Monday, February 28, 2011

Menu Monday

My new Jessica Seinfeld cookbook arrived in the mail last week. I am super super excited to make some new meals from it. I tried the cornbread last night and sadly it was really dry. Not sure if I did something wrong, so I'll have to try it one more time and see if it turns out better this time.

Monday -- leftover Chili, cornbread and salad

Tuesday -- Kenny will be gone tonight, so the kiddo and I will just come up with something on the fly. Maybe more leftovers for me. That chili makes tons!

Wednesday -- Baked Ziti and salad from my new cookbook

Thursday -- leftovers

Friday -- Lemon Chicken also from the new cookbook

Saturday -- leftovers

Sunday -- pizza night!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Mr. Big Brother Shane

Our little boy is growing up. I can't believe in 4 short months he will be turning four years old!! Here is a little highlight of what Shane is up to these days.

He LOVES his pajamas. I mean he has an addiction to his PJ's. He doesn't want to leave the house because he doesn't want to take them off. With this obsession came the ability to dress and undress himself. Basically because Mommy and Daddy got so very tired of taking his clothes on and off so he could put his pajamas back on. Also, along with this came an interest in what he wears. I have been happily picking out his clothes for years and I can say I am not so happy he has an opinion in the matter now. There are rules though. No sweat pants to school and the outfit he picks must "match".

Oh, the stories he tells. Long, long, detailed stories ALL day long. And the imagination has kicked into full gear.

His new favorite activity is "cooking" in the kitchen while I make dinner. I give him a cutting board, a butter knife and scrapes of food to cut up. He puts it all into a pan and creates something wonderful for us to "eat" at dinner. The first evening he did this he actually tired his concoction. Leaving him in tears of embarrassment that he truly thought it would taste good and from the fact raw onions and apples together are hard to swallow down. He didn't even spit any of it out What pride! He will spend an hour doing this activity. Making this Mommy so very happy!!


He is a fantastic big brother. He helps gets things for Adalyn, knows when she is hungry or tired, talks to her sweetly and can calm her down if she is upset. He still refuses to hold her though and he does not like her near anything of his because she might spit up on it (straight from the mouth of a 3.5 year old boy).

Playing outside is another one of his favorite activities. I love that I can bundle him up and send him outside with the dogs in rain, sun, wind or snow. They'll run around, dig dirt, and kick. Letting off much needed steam.

He also loves doing "projects". Which can mean art projects or "office" projects. Give him some paper, markers, scissors, crayons, glue, tape, etc. He is a happy little clam creating some thing or other

Friday, February 25, 2011

Flashback Friday

Here are pictures of both kiddos at 3 months of age. It is so fun to compare them side by side.

I think Shane had a much stronger neck at this point then Adalyn does.
 


Thursday, February 24, 2011

Pantry Project Completed!

After many, many weeks the Pantry Project has been completed. There were an amazing amount of small details to this project. I have a whole new appreciation for walls. Who knew there were so many steps to making a wall look like a wall!!! Framing, dry wall, mudding, sanding, priming, texturing, more priming and finally painting two coats! I even got my hands dirty with the texturing, priming and painting portion of the project.

Now onto the next phase of the kitchen remodel. Home Show here we come!!!

New entry to the kitchen. There use to be a wall here...see picture below.
Before
After view of the new pantry. This was where the entrance to the kitchen use to be.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

5am

What did 5am look like at our house this morning? Everyone WIDE awake: kids, dogs and parents!

Adalyn woke up at 4am. I was having a rough time getting her back to sleep. She was all wide eyed, smiles and ready to play. After being up with her for about an hour I heard Shane come running out of his room. He needed to go potty, was cold and hungry. I knew that since it was 5am there was very little chance he was going back to bed. I had to enlist Kenny's help since my hands were full with not so sleepy Addie. I finally got little girl back to sleep about 5:10am. No such luck with big boy. Kenny was super nice in getting up with him and letting me sleep until 7am.

There really is just no reason to be up before 5am in my mind!! Wish Shane and Adalyn understood that!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Menu Monday

Monday -- Meatball Soup

Tuesday -- Leftovers

Wednesday -- Beef Stew in the crock pot

Thursday -- leftovers

Friday -- Salmon

Saturday -- Pizza and Salad

Sunday -- Chili in the crock pot, Cornbread, and Salad (we have family coming over for dinner)

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Christmas Performance

This is video from Shane's Christmas performance. I was having the hardest time ever posting it to the blog and finally was able to do it today. At the 2.50 mark in the video Shane shouts out to the audience that he gets to watch Polar Express. He had us giggling for sure. He also had a major nose issue as well. We've fixed that by adding a humidifier to his bedroom. Thank goodness for no more nose pulling and rubbing.

Three Months

Finally, Adalyn has reached the 3 month mark. It seems like I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for this. Well, it has arrived and nothing has changed. She still only is sleeping 2-4 hours stretches at night. Naps are 45 minutes - 2.5 hours.

She is rolling over onto her side a lot and is so close to making it all the way over. She still loves sucking on her fingers, talking to us and smiling. She has found her knees and is super close to discovering her toes. Which for some reason I can't wait for her to do. I remember Shane spending hours playing with his little feet and it is just so cute to watch. She desperately wants to sit up and is always doing little baby crunches trying to get into an upright position.

Here is a little video of Adalyn chatting away.

Her first dress...a cute little "hand-me-down" from her big cousin's Carolyn and Meredith.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Salt Dough Craft

I've always wanted to try Salt Dough. Finally last week, Shane and I sat down and had some fun with a Salt Dough project. My intent was to make spring items to hang. But with a 3 year old you can't always do what you want to do. Or make things quite as perfect as you would like them to be.

Here is the recipe we used:
1 cup salt
3 cups flour
1 cup lukewarm water (plus a little more if necessary)
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
(taken from Make It Fast, Cook It Slow cookbook by Stephanie O'Dea)

One batch I baked in the crock pot on high for 3+ hours. The other half I backed in the oven at 215 degrees for 3+ hours. Both backing methods worked good. Some of our pieces were bigger then others. Thinner makes them bake faster. Also, in the crock pot the pieces tended to brown more. But since we painted them it really didn't matter.

Before the paint:

After the paint:

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

An Odd Day

Valentine's Day turned out to be just an odd day all around for our little family. We were finishing up with details of the car break-in. Adalyn spent a large portion of her day asleep and very cranky when she was awake briefly between her naps. We think it is a 3 month growth spurt.

As we sat down for dinner a storm started brewing. The wind was blowing huge gusts, rain was coming down, branches were flying and pine cones were hitting the windows hard. I said I sure hope the power doesn't go out. Well, about an hour later the power went out. We got the kiddos off to bed (minus the fans that we so much seem to depend on around here). There were plenty of flashlights and candles on hand. We even had a pile of wood in the garage for this exact reason. Kenny light a fire to keep the house warm, since we had no idea how long the power would be out.

After getting this all sorted out, Kenny and I sat down and laughed at this "spontaneous" romantic Valentine's evening we had before us.  Candle light and a fire. Neither of which we would have bothered with if we had electricity. It gave us some time to sit down with out TV or other distractions like the computer and chat. A positive in the storm you could say.

The lights came on right before we were heading to bed (about 3 hours total of it being off). Three hours later though we lost power again. Waking Shane up. It was out for another 2 hours. Oh, and Addie had her first eight hour stretch of sleep. Of course, it was a night that I wasn't able to partake in all of this sleep with Shane being up and scared. Soon, oh, so soon, I know I will sleep again.

Conversations with Shane

One night as I was walking out of Shane's bedroom after tucking him in bed for the night.

Me: Sleep tight, Shane. Have sweet dreams.

Shane: DON'T SAY THAT! DADDY SAID HE WOULDN'T SAY THAT ANY MORE!

Me: Whoa, I am sorry. What did I say wrong?

Shane: Dreams, don't say sweet dreams. (He is so upset, he is crying.)

Me: Okay, Okay! (as I run over to hug him) I won't say dreams. Why though?

Shane: Dreams are bad and scary.

Me: Oh No, Shane. Dreams are good, fun and happy. Nightmares are scary sometimes.

Shane: NO!! Dreams are bad with monsters.

Me: Okay, (after more snuggles and calming down) I won't say dreams any more. Good night!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Break-In

Unfortunately, Kenny had his car broken into Saturday night while at a concert south of downtown Seattle. His work bag (which had his glasses in it) and his wallet were stolen. He had about $40 in cash in there. All the credit cards, etc were canceled easy enough before they could be used. And the car window has already been replaced (but we are out $300 for that fix).

Monday morning he got a call at work from a guy named Frank telling Kenny that he had found his bag and wanted to return it to him. The most important part of his bag was that fact that his glasses (an extremely difficult type of glasses to replace) were still in there. Saving him lots of time and effort in getting them replicated correctly. The fact that Frank took extra time out of his day to call Kenny and met up with him is so awesome. It really helped make up for the fact that a creep broke into his car in the first place.

A couple big reminders we took away from this event. Never leave anything on your seats that would make anyone think some thing valuable may be in your car and don't leave your purse or wallet in your car.  And finally, sadly there are people in this world that just aren't nice and do things that are wrong. For the most part we feel that we are safe and secure from bad, but really you just never know when some random act of "ugly" could happen to you.

We made it through this event unharmed, with a little less cash in our bank account and with hope for the future that this never happens again to us or any one really. It is a crappy thing to go through. 

Monday, February 14, 2011

Menu Monday

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope yours is filled with lots of love.

Monday --
      Breakfast: heart shaped toast with Nutella
      Lunch: heart shaped PB & J
      Dinner: The 2nd Annual pink heart shaped Valentine's day dinner

Tuesday -- Meatloaf  and mashed potatoes (it's been on the menu for 3 weeks now. I think we'll actually have it this week)

Wednesday -- leftovers

Thursday -- Fajitas in the crock pot (also from the menu last week, but we didn't have it)

Friday -- leftovers

Saturday -- Salmon (again...we didn't have it last week)

Sunday -- leftovers

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Quick and Easy Valentine's Project

I remember in elementary school using tissue paper, glue and the top of your pencil to make the coolest projects. We would spend weeks filling in what ever shape we may be working on with colorful tissue paper. That inspired me to make tissue paper hearts with Shane.

He lost interest super fast in the pencil wrap/crumble part. And just went straight to the glue. That boy loves his glue.

Here they are all hanging on our slider door. The sun is actually shining!! Amazing.
 The top heart is one of Shane's examples. The bottom is my heart the "right" way.
 Sorry for the poor picture. I was being lazy and didn't want to take them off the window.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Boys Vs Girls

Shane's sock drawer has white socks with either blue strips or gray strips on them. Pretty darn basic looking.

Adalyn's sock drawer looks like a rainbow threw up in it: strips, polka dots, flowers, butterflies in all sorts of colors...light pink, dark pink, hot pink, purple, lavender, yellow, green.

Ahhh, to dress a girl. Just so many choices and options. Just so different from dressing a boy. 

Friday, February 11, 2011

Conversations with Shane

This was our conversation in the car after I picked him up from preschool one day this week.

Me: Tell me about your day at school.

Shane: I went pee all by myself!!!! (This was something we have been working on all year. He refused to go and had even peed his pants a few weeks back).

Me: Yay!! Nice job. Did you need any help?

Shane: Teacher buttoned my pants.

Me: Did you learn any thing today?

Shane: Teacher told us that God made our nose for breathing, not for picking. (another thing we have been working on for months now)

Me: Wow, that is a smart teacher you have. Which Teacher taught you that?

Shane: Mrs. Armfield (She has always been my favorite of the four Teachers, now I know why!!)

Me: Any thing else you want to tell me about today?

Shane: I gave the necklace to Trinity.

Me: Did she like it? (Just as I said this Trinity's Mom pulled up next to us in her car. She rolled her window down and said that the necklace was so sweet and Trinity says she loves Shane.)

Shane: I love Trinity.

All in a days work at preschool.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

12 weeks old

Little Adalyn is 12 weeks old today. Technically she is still 6 days away from 3 months. I had this huge marker on the 3 month point. I thought everything would be "good" by then. Guess we'll see in 6 days.

I may be a little biased, but I think she is the cutest thing ever.

Wearing overalls that her big brother wore when he was little.
She is smiles all the time....happy, sad, hungry, tired, 3am or well rested.

Wearing her first pair of jeans. So darn cute!! I am dying to buy her a pair of jaggings, too!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

My Evening and Beyond

6:00pm -- Adalyn goes down for what will probably be a 45 minute nap before her "bedtime". This is just one of the MANY 45 minute naps she has had through out the day. Meaning that I spend A LOT of time feeding her and putting her back to sleep.

6:10pm -- Shane goes down for a ridiculously early bedtime because he isn't napping, woke up super early and was crabby and tired all day long.

6:15pm -- Kenny leaves for a evening meeting.

6:45pm -- Addie wakes up from her nap. I get her in her PJ's and ready for bed.

7:15pm -- She is back to bed, hopefully for the night?! If I am lucky she will be asleep for 4 whole hours. If I don't go to bed right now I end up missing out on sleep I could be getting.

8:20pm -- I finally wonder into bed myself.

9:23pm -- I wake up hearing Kenny come home.

10:20pm -- I wake up hearing Kenny come to bed.

11:36pm -- Baby is awake. She eats 4 ounces and I pray that means she'll be down for another 4 hours! I head back to bed to try to get warm and comfortable, and to calm my mind to attempt to go back to sleep yet again. I usually lay awake for a good 15 minutes just listening for the baby.

12:10am-- I have just about fallen asleep, when I hear Shane running out of his room. He is scared. I carry him back to bed.

12:15am -- Baby is aroused by hearing Shane's voice. I give her the pacifier back and hope that is enough for now.

12:50am -- Shane is back up. He needs to go to the bathroom.

1:23am -- I have finally once again settled into bed and Adalyn wakes up. It's been 2 hours typical for her after her long 4 hour stretch. She is up for 1 whole hour this time and is very difficult to get back to sleep. I am now hungry and my mind is completely awake.

2:47am -- Once again I am settled into bed and Shane is up again in our room saying something about how he still has his PJ's on. I get him quieted back into bed for the third time!!!

3:30am -- Baby is making noises so I go and check on her. She appears to still be sleeping....unlike myself.

4:34am -- Baby is awake. Another two hour stretch. I kick Kenny and ask him to PLEASE feed the baby this time and to try and not wake up the other child who has been up 3 times tonight. I hear her crying on and off as Kenny tries to deal with her. I hear it took about 45 minutes to get her back to sleep.

7:15am -- At some point I fell asleep. I am woken up when Kenny comes in with Adalyn in his arms. Morning has arrived. A new day begins even if all you want to do is stay in bed and sleep all day long.

7:20am -- Shane is up for the day as well.


Not all nights are quite this bad. I can't say they are a lot better though. Shane usually stays in his bed. He just had a rough night of being scared for some reason. Probably the super early bedtime has something to do with it.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Survival Kit

I had a cousin return to work this week after having a baby in October. First, don't get me started on the whole "return to work" thing. Like she hasn't been working and just was on a vacation the past few months. Anyways, I wanted to do something special for her since I knew this wasn't a day she was looking forward to. I had my mind set on something like the survival kits I had seen around for teachers, etc. I looked on the internet, but couldn't find anything, so I made up my own.

This is what I came up with:

Mommy’s Back To Work Survival Kit

Kleenex for the tears that will be shed.

A frame to take that sweet little Arli face to work with you.

Superfood Slam bar for your breakfast in the car,
because you will be too stressed out to eat at home before you leave.

Starbucks gift card to start the day off with a jolt of coffee
or some warm comforting tea.

A Tribal Cinnamon Oatmeal bar to snack on while you pump for the millionth time.

A handful of “kisses” from Arli to tide you over until you get home for some real ones.

You’ll need an energy boost towards the end of the day, so enjoy some
yummy Gourmet Trail Mix…healthy, sweet and salty!

Keep yourself hydrated with some sparkling lemon water.
Anything sparkly makes the day seem just a little fancier and more fun.

After that long ride back home treat yourself to some brownies.
You did it Mama! You made it through your first day back at work!!!
Oh, and give Arli, Jeff and Grandma big kisses and hugs, too.

Shonda, Arli, Adalyn and Jessica
The A-Team + Mommies

Conversations With Shane

Shane walked into my room this morning and said:

Shane: I need string for a necklace.

Me: Why?

Shane: I want to make Trinity (a girl at preschool) a necklace. She likes necklaces.

Me: Okay, I have necklace stuff. Let me go get it.

Shane: I love her.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Menu Monday

Monday -- Asian Noodle Chicken Salad!! One of my favorites!!!

Tuesday -- Tacos

Wednesday -- leftovers

Thursday -- Fajitas in the crock pot

Friday -- leftovers

Saturday -- Meatloaf and mashed potatoes

Sunday -- leftovers

Friday, February 4, 2011

Chance Meeting

Yesterday Shane and I stopped by Subway on the way home from preschool. There was a baby in a car seat that I noticed right away. The Mom of the baby noticed us walk in and said to her daughter who was slightly younger then Shane, "That baby looks like the same age as our baby." She asked me how old she was. I said "11 weeks." She replied our is, too. I couldn't tell from looking, but it was also a little baby girl named Stella. The Mom then asked me Adalyn's birthday. It took me a second, but I was able to come up with November 18th from my sleep deprived brain. Crazy...it was Stella's birthday, too. And both little ones were born at Evergreen Hospital as well.

We were attempting to hold a conversation while ordering our sandwiches. I asked her how Stella was sleeping. The Mom looked at me sheepishly and said "Great, she sleeps through the night. All she does is sleep and nurse (NOTE: Stella was sound asleep in her car seat and Adalyn was wide awake in hers). Hmmm...this fun little encounter just took a turn for the worse. Wish I could say we have a sleeper, but we sure don't!!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Upward Swing


I am thinking that Little Addie is making a turn for the better in the area of sleeping. She is constantly taking 45 minute to 2.5 hour naps 3-5 times a day. Basically she is up for 1 hour in between naps and then is ready for another one.

At night she is up to 4 hours for the first stretch then either 3-4 more hours for the second stretch. She is sleeping in the swing in her room for naps and at night and goes does super easy (even still awake). Sometimes she goes in the swing so easy with out a peep and straight to sleep that I feel guilty just turning around and walking out of the room.

We have come a long, long way from the hours it took to get her to bed and spending hours in the Moby trying to get her to sleep and take naps. I really think the acid reflux medicine helped her so much! It is so helpful and encourage to finally see positive changes in her sleep patterns, or just the fact that she seems to even have a pattern is so very helpful.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Happy Birthday


We'd like to wish our first "child" a Happy 7th Birthday. Six years ago we adopted little 1 year old Suggie (Sugar Plum Princess was her full name) now known as Sadie Rose (or Pup Pups, Puppy, Old Lady Sadie). Since then a lot of things have changed and dropped her further and further down the family ladder. Back in the day on her birthday I would have made her a special treat to eat and she would have even received some birthday gifts. These days she is lucky if we even remember it is her birthday.

We do still love her very much and give her as much attention, walks, treats and cuddles as time with two kids will allow. She'll always hold a special place in our heart as the first member of our family.