More Cheese

As a mom I think a lot about what my kids eat.  As a crazy health nut I'm constantly thinking oh no, you can't eat that!  That has too much salt for a little kid.  No more crack-a-wahs (Michael's way of saying crackers)!  Then I'm looking up homemade, organic recipes.  Like my homemade chicken broth, but that stuff tastes awesome.  Also, being a health freak doesn't mean I can't eat cheesecake whenever it's in sight, health rules don't apply to the amazingness of cheesecake.

Some days I decide to give up and let Michael enjoy food.  Or I'm too lazy to make anything.

Like this little beauty.  Michael didn't need freshly steamed veggies on brown rice, or salmon with mashed cauliflower, he needed crackers with cold pepperoni and cheese.

Oh, and an apple.  I have to feel a little better about the meal.  Of course Michael didn't like the pepperoni.  So he just ate the cheese and a couple crackers.  Then he asked for more and more cheese.  I guess he inherited that trait from both parents.  We were hoping it skipped a generation.  Cheese is really expensive at the rate we go through it.

We also have another cheese lover here.  I offered her cheese and puffs, she went for the cheese.

Don't think the steamed veggies and salmon happen at lunch here very often.  They happen maybe once a week if I'm feeling productive or guilty.  The guilt that comes when I realize Michael's had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch the last 4 days in a row....  The health nut in me wishes they happened more often, but who has the time?

Being a parent...

....means the wins are few and short lived.

I don't mean for that to sound like parenting is horrible.  It is the exact opposite, but the statement is still true.

A few weeks ago we went to the grocery store and discovered Michael was picking grapes out of the package we hadn't paid for yet.  When we took them away he had a complete melt down in front of everyone.  That was a fail for us.

I took Michael to the zoo alone last week and let him walk around while I had Elli in the stroller.  For those of you that know the zoo you will laugh when I tell you we only made it to the elephants.  He wanted to do his own thing, climb on everything imaginable, and stare at the baby elephant for half an hour.  He didn't respond to me asking him nicely to stop climbing on the benches, he didn't respond to my threats when he was climbing up fences, and he didn't follow me when I walked away hoping he would come after me.  That was a big fail for me.  I became the mad mother at the zoo instead of the one who gently controls her kids, and encourages them to do things by positive reinforcement.

Then there's the fact that Elli is 8 months old and still doesn't sleep through the night.  Yup, big fail right there.  Of course, there are other factors involved in that, but still a fail.

Then yesterday happened.  Something just went right yesterday.  We went to lunch with Josh and the kids were happy, well mostly.  Josh had a class so he stopped home and we all headed up to campus.  I dropped him off and I took the kids to the zoo.  Michael walked the whole time and Elli was in the stroller, and both kids were completely content.  Michael loved it.  Elli was happy and smiling.  Everything was great.

Even though there are a lot of fails, I still find try to find the joy (or the humor) in them.  No, it wasn't great for Michael to be yelling at the grocery store, but I couldn't stop laughing when I noticed him sneaking grapes.  The zoo was painfully boring when he stared at the elephants for half an hour and tried to climb in with them, but it was adorable to hear him call them puppies every 20 seconds.  I don't love the fact that Elli still wakes up at night, but I do love holding her in my arms when she falls back to sleep.

Parenting is full of mistakes, fails, headaches, embarrassment, shock, and diapers.  It is also full of love, laughter, joy, and to make you feel like you can really do it, occasionally a win.

Family Pictures

So...I have the best sister ever!  She took these amazing pictures even though Michael was a having a little fit and couldn't stay in one place.  Oh, and of course Elli didn't smile.  Anyways, we are happy to have some new family pictures!...okay these we're taken a while ago but they are still somewhat new to us.

Michael didn't look too happy

This is my favorite picture of Elli!

Wordless Wednesday

Michael's words

Michael speaks a lot these days, as in non-stop.  He's always jabbering on about something.  I understand him about half of the time.  Josh is about the same but we understand different words.  What has Michael been saying lately?  Well....

grandma, boat grandma, grandma go boat, grandpa boat
Jenna (denna), Mandy (Manny), Summer (summa), Aunt Melissa (sicka), Dusty
JB, Max, Shelbie (sell-bee)
water (wader)
puzzle (pussle)
frosty grandma (fwosty)
fries, milk, pizza, cookie, banana (nana), grape, apple, cheese, quesadilla (dia), peanut butter (budder), bread, egg, cracker (crackawa), spoon, it's hot, cereal (cer-ul), cheerios (cheer-os), chicken, eat, bottle,
Elli, sister, peanut - this one meaning Elli, mama, daddy, Kim, Josh
nap
church
Jesus - always said loudly
Charlie - when he wants to watch good luck charlie
Carlie - a dog
puppy - every animal
park, slide
side - for outside
walk
shower
diaper, shirt, short, shoes, socks, dressed
nose, eyes, mouth, chin, cheeks, head, toes, piggies, arm, tongue, teeth, lips, ear
off
dishes, flush, chair, sweep, pot, spoon
pee, poop, no poop, wipe
blanket, teddy, night-night, book
wanna go bye bye, see ya, hi,

These are the words I hear at least ten times a day.  There are more he says once or twice that I can't think of.  He's also putting more words together.  Like "grandma go boat".  I also hear a lot of "go bye-bye, wanna go bye-bye, see ya".  We can even have little conversations:

Michael:  where dada, want dada
Me: daddy's at work
Michael:  go daddy, see ya mama
Me:  wait we can't see him yet, we'll see him later
Michael:  no go dada, bye-bye

This is where I run to the front door to make sure he hasn't unlocked it again.

He's one cute little guy who is learning so much.  Hopefully he keeps that love of learning.

Chicken Broth

We are all sick here.  On top of this cold Elli has been teething.  Homemade chicken broth was exactly what we needed.

I used this recipe from a cousin of a cousin

Here's what it looked like when I first put everything in my slow cooker.

The way it works is you put the whole chicken in with the onions, celery, etc.  After 24 hours you can take the chicken and half of the liquid out.  The first night I got 4 cups of broth out and enough chicken for dinner and some leftovers.  Every 12 hours you add more water to it.  Tonight I got a few more cups.  I think I will do it for one more night.

The broth is very good, and it's amazing to see how watered down the kind you buy at the store is.  When my sense of taste is completely restored it will be interesting to see how much better it tastes.

The only downside to this is that the house smells like chicken.  My clothes smell like chicken.  Since none of us can really smell it isn't too bad, but I became very self conscious of it when I went to work last night.  Then again, it probably isn't as strong as the smell of roast so I shouldn't be too concerned right?

I know why most people read this blog, it's to see cute pictures of my kids doing weird things.  So here you go...

Whenever he sees the hat he insists on wearing it, even when he only has a diaper on

He got in a fight with my purse and I think the purse won

My Crunchy Side

I am still crunchy.  Very crunchy.  Lately I haven't acted on it as much.  Probably because I live in a tiny apartment and my cloth diapers still don't absorb anything.  So to most of the world I appear normal, but I know I'm not.

One of my dreams is to own a hobby farm and grow all of my food.  I want a few cows to milk, chickens to lay eggs, a few pigs, even a sheep would be fun if I learn anything about spinning wool.  I want to learn to make my own cheese.  I already know how to make butter from milk, I just haven't done it yet.  Yes, I know this is a crazy dream.  Most people dream of moving to Hawaii or Europe (even though I will always dream of visiting Europe, I wouldn't live there).  I guess I'm just different.

While I still feel too busy to be as crunchy as I would like I'm going to start doing a few more things to get back to my crunchy ways.  This week I'm making my own chicken broth.  I already bought a whole chicken and plan on starting that maybe tomorrow.  I'm also going to start using more homemade cleaners.  For now it will probably just be vinegar for general cleaning until we use up a few of our other cleaners.

I'll let you know how it goes!  Don't worry, I'll post some cute pictures of the kids soon.

Grape-fest

Yesterday Michael and I had a very difficult day.  For some reason we were against each other the whole time.  Neither one of us was very happy.  After many timeouts and bribes we had called it a day.  Josh got home late from class but took the kids outside so I could make a quick dinner.

Michael had already had a sandwich, but he doesn't like to be left out, so we gave him some grapes to eat.  He looked at me and held his little hand out with a grape and said in the cutest voice "here you go".  I opened my mouth so he could feed me thinking aww how sweet.  Instead of placing the grape in my mouth, or even shoving it in, he quickly plops the grape in his own mouth and starts laughing hysterically.  

This happened a few more times.  So I decided to do it back to him.  Finally he started putting the grapes in my mouth.

 I don't know exactly what happened but then he started shoving many in my mouth at a time.

attractive I know

Then at one point they started falling out of my over stuffed mouth

Michael started laughing his head off.  We've never heard him laugh so hard.  So I let him shove my mouth full of grapes, then I would shoot them at him.  Sounds weird right?  Well it made him happy.  Even Elli was happy.

So I kept doing it.  Michael tried it too.

Just so you can hear his laugh.