Love, Erika

Got my hair did

Haircut today. I've had the exact same haircut for years and years, but the main difference these days is that they're so far apart (the haircuts) that it becomes unrecognizable after awhile and when it gets that bad, I know it's time. Oh well. Not very interesting, but I needed to post and needed a picture.

Parker is SEVEN months old!

I admit I'm pretty baffled as to how he got to be 7 months old. It seems pretty messed up, but the calendar doesn't lie!

He can sit up now for a few seconds before he falls over (which is just a little bit of an improvement over what he could do at the beginning of 6 months, now that I think about it). I'm surprised he's not sitting up for longer periods by now, but I guess every kid develops differently. As far as mobility, he gets around by log-rolling and scooching and shimmying. He can go across a room in this way, and is very motivated when there's a toy he wants to get to. He's also very attracted to electric cords so he will bust a gut to get to one. He's starting to be able to get his knees up underneath him, and then lunge forward in one big motion.

We have established the 2 meals of baby food per day, and now I'm thinking it's time to add in the breakfast also. I swear I totally keep forgetting how old he is. He seems to get excited now when I put him in his chair and start getting his food ready. In fact, today he grabbed my hand with the spoon and jammed it into his mouth. He still likes the veggies best, and seems to like the fruits a little more than before. But the one thing that has never changed is he can't eat cereal without gagging. I even got some oatmeal (instead of rice cereal) and mixed it heavily with fruit and he still gagged. I dunno.(I can't blame him, it's heinous)

 

He's great at chewing on his toes and can put all of them in his mouth. He's also not much interested in "baby" toys like the teething rings and animals with all the crinkly parts, and rings and colorful patterns. He wants the big boy toys. He dives head-first into the play farms, and the matchbox cars and dump trucks.  So much for being age appropriate!  And he's always going after the cats, except they move way too fast for him. They are really freaked out by him, so it's a dangerous thing for him to do. But he YELLS and squeals in the funniest way when he's going after the cats.

He got two teeth this past month and I think there's more waiting to come too. It's becoming dangerous when he "attacks" me, with open mouth and nails flying trying to gouge whatever he can get to. Sheesh. Those big open-mouth baby kisses are more like trying to be devoured.

His sleeping situation is still not where I'd like it to be, as the mom who gets up at various times of the night to tend to him. He will consistently go 5 hours for the first part of the night, but I would like to see him only get me up once per night instead of two times. He seems to be a very emotional kid, and he'll SCREAM bloody murder for what seems like ages if I don't go in there and it depends on how long I care to listen to that mess, whether I go in there or not if it's only been a couple of hours since the last time. Sheesh. But still, no matter what he does, he's a way better sleeper than Drew ever was. I keep telling myself that.

Here he is throwing up his first gang sign. He's in the Cribs.

Molasses

Well here I am watching "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" and wondering what I would choose if I were to be on this show. And suddenly into my brain popped something that I have not thought of in years and years: biscuits with molasses and butter. We used to have biscuits for dinner, and for dessert my mom would make a little big puddle of molasses and butter in her plate and stir it all up together and wipe a biscuit half into it, and hand it to me, and it was unreal.

I think I tried to recreate that experience one time after I'd moved to New Hampshire, but there are so many reasons why it all went so, so wrong. It was not what I'd expected. I had never had commercially prepared molasses in my entire life. Didn't even know how or where you'd buy it in a store. Whut?  My Grandma Faye had always gone up the mountains to visit people she knew and jarred her own and hence we always had homemade NC mountain molasses in our fridge (in a large Ball jar, with the foam and crystallized stuff floating on top), just waiting to come out for that rare occasion (or at least it seemed too rare to me as a child). 

Man, that was good. I don't even know how or where to possibly begin to re-live that taste, but I'm pretty sure you can't get it in the grocery store. Don't think I won't try, though!

First Weekend of the Christmas Season: Good Progress

I'm doing great so far this weekend and the Christmas season has barely started.  Early on Black Friday I ventured out to Kohl's at about 4:30 which worked out great because I'm up feeding Parker at that time anyway (sigh) so it's nothing new to me to be awake at that time. I got lots and lots of my shopping done and was back at home --with Dunkin's coffee and a gross donut-- by 6:30.

Then that morning I went online and did some coat shopping. I desperately need a WARM winter coat so I got a pretty good price on a Columbia coat (I'm thinking they don't give those things away), and got the boys some Old Navy winter coats for years to come! They were $15 each, a fantastic price. Drew is loving the one we have for him this year (and it's so cute and cozy on him).

Later that day, on to Target to finish up the toy shopping for Drew. I had pretty good luck and got great sales, barely spent $30 but more than enough for Drew's Christmas.

And the decorating!! I have never been a day-after-Thanksgiving decorator, usually I wait until the first week of December at least. But there's something about having a little kid that makes you want to fill their lives with magic. And magic it was!! As soon as I got out the little mini trees and plugged them in, Drew has been all like, "lights!" and getting up close to them and staring into the trees and watching them sparkle. He points at all the ornaments and says "ball! ball!"  He's been very good about not touching them too much.

A little taste of some of the decorations (whose glow I am sitting under as I blog):

This is my set of 3 rustic trees that I've done for several years now, but the big difference is that this bay window finally has blinds on it!!! We got wood blinds installed in May (literally 1 hour after we got home from the hospital with Parker) and they have been fantastic in this room for both appearance and privacy. And wow is getting the exposure right for Xmas lights difficult. It's a combination of capturing the glow of the lights but also retaining a little of the ambient light in the room.

What's next? Well, we have to get our main Christmas tree, obviously. I'm scared to get it too early because I hate for it to get all dried out so early..... every year I go over this dilemma. Do we get it early and KNOW that we've been watering it? Or do we get it a little later and not know when it was cut, and might have been sitting on a truck for a couple of weeks? Yikes. Those things go up in flames like a torch.

Also I need to do our Christmas card photos. Still don't have any ideas about that, but usually if I just do something, then some ideas come to me. There's always tomorrow, and the weekend's not even over yet.
 
 

General Tso came to Thanksgiving dinner

Our Thanksgiving kind of sucked this year, again. It's the second year that Dave and I were alone for Thanksgiving, but I have to say the improvement was the food!  Last year we got Boston Market and it was soooo gross by the time we got there, everything was picked over and had been sitting out for awhile. This year we needed a new option. And no, cooking a traditional dinner wasn't really working for us because it's just the two of us and it's not worth the hassle. So we decided to go for Chinese takeout!  Seemed like a good idea, but the problem with that being that no Chinese restaurants that we called were open on Thanksgiving day (which was weird.... I thought they were open for all holidays??). So we had to go get our food Wednesday night, and then heat up the food on Thursday for our dinner. :) Um, yeah!! Leftover Chinese takeout for Thanksgiving. Don't hate.

One traditional thing I did do was make a nice pumpkin pie. I think the Libby pumpkin pie recipe is absolutely perfect and it comes out great every time. I used One Pie pumpkin instead, couldn't find Libby at the time I was there. I never bought it in the past because the label is so old looking that it literally looks like it's been sitting there on the shelf since the 60s. But I guess a little vintage never hurt anybody. :)

I prefer the refrigerated pie crusts that you unroll into the pan instead of the frozen ones..... they're always beat to hell by the time you get them home from the store.

 

Here it is before it went into the oven:

 

And when it came out:

 

Parker meets Santa Claus

The day before Thanksgiving was a great time for Grammie and me to take the kids to the mall for their picture with Santa Claus. We got there shortly after they opened and there was no line, which was good because I didn't want an audience to witness Drew's fit. I think we were all fairly certain that he wasn't going to have anything to do with Santa, and we were right. I plunked Parker on Santa's knee, turned around to get Drew and he immediately fell onto the floor. Fit ensued. I didn't force the issue at all, so we just let him stay out of the picture and did Parker by himself.  Even my sweet happy baby Parker who is normally all smiles and beams of joy didn't particularly enjoy his time with Santa, and even that bottom lip started poking out.

Meanwhile as I waited for the girl to burn our CD, Grammie and Drew were looking at the Santa display and he was just thrilled with that. He liked looking at all the animals tucked away in the snow scene and called the big squirrel a "bunny" and was hopping around like a bunny. 

Christmas is Coming

I was thinking that I need to start showing Drew his Christmas picture books so he can start learning what all the holiday stuff is called, so I said to Drew, "Christmas is coming!"  And he gave me a confused look and ran to the window to look for it.

Oh, the cuteness!!

Parker's New High Chair, or, Being Disorganized Costs Money

I lost one of the shoulder straps to the highchair we've been using for Drew. He hasn't used straps in a long time, and I distinctly remember when I took them off and washed them, and put them away. One of them went into a cabinet where I could find it immediately and the other one for some reason which I can't remember now got separated and I remember telling myself to go put it with the other one immediately. Of course I never did that and now it's lost. And therefore we can't use that high chair with Parker because he'll fall over.

So we had to break down and buy a highchair for him which is completely NOT what we wanted to do. Did not want to spend the money on it, and definitely did not want an additional piece of large baby gear to step around in our small house. I did go to the Graco website and try to get a replacement strap for that model # but it was pretty old even when we got it and they don't stock them anymore. GRRRR! 

Once the bitterness had subsided I knew I had to get the new Graco pattern with the owls on it! Thanks to Sara for first pointing this out to me. I never imagined that I would need to acquire any of that stuff, but turns out we did. A sale at Target.com + free shipping sealed the deal. It's awfully cute and I will admit that now feeding Parker in a high chair is much easier since he's sitting upright. We've been feeding him in his bouncy seat and the poor kid was not only laying almost flat on his back, but practically sagging down to the counter top since he's much heavier now than he used to be. 

Look at the big boy (who also got his first tooth today!)!  I think he really likes it.  I wonder how long it will be until sweet potatoes and prunes are smeared all over it?

Best toy ever

Aw, they're playing together!! At least, that's what the proud parent likes to think. :) Of course I know they're not really, but it's still awfully cute. This was Drew's absolute favorite toy from 6 months until like, over 1 year old. And now I cleaned it up for Parker to play with. Of course when Parker plays with it, Drew has to get in on it too even though he's ignored it for a long time now.  I suspect his re-interest will wear off quickly, but Parker is just discovering it.

  

Sometimes I love it when the kids don't nap

Most days the naps come easily and cooperatively, which is a relief especially now that Parker is getting a little older and a little more reliable most days.  Some days one kid is off, but the other still sleeps and that's okay. But some days every now and then it's a total disaster and neither kid will sleep at all. With Drew it doesn't matter most of the time if he doesn't take his 3 hour nap from 1-4pm; he's old enough that he can make it to an early bedtime and not be a total wreck. But Parker NEEDS to sleep whether he wants to or not, so when it becomes clear that he won't sleep in his crib we try to figure out something to help him.

Today was probably the BEST rainy sleepy day imaginable, so it was ironic that they weren't into their naps today. Dave and I surely would have loved a nap!  But parents don't get that luxury. So in our bag of tricks we have a great place we can drive to which is 30 minutes away, and 30 minutes back: The Black Forest Cafe! Woohoo!  Just long enough to knock the kids out, and we get some goodies out of it too.  Shameful, really.