Trader Joe's Woes

Trader Joe's are few and far between around here, but when we were visiting David's Gramma we decided to go to one just around the corner.  David calls it the Hippie Store.  Politically correct?  No.  Funny?  Yes.  Let me say that if you're a TJ's first-timer, you will stand out like a sore thumb.  People who shop there regularly know where they're going.  I definitely felt lost and out of sorts several times...reading all the labels wondering exactly what I'm looking at.  I realize I just ended a sentence with a preposition. 

I was mostly looking for things for Amelia.  Not that I'm super picky about what I feed her, although I do try to give her well-rounded meals and snacks.  She is getting about 5 teeth right now but she still doesn't chew things very well so I'm forever chopping up her food in little pieces which completely cramps my laid-back-mom style.  What's worse is when I spend more time chopping than Amelia spends time even considering eating it.  Tess is a very fat dog right now.  Imagine my complete elation when I stumbled across these in Trader Joe's:

They're teeny tiny ravioli!  Perfect for munchkins with few teeth.  Plus, they're freeze dried so they don't have to be refrigerated or cooked all at once.  I thought I was being all clever when I boiled enough of these to last a few of her meals.  We also bought mini tortellini with pesto filling. Brilliant!

These things are nasty.  Amelia won't touch them.  I tried one and they taste like...well, like freeze dried cheese would taste.  Major convenience fail.  I'm pretty sad about this - I am hoping Amelia will develop a liking to them.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, these...

...are awesome.

They're also $3.50/box which is roughly $.59/package.  Amelia really likes them.

I also bought some hummus which, paired with calamata olives, pita bread, and cucumber, was a very yummy dinner for me tonight.

A few Amelia things:

~  Last night she was sitting and eating at dinner and I was going to be a little longer fixing my plate so David sat down to eat, too.  As soon as I sat down to eat, Amelia clasped her hands and bowed her head.  She knew it was time to pray!  Even though David had said his own already, he said a prayer for all of us.  Very proud moment for us!

~  My dad has always called us girls his "chickens".  Before (or maybe right after) Amelia was born, my dad picked out chicken ornaments for each of us.  I think they're supposed to be ornaments for a Christmas tree, but I took the hook and string off and it became a decoration in Amelia's room.  Every morning when I go get her up for the day she points to it on her shelf and says "Bid, bid" (bird).  Then she does the motorboat thing with her mouth and that is her trying to say "bird" the correct way.  Every single morning this happens - like that bird is the first thing on her mind!  I snuck in her room and took the bird off her shelf so I could show it to you!

~  She has started blowing kisses.  She puts her hand to her mouth and says "Muuuuah!" but doesn't remove her hand, so she's keeping the kisses to herself for now.  She's also started giving kisses close-mouthed which is a little less messy but makes me a little sad. 

~  She took 3 steps on Wednesday, 3 steps on Thursday, and a couple today.  She could be on her way to walking!  Everyone tells me that when they walk is when you have to look out and be careful, but she's been standing and cruising for months.  I can't imagine anything that would be in her reach now that wasn't in her reach before.  I'm ready to be able to take her to the park and let her walk around.  Right now she just sits on my lap which can't be fun for her.  She'll walk about 5 steps next to me while holding my hand so I let her do that while we're out and about sometimes.  She loves, loves, loves going crawling after church at the building.  Grandpa follows her around and cheers her on which is so cute.

We went to a local street fair today.  It was less than I was expecting but still nice to get out and about.   

Happy Weekend!

Not Millie's 1st Birthday

It's never, ever a good idea to drink a large glass of iced caffeinated coffee at 5pm.  Take it from me.  Learn from my mistakes.  Don't walk in my footsteps.  It's 1:20am and I'm starting a blog that is bound to be long and wordy.

First, a couple of things.

We went to see David's Gramma J last weekend.  She hasn't seen Amelia in months so it was fun to see her and catch up with her.  I tried to get a photo of everyone but Gramma wouldn't look at the camera in any of the photos so this is the best one I have of David and Amelia (to the right).

We bought a big, huge bag of Brookside dark chocolate covered acai with blueberry on the 11th of this month (last Sunday for those of you who don't feel like thumbing through a calendar).  It's gone.  David had 3, maybe.  Amelia had 3, maybe.  I'm not a math whiz or anything but I think that means I had more than 3.

Amelia has learned to say "Please" ("psss").  Up until this point we hadn't really pushed the manners thing since she was still learning how to say a lot of things (important things like "bird") and she looked lost when I asked her to say please.  Truthfully, she's probably insanely brilliant and realized that once she started with please she'd never be allowed to stop.  She's also got the head nodding for "yes" and the violent head shaking for "no" down, although both are just games and we are still trying to help her associate what they really mean.  Well, she knows what they mean but I don't think she knows that's what she's communicating when she nods or shakes her head.  Get it?  Okay, moving on.

She's been signing "More" for months now, but in the past few weeks has also picked up "All Done". 

I was going to make this post about her first birthday but I'm actually getting sleepy and we have plans to go to the park tomorrow morning.  Amelia is teething like crazy - I see about 5 teeth trying to pop their way through.  I put her down for her first nap today around 10:45 and got her up around 2pm.  Lest you think she slept for more than an hour, let me tell you that in that time was some crying, then some rocking, then some more crying in her crib, then me changing her stinky diaper, then some more crying in her crib, then me being a sucker and giving her more milk, then her finally crashing around 1pm and waking at 2pm.  I tried to put her back down to see if she'd take a cat nap around 3:15 but no dice. 

Am I crazy or does Amelia look a little like Emma, the guidance counselor from Glee, in this photo?

David and I went jogging today.  Maybe a 1 1/4 miles.  Definitely a mile - just not sure about the 1/4 part...could be more or less.  I say jogging but of course I mean I would jog in 30-60 second spurts then start walking and mumbling about how out of shape I am.  I tried several times to get David to go ahead of me and I'd catch up but he wouldn't - he wanted to wait.  Isn't that sweet?  At the end of our run we had circled the park and were about to go home but I convinced him to take another lap around the park and he did - a 7 1/2 minute mile was his pace.  When we was running with me it was a 12 minute mile.  Lame. 

I put Millie to bed at 8pm which is half an hour earlier than usual.  She zonked out and we haven't heard from her since.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  She squawked a few times but went right back out.  Usually by now she'll have woken up for a bottle or something.  Not that I'm complaining, it just means that she will probably be waking up around 7:30 or 8 instead of 9 like she usually does.  And here I sit at 1:40 writing a blog.  Stupid.  Stupid.

It's almost 2.  All of the photos with the exception of the Gramma J one were taken tonight while David grilled our steaks.  My baby is not such a baby anymore.

Happy whatever-day-it is.

I can't believe I have over 500 fans on Facebook.  I'm supposed to do a huge giveaway so if you have any ideas of what that could be, please let me know.

Super Lame

I'm all about posting the ups and downs of life.  I never understood why one would post only happy things.  Isn't the purpose of a blog to document real life?  Anyway, I digress.  A balance of both is good, I'd say.

My husband is passed out on the couch and has been since about 9:15 tonight.  He has been staying up until around 11:30pm every night and getting up at 5am for work.  I love Thursdays when he doesn't have to work the next day (he is on a Flex schedule where he works more hours during the week and has every other Friday off), but lately he's had to go in for a meeting for about 4 hours, even when he isn't technically supposed to be working.  Thankfully it's not until the afternoon and he gets to sleep in.  Usually we watch a movie together on nights like tonight.  Or, he'll go work on projects and I'll make bows.  Tonight, he went horizontal on the couch and it was all over.  I feel bad for him - I wish he wasn't so tired all the time.

We bought a bag of Brookside dark chocolate covered acai with blueberry at Costco.  They're good.  Too good.  I'm considering buying another bag and stashing it in my freezer so I can have a surplus when Costco doesn't sell them anymore.  I'm getting the feeling they're a seasonal item.  I made the rookie mistake of leaving the open bag on the coffee table the other day.  Amelia sniffed them out, reached in the bag despite my chorus of "No"s from the other room, and popped one in her mouth.  It was like slow motion, me running from the kitchen to stop her and her shoving the choclatey goodness into her mouth.  I told David about it later and he got the mistaken impression that I had given her one.  So, he decided to let her have one, too.

A little dark chocolate won't hurt her.  She's eaten so many blueberries this summer that I wouldn't be surprised if she starts turning blue.  One thing she won't eat:  meat and veggies.  Our pediatrician assured us that she won't refuse them forever, but right now it seems like the only things she'll have anything to do with are sweet things like fruit.  She actually really likes cheese and hot dogs, but if the cheese is shredded instead of cubed it throws her off and she won't eat it.  Crazy girl.

I'm having a giveaway on my Millie's Bows blog.  I'm giving away some cute clippies, so check it out!
Enter Here! ~ Millie's Bows ~

Happy Friday!

Miss me?

Ah, the things that make one think "I should document this". 

**WARNING** This post is about poo...and I don't mean the Disney character.

I saw on the video monitor today that Amelia had woken from her nap.  I was in the middle of something and decided to just let her be since she seemed content.  Probably about half an hour passed and I assumed she had fallen back to sleep since she's been doing that quite a bit lately.  I finally check the monitor and I can tell that her rear is bare.  I didn't look too closely but I grabbed my camera on the way to her room, thinking that whatever was going on would at least be humorous enough to photograph.

I was right.

I'll spare you the photos, but she had decided to see what it would be like to poo on her crib sheet instead of her diaper.  The diaper was virtually unscathed save for a few poo streaks on the outside.  Not only did she deficate on the crib sheet, she played in it and smeared it all over everything she could reach.

Now, I'm a first time mom and have never had to clean up a mess this stinky or on a scale as large as this.  I didn't really know what to do exactly.  I left the room and started to fill the tub.  When I went back into her room I took her shirt off of her and she tried to grab my shirt.  Keep in mind her hands are absolutely black they're so caked with poo.  I realized once I reached the bathroom that filling the tub was a monumentally BAD idea.  Now there were poo particles floating all around her the second I put her in.  So, I started to empty the tub, all the while trying to run her hands under the heavy-streaming water and scrubbing them as much as I could.  I was grateful that I had just cut her nails a few days ago.

I finally got her un-pooed enough that I could fill the tub and give her a normal bath.  That was the easy part.  While I was drying her off I called my mom.  I knew she'd get a kick out of my situation and, honestly, I thought it was pretty funny, too.  It wouldn't have been funny if Amelia was old enough to know better and did it anyway, but she's 1.  Anyway, apparently my younger sister had done the same thing to my mom when she was a baby.  I think my dad called this something like "sweet revenge".  Maybe 28 years down the road I'll get a call from Amelia when her baby smears poo all over the place.  A mom can only hope.

It really wasn't as bad as I thought - cleaning it up.  I put all of her little stuffed animals and her blanket in a bag and also had a separate bag to put my used cleaning items in.  Her crib sheet was soaked in the bathtub while the bumper, rug (yes, some even ended up on the floor), and mattress pad were washed.  Then her sheet and her little animals were washed. 

I'm sure you care about the details.  I just have to say that I would rather clean up her poo than be a Northwesterner without A/C this week.  It got into the mid-90s today and many, many homes in this region do not have central air.  We had ours installed when we moved in and it's so nice.  Although, last night we lost power for a few hours (which never happens) and that was pretty crazy.

I'll catch up with other things soon.  I have to write about Amelia's first birthday party.