Monday, October 28, 2013

Menu Plan Monday - Week of October 27th



It's Halloween!  Or, it will be later this week anyway.  Jack has been talking about Halloween for weeks now and this is the first year he's cared so it makes it all pretty exciting.  I'm still not finished with his costume so I need to get on that ASAP!

We visited the pumpkin patch this weekend.  Again, this is the first year he's seemed to care about it and he was very particular when it came to choosing the perfect pumpkin.  So much fun!


Here's what we're eating this week:



Monday:  Baked Chicken Fajitas with Chips and Salsa

Tuesday:  Leftover Meatloaf Sandwiches with Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Wednesday:  Leftovers/Freezer Meal

Thursday:  Happy Halloween!  Pumpkin Chili (Crock Pot) with Pumpkin Cornbread Muffins

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  Apps


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com

Monday, October 21, 2013

Menu Plan Monday - Week of October 20th



Last week was such a busy week.  It went by in a flash and the weekend passed even more quickly, it seems.

Saturday the weather was really icky so we mostly spent the day relaxing around the house.

Sunday we went apple picking with friends and had so much fun!  I need to decide just what I'm doing with all of our apples.

Then we had some car trouble (we have had the worst luck with cars lately!  I feel like Mark and I have just been trading car problems back and forth.  Not sure what the deal is, but it can stop anytime now.)  Luckily, we were out by my parents' house and we were invited to dinner so we spent some time there visiting with family and thankfully the car issue turned out to be a very simple fix.

Jack didn't seem to be feeling so great yesterday, but he didn't sleep well at all the night before.  He snuck in a short nap, which is so atypical for him, but it must have really helped because by bedtime last night he seemed much more like himself.  He got a good night's sleep last night and seems to be fine this morning so we're headed to the zoo today!  Trying to take advantage of today's nice weather as it's supposed to get very chilly later this week.

Here's what we're eating this week:


Sunday:  Parents' house

Monday:  Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

Tuesday:  Smothered Chile Colorado Burritos with Mexican Rice - carried over from last week

Wednesday:  Leftovers/Freezer Meal

Thursday:  Mom's night out!

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  Game day apps


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com

Monday, October 14, 2013

Menu Plan Monday - Week of October 13th

Another weekend in the books.

Friday evening we had some much needed down time.  Chipotle while catching up on DVR'd shows is my kind of night!

Saturday we ran some errands and I started working on Jack's Halloween costume.  He is SUPER excited and doesn't understand why it's not done like, yesterday.  I can't wait 'til he tries it on!  I also scored an amazing deal on a new TV stand.  70% off?  Yes, please!  Deal of the month, fo sho.

New TV stand means the end of our current set up.  Yes, that's our coffee table.  We sold our old TV stand at our recent yard sale because we had replaced it with a new storage unit.  I decided I didn't like the new unit so I sold it and then our TV was sitting on the floor so the coffee table got pulled in to sub as a TV stand.  It's been like this for like 6 weeks now because I was only casually looking at replacement TV stands and didn't find anything I liked.  My clearanced TV stand was obviously a gift sent to me directly from the TV gods.  

Sunday we started out with some homemade Pumpkin Scones and coffee and after some usual Sunday things (mowing the grass and football watching, for Mark.  Meal planning, laundry, a grocery store and library run, for me.) we had a family birthday party to attend.  My niece just turned five!

Monday again.  Here's what we're eating this week:


Sunday:  Family gathering

Monday:  Grilled Burgers with Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Tuesday:  Smothered Chile Colorado Burritos (Crock Pot) with Mexican Rice

Wednesday:  Buffalo Chicken Chili with Honey Cornbread Muffins

Thursday:  Leftovers/Freezer Meal

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  Game day apps


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Menu Plan Tuesday - Week of October 6th



I had a wonderful four day weekend at the DONA birth doula training I attended.  Very long days and tons of information to digest, but it was so great!  I loved being immersed in birthy type things and this experience only reinforced just how much I really want to do this.  I nearly put off the workshop until the spring and I'm so glad I jumped in and decided to make time for it now.  I'm officially a DONA trained birth doula so if you or someone you know is interested in some labor support let's talk!

Mark did an awesome job of holding down the fort while I was gone.  I know he had very long days as well and he rocked it without a whisper of complaint.  It was a big thing for me to be away from home so much, and I missed the kids terribly, so it was really helpful that he had everything under control.

Back to real life this week.  Here's what we're eating!


Sunday:  Daddy's in charge!  They made pizza.

Monday:  Freezer Meal (oh, how I love having a home cooked meal with no more effort than pulling something from the freezer and popping it into the oven.  Much needed on this day!)

Tuesday:  Panini with Chips and Fruit

Wednesday:  Corn Chowder with Beer Bread

Thursday:  Grilled Burgers with Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  Game day apps


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Ruffled Crib Skirt



I'm slowly getting Molly's room decorated and the next project on the list was a crib skirt.

Of course I fell in love with some beautiful ruffled crib skirts that I saw, but I couldn't find what I wanted at a price that I found to be reasonable so I made my own!



It turned out super cute, but it was a decent amount of work.

I spent 3 weekends working on this project, although I didn't get a ton of time to devote to it.  It involved lots of cutting, pressing, and hemming.  I also don't have a ruffle foot for my sewing machine so I had to spend time gathering the ruffles by hand.

I am pretty excited by the end result though and the fact that I spent a little over $10 on the project!  I re-purposed an unused full-sized dust ruffle (by cutting it to size and piecing it together) to create the deck and panels so I only had to buy 3 yards of fabric and some thread.

I looked at a few different tutorials and then just kind of did my own thing.

Onto the next project :)


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Molly - 8 months


Molly is 8 months old!

I was pretty late in posting last month so we've had some big changes as well as things remaining pretty much the same.

First, Molly is officially crawling!  This past Thursday she finally got some forward momentum and it's taken off from there.  She's all over the place now.  Watch out!

Mobile baby gets into lots of things and is quite pleased with her accomplishments.

And of course she enjoys bothering her big brother.  What are younger siblings for after all?

She's currently working on her first tooth.  Poor thing has been pretty upset the last few days and although nothing is actually visible yet she has a nice bump on her gum so I suspect one of her bottom teeth is going to be making it's appearance any time now.

Had to bust out the baby jail to hang laundry.  Molly will no longer play contentedly on a blanket in the backyard.


With that said, overnight sleep has continued to be rough.  It's no wonder considering she's been working on crawling and producing her first tooth!  Naps are still going okay most days.

Mobile baby likes to stealth steal food.  Here she got ahold of Jack's snack of orange slices.


She's loving food and makes pretty quick work of anything put in front of her.  She's regularly eating both lunch and dinner now and I hope to add in breakfast here soon.  She's mostly taking 5-6oz of formula at a time now, which is up from 4-5oz.  Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's more (especially in overnight bottles).



Her current schedule something like this:

7.30am: wake up; get into everything play time.

9.30am: bottle, rocking, morning nap time

10.30am: wake up, get into everything play time

11.30am: lunch, more playing

1.30pm:  bottle, rocking, afternoon nap time

2.30pm: wake up, more play time

4.30pm: bottle

6pm: dinner

7pm: bottle, rocking, bed time

Midnight - 6.30am: various wakings and bottle feedings


I feel like she should be taking more bottles throughout the day at this point.  I typically offer her a bottle upon waking, but she's just not into it.  She's never been on the higher end of normal as far as formula intake so I guess it is what it is at this point.  Luckily, she seems to be doing well with her solids, but I suspect if she ate more during the day it might help her sleep at night.



She loves to imitate/be imitated.  She's try to make the sounds she hears and likes when anyone mimics her.  She also likes to fake cough for attention and she'll usually wave back if someone waves at her.  Very social, she is!  She has also started to give kisses (and it's all sorts of adorable!) and she sometimes smacks her lips when she's ready to eat.  I'm trying to start some baby sign language with her and I think with the way she likes to imitate things she'll likely pick up quickly on some signs.  Another favorite of her is blowing raspberries.






She still likes to be worn.  We've been using the Boba a lot for out and about and we've been doing some back carrying in the wrap at home.  She's big enough now that back wraps are really going well!  Good thing because she's getting heavy!

We picked up a double stroller this month.  Molly happily rode while facing me.  Jack opted to push his puppy in his stroller for part of our walk.  I'm not sure if it's any easier pushing what feels like a 100lb stroller with both kids in it, or pushing Jack in a single stroller and wearing a ~20lb baby.