Tag: parenthood

Minnie’s Day Out

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Every morning after breakfast, I turn Bay loose to run amok and watch cartoons. Tuesday morning she was particularly busy – she was playing with her new toys and bouncing from room to room.

As PW was ready to head out, she grabbed her new Minnie Mouse rolling backpack and helped Peter carry his stuff to the car. When she got there, she told him that Minnie Mouse was in the bag and that she was going to work with him. She kissed him and Minnie and headed back into the house.

When he got home, he wheeled Minnie inside and Bay greeted them both with kisses. She began to unpack the bag – it was then I realized that not only had she packed Minnie in the bag, she had packed a tupperware full of play food, a dish towel and a blanket. She explained that Minnie needed a lunch, a place mat and her blankie for nap time.

I sat down and marveled at how thoughtful and sweet she had been. And when I hugged and kissed her for the 19th time, she looked at me as if I had lost my marbles – which only made it better that her thoughtfulness was second nature.

Christmas Recap

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Christmas is always a whirlwind of family parties, church, food and wrapping paper and this year was no different. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful family – we were missing a few members this year to their in-laws, but we managed to adjust tradition and make it a beautiful holiday.

We kept with the tradition of the family sneaking all their gifts to one house so that the kids awake/arrive to a sea of presents. This year we hosted gift opening and it was a blast. PW and I both went to Bay’s room when she woke up and the first question out of her mouth was “did Santa come?”. We told her yes and that he had eaten his cookies and milk and that the reindeer loved their carrots. Her response? “did he put his dishes in the sink?”. Clearly she is my child.

She got to open one gift first thing – her new backhoe scooter – complete with a tool kit. What? Not everything has to be pink and pretty! She loved that she would have something that she could get around on quickly (she hasn’t quite mastered her trike yet) when she plays with Britain down the street.

She beeps when she backs up

“rip and tear!!”

Once she was done opening her presents, she asked for a “time out” in her crib. Which I think was a nice way of saying “overloaded”

“Boots like Morgan!!!”

We switched up our usual schedule a bit which left Christmas day afternoon open – which meant plenty of mimosas at brunch and a nice long nap for the whole family. The best part was that we had several friends stop by. Normally getting together with friends means much planning and coordinating of calendars, but the shared day off by all meant lots of very welcome impromptu visitors. We got to catch up with a great friend and best man from our wedding, Ryan and by Baylor’s Godfather Joe and his fiance Brandy. There was also a convoy of new bikes, scooters and cars with the neighborhood kids while the parents sat on the patio and sipped champagne. It was a perfect holiday.

After Bay had gone to bed last night, PW and I enjoyed our gift from my parents, a 2007 bottle of Cakebread Cabernet (we typically by wine base on the fact it’s under $15, not so much on the year). We were snuggled on the couch when PW looked over at the coffee table full of new Legos and said:

“Your Lego tower is pretty wonky”.

“It’s a tree” I replied.

“Wow. That’s a pretty crappy tree.”

“Listen, I don’t work at Lego Land, ass. Use your imagination!”

 

 

 

Baylorisms – Part 3 – The Christmas version

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Christmas has brought a lot of new words to Bay’s vocabulary and not all of them are easy to understand. The Grinch, for example. I asked her to repeat herself 16 times before I sent her to PW for interpretation.

Silly Lu Lu – Cindy Loo Hoo.

Zinsh – The Grinch. This one is hard to write because it’s really more of a sound than a word and leads me to ask “show me what you’re talking about”.

There’s me! – her greeting when she walks into a room.

Sarah – Dora the Explorer. She doesn’t watch Dora but for some reason thinks her name is Sarah. Her swim diapers have Dora on them and when I put them on she says “Hey Sarah!!”.

The Teddy Bear – Winnie the Pooh. We’re going to see the Winnie the Pooh Christmas play today so I’m guessing she’ll know his name after that.

Krishness – Christmas!

 

Kid Friendly Nativity

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Growing up, we had the most beautiful nativity scene. It was all carved wood and was incredibly detailed and had so many people – it was like a religious Barbie house to me. I loved playing with it. I like staging all the figurines, hiding baby Jesus and enjoying every minute of it.

As an adult, I had a hard time finding an equally beautiful manger scene that was kid friendly. But then I came across a hand-made set at a silent auction for Circle the City charity (amazing amazing amazing. If you don’t know, find out). I was stalking a bid I had made on a bedding set for Baylor and noticed the adorable figures. They are all knitted and include the three wise men, shepherds and sheep, a donkey, camel and of course the holy family and an angel. The auction was closed for it, so I asked the lady collecting the cards if she could give me the information for the person who made them. The lady said she didn’t have it, but if I would give her my info, she would have the lady contact me.

Flash forward 3 months and I got a call from Sister Joan. I had no idea who sister Joan was, but when a nun calls you, you listen. She explained she was driving to Arizona from California and that she had my manger scene for me. Huh? I confirmed that it was for me and not someone else since I had only been interested in knowing how much one cost…and yet now I apparently owned one. Or at least I was going to own one, once I knew how much it cost. To keep it brief, I almost drove off the road when Sister Joan told me what the winning bid was for the nativity scene at the silent auction. But she then told me that the lady who make the scenes donates them to Circle the City so whatever amount I wanted to donate was perfectly fine. I decided on a number that didn’t make me want to choke and handed over the check and collected my goodies.

Bottom line? Worth every penny. The best part about the figurines  is that there is not much that could destroy them so Bay is free to play to her heart’s content. She had baby Jesus in her baby buggy and was pushing him around because “His mommy Mary said it was ok”. Just love it.

The whole gang..happy at home in the hutch.

The wise men

The shepherds and the camel

The Fam – I love the donkey hiding behind them!

The Wands Need Sleep

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Between PW’s late work nights this week (he’s averaging at least two nights a week after mid night) and Bay’s early mornings, we’re all starting to look like the walking dead.

Here’s how it typically works:

730pm: Bay is in her crib but still chatting to her animals

930pm: I decided I really do need to get to bed.

1000pm: No really, I’ve got to get to sleep

1045pm: Sleep timer turns off the TV and I was a goner when my head hit the pillow.

1145pm: PW gets home and announces himself loudly so that I don’t have a heart attack thinking he’s an intruder (we learn from our past around here).

1215pm: PW still goofing around the house which wakes me up and confuses me.

100am: PW finally goes to bed and again, wakes me up.

400am: Bay starts whimpering in her sleep.

405am: More whimpering.

408am: I decided I better go figure out what she needs before PW’s alarm goes off at 5am because then there is a chance she won’t go back to sleep.

415: Clean diaper, socks and a blanket and Bay is back down. I am now awake.

440am: I finally doze off…

500am: Alarm goes off. I tap PW who promptly asks me to snooze the alarm.

510am: PW gets up on his own.

515am: Snoozed alarm goes off again.

545am: PW leaves for work.

600am: Whimpering…

615am: I get my lovely wake up call of “MOMMY!!! AWAKE!!!”

And this is why it takes three coats of various colors of concealer to cover up the deep, dark circles under my eyes…So looking forward to nap time on Saturday when I can catch 2 hours of guilt free sleep time.

Bop It

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PW and I had a very limited idea of what the hell we were doing when we registered for all our baby gear. I, the shopper with a black belt, was totally overwhelmed by the process and spent most of our first trip with my feet up in the floor model gliders. Thankfully, we did pretty well ending up with only  a few things we didn’t really need.

One of those items was a Boppy Pillow…or so I thought. This little “U” shaped, stuffed thing is supposed to help support your baby while you breast feed. I am apparently not the Boppy standard size as I would have needed 3 of them stacked up to help me out. But I did find it useful when Bay was learning to sit up. We would sit on the floor and try to get her to stay upright with the support of the soft pillow around her.

Normally, as soon as we are done with something, it gets washed and goes straight to a storage bin in the garage. But for some reason this damn pillow escaped my organized wrath and B spotted it at the top of the closet shelf. She asked if she could have it and then insisted she sleep with it. She didn’t have a pillow at all, is out of SIDS range and has enough stuffed animals to choke a horse in her crib any way, what could it hurt? It turns out that she loves it. She sleeps like a badger – flailing around and rolling all over the place. So the Boppy works great as it pretty much surrounds her. She looks so comfy, I’ve been tempted to snap a picture. But because I haven’t totally lost my mind, I don’t risk waking her up with the camera beep.

Lettuce Eat

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Remember this post about the lettuce table that PW built for me? Well it’s back and better than ever! Bay and I planted seeds about 5 weeks ago and they are growing like weeds. I think we are some fertilizer and a week away from eating like rabbits for every meal. The best part is that Bay is totally persuaded to eat because she grew it!

 

 

Pasta Fagioli

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I am so fortunate to have become good friends with the other two room moms from Baylor’s class. They are incredibly funny, smart and freakishly talented multi taskers. And they like wine so we were a match made in heaven.

We sipped and snacked on Monday night at Postinos. I’m embarrassed to say that it was my first time there (look, I like to ride my bike and I live where I can do that to like 15 great restaurants, why go where I have to drive?!). We all ordered a cup of the Pasta Fagioli with sausage and it was awesome. I googled around and found a great recipe. It’s soup, but very hearty and great for a meal.

My  variations are that I used fresh herbs because I had them, hot Italian sausage (Safeway meat counter), kidney instead of cannaleni beans and I added 3 tablespoons of butter to the final mix, just to give it a little more flavor. I loved this recipe because it was a chop-and-dump-into-pot variety which is my favorite. Be sure to add the Parmigiano on top, it really pulls it all together.

Ingredients

    • 1 tablespoon olive oil
    • 1 onions, chopped
    • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
    • 1 carrots, peeled & chopped
    • 1 stalk celery, chopped
    • 1 lb sweet Italian sausage links or 1 lb hot Italian sausage, casing removed and crumbled ( can use turkey sausage)
    • 2 teaspoons dry oregano
    • 1 tablespoon dry basil
    • 1 -2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, to taste
    • 1 1/2 cups canned chopped tomatoes with juice
    • 3 -4 cups vegetable stock or 3 -4 cups chicken stock
    • 1 can progresso cannellini beans
    • 1 cup ditalini or 1 cup small shell pasta
    • 2 tablespoons chopped flat leaf parsley
    • parmesan cheese

Directions

  1. Heat olive oil in a large heavy pot over medium high heat.
  2. Cook onion in oil 2 minutes.
  3. Stir in garlic, celery and carrots and cook for 3 minutes.
  4. Add and brown crumbled sausage.
  5. Add basil, oregano and red pepper.
  6. Toss to coat.
  7. Stir in tomatoes and stock.
  8. Bring to a boil.
  9. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.
  10. If necessary, add an additional cup of stock or water and stir in beans and tiny pasta.
  11. Simmer for 6- 8 minutes or until pasta is tender.
  12. Stir in parsley and serve hot with grated Parmesan cheese.

Recipe credit from:http://www.food.com/recipe/pasta-e-fagioli-italian-soup-with-italian-sausage-38088

Tree Hunting

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Peter finally convinced me this year to go up North and cut down a Christmas tree. I have always been opposed because his plans involved me sitting in the back seat with a squirmy, crying  kiddo while getting motion sick for 5 hours while he sipped hot chocolate, sang along to Christmas songs and drove his oh-so-precious truck.

He agreed to move the location to a much more reasonable destination and went the first day permits were available to ensure that we got the right area. The plan was that we would drive up just north of Payson, get our tree, eat a picnic brunch and head back while the munchkin napped. When I told our friends Beth and Grant of our plans, the wanted to join. So now we would have a party for our Griswold style tree hunting. We were certain it would be a disaster, but hopefully a hilarious disaster.

Sadly, Mother Nature had other plans. She decided to dump 2 feet of snow on the usually dry area the day before our trip. After looking at the web cams and the road conditions, we decided it wasn’t safe to risk an accident or getting stuck. So we opted for church, breakfast and tree hunting at a lot with our friends.

PW and I each can’t remember the last time we had a real tree. We have an awesome, pre-lit version that is so easy we just always go with that. But the live version is pretty great – we bought from a local nursery and the thing might as well have been cut down by us it’s so fresh! Here are the highlights:

Getting her in place.

Uncle Grant ATTACK!!!

Aunt Beth 🙂

Straightening it out…again. It only fell over twice.

Ta da!! I was trying to get tricky with my camera to get lots of light, but it didn’t quite pan out…

Who is that teenie, tiny lady?!

Old School

From the time I was little, I remember Mame had this on her dresser.

I’ve actually done a good job of making a photo ornament for each year. I love looking at all of them!