Wednesday, December 17, 2014

My Talker in December

So there was a moment this month, a day a moment, I don't know. But he just suddenly started talking. Like an actual kid, not like a toddler <3 Sooooooooooo happy!

11) Got him home from school and he started acting sick. Coughing, fever, lethargic. Poor kid. There was a lot of cuddling to be done that night :(

12) Croup cough started in the middle of the night. Took him to the doctor to help his breathing. Poor kid. He was nervous about letting her look into his ears, and overly sensitive about most everything. :( After his nap he was extra miserable too, with his fever returning. We toggled between train videos and Curious George throughout the day.

13) Up a chunk of the night miserable. Poor kid :( We visit Meemaw and Papa for awhile though, and Peanut refuses to nap. But he's pretty well behaved until dinner time when he devolved into a mess. Mr Veggie has to work late and poor Peanut has to deal with me for bathtime too. But he survived the experience.

14) Starting to feel a bit better. He doesn't want to do anything much all day but stay at home and quietly play though. We convinced him later that night to go for a short walk to look at christmas lights though. We also invent the game "Hide and go Moo" which is exactly what it sounds like. He moo'd at everything on our walk too.

15) We decide he needs one more day to rest and don't go to the gym. I do go out and pick up Polar Express though so we watch that. He loves it. Bedtime routine is he gets up, counts to 3 (or 5 or 3 again) turns off the light and lays down and we sing Twinkle Twinkle together. I think he was trying to get more verses out of us, he refused to sing, then he sang, then he demanded we all sing together (instead of us all just doing that from the start) and this was the multiple night of him deliberately trying to mess up song time so he cried a bit after we told him it was just time for bed.

16) He goes to school, he's got a new box of Chex and loves eating it dry (less milk mess!) We had an unorthodox dinner, I made waffles, and he started having one when he spied a candy cane. So I let him have one after the candy cane, then when Mr Veggie came home, they sat down and ate more. Dessert in the middle! Then some Elf special was on TV, the elf's name was Buddy, which confused poor Peanut a tad bit. But at least our "punishment" of not singing a third time seemed to work  and finally we were all back to singing twinkle twinkle together.

17) Today! It's so sweet, he wakes up and chimes in a merry "Good morning!" right away. He didn't want to go to school today - when I got his coat he cried "No, it's nighttime. Go up and sleep!" and tried to take off for his bedroom. Poor kid is probably have a wonderful time right now playing, I'm soooooo mean for making him go!

He's a big fan of our new door too.

We got a lot of good dancing in tonight, and much play with the flying/swimming/I don't know Rainbow fish. Also we got a new ornament for the tree. Then when he jumped into the bathtub he declared "I clean!" Way to save water buddy ;)

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

December Continues

I wanted to post more this Dec, like I did last Dec (has it really been a year?) but, well, plague. So let's try to recap.

Let's see....




5) Peanut goes to Meemaws on Friday. They went on a nice long trail walk, due to the mild weather we're finally having. Kid PASSED OUT at nap time I hear, good for him!!

6) Peanut intentionally skipped nap time so we could go to an event downtown. There was a holiday special at a museum, and Papa's train club was open for it, so he and papa played trains while we Mr Veggie, Meemaw and I walked through the museum. He did really well I hear, all the guys had nice things to say.

7) my day to chill out and do things with Mom, or whatever, both Peanut and I hang out over at Meemaw's. I finally started ordering Christmas presents. 

8) Plague. The two boys both had a stomach bug awhile back, and it finally caught me. While I was fighting off a cold. And my back decided to act up again. I was a hot mess, but Peanut did such a good job taking care of me. He fetched me things I asked for, stuff that I didn't but he thought I needed, and at one point he looked me straight in the eye and clearly said "Mama, are you feeling better?" So much love for that little boy.
9) Peanuts been doing that thing where he wakes up, goes out into the hallway and... Waits for us. We'll hear him open and shut the doors, like he's trying to get us to wake up w/o doing it with his voice. Not sure if that's just an oddity, or if maybe he feels bad about waking us up?

10) The freaked out look on Peanut's face is so worth all the effort I go through to derail the train in his simulator. He's getting pretty good with the controls, panning the camera, the horn, switching views. He warned me to slow down, but Mommy couldn't resist the downhill grade. Derailed his train, made it fall through the tunnel, down through the air till it crashed. I swear he almost peed himself. I'm so mean! I'll teach him how to speed up and slow down next time we play.

He spoke about the incident for the rest of the night <3



Friday, December 5, 2014

December Begins

 1) Today Peanut slept till 740, we went to the doctors for a booster shot, he clearly cried out 'owie,' then we played at the gym. We picked out a star for the top of the tree, and came home for lunch.

No nap while he watched the blue mountains

We asked him what he wanted from Santa.
Kitty bells (jingle bells)
No noggin'
Orange train
Red and green candy


2) Another no nap day. Many no nap days in a row. Not much time to do anything after bringing him home but to feed, bathe and put him to bed. Mr Veggie beat us home, it was a happy surprise.

3) Party at 2AM, finally put him on the couch with a train video and we all slept. He finally napped, though apparently reluctantly. Must be a phase he was going through. Mr Veggie beat us home, but it was expected this time. Poor guy was sick overnight too. Made chili though, at his request. Peanut wouldn't have anything with the chili, however kept requesting more 'spicy cheese.' One spicy thing at a time?

4) Took a good nap, found him playing at school with 2 other boys with the train. One boy would fly Thomas off the end of the track, Peanut would giggle and add on another piece of track for him. Brought him home, had a yummy dinner of PBJ and raspberries, played with hotwheels (so sorry! everytime they crashed) and watched Peter Pan.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Sickness Returns

The sickness has returned to the household of Peanut. He's upstairs right now watching Curious George, poor kid. He'll have bursts of energy, but then like we tried to feed him, and he crawled under the table and refused to eat. Finally convinced him that the party in his tummy needed some friends so he ate a bit of pasta.

But Curious George is keeping him still which is keeping his cough at bay. Hopefully a good night sleep will do him well.

---Sunday ---

Well, he's got a little more energy, but still sick. He stumbled into our room at 2AM burning up too. Fever's not as bad now, but we're still in for a quiet day today. He's going to go overboard on the Curious George though, I'll have to insist we watch something else.

Plus it's snowing out. Supposed to get another 5 inches tomorrow as well. But with him sick, it's not like we'll be heading out to the gym or anything. Mr Veggie will be home and he can run any errands we need. I'm thinking I'm going to make some cookies. Peanut still doesn't want to eat (he's been working on a piece of toast since early this morning and no dice) so maybe a nice protein rich cookie will help him out.

We got some bad news, our house is super drafty so we gathered the money to replace the windows and doors, however... the front door we were going to get is astronomically more expensive then estimated. The skylight side panel whatever next to it is an abnormal size so it would have to be special ordered. So we're going to scrap that. I don't know if we'll do the back door now or not, we'll talk to the contractor tomorrow I guess. The windows are almost completely done though, he's feathering out the drywall (or whatever, like I know what I'm talking about) and then we can finally get some curtains up. I've got old printer paper that's connected to each other hanging as stand in curtains for privacy/light control on a few of them, like the bedrooms. I'll be glad when that ugliness is gone though :)

Well, I guess as long as it's another TV/Movie day, I have no excuse not to clean. Also had no excuse not to finish this entry. TTFN!

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Official Halloween Post!

We did a successful test run of trick or treating the night before. He got a card from his great grandma which included a treat. And he did the process smoothly, he seemed ready for a frigid Halloween!

He got all dressed up in his Train Engineer costume. I donned a quickly constructed ninja outfit, and Mr Veggie dressed as a disgruntled Brewer's fan. He was dressed fully down to snowpants to stay warm.

But, while he liked the candy, he wasn't a huge fan of all the strangers. He was very nervous about saying Trick or Treat or getting close enough to get the candy. Then when his face got cold... he was done. He sat down on the sidewalk and cried to go to 'Buddy's House.' So we headed back, thinking once he warmed up we'd go a bit more. But... he was much happier at home handing out candy and didn't want to head back out. He stood at the window, sucking a lollipop, and would run to the door and help hand it out when kids walked up the driveway.

Though he's still saying "No light, no candy there" at houses, which is adorable.


Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Almost Halloween

Yes yes, it is almost time for Engineer Peanut to set out upon the land and conquer it for candy. But before then, we need to paint one of his toenails, let him draw impressive drawings of himself, and pick out some happy/weird/spooky carvings for us to carve. He thought the inside of the pumpkins were icky :)
Also, he asked if he could lay down on the ceiling, and has been playing "underpowered train" almost nonstop.
Just a quick update!


Sunday, October 26, 2014

October:

  • His vocabulary increases, stringing together sentences
  • Still loving Winnie the Pooh. Curious George becomes big.
  • Eating a greater variety of food
  • Making new friends at school
  • Leaves are fun to play in
  • Some illness but sleeping well


That's a pretty good synopsis of October I think.


So yeah, I haven't been good about updating. Part of it was I wanted to do a good update. And then failed to do so, so I left it sit. I need to become ok with just any kind of update. I did though update a million videos to my youtube account though, so enjoy those.

We've been getting new windows on the house, hopefully this winter we can stay toasty warm without space heaters and covering up the windows. Peanut enjoys checking out what the contractor is doing, checking out all the 'new wiiindows!' etc. Today we took another step into more imaginative play with trains. One of his naptime videos has a segment where one of the power units die and we watch it work slowly up the hill till it comes to a spot it can stop. Peanut's been replaying this scene for most of the day, super cute. "Underpowered train can't go" "here comes helper train" "train more power" "there goes helper train" and "train go fast now."

Super cute. If you ask me.


Just a random picture from earlier

Birthday Recap

Peanut's 3rd birthday has come and gone. On the whole it was a terrific experience. Peanut loved having all his family here, and all the Winnie the Pooh fun and games. And then of course he had a complete blast on the train ride. I really wish I had written a recap earlier so I could remember all the details. But oh well.

Peanut slept poorly the night before his birthday. So he went to school, where they did birthday stuff for him, and Mr Veggie went to pick him up, and drove him around so he'd nap. Everyone showed up in the meantime, and we watched videos of Peanut while we waited. They got back and we snuggled, then went to help Pooh out of the honey tree. Then we went in and had a yummy lunch, pizza, mac and cheese and vegetable soup. Then, gasp, Pooh got stuck in Rabbit's hole/door, so Peanut bravely went out and we all helped rescue him, after declaring that no one was to feed the bear with the sign.

Then we headed back in (with some difficulty as he wanted to replay the scene over and over. But we did it, and we ... opened presents? I think so. Lot's of awesome gifts, then we played Pin the Tail on Eeyore. Then Winnie the Pooh cupcakes!

We played a bit and slowly got ready to head out to Pooh Stick Bridge. He loved playing this sooooo much. We took a walk around the island, and played at the playground. Then my family headed home and we went home with Mr Veggie's family. We played, popped Piglet's balloon and put it in a useful pot, and had a video chat with more of his family. He was a happy boy, playing with all his new toys.

Super fast recap, and here's the video.


Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Birthday Week!

So, it's birthday week, HUZZAH! I loooooooooooove birthday week!

Sunday: Wakes us up 4 times between 230 and 400. Is up till 7 when he crashes for a nap. After he wakes up from that, and he's on the potty, he poops in underwear. I threw him in the shower, and he began to sing happy birthday to me. The stinker. Afterwards he asks me to play and I tell him I'm feeling sad from the morning. So he sings twinkle twinkle to make me happy. A little snippet from that day.

Monday: Went to play at the gym! Peanut used the phrase "Watch Winnie the Pooh on the TV" which was jaw dropping. And then at the park he kept asking "hot it work?" and ducking down to try to figure out how the different equipment worked. Overall a good day.

Plans

Tuesday: School today, so we'll spend some time getting ready for the party while he's there. Afterwards I'm thinking we might have a Winnie the Pooh movie night to psych ourselves up for Thursday.

Wednesday: School today. Mr Veggie works, but Uncle A flies in! We'll be playing at Meemaw's house in the evening.

Thursday: BIRTHDAY!!!! We go to school just in the morning today, then we come home for our AWESOME Winnie the Pooh party! With GG and Grandpa S!

Friday: GG and Grandpa S are around for awhile. Chilling with all ze families.

Saturday: We're going on a train ride!

That's the general plan.

New gems out of Peanut's mouth:

"Watch Winnie the Pooh agin?"
"Sleep in a tall bed!"
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5!"

Also singing the alphabet song with us! Ahhhh life is good :)


Monday, September 15, 2014

More Peanut

It's been a chilly week here, highs in the 40s-60s. Fall weather. And considering he just grew, we've been messing around with his clothes. I've got a big ol' pile of clothes that he's too big for now.

He's upstairs right now watching trains. Or napping. He should be napping, he didn't sleep much last night, he was up past his bedtime last night due to the fact that his mommy was at a football game until late and poor Meemaw and Papa had to watch him all day. At the last minute. They kind of rock. Though I just heard him cough, sooo... I don't know.

We'll be spending the afternoon working and planting outside. We also watched the first new episode of Sesame Street of the season. It was pretty good, there was more singing and dancing this season, and Peanut happily danced and waved his arms and such.

Gonna go check up on him.

Yay, he was asleep!

He invented a new game, of course from Winnie the Pooh. I had my measuring rope, I was working on a project, when suddenly he grabbed it and started saying 'heave, ho! heave, ho!' like when they pull Pooh out of Rabbit's doorway. He's just so gosh darn cuuuuute!

Better go get ready, we've got flowers to plant and raspberries to plant as well! My berry patch will soon be both black and red raspberries :D

Friday, September 12, 2014

Digital Artwork Storage

---forgot to post yesterday, my bad ---

Upside down stamps!
Ok, so, I know that I loved going through my parent's files of all my artwork growing up. And he's bringing stuff home from school, but some of it is just... 99% teacher and 1% Peanut. So what I'm thinking of doing is taking photos of the stuff he makes, and keeping the stuff that is actually him doing stuff, and ... tossing the stuff that he clearly had next to nothing to do with. I love it regardless, I love walking into his school and seeing stuff in his cubby waiting for me. But I'm not going to care about most of it in 15 years. Obviously. "Ooooh, lookie, 100 sheets of paper with one crayon stroke on it, with the teachers carefully hand drawn fish depicting friendship!" So yeah, that's my plan right now.

I'll do a little montage on here, that's one of my goals today!

A run through of school mornings:
Peanut didn't nap yesterday so we were really hoping he'd sleep 12 hours last night. Nope, only 11. At least it's a good night sleep overall. But it did mean he crawled into bed with us at 630. And kicked us for awhile. Then gave up on kicking, crawled out of bed and turned the lights on and stood around demanding we get up. He's so nice to us.

Family tree!
So we get up and get him begrudgingly on the potty. He eats breakfast just in his pj shirt and underwear usually, there's no point to getting him dressed, more on that in a sec. We head down, he sometimes demands to go play with his trains right away, which means I have to release the cats. I want to get the basement to the point where I can lock the cats up there and Peanut will have free range of his trains in the morning. We ask him what he wants for breakfast, and it's usually peanut butter toast. He eats it with a towel on his lap, but usually he gets some on his clothes. Hence not getting him dressed right away.

So he eats, either a bite or all of it. While he's doing that, I start his lunch. I take a piece of bread out of the freezer and toast it to defrost. Then he gets a one slice grilled cheese for his lunch, fruit (this week raisins, as he's been anti non dried fruit) and veggie straws in his lunch.

He's done at this point and Mr Veggie has come down to head off to work. Peanut runs to the window to wave goodbye. Then we head up and Peanut now INSISTS on picking out his own shirt. Alas he does so indiscriminately, so I think I'll just be hanging up the shirt I want him to pick at the end where he always grabs. We're getting closer and closer to him getting the shirt on completely by himself, but I still need to tug the shirt down over his head, as if it's not a baggy neck hole, he freaks out with it over his face. This morning I actually did it all - he was determined to no wear a shirt, despite the fact it was like 40 degrees out there.

So we're dressed, lunch is ready, so we head on out. Usually we need to hop over multiple cracks in the garage/driveway before he'll hop in the car. But it's usually not too difficult to get him in the car. He likes going to school, just playing outside is pretty fun too. And that's our morning at home before school!

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Boys Gone for the Weekend

New PJs!
It's actually been a quiet week or two here. It's been a lot of stressful ups and downs. We were all sick there for a week or two (colds, still have a nasty morning cough here but Peanut and Mr Veggie seem past it) and then in the middle of it we got bad news about my out of the home job, it was a start up and it was struggling and needed to cut labor.

School - it's going great! He's communicating so much better - still not in the normal range, but damn it feels like we're getting close to whole thoughts, pronouns are sneaking it, and he's often attaching 'the' and 'a' in front of nouns. And he's a singing fool. I go pick him up and he's playing trains with another kid, or pretending to make lunch with another kid, or playing chase/tag with groups of kids. There are always a chorus of kids who yell 'goodbye!' when we leave, and it only takes a nudge from me to get him to reciprocate (the first few weeks it was a lot of coaching 'say byebye back. No louder. No yell really loud!'). His teachers say, aside from a few quirks he always is a great role model, great at cleaning up, and participates in group activities (quirks? Yeah, well, he likes to dump his water on the floor when done drinking).

He's tooooo big
Yesterday he was in such a great mood, and it was after sleeping 12 hours, we had a monster on our hands tonight, after 9. And he's struggling to fall asleep tonight. Ah well.

We've been discussing his birthday party, a small thing on Thursday then the train on Saturday. We have a great idea for Thursday, but I gotta give the beginning credit to Mr. Veggie. The rest was all me ;) He suggested that we have a Winnie the Pooh birthday instead of trains, since Saturday was going to be about trains. And considering he wanders around quoting pooh lines and singing pooh songs, we can have a lot of fun with that. My beginning plan:

Hiking
Breakfast of honey butter toast. go to school, come back and the house is all ready to go. Hopefully GG will be here by then, we will give Peanut a blue balloon, lift him up onto Mr Veggie's shoulders, and they'll go searching for the honey jar in the trees. Then we'll have lunch of yellow pasta (his favorite) and with stuffed tummies, we'll go discover Pooh is wedged... somewhere. We'll pound a sign into the ground next to him saying "don't feed the bear!" Then pull him out. We'll then get into the car, head down to Pooh Sticks bridge, and play pooh sticks. If it's a 'Windsday' we'll fly a kite too. Then we'll head back for cupcakes decorated like Winnie the Pooh. Peanut has requested 'cockolat cucakes.'

So that's our running idea. That's enough rambling for tonight.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

September of Pictures and Videos!

I had every intention of uploading pictures or videos for every day this month to the blog, and kind of failed. But here I go making up for it!

Here he is reading on the first.


You'll just have to deal with it being sideways :( Maybe we'll make another one and remove this one, I dunno.

Then yesterday...


We went for a walk. Logan pushed on quiet roads, and I pushed him on busy roads.

Then today...




So that's that, a few days of catching up. I'm sleepy now, buhbye!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Just a few More days till...

--- A few days ago ---

Birthday Month! Yes, September is Peanut's birthday month. And it starts Monday. Please oh please let us all be over our colds by then.

We went for a long walk this morning. Not that the distance was long mind you, just the time. I wanted to get out of the house for awhile so I suggested we'd go for a walk around the block. Just enough activity that I should come back breathing (that's the bare minimum I ask for, right?). Well... he wanted it to be a stroller ride. Ok, whatever, in you go. Two houses later, he wanted back out so he could push it. Into all the curbs. Repeatedly. What no curb? How about this driveway! Oh, wait, not into either of those? Let's beeline it for the middle of the road! We spent most of the time making zero progress. Finally he decided he wanted to get down on his back to examine the underbelly of the stroller, and my patience wore thin, picked him up and forced us forward a few houses (past the next storm drain, which also is a few minute delay). So you know. That's how it was. Finally when we got back to our street, he decided that he wanted to run instead, and bolted down the sidewalk. So, you know, there's that too.

I really should have been tracking that walk.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Week Of The Cold

Him and Mr Veggie made me a birthday cake :)
Well, as the title suggests, the Peanut and I both have colds. Though his nose was only drippy for a day, and I'm a few days behind him, so hopefully it'll all be done and over with soon. He's hopefully taking a train nap right now with Mr Veggie, I'm enjoying my DayQuil and doing a few things. What's going on with the 'Nut, hmmm. He's been loving to sing Twinkle Twinkle and Old MacDonald lately. We're getting him to switch who he sings Happy Birthday to. He's been insistent on waking up before 7AM, though I guess it's a give and a take, would I rather him take forever to fall asleep or wake up a bit early.

I've gotten up to the Texas trip for the scrapbook. I'm soooo far behind, I wanted to be caught up for his birthday. Which is one month from today.

HAPPY 35 MONTHS BUDDY! Holy cow he's about to be 3. He's a happy active loving kid. He's acting his age - with his rambunctiousness, he's limit-testing, his love of the word no. Which I still don't mind. Yeah, he's getting harder to fool. It's getting harder to bypass that 'NO!' But it's just forcing me to be more clever. We now offer him to take a shower in our tub or the hall tub. Getting to choose which fools him to start bedtime. Not sure what we'll do when that stops working, but we'll figure it out. Or maybe he'll finally stop resisting everything and enjoy the idea of taking a bath instead of just enjoying it after the fact.

Well that actually won't work anymore, noticed some water damage from underneath the hall tub. GREEEEEEEEEEAT! Especially when we've already committed to getting our windows replaced. He didn't want to listen to stories tonight. but he also didn't want us to not read. So in the end we just turned off the light, and softly talked to him till he calmed down. And he actually went to sleep, so it all worked out.

Well, regardless, tomorrow I have to make Mr Veggie's birthday cake. It's a special one, it needs to be cooked tomorrow and cooled overnight. It'll be half cake and half flan.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

A Day down in Mtown, A Day in Town

It's my birthday weekend, we decided to kick things off with a trip down to Mtown. Peanut climbed into bed with us around 6, then we all snoozed a bit till 730. A half hour later then I wanted, but ah well. We drove down there, he was pretty good in the car, then walked up to the farmer's market.

He spent a lot of his time with Mr Veggie in the grass as I tried to scope out the funny vegetables for the best prices. Picked up a GF hazelnut brownie for us to snack on and some cheese curds.

Mmmm. Cheese curds. Be still my heart.

Then Mr Veggie had to open his big mouth and mention there was a train track just a few blocks away, and we had to go that way. Though there was Indian Independence festival happening, Peanut plunked his butt down on the sidewalk and watched them dance to the music. The train tracks were rather anti-climatic, but the view of the lake was really nice.

We headed back to the market, picked up some GF bread items, dragon tongue beans, a giant globular eggplant, some swiss chard and oyster mushrooms. Also found some sweet smoked trout (absolutely delish, I devoured that today).

There are a lot of honey vendors there too, and one of them had brought a bunch of bees, which fascinated Peanut. We bought him a honey stick, which we all ended up enjoying, and got him to say 'Bees make honey.'

We were running late though, I always forget how long it takes to make it through the market with a 2 year old, especially with a train track detour. So we decided to skip going to the children's museum, we ate the rest of our curds and some of our bread in the grass.

Took off for the car for a nice little nap. The heat was doing me in so him and I both took a nap while Mr Veggie drove around town, tracked down our dinner location then cruised around. After about an hour Peanut woke up and we headed down to the zoo.

Last time we were there the seal was his favorite. What would win this time?? Another water animal? The giraffe? Maybe something unexpected?

Whoever said otter raise your hand! He absolutely loved those. He still liked the seals, and the fish were neat. Really it was all the water animals that captivated him. We'll have to take him to an aquarium. There's a few options, though the best option is quite a drive away. Maybe this winter, since it doesn't have to be nice to hit those up.

We just missed going for a train ride, which infuriated him, but the attendant was nice and let us get a picture before she closed up shop.



I also got some goat pictures and videos. Every August since he was born he's fed the goats. My calendar next year is going to be just him feeding goats. I should have Aunt K get Baby E to feed a goat somehow this month. Or a picture with him and a goat.

We'll see.

We went to a restaurant afterwards. I think Mr Veggie and I will have to take a day to ourselves next spring, maybe go back. That place was good and had so much potential, but Peanut could not settle and only wanted to eat toast. Which is why we never go to restaurants with him :D

Today we had a chillax day. He spent some time at Meemaw's and Papa's while we stayed home and did some household stuff, cleaning, some painting, got a little nap in as he didn't sleep great and woke up early. What I had WANTED to do was go mini-golfing, but I guess the place closed down. Super duper sad. I need to find a place we can go to next summer as I bet Peanut will be up to it. We all helped with dinner at Meemaw's, I chopped and diced most of the veg for dinner, and then made the dragon tongue beans. Mr Veggie helped by keeping Peanut occupied :D He did a good job eating, chowing down on rice and Papa's meatballs.


AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE VIDEO MONTAGE!


Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Short Update

Tooth come out! Just come out all ready! We're all tired of your relentless advance.

Let's hope he's not completely wearing out the teachers today.

But at least we managed to have some fun this weekend, nothing like the Children's museum to keep us all happy. Slides, blocks, more slides, cows, trains, water table, etc etc etc. He had a blast, even Uncle B looked like he had some fun at the end :D


What are some new things he's doing... he's been saying 'Mine!' which is adorable, and 'come mama!' which I love.

He's also telling the kitties to go away. Yeah, he doesn't like them curling up on him.

Short update. I'm tired.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Bye Bye Baby E


Well, Baby E went back home to Texas :( Peanut's all riled up about everything, he's been combative and testing his limits. From hitting/headbanging us to knocking food off the table to ripping apart my plants... it's been a treat being his mom the last few days. It's just a phase, it's just a phase, maybe it's just teething enduced, I dunno, but the fabled last tooth needs to finish erupting and just be done. Like now.

Our food situation is also way wacked out right now. We've got me, focusing on losing weight while gluten free, so reducing carbs seems like the best (and historically efficent) way to go about it. We've got the 'Nut, picky gluten free, and Mr Veggie(I feel calling him Daddy confuses things a little, trying a new nickname on for size), always throwing the wrench in with his vegetarian ways.

Breakfast is generally fend for yourself. Today Peanut decided to throw his cereal on the floor. Bugger.


Monday:
Me Mr Veggie Peanut
Lunch: Jalapeno Poppers (no breading) -work- Pizza (his choice)
Dinner: Stirfry, no rice noodles Stirfry, no meat Stirfry (blended up veggies mixed with meat)
Tuesday:
Lunch Tacos, no shell, no beans Tacos, no meat -school-
Dinner: Improvised Huevos Rancheros with leftover tacos -work- Leftovers, however he'll eat it
Wednesday (work day):
Lunch Cream Cheese Wraps, stuffed with a shrimp salad -fend for himself- -school-
Dinner: Egg salad w/bacon in lettuce wrap Egg salad on bread, fruit side Egg salad on bread, fruit and bacon


Why yes that is a... super nintendo train.
Then Thursday I can go grocery shopping again and make a new plan! I'll be ok for lunch, I'll be the only one home again and I'll have the rest of the shrimp that didn't go into Wednesday's lunch, I'll do some thai seasoning on that or something.

The 'Nut woke up and fell back asleep. Precious boy better not pee in the bed due to the long nap. Maaaan, can I turn a sweet thing into a negative thing like nobody's business! I'll try to think more positive, and maybe in turn he won't slap me silly when I get him up. Like he did this morning. Then crawled away and hid in the craft room.

Plans for the rest of the day? Mr Veggie will be home around 530. I think we'll play some 'pretend to be animal' games, sing a few songs, I haven't watched Jeopardy in awhile so I want to do that too. Hopefully Mr Veggie will take him out for a bit tonight too, I want to do some cleaning. I'll see if I can't get Peanut to help me clean too. I have some reservations about it, sometimes he is super helpful, but with his mood lately... I'm afraid he'll just throw everything on the ground and run away. I could also put him out on the deck and clean the kitchen. Actually I might do that, then we both get what we want.


Thursday, July 31, 2014

Eat it, Mama

It's so adorable, all the stuff that's pouring out of his mouth. A lot of it is still jibberish, but if everyone listens, we can often make stuff out now. He also gave us a rousing rendition of Old McDonald today, huzzah!

I've been so busy this week, with Baby E here, and other family, and just everything. Peanut's been thrown for a loop too, regressing on cup drinking and potty training :( But he's a cutie and we'll all get through it.

We've gone lots of places and had lots of fun, and tomorrow while we're at work he'll be spending all day with Baby E, Aunt K and Meemaw. I'm sure they'll be driven insane by the end, but Peanut will have fun!

He discovered today that he can reach the lightswitches... that'll be fun? He ran around flipping them for awhile (no chair/stool required!) and we were... delighted. So we distracted him with a fun game of folding/cutting paper, he happily built up his collection in the other room in a big pile, silly kid.

Crazy to think that he's that tall now. Sheesh, and he's 34 months now. Tomorrow's my birthday month, then it's his. He's going to be freaking 3 years old. Doesn't seem that long ago that he was a little baby crying all night while I rocked him.

It's a good thing that it's his Uncle A's birthday today, gave him a legitamate reason to sing Happy Birthday. A rare treat, someone to sing it to! Too bad he's not up here though, that'd be waaaay better :) He's upstairs restless right now, but I think about to crash, he's been having a hard time falling asleep, but that last tooth is almost all the way through, hopefully a more normal schedule next week combined with that tooth finishing up and we'll have our completely sweet and less complicated boy back. In the meantime... IT'S A BABY!


Thursday, July 24, 2014

What's in space, Peanut?

Helping me try on glasses
So yesterday, upon coming home from school, we inquired what he learned in school. Didn't get a "correct" response, that's normal. (He starts listing off his friends - T and Sweetie Pie) But the school has started to supply us with key words for the day, and they're having a space week, so we looked at the list, it was pretty basic, and idly asked what could he find in space?

For the first time, my little munchkin responded correctly. "Moon." Mouth agape. What else Peanut? "Stars."

Holy crap mun. He's growing up!


He's learning how to play on toys differently at school, and he's getting so brave. Like here, where he scaled up the side of the play house in the neighbors yard. Never seen him do that before!

Today he's going on a field trip to the splash pad! We'll see how that goes - there's a train that goes around it and the last time we went... he didn't even get wet he was so distracted? Did I blog that already? I feel like I did, so moving on.

He's been extra cranky. Some days are worse then others, but like 4/7 days a week we get Sir Crankster. Last night was Sir Crankster. His crying was my soundtrack for the evening.  Teeth cut through - fast please! We're totally mostly through on #19 but #20 still is just teeny points, best I can tell.

His favorite books right now are The Very Hungry Caterpillar (when we get to the page with ALL the food, he pretends to eat it all) The it's a toss up, maybe a Spot book or a Train book, and the last two nights he's asked for The Runaway Bunny, which is completely new for him, I like it when he enjoys a new story. We let him choose who's going to read each book, I'm the clear favorite ;) So usually we have Daddy read the final book regardless of what he wants.

Shoot, I just realized that we didn't cross out anything on our Baby E calendar this morning. He's coming on Saturday!!

Got to get his room cleaned up still. I don't want to spend a ton of time in there yet, on Saturday I'll need to strip the bed and change the sheets for our guests anyways. That's right, Peanut will be camping out in our room! Asked the school to stick his sleeping bag in his cubby after his nap for me, we'll see if he stays in it, or if he ends up climbing into our bed. But I can be hopeful :) I leave to pick him up in about 2 hours, I'm excited to see if he's just a bundle of excitement. And words. And all sorts of stuff <3

I have to start dinner soon, I feel like we've been eating it a ton, but I've got leftover ingredients for ratatouille, so I might as well use them. Get everything prepped so I can just throw it in the oven when we get back home. Peanut doesn't like the pieces, but he likes it pureed over rice. And I like it without rice and Daddy... likes it with rice, a sandwich, cookies and maybe a plate of spaghetti (have I mentioned how much he eats?) So it should work out fine.

I've still got a ton to do before time's up, I've barely even touched work. So much to doooooooooooooo~! But here, in honor of his trip to the splash pad today, here's a video of him chasing the train that goes around it, instead of playing in the water.



Thursday, July 17, 2014

Singing Happy Birthday

Peanut and I headed out to the stores tonight with Daddy to get a few things, he started to get a little antsy so we did a duo of 'Happy Birthday' which is his first and only song he'll sing.

He's had a testy few days, we had to bring out the timeouts tonight, as he'd look me in the eye and disobey me after I'd warn him. 10 minutes later he'd be doing it again, whether it was throwing trains or dropping things off the table or whatever... sigh. testing children.

I wanted to blog during the day today, but I spent it preparing for our guests next weekend. Can't wait to see Mr E again soon!

This is an old picture of his hair, but I just looooove Peanuts hair.

Hopefully I'll do better next time!

Monday, July 14, 2014

A day of Pictures July 2014

I tend to space these out about 6ish months apart, so we were due for one. A day of pictures (and video!).

Typically I start these out with going to wake him up, however this time, the opposite happens. Peanut, being in a bed instead of a crib, woke up before us at 630 (awww, I prefer it when he makes it to 7-730) and came into bed with us until I could manage to crawl out. He didn't sleep great last night, but it was great compared to a few months ago. He's been fairly consistently sleeping through the night, he had a hard time falling asleep though last night, woke up crying at 4, and woke up early. But he does have two molars pushing through (the last two!).

So he convinced me to get up, he begrudgingly took care of business, and we headed downstairs. I asked him if he wanted to play or eat, and he said "play." So we went downstairs to feed the cats and play with toys for a little bit. Peanut immediately grabbed a truck and headed for the train table. Then after that he strung all the train cars together and tried to take them under the bridge and up, but they got stuck, and he got quite distraught :/ I'm hoping this was random and not an indicator that we're going to have a more emotional day.

We headed upstairs for breakfast. Usually he's a peanut butter toast kind of guy, but ever since Daddy brought home some Chex on sale, he's been begging for some. So I've relented a little on the Chex stance (we had a cross contaminated box in the past) and let him have some. And now that's all he wants to eat. I'll likely hide the rest of the boxes after we finish this one - it just makes me nervous that both us and the internet have had bad luck with them. But he gobbled it down with one little problem. He freaked out a little bit and started babbling on when I got him set up, and it took me a few minutes to figure out why. He's often dressed by the time we eat, and especially if he's headed to school, I put a bib on and a towel over his lap. So he wasn't happy that his normal company was missing.

But that was easily remedied and breakfast went on with peace. Up until he noticed his favorite book sitting on the table, The Big Red Barn (well, it's his favorite book this week). And of course he wanted to red. Sly me asked him to take it upstairs to sleeping Daddy and have him read it to him. So we went up, I got the picture, and came down here to start this up. So begins the day of pictures!

It'll be fun, trust me.





After typing that, I turned around to Peanut dragging his Thomas tent over to me, we got down and played with it a little bit, then moved on to making block tunnels. Block tunnels are on his ASQ36 form, so another one I'll be able to check off the list later on when he turns 3. Daddy joined us and they began to play a little yellow. Peanut loves when he plays yellow, and saying 'Daddy died.' when the sound effect comes up. He also likes pretending his Percy plush is a rocking horse, silly kid :)


So soon after this, it was time to go get dressed, I gave him a few choices in shirts, and he choose the green one. Excellent choice kid! It'll be great for later *foreshadowing* we came back down (well, Peanut chose to pretend to fall down the stairs a few times.

Then we got out some different trains and train tracks and got out our 'funnel tunnel' and played around with that for awhile. The light even chose to work on it today :)

But the morning was quickly was going by, and we had some tasks to do. We needed to hit up the library to return a few books and a movie, I wanted to get a few pictures at the park for a side project, and we need to go exchange his sandals. More on that later.

For now, there are few things that Peanut loves more than a car ride, also I inched up that chest strap after the photo, should have just done that before, but ah well. Adventure time!


We swung by the library then headed to the park. Peanut loves his 'white water.' We drove over there, saying hi to the kids playing there, and ran right over to the white water tower. ZOMG SO BIG SO FUN FREAK OUT TIME!!!!! but soon after that, we heard train noises. Specifically I heard what sounded like the train crossing going off, but no horns, but we walked down to the trainyard from there. A park... with a water tower... a block from the train tracks. This is heaven for Peanut.









Unforunately it was quieter then I hoped. The 'green car' was shunting a tank car around, but it was behind stuff and not easy to watch. There was some other stuff going on, and it was intriguing, but not AMAZING for him. So as soon as he remembered (well, turned around and saw) the white water tower, he was happy to return.





He ran straight to the tower, but as it was going late, we got him to go run over to the slides, he went down them several times before I asked him if he'd like to go drive by the tracks, which he was down with that idea. Momma knows how he ticks ;)








So we took off, here's the new car, I don't think I've posted a picture of it yet. Fairly confident. We took off to exchange his shoes. A few days ago we tried on a bunch of sandals as the velcro is dying on his current pair. We found a nice pair... got it home and it was a WTF? It was clearly too small. So not sure what happened there, but we went back and... there wasn't a single sandal that fit him there. We even had an employee scan each one to make sure.



Sooo we got a size up with adjustable straps that we could cinch around his ankles to keep them on and let him run around the store to make sure he wouldn't trip. It looks good, so we took them. We'll see how this afternoon goes. It was really getting late at this point (as it took us FOREVER to decide about what to do with the sandals) so we went home and just put some water on to boil (Peanut loves 'bubble' water) and cooked up some 'yellow pasta' aka GF mac and cheese. It just sounded nice on a cool day, and it was quick and brainless.

And he loves it.

Loves. it.

Of course he was getting tired and there wasn't a lot of time to let it cool, so there was a little drama when he forgot to blow, but otherwise he cleaned his bowl. Omnomnomnomnom!

I neglected to get a picture taken as he was getting ready for a nap, my bad, I laid down to read him stories, and found myself dozing off, so we cuddled up together until he fell asleep (pretty quickly despite a cat wanting to join us and the tornado sirens going off) and then I slipped out. And there he naps. My snuggle buddy :)






-----Nap Time---


He took a good nap and woke up in a pretty good mood. Here he is showing off his bedroom, it's kind of haphazard right now, we're planning on getting him a nice bed for his birthday and doing some redecorating in there, now that we know he's a trains and vehicles type of guy.

It'll be crazy bright in there, but none of us care :) It just makes it fun! And zomg I can't wait for the new windows to be in! New curtains! Everything!


Apparently also we lost a big branch/trunk thing (well, significant) we were checking it out with Kiara before we left the room. Though it doesn't look like you can see it here. I've always loved the view from his room though <3







Anywho, after that we just had some generic free play time. Lot's of train plaing, I had some work to finish up that didn't quite fit into his nap period, dinner to plan, misc around the house stuff. I had been thinking of setting up a ton of animal crossing and seeing if he was maybe interested in checking that out. Maybe in a few months, it was fun and nostalgic though. Makes me really want a 3DS so I can check out the most recent version though :) Ah well, dreaming! We'll save those upgrades for when Peanut's older and we'll go, hey, you've been playing SNES/Gamecube/Sega, but check out THESE graphics, mwaa haa haa haa haa! Yeah, we're raising a gamer ;) there are worse things.

HE'S RUNNING RIGHT AT ME, RUUUUUN!
The temperature is dropping outside (is it still July?) It's just after dinner time right now and it's 59 degrees. So we changed him back into pants and into long sleeves. We had a hectic moment there and I completely forgot I was doing this for awhile. I went outside on the deck to harvest some vegetation for dinner, and let Peanut come out with me. A week ago we sprayed a hive under the deck and it seemed like there wasn't much going on out there, so I figured it was safe, but I told Daddy to keep an eye out just in case there were scragglers. Well, I think there's a second hive, because shortly after I left the deck for the garden, they started to swarm under the patio furniture, and Daddy was quick to scoop him up to safety :/ I'm not sure the kid's even going to want to play out there any more.


But the boys had rice and chickpea curry for dinner and I had egg drop soup (I only eat grains for one meal). It was apparently pretty tasty, we have to get that cleaned up so we can fit in the rest of our plans before bedtime!

Oh, after the hornet incident, Peanut took his revenge by... shoving a thermometer into the screen door? Great >< good thing we have a new sliding door in the works.


So yeah, soon after this we decided we needed to run to the store for Peanut's school lunch tomorrow. So I took him out as we were getting ready to go and got this awesome shot of him playing hopscotch <3 I think this one will end up on FB too.

We played, headed out, stocked up on food for tomorrow and used a few coupons. We love coupons! Then we decided to make a detour.

Guess where?!?!

Yeah, the train tracks of course. We parked nearby and walked up and down them for a little while, sending him into preschooler fandom.

It was fun and lovely and then I realized I was getting texts from I who had stopped by. We hurried to the car so we could have a quick rendezvous, which was delightful. We ran around the house outside (well, one of us did) and chilled out till bedtime.

Of course when we went in we realized Peanut barely ate any dinner.

So we sliced up some cherries and we warmed up some leftover and Peanut polished off every single bite. Hungry boy! The up the stairs for bath time, which when Daddy's home, it's a freaking blast.

We read wore warm pajamas since it's like below zero out there in July or something. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Big Red Barn and The Blue Train. He was an excellent sport and actually fell asleep right away. I presume, I haven't heard him so he must have.

So that's his day, it was a pretty good day, I like to think it was swell, but he's got school tomorrow, I'll try to update on... Thursday! We'll see how that goes! Thanks for reading!