Tomorrow I’m having jaw surgery, so I will be away from my blog for a (hopefully short) while. I’m hoping to still document my recovery, but it won’t be on this blog. If I do, I’ll link it for the non-squeamish!
Life
Dexter Turns 2!!!
We celebrated Dexter’s 2nd birthday last weekend, and it was such a nice day! We let the kids play at a park, everyone got a sugar buzz… What more could a kid want??
My theme was bugs, but I didn’t want to go with a bug cake. I saw a terribly cute idea in the last issue of Parents Magazine. They stacked wood rounds to make a cupcake stand, and then decorated their cupcakes as mushrooms. My sweet brother-in-law attempted to HAND SAW some rounds for me. But the wood and his hands wouldn’t quite cooperate, so he supplied me with a still-cool stump and a few rounds.
My INCREDIBLE husband took over (after I semi-destroyed both a batch of cupcakes and a batch of frosting) and made these precious little mushrooms! I did my part by playing Dance Central and cheering him on 🙂
After we got everything set up, the table looked awesome! I wish we’d gotten a picture of the balloons. I picked red, orange, green, and cream, and they went perfectly with our theme.
We let the kids have cupcakes immediately. We didn’t really have a choice, as soon as we sat down about 30 grubby little hands started clawing at the table 🙂
Dexter was thrilled to sing happy birthday to himself, and I was surprised when he blew out the candle by himself without even being told to!
Then he proceeded to slather himself in icing. It was exceptionally cute 🙂
Here are Ty and Micah getting down on some cupcakes. I think one of Deborah’s boys managed to snag 3 cupcakes by the time the party was over!
Could this child be any cuter??
Another big birthday thrill for Dex was getting to drink out of a real juice bottle. And to actually get to drink juice! He rarely gets it unless he’s sick!
He was given a lot of sweet gifts, and he has loved playing with them for the whole week. It’s been a lot of fun watching him explore and interact with the new toys. After I put him to bed the other night, I was turning out all the lights and found that he’d nestled his tiny dump truck into his big dump truck. I really wanted to wake him up and squish him for that. But I didn’t.
I love you teeny-tiny-big-boy!!! Happy Birthday!!!
Quarantine. Boo.
Well, someone in our family now has croup. And it’s not me, and it’s not Alex. We were excited to start getting out after the crazy tornado day, but for the next several days are in quarantine. Thankfully he should be fine in time for his birthday next weekend!
In the meantime he will have to be content to play in his laundry basket choo choo train (when isn’t he??).
Speaking of Dexter’s birthday, I have been plugging along on his lion pillow! I lost a few weeks when I couldn’t find my crocheting stuff. Why am I not more organized?? But now I’m back on track and I have a week to get it done!!!
I’m on the second circle, and it’s just in a blah stage where you don’t know if it’s going to look good or turn out to be a big embarrassing mess.
Although, I’m certain he won’t care either way. He’s just going to be so excited to have his own pillow, and double excited if he can tell it’s supposed to be a lion, so that takes a lot of pressure off 🙂
On another note, I want to start a new project!!! Almost anything will do. I love starting things and finishing things, it’s the middle part that’s not always fun 🙂
But I really can’t start anything new, I have SO MANY things going on. I’m finishing Dexter’s pillow, I have his birthday party in a week, and then a week and a half later I’m having jaw surgery (boo again..), so I have too much on my plate to think about starting something new. Not to mention all the other unfinished projects I have in the queue.
I’ve also started an herb garden, and I’ve been trying to keep that alive. They really should screen better before they just hand plants over to people.
Don’t they know how much I have going on???
Still Here!!!
I’m sorry for the lack of posting recently! Sickness has been ravaging our home!
I have barely been able to craft, although my mom and I cut out about 2000 2 inch squares while she was staying with me through my sickness. These squares will go toward my mom’s quilt… whenever that might be started…
Browsing through my pictures today, in search of something crafty to share, I came across pictures of Tiny Dexter, The Chunky Baby. He has grown and changed so much over the past year! And sometimes I feel like he is trying to outgrow being my baby. But today he gave me the sweetest, unsolicited hug, and it was wonderful 🙂
So feeling nostalgic, and longing for the time when my family is healthy and back to normal and snuggly and not cranky, I’ll leave you with a sweet picture of a then 7.5-month-old Dex and his sleeping daddy. And, to this day, he still loves to go wake his daddy up 🙂
(Re)Creating Memories
I’ve always loved this picture of my husband with his mom. When Dexter was teeny, I always wanted to try to recreate that scene. We just remembered to try, and we didn’t manage to capture the serene moment Alex had with Karen. Dexter is a little older, a little more self-aware, and quite the ham 🙂
But thanks to the digital era, we were able to play around and were able to get lots of fun shots!
2011
So I didn’t quite make last year’s goals. But I still think I did great!
1. Lose 20 lbs: I lost 6.8. I am not mad about this! I lost almost 7 lbs, that’s awesome!
2. Read 52 books: I read 26, unless I forgot to write any down. I intentionally let myself slide on this because I realized early on that sometimes reading that much caused me to ignore other things. So I feel really good about the choice to ease up.
3. Make a dress or shirt for each woman in my family: I knew this was a big one, and I actually did not make a single garment for any of them. But I did manage to make several things for myself and Dexter, do those count???
Other things I accomplished this year:
I made TONS of crafts. TONS. I wanted to do a special photo post where I showed off everything I made. However, that turned out to be a nearly impossible task. You will not be seeing that post.
My sister and I participated in Santa’s Workshop. That was such a great experience! We got to share our crafts with the public, we bonded over common interests, and we got paid to do it. Sweet!
We moved to a new city. This is not my favorite accomplishment of 2010, and I’m still adjusting, but it was great that my husband found a new job after being laid-off.
2011 goals:
1. Lose 15 lbs.
If I make this goal, I will have completed the 20 I wanted to lose. But even if I only lose 5 by the end of the year, I’m going to be pumped! I am actively working toward this goal already, so I have a bit of a head start.
2. Work out at least 10 min everyday (except if I’m sick).
I’ve already been doing this for over 2 weeks! I actually started the day of my 30th birthday, and I’m trying to keep up that commitment. I know 10 min sounds really wimpy, but it means I don’t cut myself any slack. I *can* move with purpose for 10 minutes. Most days it’s 20 or 30 min of activity.
3. Read 24 books.
I’m certain I can match 2010’s progress. 2 books a month isn’t unreasonable, and if I really want to read more I can!
4. Commit to 2 weeks of my Secret 2011 Goal:
I’ll blog about this attempt later. It’s one of those things that I will not talk about until I either do it and succeed or fail and try to be the first to make fun of myself.
5. Unofficial Goal: Blog more frequently.
I’m not going to set a timeline, but I do want to blog more. It was hard this winter because I was too busy to really document everything.
I don’t plan to make any crafty goals this year. I already have a backlog of orders I’m trying to get through, so there is no way I intend to put more things on my plate. I’m really pleased with my progress last year, so I’m basically just going to try to keep up that pace!
Break and Sneak Peek
My precious nephew Ty is in a children’s hospital right now. He’d been having fevers, and when his temp spiked to over 106 he started having seizures. Long story short, he is in the hospital and they’re still trying to figure out what’s going on. He does seem to be doing better overall, but it’s still going to take time. Any prayers for him, my sister and brother-in-law, and Ty’s twin brother, Micah, would be greatly appreciated. Deborah and Ian are so stressed out and worried about Ty and missing Micah very badly 🙁 Please pray that little Ty will recover very soon and that they will all be reunited 🙂
That being said, I’ve been devoting much of my attention to keeping people updated on what’s going on, so I am doing zero crafting or blogging… well, with this exception 🙂 So a temporary break is in order. I hope that by the end of the week things will normalize!
But last week I had a LOT going on, craftwise. I’ve put together a few tutorials for hoodies, worked on lots of dolls, reworked my training pants… Here are a few things you have to look forward to:
Dexter’s First Cooking Experience
We tried the Polenta Pizza Stackers by Cooking With My Kid. They were really yummy comfort food (think pizza grits, but better). If you’re interested, make sure you head over there for the recipe!!
I decided to brave it and let Dex help! He stood on a chair (I made certain he was supported on all sides) and helped me spread Smart Balance onto a pan. He really liked playing in that 🙂 It was awesome seeing his little finger marks all over the pan 🙂
Then I let him help me use a butter knife to slice the polenta. He thought that was the best. He chuckled the whole time 🙂 And he also broke a lot of the slices and ate them lol. Ours were way uglier than CWMK’s 🙂 We need to work on our slicing skills.
Thankfully our oven stays cool on the outside, because Dexter felt the need to monitor their progress.
See? Ours were all jagged from bad cutting and a chubby little snacker.
Dex was able to help me put a tomato sauce on two of them before he decided the most important thing he could contribute was thumb-sucking. Can you guess which two were his?
He also “helped” with the cheese by eating a chubby handful while I sprinkled.
These things looked awesome after they cooked! And they smelled great. Dexter realized when they were baking that they were pizzas. He’s so smart 🙂
Dexter gobbled these up!
I give these a 4 overall. I will certainly make them again, they were easy, pretty yummy, and Dexter really enjoyed both making and eating them. Plus, I can feel good about serving them because they’re really healthy. But I think I will play around with cheese and sauce to find the perfect flavor combo!
Cooking With My Kid & Preschooler Meal Planning
I found an awesome website today (actually, I found several great sites…) and I’m so excited about it! It’s called Cooking With My Kid and the author has created tons of healthy kid-friendly recipes that she makes with her son. Now I can’t wait til Dex is able to help me out in the kitchen!
A few recipes I plan to try this week include:
Broccoli and Cheese Stromboli (This looks incredible)
Naan Pizza (Dex LOVES pizza! Any time he sees a pizza box or hears us carelessly use the word he starts shouting and crying for pizza. He says “pee”, but we know what he means lol. Plus, I really like the idea of single serving pizza for our lunch so we don’t have crazy amounts of greasy pizza taunting me for days.)
Warm Tortellini and Pesto Chicken Salad
Breadless BLT’s (Maple turkey bacon??? YUM!)
Polenta Pizza Stackers (I’m really excited to try pre-made polenta!)
And then I REALLY want to try the Peanut Butter Quesadillas. They include peanut butter, apple slices, and honey. But our pediatrician really wanted us to wait til Dex was 3 before introducing peanut butter. Maybe I can get away with it sometime by making a regular cheese quesadilla for him.
On a similar note, we’ve been nearly out of groceries for… hmm… a couple weeks? We’ve just been getting what we need as we need it and eating out way too much. It’s really difficult to take Dexter grocery shopping and Alex is too busy to do the shopping or to watch Dexter so I can go.
But after a few weeks of eating crap I’m going to bite the bullet and take Dex out tomorrow. It’s amazing what having a child does to your conscience. I can’t feel good about just feeding him whatever, so I’m going to do whatever I can to get good food for him.
Up until now, I’ve often eaten separately from Dex, giving him whatever mostly healthy thing I can scrounge up while I eat… well… whatever else I can scrounge up 🙂 But now I’m going to take on the mindset of preschool meal-planning. When I worked for daycares and preschools, the meals are set in advance and include all the healthy things kids need and the teachers eat the same thing. It will be healthy for both of us! Here is a link to some dietary guidelines for preschoolers, and a website for toddler meal plans I want to check out.
How do you ensure your child gets the nutrients they need? Do you model healthy eating, or do you find this to be very difficult? Any favorite (and super easy!) kid-friendly recipes?
Nursery Decor WIP And Bad Photography
Sometimes I have good photos on my blog. This is not one of those times. I need a different lens for what I wanted to do. And today was bad for natural light. AAAAAND I’m impatient and I want to do this blog RIGHT NOW. So you must suffer through ugly pictures.
Dexter’s nursery has never been very well decorated. It’s a blank slate with some furniture and toys thrown in. I’m working on making it more visually interesting.
Recently I found some flash cards in Target’s dollar bin. Dex LOVES them. So I decided to hang some over his changing table. I just sort of eyeballed it, and they look good, but they’re a little too low. He grabs them while I’m changing him, and that’s a battle I just don’t want to deal with.
Before we moved, I made his name letters for over his crib. I’m really glad to have those up!
I made them by fabric letters onto contrasting fabric, then stretching them into round embroidery hoops. This creates an insta-frame, and I was able to hang them by just pushing a pin through the frame opening!
There are definitely areas of his room that need work, and unfortunately I was unable to capture the whole room (or even whole walls) to give an idea of what the space is really like. I would have loved getting feedback and advice!
I am on the hunt for an inexpensive but child-safe bookshelf, if anyone has any ideas. Currently I’m storing his board books on the window ledge, which looks ok, but isn’t ideal.
And then there is the unsightly vision of his toys in random baskets along the wall.
The color of the room is just the standard-issue taupe that came with our apartment. It’s not great, but I’m not offended by it, and since I don’t know how long we’ll live here, I’m not willing to paint it. But I hope to get a few pictures hung up on other walls, and maybe some fun stuff for him, like low mirror and a chalk board.
I’ll leave you with a cute but blurry picture of Dex taken just before my battery died 🙂