Obsessions of the Month

#1
CHOCOLATE

I'm only obsessed because I can't have any right now. I had to cut it out of my diet because my sweet little baby was having tummy troubles. He is doing ever so much better now, but I miss chocolate with a passion.

#2

Story Time

It is definitely all about me getting out of the house and not feeling trapped where story time is concerned. My 19 month old doesn't really get anything out of it yet. The only time he sat still was when they read a story about a dump truck. We did miss one week because of sickness but have gone the rest of the past 5 weeks. I'm really glad my husband has been supportive about me going and leaving the better gas mileage car with me on those days (cause I can't drive stick... YET).

#3

Breastfeeding

I am so glad that I'm back in the groove with feeding my baby. I had forgotten how often babies need to eat and that I can't eat certain kinds of foods and even how my cover worked. I feel so bad about the first month for my son because he could have been a much happier baby if I had just remembered that I couldn't eat certain foods the first few months. I also kept thinking "AGAIN?! You just ate I swear". Now I'm just like "Ok, I'll feed you". I totally love how convenient it is and that I can take my baby anywhere with me and I don't have to pack a ton of stuff for him.

#4

Diapers

Two kids under two in cloth diapers means I'm changing diapers all day long and washing them every day. Sigh.

Kaleb Ralph - 19 Months

Loves, loves the movie Cars. He will sit through almost the entire movie which is a really long time for his age. He will ask to watch it several times a day, but so far I've tried to keep it to once a day. Sometimes we'll watch the end a couple of times. Car is also the one word he will consistently say.

Loves to Help:
          - Aunt Shannon unload the dishwasher. Once it was open and he decided to do it himself by putting assorted dishes in the corner cupboard. It was so cute seeing the plates, cups, and tupperware scattered among the pots and pans that live there.
           - Do the laundry. He will help me carry the dirty clothes to the laundry room and once added clean clothes that I had on the couch to fold. We have a stool in there (so he doesn't use it in the kitchen to climb up to everything he is not supposed to get into) and he will stand there and throw the clothes in the washer. He always wants to add the soap too. Our washer and dryer are opposite each other so I will just throw the clothes across to the dryer and if they don't make it all the way and are sitting on the door, he will push them all the way in for me.
          - Feed the cats. We give him the food at the garage door to take though the living room to the bathroom to put in the cat's bowls and he always wants the cats to go in front of him, while they only want to follow the food. Its very funny to watch and usually we have to herd all 3 of them to the bathroom.
          - Put away groceries.
          - Daddy with his tools. For daddy that's not really helping :)
          - Mommy get her newspaper.

Insists that all the stuffed animals he sleeps with come out to the living room in the morning and after his nap. Which is really funny cause he can't carry them all and gets really frustrated when he can't pick them all up.

Thanks to his parents, thinks that stickers belong on his head.

Has brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast almost everyday.

Loves taking a bath. In fact we cannot even mention the words bath, shower, or wash without him tugging at his clothes and running to the bathroom.

Loves to just be with his Daddy. Nick takes care of him the most when he is home because Kaleb is always following him around and asking him for things.

Prefers his Grandma to his parents any day. If mom or dad leave him and he is with Grandma, he doesn't even notice that we left. However when Grandma leaves without Kaleb, he cries and cries. I sure hope that he has just as good a relationship with his other Grandmas when we are able to see them more.

Last because it is the most important, Kaleb LOVES to be outside. If I let him he would live outside. He asks to go out all the time and will run and get his shoes for us to put on him. He has a small obsession with shoes because to him it means that it is time to go out. For a few months we had to put away our shoes because if he saw them he would bring them to us to put on and would get so very unhappy when we weren't going outside. He loves to just wander around outside and sometimes will head off down the street to the rock pile (a pile of very small rocks about 5 feet wide and 2 feet tall) where he will climb up and down and show me the big rocks he finds. He also likes to follow the kitties off into the field next to our house and gets quite far sometimes. He has figured out that the front of the house with the road, the neighbor's houses, and the rock pile are far more interesting than the back yard with the garden that mommy won't let him plod all over or the fire pit that mommy says is completely off limits. When I try to hang my laundry on the line, I'm constantly running after him to bring him back to the back yard where I can see him. It is nice that he wants to go out all the time cause it gets me out of the house and into the fresh air.

I am so blessed to have this little man in my life and can't wait to see what he discovers tomorrow!

My First Pie

I know this is a little after the fact but oh well.

During Thanksgiving this year I made my first pie ever. I've helped other people make pies before but this was the first time I did most of the work. Well maybe I did most of the work. I started making the pie dough but didn't have a pastry cutter and was very uncoordinated with the knives so my Mom took over with that. I did roll it out and put in in the pan. I was going to cut up the apples but was going really slow so Mom and Nick did that too. I did manage to mix the filling together and put the top on and make a little pattern in the crust. So I sort of made my first pie for Thanksgiving.

Pet Peeve this week

I would have to go with the automatic flushing toilets. I mean what does it matter if you have to touch the toilet to flush it when you are just going to wash your hands anyway? I don't like any of them. From the ones that flush when you are still sitting there to the ones where you have to wave your hand in front of it to get it to actually flush, I really don't like them all. And I really hate the ones that flush so vigorously that water gets sprayed up on the toilet seat and the next poor person that comes in after you is going to think that you hover peed.

And what is with the automatic faucets and soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers when you just have to touch the dirty door handle? And they never put a garbage can next to the door so if you want to use a paper towel to open the door you have somewhere to throw it when you are done.

Whew, just had to get that off my chest.

:P to my Mother

Mom sent me this picture and told me to post it, so here I am posting it.

Kaleb only wanted to hold him for a second and then he pushed him away and he still does it 3 weeks later :)

Broken Record

I feel like all I am lately is a broken record. All I can talk about or even think about is pregnancy, giving birth, and breastfeeding. Whenever I am around my friends and family, I find myself going over the same topics over and over again. I am sure that people have other things they want to say or different have subjects that we could talk about.

Of course now everyone's favorite subject is "When are you having this baby?", but that doesn't last very long because it could be any day now for 2 weeks or more and then what do you say after that? Especially as I am one of those folks who isn't going to have any kind of medical interventions to get things speeding along. It is scientifically proven that the baby is the one sending out the signals that get labor started. So why would I mess with something that, for me, happens when its supposed to happen, that is when the baby is actually ready to be born? Just because I'm uncomfortable and aren't sleeping well doesn't mean that I'm going to force the baby to come when its not time yet. Being a parent is about making sacrifices for your kids and that definitely starts before they are even born.

Look, there I go again. *sigh*

No longer owned by the Government

Today I received my Honorable Discharge papers from the Air Force Reserves. Which means that I cannot be called up by the military any more. Not that I think anything monumental would happen to the United States where we would declare war and be needing whole bunches of troops to go to battle. Still its nice to know that I'm "safe". I don't have to worry about leaving my family for any reason. Not that they would want me anyway. We had to recertify every 2 years on the M-16 and they described my classification as "If we give you a gun things are looking very hopeless". I am grateful for the experiences that I received during my enlistment. I am also grateful to put that part of my life very much in the past. So Goodbye Government! You no longer own me :)