Garden Bounty

Vegetables are growing, and fruit is ripening in Oliver's garden at Grandma Judy and Grandpa Larry's house.   Two and a half weeks ago, the first pairs were ready for picking. Oliver had the time of his life picking pears!

We ate our fill, and then I made spiced pear jam.

The weekend before last, we picked even more! Oliver and Jo both enjoyed fresh pairs, and I made a cranberry pear crisp with what was left. The pumpkin vine has gone crazy, and, now, the first pumpkins are starting to grow.

This past weekend, we went to visit Andrew's great-aunt and -uncle. I love their house because we can sit on their sun porch and watch Oliver roam the fenced-in yard.

George's garden was full of ripe veggies! Oliver delighted in the fact that he could just pick tomatoes off the plant and pop them into his mouth. No exaggeration, he ate two to three dozen cherry tomatoes.

And the zucchini! I can't forget to mention the zucchini Oliver picked with his Great-Great-Uncle George. Check out the size of this this thing!

We took the monster zucchini and a load of cherry tomatoes home with us. Andrew immediately got to work making salsa with the tomatoes by blending them in the food processor with a few garlic cloves, chopped onion and green pepper, some jarred roasted red peppers, Tabasco sauce, and some of my homemade corn relish. Home grown tomatoes have so much flavor, and the salsa was out of this world!

With the zucchini, I made some chocolate-cinnamon zucchini bread, and I made a vegetarian lasagna using thinly sliced strips of zucchini as a substitution for the noodles. How much fun it is to eat fruits and vegetables that you pick yourself! What's great is knowing that Oliver feels the same way. I'm glad I finally discovered a way to get Oliver to eat his fruit and vegetables--just have him eat them straight from the plant!

100 (Attempted) Ways to Entertain a Young Toddler, Day 83: Chalk Shapes

I've tried playing with chalk with Oliver many times. He's always interested in it for about one minute and then moves on to bigger and better things (like rocks, sticks, and leaves).

Today, I decided to use chalk to make a game. I call it "Chalk Shapes." I went outside and drew a purple triangle, a red (OK, pink) square, and a blue circle.

I gave Oliver simple directions to follow. I asked him if he could sit in the purple triangle, and he did:

I asked him to put his hands in the red square, and he put his hands on it (not bad!):

And I asked him to jump into the blue circle. Yes, Oliver (kind of) jumps now. He jumped in it and back out a couple of times before deciding my game was not very much fun.

He decided to ditch my "Chalk Shapes" game in favor of crunching some leaves. Then, a neighbor girl who is two years older than Oliver came by and played with the chalk. She told Oliver the name of all the shapes and drew some herself. Oliver gave her some sticks. So, apparently, my "Chalk Shapes" game is fun for some kids!

Because we already have chalk, I didn't lose anything by trying this game. It just didn't excite Oliver nor keep him busy. I give it a C grade.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sushi

Yesterday, I promised I'd share a kid-friendly sushi recipe with you today. I didn't forget!

Check out what I stumbled upon on Allrecipes.com!

It's so easy!  OK, so mine didn't turn out as nice-looking as Smucker's did, but Oliver didn't seem to mind.

First, use a rolling pin and flatten out a piece of bread.  If you don't do a good job here, the bread won't roll very well and will crack.

Then, spread some peanut butter onto the flattened slice of bread.  Spread some jelly or jam on top of the peanut butter. Your rolls will look cuter if you use a dark jelly. I made these last time with apricot jam, and they weren't as cute because there was no contrast. Cut off the crusts, and then roll up your bread (starting with a long side). Your roll should look something like this:

Slice your roll into six pieces and set them on a plate.  Look how cute!

We have some toddler monkey chopsticks that my in-laws gave us for Oliver. He loves them. He used them for two pieces of sushi before setting them aside and just using his hands.

The cutest part? When he was all done, he asked me for "more peanut butter jelly sushi."

Meatless Monday: Vegetable Sushi Rolls

Sushi is so cheap to make at home. It's surprisingly easy as well.

I know some people think of sushi and associate it with raw fish. It's true that a lot of sushi is made with raw fish--but not all. My best friend has worked at a lot of sushi restaurants, and when I go visit her, I order cucumber rolls. They're just sushi rolls stuffed with rice and cucumber, and they're sometimes sprinkled with sesame seeds. At a restaurant, they cost about $4 for a roll (6 pieces), but at home, they cost about 50 cents for the same amount.

Andrew and I started to make our own at home because it's a fun meal that's crazy inexpensive. We have date nights at home once or twice a week. On those nights, we make dinner just for the kids, and once they're in bed, we make a special dinner for ourselves.

Before Andrew even gets home from work, we make rice. We are so lucky to have a great rice maker that we got as a wedding gift from my in-laws. I don't normally advocate for spending extra money for having the best of anything (like, who really cares if your ice cream scoop or duster is top of the line or not?), but this rice maker has made a world of difference for us. We have rice with a lot of our meals because all we have to do is mix rice with water and push a button. That's it. It's so easy that we just have Oliver make the rice. Seriously. It has settings for brown rice, white rice, sushi rice, etc. You just tell it whether or not you've washed the rice first, and it changes the cooking accordingly. Love it.

                                              

Here's Oliver setting the rice cooker. It plays "Twinkle, Twinkle," when it starts and finishes, which Oliver sings along to. Oh, and it has a "keep warm" setting and an "extended keep warm setting," which lets us make our rice hours in advance.    

                                      

Alright, rice is cooking!  Now let me go through a list of everything you need. Our regular grocery store sells both seaweed and wasabi (optional) in the Asian section. While it's still fairly inexpensive there, you can certainly get it for much cheaper at an Asian grocery store.


Ingredients:
One package of roasted seaweed
Here's what we use. It costs less than $2 and lasts for 2-3 dinners, depending how hungry we are:

2 cups sushi rice (regular white rice will be fine; it just won't be as sticky)
Vegetables sliced long and thin
We used my favorite, sliced cucumber, as well as sliced avocado, slices of fried tofu, and some cooked eggs:

Soy sauce for dipping
Optional: sesame seeds, wasabi, and fresh ginger

Making Sushi

Here comes the fun part!

10 Month Old Jo

Joanna has done some growing up this month. She's starting to act a little more like a toddler and a little less like a babe. It tugs at my heart strings to see how quickly she's growing, but I also enjoy some of her independence.

After we put them in the same room at night, Oliver and Jo woke each other up regularly. That seems to have settled down now. Jo regularly sleeps through the night from about 8pm to 6:30am. She'll occasionally get up once around 4am, but we just let her fuss and whine for about 15 or 20 minutes, and she goes back to sleep.

She's still at the cusp of wanting just one nap a day. She wants to nap around 10am daily, and that's awkward because she wakes up at 11:30am. It's hard for her to make it all the way to bed time, but she's not ready for another nap until evening. Hopefully, she'll get the one-nap-a-day thing figured out soon!

We've recently started working with Jo to eat more solid foods. Instead of just Cheerios and Puffs as finger foods, I now grate and steam thin pieces of carrot for her (until it's soft). I also scramble egg yolks for her, and, when the cool off, I break the eggs into bite size pieces and let her eat them like finger foods. We're working a little bit on biting off pieces of larger food items. She'll take little bites of strawberries, although I have to be supervising her so she doesn't shove the whole berry in her mouth. She also eats Mum-Mums by herself.

Weaning is going OK. She nurses when she wakes up and before bed, as well as one to two times during the day. She has a cold right now, so she's frequently nursing twice during the day. Once she's over her cold, I'm going to cut out the middle of the day nursings. She sips water from a drinking cup while I hold it, and she is able to drink from a sippy cup by herself. I pull the little plastic piece out that is supposed to prevent spills because I want her to learn to drink and not suck.

Joanna is crawling all over the place. She stands while holding onto things but has no fear of falling. She simply lets go when she's done and gets mad if she falls too hard. She'll learn to drop safely to a sit soon, right? Joanna is working on pulling to a stand, but, so far, she just pulls up onto her knees.

She still loves mimicking. She's also responding well to some words. She understands a number of words I say, including Jo, stand, milk, more, nose, hi, and Oliver. Of course, she's not saying words of her own yet, but she lets us know how she's feeling. When she's upset, she babbles to us about all her grievances. When Oliver takes a toy from her, she lets our piercing squeals. When she's happy, she coos and grabs our faces.

At 10 months old, here is a list of Jo's likes and dislikes:

Likes
*Nursing
*Baths
*Strawberries
*Oliver's music videos
*The bathroom
*Lego Duplo blocks
*The flashlight
*Grabbing yarn when Mommy knits
*Oliver
*Fleece jammies
*Oliver's Guess Who, Abby? Sesame Street book
                                                                                                           

Dislikes
*Being put down on the floor
*Bananas
*The car seat
*When Oliver takes her toys away

Rewind to Oliver's 10 month update

Cool Mornings Have Arrived!

With Labor Day behind us, it's the unofficial start to autumn. We don't know how to dress! Yesterday's temperatures peaked in the low 90s, but overnight, we dropped to 56 degrees. It's so cold in the mornings that I can't put Jo in her little sun suits, but by mid day, the temperatures are high and the sun is beating down. I guess we have to settle for two outfits every day for now!

Here are Oliver and Jo testing out their fall outfits. They are so stinking cute.

Christmas Tip: Clean Up Old Toys

I like providing a festive, bountiful Christmas for my family, but I do not like going broke over it. While I tend to be a pretty modest person, I want to lay this out here: I'm good at making Christmas cheap.

It's only September, but I want to give you this tip now because, well, you need it now for it to work. If you have older kids, this probably won't work for them. This tip is aimed at children three and under.

If you're a typical parent like me, when a toy runs out of batteries, it takes you months to get around to replacing them. Well, take those toys, clean them up and replace their batteries. Get them looking as good as new. Then, put them out of sight.

If they haven't had batteries in months, and you hide them for a few months, your kids won't even really remember them. They're going to be like brand new toys for them at Christmas time.

So, this week, go out and pick up a few packs of batteries. One evening, when your kids are asleep, spend an hour or two scrubbing toys, replacing batteries, and getting them looking good as new. Stick them up in your closet behind some sweaters or something and know that you have a couple good gifts for Christmas that only cost you some batteries. Don't forget to dig at the bottom of your kids' toy boxes! It's probably been a while since they've seen anything down there ;-)

I cleaned a spinning alphabet wheel that had been Oliver's. That will be a gift for Jo. I replaced the batteries in a mailbox toy that Oliver had gotten for his first Christmas. That will also make a great gift for Jo. Let me just tell you: our baby won't care that Santa gave her hand-me-downs!

Letter Love

Oliver learned all of his capital letters by his second birthday. I started teaching him letters one at a time. I started with the letter "O," because I thought it looked simple to recognize. Then, I chose "I" because it looked so different from "O." I mostly used magnetic letters to teach him. Once he recognized some letters, I took a friend's advice and started to point them out at signs and boxes at stores. It took nearly a year to teach him all 26 letters.

                                                                                            

Some of his letter learning took a back seat after Jo was born. I still kept up with what he already learned so he wouldn't forget, and I familiarized him with the lower-case letters. I can't say he could recognize all his "little letters," but he knows most of them.

When we're hanging out, I sometimes mention what letter a word starts with. Like, when we're playing catch together (with a big ball), I might say, "Ball begins with B. B says, 'buh, buh, buh, ball.'"

Sometimes, I just pick a letter and tell him all the words I can think of that begin with that letter. I say, "What begins with B? Let's see. B says, 'buh.' Ball. Bear. Boy. Back. Butt. Bumble Bee."

Oliver has started telling me what words begin with a letter now. It still takes me by surprise! Last week, I asked him, "What begins with B? Bear!"

He yelled, "Bath!"

Holy cow! I was so excited. I'm not going to lie; I gave him a cookie.

This morning, he walked around the kitchen with his magnetic letter, "P." He came up to me and said, "P is for pan." It was 7am, but I still gave him a cookie. I gave him lots of praise, too, of course! I even took him upstairs to tell Andrew what he said. Oliver was so proud. Then he took a big bite out of his cookie, just like Cookie Monster, so that it looked like a C. He held it up to me and said, "C is for cookie!" Haha.

Speaking of Cookie Monster, I realized I never posted a video I took of Oliver last week. What's the point of being a mom if you can't embarrass your kids every once in a while? Here's my hilarious little man acting out and singing to the "C is for Cookie" video on the Sesame Street channel on Youtube. That plastic circle is actually a piece to his toy cookie jar, so he pretends it's a cookie:

President Obama in Colorado

I feel so disappointed. Just... really heartbroken.

I usually keep my political opinions out of my blog. Political opinions tend to push some people away, and that's not what I want for my blog.

This post isn't about my opinion on issues; it's about my experience.

I support President Barack Obama, and I am a campaign volunteer for him. At least once a week, Andrew watches the kids in the evenings for me so that I can get to the campaign office and make some calls to people in my area. I love reaching out to people and talking about the issues.

Well, about a month ago, President Obama came to Denver. I got a call from my volunteer organizer, and she told me she had a VIP ticket for me to see the President. One of the hardest things I've ever done was turning that ticket down. You see, I had anniversary plans with my husband to go up in a hot air balloon. When I got back to the campaign office, everyone was talking about how they got to meet the President and First Lady. I don't think I've ever been more jealous of anything in my life. I mean, I'm glad I got to celebrate my anniversary with my husband. I was just sad about what I gave up to do it.

Well, today, the President came back to Colorado. He came to Boulder, which is about an hour away. It's out of our area, I guess, so my campaign office didn't get tickets. So, Andrew and I drove up to Broomfield on Thursday night (when the tickets were released) and picked up two tickets for my friend Aminta and me.

The doors opened at 10am. Aminta and I got to Boulder at 8:15am.

Here I am in my Obama outfit:

We waited in the hot sun to get in, but it was totally worth it. Although there were hundreds of people ahead of us, we had amazing "seats." By seats, I mean a place to stand! We were about 20 feet from the stage.

Here's Aminta! "O" for Obama, of course! You can see we beat the crowds. 

The event was to start any time between 10am and 1pm. At first, we had access to a free water station. Before long, the crowds filled in behind us, and we couldn't get water unless we wanted to abandon our awesome spot. In all, there were over 13,000 people there.

The crowd behind us:

Here was my view of the podium:

We waited and waited and waited. Around noon, my breasts started to ache from not nursing Jo. Then, I started to get sick from the heat. I had stomach pains and was dizzy. I kept holding out. It was going to start any minute (I thought). Sometimes, clouds rolled in and gave us a break from the heat. Most of the time, though, we were just standing there underneath the hot, hot sun. A few EMTs were running into the crowd to help people who were overheating. I thought I could make it.

One o'clock came and went. I started shaking and had to leave. I told Aminta to stay because she was doing OK. I left around 1:15pm and pushed my way through the crowd to the water station. People were exhausted from the heat and wait and were pretty hostile to me. I finally made it and poured cup after cup of water straight down my throat. After swallowing about a liter, I filled my cup and took it to the shade. I was so far back that I couldn't even see the stage. There was no way I could get back to Aminta.

This was my view after I left the stage area. Boo.

A few minutes later, they started announcing speakers. I sat near a speaker and listened to Senator Michael Bennet and Governor John Hickenlooper. I worked my way around the crowd, trying to find a spot where I could see the stage. I couldn't see anything. After a few more speeches, they announced President Obama. Everyone was so excited and cheering, but I was fighting back the hot tears in my eyes. Hours in the hot sun, waiting for that moment, and all I had was a speaker to stand next to to listen to him.

He gave a great speech. He talked about some of his experiences in Boulder. He talked about Obamacare and his work to help college students pay for school. It really was amazing, and I tried to appreciate being there, listening to the President live. I really am an optimist, but it was too hard for me to be optimistic. I was so disappointed.

Aminta got to see President Obama. She didn't have a camera but snapped a cool photo with her phone.

When the speech started to wind down, she came and found me near the back of the field. People back there were talking a lot, and we could no longer hear the speech. So, we decided to leave. On the way out, I was able to find a spot where I could see through the crowd to the stage. It sounds stupid, but I was so happy to at least get a glimpse of the President. I felt like I at least got something special from spending all day there. Here he is (under the tree), with my camera zoomed all the way in:

It was about 3pm when we left. We made our way to the car, stopping for a snack on the way because we hadn't eaten all day. It was a good thing we stopped because we got to see the President's motorcade drive by. One of the tinted cars had a flag with the Presidential seal. I assume it was President Obama in there. Pretty cool, huh?

I know I should be thankful that I got to be there in person to hear our President speak. I am trying to be. I'm sure once the pain of disappointment passes, I will feel glad I made it at all. In the meantime, though, I think I need to have one good cry. Then, it'll be back to volunteering this week! Who knows? Maybe there will be another chance to see the President speak. We are a swing state, after all!

100 (Attempted) Ways to Entertain a Young Toddler, Day 82: Water Bombs

Our last water balloon activity completely bombed. Oliver still wanted to play with water balloons, so I filled another dozen or so and took him out front. I told him to throw the balloons. As soon as he threw the first one and watched it explode all over the sidewalk, he was hooked.

Some of the fun in action:
         

The activity only lasted a couple minutes. Oliver was a little water balloon machine gun. After he threw the last one, he cleaned up the busted balloons, and we went inside to do some rock painting.

Oliver loved this activity. It was so simple, too! Ultimately, my only big problem with this activity was that it took me about 10 minutes to get it ready, and it was over within a minute. I hate when cleanup takes longer than the fun. I know we'll definitely do this again, but I think I'll do it on a weekend when Andrew can watch the kids so I can fill a ton of balloons all at once. I give "Water Bombs" a B+ as a toddler activity.