 29 lbs. I'm not sure how tall you are but I'm positive you're big for your age.

Your favorite book I think is the Clifford Preschool Treasury. The other night I asked you if you wanted to read Clifford and you disappeared upstairs to your room for quite awhile but finally came back with it. We laughed because it was completely dark in your room so we don't know how you even managed to find it. You love to point out the objects or animals you know the words or sounds for and yell them out enthusiastically. Especially "BUBBLE!" and "BEE!" You also lean over and make a little munching sound pretending to eat the food out of Clifford's dish. I have no idea where you picked that up.

Pretty much every kid you see you point and yell "BABY!" You let out a big "ROAR" if you see a lion or a tiger or a bear and yell "YEE HAW" at anything resembling a horse (including a dinosaur just yesterday). You also say "bath" and this weekend you said "thank you!" Other times you sit in your car seat and speak full paragraphs in your own little language.

Well that's enough for now. Love you monkey!

~Mama

8 weeks

No, not 8 weeks pregnant... 8 weeks in a row not missing a day of exercise.  Whoohhhhooo!  I really can't say enough about what a great thing this has been.  Knowing that I HAVE to fit it in somewhere, somehow, no matter what.  The other night around 7pm after an exhausting day I was sitting on the couch finally relaxing and it hit me that I hadn't gotten my workout in.  There was no whining, no excuses, no rationalizing it away.  I just got up and did it.  Because I had to.

The best part is that I'm slowly losing some weight, without counting calories.  In the past the only way I could drop lbs was to meticulously record every single morsel going into my mouth.  And that is a lot of work!  Don't get me wrong, I think that if you're struggling to lose weight this has to be done from time to time because otherwise there is no way for you to really get a feel for portion sizes.  Not to mention the appreciation of the fact that a grande white mocha from Sbux has almost as many calories as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.  But at the end of the day I really want to set a healthy example for my kids, especially if I have a daughter someday, and so I think that weighing and measuring all of my food constantly is no way to go through life. 

In other news, I did get the rest of my lab results back yesterday.  My TSH was like 3.6ish which is technically considered normal but for fertility purposes they like to get it down around 2.25.  So I'm going back on my Synthroid for awhile which might help me lose weight even faster, so that's a bonus.  Unless I get pregnant, which is actually on the agenda for this month.

Seth is talking up a storm these days.  Tomorrow he'll be 22 months so I will try to compile some details for the occasion.  He is my little cutie patootie, for sure.

Crazy week

It must be a full moon or something.  Yesterday while clipping Seth's finger nails, Eric clipped off the end of his finger.  Ouch!  This has happened so many times now I'm not sure why Eric just doesn't leave the nail clipping to Mama.  Anyway, this time it was bad, bleeding all over the place.  Eric had it bandaged up pretty good but in the afternoon while I'm in the checkout line at Old Navy I look down to see that Seth has ripped the band aid off and it is bleeding again, everywhere.  Thankfully the cashier had some band aids and we got him patched up again long enough for me to pay for my stuff and get out of there.  I was a little concerned that this wound was still bleeding that much 6+ hours after the fact so I called the doctor's office.  The nurse reassured me that fingers just bleed a lot and there wasn't much that we could do except keep pressure on it.  By this time Seth had ripped the band aids off again so I was sitting in the back seat with him in the Old Navy parking lot trying to fashion some sort of pressure dressing that he couldn't get off so easily.  I succeeded and although he chewed on it a little, it held out until after bath time at which point I redressed his wound and it was no longer bleeding.  Yay!

I also had to call the Mr. Yuk hotline yesterday because I walked into the bathroom and caught Seth slurping hand lotion out of the tube.  Gah!  Why would a child do that?  It can't possibly taste good!  Poison control assured me that hand creams are very safe.  Num num.  I didn't like that hand lotion anyway. 

So I'm hoping we have had our fill of medical issues for awhile.  On the other hand maybe this is just the beginning.  Maybe we broke the seal and this is just what having a little boy means.  I don't know, but it is really wearing me out.

I had a little peek into the future the other night.  We were leaving a restaurant and passed by this group of people and I overheard them talking about how they were celebrating someone's 18th birthday.  They were referring to a young man who was about Eric's height.  They were discussing the upcoming basketball season and asking him if it was going to be a good one.  *sigh* I got a little teary thinking about how someday Seth is going to be 18 and as tall as his dad, a foot taller than me.  Yikes!!  Can't they just stay little forever?

Mexican Shepherd's pie

I wanted to write this one down since it a big hit. I was a little nervous but went with it since Eric usually likes anything with "mexican" in the name. I adapted a recipe from Betty Crocker and it turned out great. Here's my version:

Layer 1 ~
2 lbs ground beef
1 cup chopped leeks
2 tbsp minced garlic
3 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp ground cumin
2 tsp paprika
2 cups salsa

Layer 2 ~
11oz can shoepeg corn
4oz can diced green chiles
15 oz can olives, sliced

Layer 3 ~
Mashed potatoes, however you like to make them. Just make sure to season so they are tasty on their own. I probably used about 5-6 cups.

Layer 4 ~
8oz Tillamook Mexican blend shredded cheese

I browned and drained the hamburger and then added the leeks and garlic and cooked until the leeks were soft, before seasoning and adding the salsa. Then just layer it all in a 13x9 pan (or any 3qt casserole dish), and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. When my time was up Eric wasn't home yet so I just turned the oven down to 200 and it was fine for another 15 minutes.

The best part about this was that I didn't have to go to the store! I had everything I needed, and I love it when that happens. Normally I would probably use onion instead of leeks but that wasn't what I had on hand this particular night, and it worked out fine. Even Seth ate some, which is always a bonus for me. I think next time I'll try to incorporate some beans in there somehow, but I haven't decided exactly how. Possibilities are endless!

Toddler Triage 101

We couldn't get an appointment with Seth's regular doctor yesterday, so we followed up with another physician in the office.  What a mistake.  I don't know what his problem was but I didn't like him AT ALL.  I'm sure he's a good doctor (I've actually heard good things about him) but maybe he was having a bad day or something.  His bedside manner sucked, big time.  He didn't actually say any of these things, but here's what I got out of if:

Why are you wasting my time with this?  Any idiot can see that this child is not seriously ill.  Basically it's your fault he even had a seizure since you had him bundled up so much he overheated in the car.  Then you totally overreacted by taking him to the emergency room.

I was so upset by it I'm considering making another appointment with his regular doctor, just to get the bad taste out of my mouth.  Even though I know we did the right thing taking him to the ER.  There's no doubt in my mind that anyone else would have done the same thing given the circumstances.  The only benefit of going to the appointment was that he did look in Seth's ears, which for some reason they did not do at the hospital, and they were fine.  He said it was probably just some upper respiratory virus and that the medications he was already on seemed appropriate for the situation.  I was really irritated that he didn't even look at the ER report or anything while we were there, even though I know he has the capability.  Oh, and another thing was he pulled up this Mayo clinic article on febrile seizures (that I've already read) and printed it out for us.  Which again seems lazy to me.  I'm all for sending me home with information but maybe try talking it over with me as well.  Ok, you get it, I'm irked.  Rant complete. 

He definitely seems to be on the road to recovery.  Yesterday afternoon he took almost a two hour nap, and we hadn't gotten more than about 30 minute naps all weekend.  Then this morning when he woke up he just hung out for a while in his crib talking to himself instead of immediately screaming and crying, so that is a huge improvement as well.  Hopefully he'll eat some actual food today instead of just crackers and juice and that will convince me he's really getting better.

Funny story... ever since we got back from D.C. when we'd read books with Seth he would point at horses and say "hee haw!"  He used to do a really good horse whinny sound that Eric taught him so we just assumed his Nana had been teaching him the sound that a donkey makes.  Well last night we took him "trick or treating" over to Nana and grandpa's house and learned that no, in fact he is saying "Yee haw!" like a cowboy because that's what grandpa says when Seth is riding his rocking horse over there.  We were dying laughing.