Daily Dose

Mike at the Cardinals game last night.

10 Random Thoughts

1) The minute I tried to think of a "random thought" my mind went completely blank

2) I tell people my favorite fruit are grapes. I'm not sure if that is true though. I really like watermelon and peaches. But only ripe peaches. Maybe I say grapes because they are available pretty much year round, and I do like grapes an awful lot.

3) I don't like artificial banana flavor at all. Pudding, popsicles, candy, yuck. That being said, I do like bananas.

4) Mike woke up nice and early this morning (5:30am). I brought him into bed with me to feed him and then we snuggled for about 40 minutes. It was the absolute best part of my day...even though he puked all over me...twice.

5) I don't think the picture on my "Scenic Earthscapes" calendar is that great this month.

6) I miss dollar tacos.

7) I just ordered new phones for Brad and me. I have a love/hate relationship with my phone. I love it. It is the perfect phone for me, but it is dying a sad slow death. The volume is ridiculously poor so the only way I can hear people when I'm talking to them is if they are on speaker phone...makes talking on the phone in public a little awkward. I also have to fight with it for 5 minutes each time I want to charge it to try to wiggle the cord to get it in just the right place. But I love the phone. I wish I could take it to a phone doctor and make it magically better. Ah well, my new phone will be here in 2 days!!!

8) I miss Mike and Brad. Mike is home with my parents right now. Brad is in Chicago until Thursday.

9) I think Sam is mad at me. Poor girl doesn't get nearly as much attention now that Mike has entered the scene.

10) I'm hungry. I'm always hungry. I eat all the time. *sigh*

Here is a semi-grainy picture of Mike from dinner last night (taken with my cell phone).

Baby food

We started Mike on solids about a month ago. We have been getting an idea of what he likes and doesn't like, so I decided to try my hand at making some of his baby food 1) because I'm frugal (read cheap); 2) I know exactly what he is getting and 3) I'm kind of Susie homemakery like that sometimes...just sometimes though. So off to the store I went. I bought some peas, carrots and sweet potatoes.

$1 worth of carrots in pre-made baby food form.

$1 worth of carrots - these made about 35 servings which would probably be about 17 small jars of baby food.

Blending the peas. For the peas I just bought a bad of frozen peas and cooked them according to the package directions then pureed in the blender. Worked like a charm.

Trays and trays of peas, carrots and sweet potatoes

The end result, many many little cubes of baby food all ready for Mike! I think in total it cost me about $4 for the carrots, peas and sweet potatoes and it made about 100 cubes. I would estimate that a jar is probably the equivalent to 2 cubes so this made approximately 50 small jars of baby food which would have cost me about $20. Next up, peaches and nectarines!

Monday Picture

Snuggling with Grandma

An update on my sick little boy: He is still running a fever. It will drop back down to normal, we will breath a sigh of relief then it will spike again. Saturday it got up to 104.2. They told us to go to the ER if it hit 105. Yesterday it was hoovering around 101-102 most of the day. I will likely be taking him to the pediatrician's office again today. I'm just hoping they will be able to treat him there and I won't have to make a trip to the ER.

Haircut

Got my haircut yesterday. What do you think?

Oh Craigslist how I love Thee

Once again I am finding myself enamored with craigslist. I found 8 board books for $5...total for the whole lot, plus the lady threw in an extra book when I showed up to pick them up. Each of the books individually cost at least $5 new and all 8 of them were in perfect condition. It looked like they hadn't been used at all. This morning I set them all up around Mike to get a good picture, it took a while to get a good picture because he was having more fun knocking them down as soon as I set them up than trying to pose nicely for mommy. Sheesh, babies.

Sick Babies

I hate it when my baby is sick. Last time we ended up in the hospital. Luckily it wasn't nearly as serious this time and it only involved an extra trip to the pediatrician and me having to take a day off work.


He felt a little warm to me last night so I took his temperature. It was 101. We gave him a hit of Tylenol hoping he would be better by morning. When he woke up this morning he still felt warm so I took his temperature again and it was a whopping 103. We waited until our pediatrician's office opened and gave them a call. Even though his temperature had fallen back down to 101 by the time I talked to them, they still wanted to see him. So in we went. The pediatrician didn't find anything acutely wrong with him (i.e. no ear infections or anything like that) and told me to keep monitoring his temperature and give Tylenol as needed. As of his bedtime tonight it was still hovering around 102. I really hope he is feeling better tomorrow.

This is how Brad found us when he got home from work today, in case you didn't know a very important job of a mommy is being a temporary baby mattress. I played this role a lot today as Mike was a very unhappy boy unless he was in my arms or sleeping on me. Can't say I minded at all.

And as an unrelated side note, I think Mike must have had a growth spurt recently. When we took him to the pediatrician exactly two weeks ago for his six month check up he weighed in at 17 lb 10 oz, today he weighed 18 lbs 10 oz. Gives new meaning to the phrase "growing like a weed."

Happy the Hippo

Here is a boy and his hippo, Happy. Happy was born in a hospital gift shop and was named happy by the boy's grandpa.

No Post

Well, I guess the title is a bit of a misnomer, as this is an actual post. Just not a good post with cute pictures and witty commentary. Ok I usually don't have witty commentary but just go with me on this one. So there was no post yesterday (Wednesday) because I was in Chicago at a Cash Flow seminar for work. I was supposed to get home at about 8pm but my flight was delayed, then delayed some more and then delayed even more so it is now 12:24am on Thursday morning and I just got home. What are you doing writing a blog at this hour you ask? Well I had to pump and decided why not multitask. So yep, this is a crap post because I'm in a crap mood. My flight was delayed 4 hours so I didn't get to see my baby boy at all today (yesterday???), I have to be to work in less than 8 hours (guess that means I won't be getting 8 hours of sleep tonight) and instead of climbing into bed and cuddling up to my husband, I get to be attached to a stupid breast pump.

Ok, rant finished. I'll be better tomorrow (later today???) and if you are lucky you might even get to see some cute pictures of Mr Michael.

Good night.

A quick peek at our weekend

Trying to cool off a bit during a hot hot day.


Mike's first time sitting in a shopping cart.

Trying a peach chunk

Playing with dad on father's day

My silly boys

Silly faces

Monday Picture(s)

Today is your lucky day, you get two pictures!

Proof that fart jokes are funny at any age.

Happy Father's Day!

First Words???

Mike has fully entered the baby babble phase. When he gets mad instead of crying he just shouts things like ba-ba-da-ba-be-be-da-be louder and louder with a nice mad look on his face...it is actually pretty cute. So as new parents, Brad and I are attempting to decipher and pick out words from these rants (he does it when he isn't mad as well). Yesterday when I got home from work he was sitting on the floor babbling away something that sounded ridiculously like "dada dada dada" (the sweet wife that I am, I told him to keep that one in until Sunday so he could surprise daddy with a little "dada dada" action on father's day). A few minutes later I could have sworn he switched it up to baaayyy-beeee, baaayyy-beeee. And this morning he combined the two into baayyy-beee dada dada, baaayyy-beee dada. Could my kid's first words really be baby daddy? Perhaps this is a sign that we have been living in Saint Louis a little too long.

As a funny side note, Brad introduced me to the head of the orthopedics department at SLU last night as his "baby mama." Nice honey. Nice.

Cooking: Biscuit Tostadas

So I've been reading a few blogs lately that have hit on a common cord...people don't like to cook or don't feel they have the time/energy to cook. Now I may be super duper lucky because both Brad and I both really enjoy cooking and we are both game to try new recipes pretty regularly. With a little one in tow it seems that our evenings go by ridiculously fast and actually cooking let alone eating dinner doesn't always seem to make it on the nightly "to do" list. So in that vane, I am going to attempt to post some of our easy and tasty dinners.

Without further ado, I give you Biscuit Tacos. I got the recipe for these here. When I first pitched the idea of these to Brad he was pretty skeptical. I believe his exact words were something along the line of "whenever you make some that is supposed to be Mexican food, but uses non-Mexican type ingredients it ends up weird." That being said, he had three helpings and at the end of the meal every last bite was gone.

Biscuit Tostadas:

1 tube refrigerator biscuits (cut each biscuit in half to make two super skinny biscuits)

Refried beans (we used homemade Chipotle black beans)

1/2 pound ground meat

taco seasoning

1 jar salsa or tomatoes (chopped)

lettuce (shredded)

cheese

green onion

olives

(basically whatever toppings you want).

Lay the biscuits on a cookie sheet and press together to fill in the gaps. Bake as directed on the package. Meanwhile, brown the meat and add the taco seasoning per package directions.

Once the biscuits are cooked, smooth the beans on top then add the meat. Next add all of your toppings (salsa, tomato, olives, lettuce, etc). Smother the top with cheese and put it back in the over with the broiler on for 2-3 minutes (just enough for the cheese to melt). Serve!

There were really easy with the total prep and cooking time being less than 20 minutes.

6 months ago today

This is what I was doing...what about you?

Yet another reason why I love craigslist

Inexpensive baby swings: $10 on craigslist.

Which bring pure joy to this little guy's face.

Good Morning

This morning was a good morning. We could even call it great except Mike woke up at 1:30am again, so we’ll stick to good. Brad scooped me up and kissed me goodbye before he left at 5:30 and amazingly the baby wasn’t awake yet so I fell back asleep for another 30 minutes until I was awoken to the sweet sounds of Mike babbling through the monitor. I laid in bed enjoying hearing him wake up and talk to himself and finally pulled myself out of bed about 6:10. He was still happily chattering away so I brushed my teeth and put in my contacts before I went to greet him for the morning. As soon as I walked into his room he gave me the biggest smile and started wiggling his little body.

After he ate we headed downstairs so I could eat my breakfast. He happily jumped in his jumper while I ate my oatmeal and made silly faces at him…sending him into fits of giggles. After breakfast we both headed back upstairs to shower (me) and get dressed (both of us). I put him in his crib with a few toys while I was getting ready and quickly started hearing crazy rattle noises. We bought him a little bathtime book with a rattle in it at the Seattle Aquarium and he was shaking it like crazy, happy as can be. So I left him to it and continued to get ready.

I got him dressed and ready for the day and realized we still had about 20 minutes before we had to leave for daycare so I decided Sammy most definitely deserved a morning walk. As a side note, I used to take Sam on three walks everyday…one in the morning, one when I got home from work and a third right before bedtime. Since Mike came along she is lucky to get one walk a day (she still gets plenty of outside time thanks to our big yard though), and it is usually in the evening. So I packed Mike into the stroller, grabbed a poo bag and off we went for a nice 20 minute walk, with Mike still clutching and intermittently shaking his rattle book.

When we got back to the house I got everything in the car and off to daycare we went. At daycare Mike was happy to see his teacher and in an all around good mood. She sat him on the playmate while I was re-stocking his cubby. After I finished I grabbed a toy and sat on the floor with him for a few minutes. When I left he was happily playing with the toy.

I realized as I was driving to work that this is my life, and my life is good!

Monday Picture

Outtake of the week

The outtake...a little blurry unfortunately, but still funny...again, he normally doesn't look that chunky.

The good one

Botanical Gardens

This morning we decided to take Brad's mom and stepdad to the Botanical Gardens. It was beautiful as always but hot hot hot (the thermometer in the car was showing mid-90s when we got done).

Water lilies of some sort

Roses

Iris'

Mike and I after he woke up from his nap

Sporting a lovely sunscreen faux-hawk

Not quite sure what this was all about, but I thought it was a funny picture so here it is. Dipping his little toes in the stream.

Go away!!!

See that ugly bruise? Yeah, I know it's kind of hard to tell what it is because I took this with my cell phone...but I'll tell you it is an ugly bruise. Where did you get such an ugly bruise you ask? In order to answer that question we must venture back over 6 months...yes people, I have had this bruise for OVER 6 MONTHS. This is the bruise from my IV when I was in the hospital giving birth to Mike. And as he was 6 months old yesterday, that means this bruise is over 6 months old (I got the IV on December 8). Granted it has gotten a lot better, but it just won't go away. There is even an extra, darker bruised spot from where the needle sat in my arm. People must think I am an IV drug user or something because I have had this "track mark" for the past 6 months. And honestly who has bruises that last 6 months???


Here are the reasons why I think this bruise has lasted so long (I've had a lot of time to contemplate since it just doesn't seem to want to go away).

1) The person who gave me the IV did a bad job. For the early hours of labor (I was at the hospital before my contractions started because my water broke) the stupid pain of the IV bothered me a lot more than labor itself.

2) I had the IV for an extra day over what most pregnant women have (due to being in the hospital for an extra day because of the c-section).

3) They gave me IV iron. Now this may be my own conjecture (well all of these are my own conjecture but never mind), but when they hook up a bag of stuff to your IV pole that looks like espresso and burns like fire it is going to cause some sort of negative repercussions, I just never imagined I would still have that nice reminder over 6 months later.

4) I bruise ridiculously easy. People probably think Brad beats me because of all the bruises I have and my inability to remember where they came from. As a side note I have little toe sized bruises on my thighs from Mike standing on my lab (yes, I bruise THAT easily...as a side note to my side note I think part of the bruising is you just notice them more than on other people because I am PASTY white...anyway to get back on track here...).


So as a moral to my long and tangential story I wish this stupid bruise would go away already.

6 Months

Happy 6 month birthday to my baby! I can't believe you have been with us for 6 months and at the same time can't imagine my life without you. We love you so much!

Pool Party!

On Sunday, Kari and Bill invited us over to try out Will's new swimming pool. As the temperatures had been in the 90s all week we packed up our swim gear and headed over. Mother nature decided to make things a bit nicer for the Saint Louis population on Sunday and the highs were only in the low 80s. We decided to "swim" anyway. So the boys filled up the pool with water and we let it sit for about an hour to warm up a bit. Well, it didn't warm up much. Kari, Will, Mike and I all got in and tried not to cry because of the cold water. The boys quickly came to our rescue by hauling multiple baby bathtubs full of warm water down to the pool. Once the water temperature was less frigid the babies were actually willing to play in the pool. Ah summer.

Monday Picture

Sorry it is so late today, blogger has been down since last night.

Anji and John

Congratulations Anji and John, we couldn't be happier for you guys!

At Brad's birthday party last year

The lovely bride with her father.

Mike at his first wedding...he was fantastic the whole time except for the fact that he made fart noises (with his mouth) through half of the ceremony.

Smoochy smoochy

Officially Mr. and Mrs. Watson!

The Warlick family at the reception.

Relaxing after the night's festivities