right there, and there, oh, and on the tip of your nose too. How does that saying go? Go big or go home? So if you’re going to make marshmallows early in the morning for some reason that no one remembers, just do it. Use this recipe and make all 24.
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Posts Tagged ‘Parenting Challenges’
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
You’ve Got A Little Something…
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Amazing
Lately, when I need to kill a little time at home I draw mazes for Chase. I try to make each one a super stumper but she’s pretty darn good at mazes. I wonder how long she’ll be into this. It’s awesome because they really do eat up a lot of time and she likes them so much that she’s willing to wait patiently while I draw them one at a time. One day she’ll figure out that you can buy them by the book full, no waiting needed. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Priming the Pump
For holiday shopping that is. I know, we’re tightening belts around here too but still, the girl needs a few things under the tree right? The play kitchen I’ve had my eye on for months was discounted 30 dollars this past weekend so we picked that up. I think she’ll be very exited about that. I have dishes and pots and pans from Ikea stashed away here somewhere to go along with it. I broke down and ordered her a paperback copy of Baby Shoes and a used copy of Hi, Cat which I’ve been thinking about since last year.
Speaking of things I’ve been pining over for a year or more, I picked up some hairpins and Holiday Heap over the weekend. Whether or not I’ll ever wear them remains to be seen I just really, really wanted them. I’d post a picture but my camera is decommissioned because my battery charger suddenly and mysteriously conked out on me. I should have a new one of each by Thursday so I can figure out whether it’s actually the battery or the charger that’s causing the problem. Hopefully it’s not the camera.. but then again I could ask santa for my new lens and the new nikon DSLR that also takes video. Anyway, that’s how I ended up on Amazon ordering books. Shopping on Amazon is like going to Target nay, Walmart because they’re always slashing prices and showing you the deep, deep discounts coming at ya.
I cast on (an re-cast on and re-cast on) a new pair of mittens for Chase. I have about 20 knitting books but I always use Knitting for Baby because I (usually) find the instructions clear and easy to follow and because the projects are simple and cute. These are toddler mittens knit in the round on double pointed needles. The project is too small to knit on circular needles and let me tell you these double pointed jobbies are no joke. I had to go online looking for further explanation but only ultimately figured it out after doing it over and over again. What I learned was to not be dumb about knitting but in all seriousness, that simple point just wasn’t coming to me. I might write a little tutorial on the finer points of not being stupid when I get my new battery.
The reason that I’m knitting, I’m noticing a pattern here, is that my sewing machine is in the shop. It needs a tuneup to deal with what I can only imagine is some kind of timing issue. It’s a solid machine though so I’m pretty confident that it’s nothing disastrous. AND, most promisingly, I met someone who thinks they might be able to thread my ancient industrial Juki overlock. I’d love to get that baby up and running. You know, so I can use it late at night and cut a finger off instead of just sewing over it.
I’ve been doing a little but not nearly enough cooking. I was supposed to prep a casserole tonight for dinner tomorrow but haven’t and now it’s way late. I might push myself to get it done instead of paying for it tomorrow. Chase has had some kind of food epiphany. Completely unprovoked the child, who on one occasion last week ate only a single grain of rice and a bite of chicken for dinner, ate (almost) a whole scrambled egg, half a grilled cheese, carrot sticks and almost a whole flounder filet with rice AND salad. She didn’t eat that all at once, but the sheer variety of it all has my mind reeling. Even though I never really pressed the issue I thought she’d just eat crackers for the rest of her life. I’m glad that my approach didn’t come back to bite me, not yet anyway.
Lastly, because I’m feeling really proud of myself, I cleaned out the fridge today. It was much needed.
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Bits and Pieces
Life seems to be moving at a good pace right now. I’m enjoying the relaxed feeling of evenings where there are no pressing deadlines. There’s plenty that I could be doing but I’m going to soak up a few more of these evenings first. I’m also really happy that we haven’t had to turn the AC on in a while. I suppose it’s no surprise then that I have also started making sure that there’s always a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge. It’s not blazing hot but a nice glass of iced tea certainly doesn’t hurt.
I’m not particularly happy about the fact that Chase is dealing with some cold and/or teething issues at the moment. For the last couple of days no amount of sleep gets her to a point where she’s rested enough to be her usual pleasant self. She seems a little better tonight, her nose is running less but at dinner she clutched the side of her jaw as she bit down on her animal crackers. There’s definitely something going on back there. I haven’t asked around but I’m guessing that at 20 months we’re probably within the range of two year molars.
I’m running out of court appropriate clothes already. I didn’t really expect to be spending so much time with the attorney in court. I’m a frugal girl at heart and it’s really hard for me to reconcile with the fact that I’ll never find a good deal on clothes again. Since having Chase my body is what I can only describe as fat-skinny. It simply is not the same as it was before in ways that I could never have imagined. Even though my stomach has no muscle tone and is a little tub of jelly that slides down onto the mattress if I lie on my side, it only fits into the tiniest of pants. So tiny that you can’t find them just anywhere you have to pay full price for them at stores where other tiny people shop. I can’t just run in and grab a pair of pants anywhere anymore and grappling with this realization still hurts. The girls… well that’s another and equally crazy story. I come to this realization every couple of months. Today I thought I’d pop into a couple of places to see if I cold find any deals. I didn’t find anything and now I feel bad about being stupid and wasting time especially since Chase was less than enthused about the outing (to compensate her she demanded to wear footies home over her socks. I might have to steal the look.) Any way, against my better judgment I may make a trip to Arundel Mills tomorrow to return the low rise khakis I bought by accident. You can’t wear low rise pants like real pants… not pretty, they must go back.
Monday, July 28th, 2008
Restaurant Week
Have you made reservations yet? If it’s in the budget, the restaurant week price just can’t be beat. Considering that it’s not cheap to go out for a couple of plates of microwaved slop at (insert name of big box restaurant here) I think it’s worth it to shell out an extra 20 for a really nice meal. There are a ton of fabulous restaurants participating this year but I had to think practically knowing that we’d be a party of three. I decided around 3 on Saturday that we should go out to dinner. We all got shined up for our 6 o’clock reservation at Pisces at the Hyatt in the Inner Harbor. Early reservations are a good idea if little ones are tagging along, the place wasn’t packed until we were on our way out the door.
I’m more of a neighborhood restaurant type of a gal myself but a hotel restaurant seemed like a good choice in this case. A hotel restaurant works well for fine dining with a baby because they a) see tourists in all manner of disarray and are used to serving families, if even only on occasion, traveling together; b) you’re less likely to play second fiddle to regulars, in my opinion everyone is more likely to be on equal footing at a hotel restaurant; c) this particular choice was on the top floor of the hotel meaning that we had a view of the whole harbor including boats, helicopters and trucks driving by below. The trip included not one but two awesome rides in a glass elevator as well as a walk around the inner harbor complete with bridges and waterfalls just to get there.
All of that and we still weren’t convinced that Chase would sit still through the whole meal. It wasn’t easy but we managed. The staff was really accommodating. When Chase really liked the dried cherries on Ben’s salad, the waiter brought a little dish out just for her. The food was really good. I had a delicious cream of crap soup to start and glazed chilean sea bass as my entree. I like ordering fish when we eat out because it always tastes way better than when I make it at home. I think Ben shies away from ordering fish out because he thinks it WILL taste like I made it at home and then always realizes he’s made the wrong choice. All in all it was a lot of fun. It would be fun to do a date night soon but in the meantime I’ll take my gourmet where I can get it and you should too. Just don’t forget to call ahead for restaurant week reservations. I heard people complaining that you had to call ahead to get the restaurant week prices. Oh, and I caught a look at the regular menu on the way out the door… ouch, good deal is an understatement.
Friday, April 4th, 2008
Poop Adventure
So I was posting about dinner when I stumbled across something unknown to me up to this point. I’ve been snacking on that delicious cheese for years completely ignorant to its history. I was going to say provenance (cause I watch a lot of antiques roadshow you know) but I can see the road this post is going down and think history is a better pick. There’s some connection between this cheese and a french gastronome by the same name. I’ll bite, what’s the deal with your delicious cheese mister? So then I see he wrote all of these books. They will be next on my reading list. How will I get my hands on them? The library has them in translation AND in their original French. How nice for me.
So I had my first poop adventure today with Chase. I let her run around diaperless for a few while I got things read for her bath. That’s when she paused… and dropped a turd! A turd! That’s the first time anything like this has happened. So I picked her up and ran her down to the potty before she could expel any more… well, turds. So she finished up on the potty but I had to go back and clean up the carnage in her bedroom. So back down the hall we go. I reach for some wipes and she’s running for the mirror where she was dancing naked just a minute ago. What are the chances that she steps in the turd? Oh, pretty good. So I manage to get her to stop moving and to sit for a second so I can clean her up. I get her foot cleaned up and move onto the floor when she decides to help clean up too. She’s got socks in her hand so why not take a swipe at it? Thankfully it was pretty contained at that point but man talk about excitement.
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Our guests came and went and I am woefully behind in my work but it’s been a long time since I’ve just sat around on a Saturday night watching movies. On Sunday we went to Fort McHenry. It was c-c-cold but Chase loved it. You have to pay admission to go inside the buildings but the grounds are free. At less than 15 minutes away we will be taking advantage of the grounds this summer to be sure. They have ducks there that are so used to being fed that they come right up to you. Assuming that you give them something so that they don’t attack you it was pretty cool to get so up close and personal with them and to hear them going quack quack quack. The fort sits on a vast green space that provides lots of space for running around.
A Good Weekend
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Our guests came and went and I am woefully behind in my work but it’s been a long time since I’ve just sat around on a Saturday night watching movies. On Sunday we went to Fort McHenry. It was c-c-cold but Chase loved it. You have to pay admission to go inside the buildings but the grounds are free. At less than 15 minutes away we will be taking advantage of the grounds this summer to be sure. They have ducks there that are so used to being fed that they come right up to you. Assuming that you give them something so that they don’t attack you it was pretty cool to get so up close and personal with them and to hear them going quack quack quack. The fort sits on a vast green space that provides lots of space for running around.
Tax time is upon us again. As always we are unprepared. Last year we ended up filing with Turbo Tax but I vowed never to do it again. So today, April 1, only two short weeks before the filing deadline I got a referral for a reputable CPA and stuffed an envelope full of bits of paper to mail off to him tomorrow. Talk about a sense of relief. He reassured me that he could get it done in time and didn’t even make me feel bad for waiting until the last minute. Why does it feel like tax time comes around every 6 months instead of once a year?
Wow, I’m so glad to finally get to post again. Things get busy, you miss a couple of days and all of a sudden it’s out of the routine altogether. The weather today was beautiful. Almost beautiful enough to make me want to play hooky. I was this close, but the truth was either go to class or work on my paper, so I went to class. It’s probably a good thing too since I’m not likely to study for finals. I took Chase to the park to play with a friend. On the walk over Chase rode in the back of her double stroller. She loved every minute of it. She gets along so well with this little girl and they genuinely seem to like spending time with each other. They both had a really nice time at the park. Well, with the exception of the unfortunate hill incident. Chase had a quick but thorough lesson in gravity today. It’s ok she came out unscathed just a little shaken up.
There hasn’t been much cooking around here. I made franks and beans for Chase’s lunch one day but she wouldn’t eat it. In the next few days I made her a hot dog, which she ate. Then one night we had burritos, she didn’t want filling just bites of whole burrito. On another night I made her her own burrito but she didn’t want it. She only wanted the beans in the filling. So today I made her not franks and beans, which apparently offends her palate, but a hot dog and beans which she gobbled up. The very same hotdog with cuban style black beans. I know the two bean preparations are very different but honestly, she wouldn’t even taste the franks and beans. It makes no sense!
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Woo Hoo Spring
Cherry blossoms just sneaked right up on us, didn’t they? I should have known it was coming when we stopped having to wear jackets over the last couple of weeks. I love this weather, even when it’s raining. The flowering trees are blooming and look great and I fully anticipate that my eyes will start itching within 24 to 48 hours. Last week I ordered some popsicle molds from Amazon. We made some popsicles this morning from some Stoneyfield yo baby yogurt drinks we had. The yo baby line tastes so good and is organic but is completely laden with sugar. I thought using them this way was a good way to turn them into a treat instead of just part of Chase’s diet. As an aside, I prefer to make her yogurt by combining plain yogurt with whole ripe fruit and pureeing it with the immersion blender. We poured the yogurt into the molds, put the lid on and added sticks. After sampling the first batch we learned that you shouldn’t ram the sticks down to the bottoms of the molds because you won’t have enough stick left to hold onto if you do. They tasted great, just like a creamsicle of sorts. I think this will be a great tool for summertime treats. Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Pretending to be Mommy
This past week has been interesting to say the least. Starting a few days ago my good sleeper was no more. The first night she cried when I put her down, when I tried to leave the room and each of the three times that she woke up during the night. It appeared to be a combination of teething and the separation anxiety that sets in between 12 and 18 months but who knows. The second night was just as bad and she was doing the same thing at naptime. The third night Ben put her down for bed but she still woke up once or twice and it was difficult to get her back to sleep. The fourth night I got her to sleep with no crying but had to stand in her room until she was asleep and then sneak out silently and naptime was still a bear but she slept through the night.
Today naptime was just as bad as the rest of the week. It took an hour to get her to sleep half that long this morning. When she started to fall all over the place this afternoon I took her back up and tried again. After half an hour of failed attempts I kissed her forehead, snuggled her in and said go to sleep now mommy is leaving. She said bye and waived her little hand and I left and lo and behold she… went to sleep? I couldn’t believe it. I tried my luck again tonight and sure enough she moved around for a while but ultimately settled down. I hoping we can continue on like this because standing in the dark for even 10 minutes felt like an eternity and was really getting to me. I wish I knew what was going on in that head of hers then I wouldn’t have to spend 5 days trying to figure out what to do. Read the rest of this entry »
