HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Hope that yours is more treats than tricks.  As you can see, Abby Cadabby has had a blast trick or treating and partying down.  She is a little put out that I won't let her eat any of the candy, and the freckles won't wash off of her face (I used a "washable" marker.  Hmm.  Not very washable...) but overall her 1st Halloween was a success.

I am super proud of the costume.  It turned out adorable and she didn't mind wearing it at all.  We got some great pictures of her in our yard with her pumpkin.  Adorable.  What a girl. 

Now I am off to sample some of her candy.  Garrett and I earned it packing all 20 pounds of Abby up and down the streets of Fallon....  she is getting so big and heavy, packing her isn't what it used to be! We'll consider it payment for her Trick or Treat transportation.  ;)

The (new) heart of our home

Our new dining room table was delivered Friday.

I believe that the dining room table is the heart of the home.  It is where families come together at the end of each day to reconnect and recount the events of that day.  It is where immediate and extended families and old and new friends break bread to celebrate each other. 

I picture my new dining room table as it gets older being the place that my husband and I teach our children about family.  We will spend countless hours together at this table over the years, and Hoot and her future sibling(s) will remember the dining room table as the place they learned to write their names, the place where we all shared good news and bad, where they blew out the candles on their birthday cakes.  It will be where home work is done, where permission slips are signed, and where they grow and learn.  We will enjoy Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas morning cinnamon rolls here, as well as our everyday family dinners. 

I hate to think of Owl as a big girl, a teenager, a wife, a mother -  but you can't stop the wheels of time.   But I can take solice in the fact that she will always be able to return to our home and that every scratch and mark on this table will be a scar of love, recorded forever for us all to see and remember our best times together. 

What's for dinner tonight?

As I mentioned in my previous post, last night when I was faced with the question “What’s for dinner?” from my husband, I totally choked.  So I am going to try to redeem myself for that faux-pas tonight.  To avoid a replay of yesterday, I decided that I would bust out the CrockPot and make some delicious Spicy Chicken and Rice.  And then I decided I would share it with you.

I feel bad calling this a recipe because it is so dang easy, but here is a picture how to.  Anyone can do it.  Just adjust the amount of chicken and tomatoes for the number you are trying to feed.  I am using 1lb. chicken and one can of tomatoes, and that is enough for four of five I suppose.  BTW, this is great as leftovers too.

Step One: Gather the Goods

Step Two: Open the can of tomatoes. (If you can’t handle this step, you need to just give up.  But I added a picture just in case)

Step Three: Cut the chicken into pieces.

Step Four:  Dump chicken and tomatoes into CrockPot and stir.

Step Five: Turn CrockPot on.

Step Six: Clean up the huge mess your child has made in the two minutes Steps 1-5 took to complete.

Step Seven: Write your husband a reminder note.

Step Eight: Turn around and see child making another mess in the thirty seconds it took to write note.

Step Nine: Edit reminder note.  

Step Ten: Go about completing (yeah right – more like chipping away at) the mile-long to-do list discussed in yesterday’s blog for around four or five hours or until the chicken is done.

Step Eleven: Cook some rice.

Step Twelve:  Assemble in bowl by spooning chicken/tomato soup over rice, then sprinkle with cheese and chopped onion .

Step Thirteen:  Pat yourself on the back.  Holy Maria, I am awesome…  whoops - I mean “you”  -  YOU are awesome.  ;)

The Neglected To-Do List

I am so tired.    

I have a baby who doesn’t sleep through the night under the best circumstances – and last night was far from the best circumstances.

My little Night-Owl is getting a tooth and she has a cold.

So it goes without saying - last night was no exception to her sleeping through the night problems.

Good thing she’s cute because she is crabby as can be, poor little thing. 

Our company has gone home and I feel like I have a million things to do.  I have a mountain of laundry that needs to be put away, three and a half bathrooms that need cleaned, beds that need to be made, carpets that need vacuumed, floors that need to be mopped and dishes that need to be done.  Our new furniture is coming on Friday and I would like to move it into something that looks at least a little less like a warzone and more like a home.

I even wanted to bake some zucchini bread or muffins to use some of the last zucchini of the season.

I will be lucky to get any of these jobs done because there is something more pressing that needs to be done today.   There is a little girl with a runny nose who needs someone to cuddle and watch Sesame Street with her.  I’ll get back to you on how much of my mile-long to-do list gets accomplished.  Good thing that list of stuff will all be here tomorrow (and will probably have grown by another mile) because it is snuggle time at Owl’s house.  J

A little while later…

Well, I got dishes done and some muffins baked.  When Garrett called on his way home and asked me, “What’s for dinner?” I didn’t know what to say.  LOL I felt like, “Dinner? How could it be time to think about dinner?”  It was 6pm….  Whoops.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some, right?

After a hard day and night with Hayden, she seems a little happier tonight.  Some cuddling and a muffin helped.  A huge Diet Pepsi and a 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp bar from the Maverick got Mommy through.  And that list will still be around tomorrow.   For tonight, all sins are forgotten when I see this little face:

A full house.

We have company in town this week.  Some old friends are visiting from Phoenix with their three girls, so things have been super busy here.  Five adults and four kids make for a bustling house for sure. 

It amazes me how much Hayden loves other kids.  She follows them all over and has to be in the middle of everything they are doing.

I look over at her playing with Lily (age 5) and Zoei (age 3) and wonder where my baby went and who this curious new big girl is.   I want to remind her that she is only nine months old.  

Last week I bought her a new “big girl” car seat, so now she doesn’t even look like a baby when she is on the go.  (She doesn't exactly love it yet, which is why she looks less than enthusiastic about it.)

I have been giving her some piggy-tails most days, too – which makes her look extra big. I think she thinks she is big, too.  She sometimes looks at me like, "Seriously, Mom?  Quit treating me like a baby!!"

I took these pictures of her yesterday when we all went to Virginia City:

Where oh where has my Baby HootOwl  gone?  I am not gonna lie though- big or little she is the cutest thing I have ever seen.

At any rate, we are all enjoying our company and we hope they are enjoying staying with us.  We are all headed toward the pumpkin patch this afternoon, which I am so excited for.  Fall is finally in the air and we are going to spend the afternoon soaking it up.  J



Muffins for Owl and a moment of peace for Mommy

A rare occurrence happened at my house today:

That is my owlet, taking a nap.  And am i ever thankful! She is really quite stubborn about naptime, and I think she is (maybe?) working on getting a tooth.  She will be nine months old tomorrow and doesn’t even have one, but boy has she been in a mood today (as in Stage 5 Clinger) so I am suspicious that a tooth may show itself soon.  With the lack of quality napping and the bad mood, you can imagine I am not getting a ton of peace today.

So this nap feels good to us both.

It has finally cooled off here in our neck of the woods – in fact we have gotten a crazy amount of rain…  I know, any amount of rain is crazy in our neck of the woods, but it has been very wet here.  Between the peace and the wet weather, I am in a cozy kind of mood. I got to thinking I would get domestic and bust out some pumpkin muffins. 

Some little helpers even woke up and came in the kitchen to beg. :)

Last year when I was pregnant with Hoot, pumpkin was my #1 craving. Pumpkin Pie, pumpkin milkshakes, Pumpkin Spice Frappuccinos, pumpkin bread, pumpkin ice cream (thank you Ben and Jerry for getting me though my pregnancy with your Pumpkin Cheesecake flavor! My dream come true!), pumpkin rolls, pumpkin muffins. Anything that pumpkin can be added to, I had to have.  We joked that Hoot would be born orange like an Oompa Loompa.

(By the way, do you know how hard it is to find a pumpkin pie in late July? HARD.  In fact, you may just have to bake one for yourself from scratch at nine thirty on a Tuesday night.  And when you wake up the next morning, you may have to eat the entire thing by yourself in one sitting.  Not that this ever happened to me…..  I’m just saying it might happen….. You know, to someone else.... who is definatly not me.)

At any rate, she wasn’t born orange, but she does love her some pumpkin muffins.

Hopefully they put her in a better mood and she allows my moment of peace to last all afternoon.



Feeding time at the zoo....

As a mom feeding a kid, I try to do all the “right” things. 

When I was pregnant with Hoot, I read book after book about breastfeeding and what the benefits were and how it worked.  I was hell-bent on breastfeeding her, and I have nursed this kid from the get go, even when it was hard.  Even when having a person clinging to me several times a day and night was driving me batty and even when it hurts or  I want to give up, I tell myself just one more day. I in no way look down on or judge mamas who choose formula.  I just know that the boob is what is “right” for us. J  And in truth, I occasionally envy you all when in the middle of the night, I am awakened from a dead sleep by Hayden crying and I look over at Garrett and he is snoring and I know that the only person that can solve Hayden’s problem is me and my boob… Don’t get me wrong, I love nursing my baby and I am not ready to stop, and I take great pride in being almost 9 months in and still going strong.  Because in my “mom mind” it is the “right” thing to do, I want to make it to a year.

When we started solid foods, I wanted to do that “right” too.  I made all of our baby food.  I had a regular baby food factory going on in my kitchen.  I waited three to four days in between new foods.  I offered the veggies first, followed by veggies.  I bought organic.   I did a ton of reading and research about feeding babies and small children, allergies (we have none, but you know, just in case), baby-led weaning, and a million other related topics.  I feel like I should have a Ph.D. in feeding babies.

Now we are 9 months old and not feeling the baby food anymore.  Hoot no longer wants the mushed up crap of her younger days.  She wants the real stuff.  So, I try to feed my kid organic fruits and veggies several times a day,  I offer for a wide variety of things with a wide variety of flavors and textures, and I offer her things she didn’t like on the first try several more times to see if she will eventually decide she likes them. (This has been the case with several things like cherry tomatoes.  It has also failed to be true with other things, like ground beef, cucumbers, green beans, and melon.  LOL Ya win some, ya lose some.)

I realize that “right” is not the same for everyone.  It is a totally objective thing.  Also, I realize that while I have just spent 15 minutes writing the last three paragraphs about how I “do the right thing” when it comes to feeding my kid, the real point of my story is this:

This messy little imp is my daughter eating pizza for breakfast this morning. That is right pizza. For breakfast.   At nine months old.  And no - it isn’t homemade, organic, whole grain, or free of fat and sugar.  It is regular old leftover pizza. 

Go ahead, judge me.  I fed it to her.  I am a naughty mommy.  But isn’t she cute?  J