Family

Amelia liked having her Daddy home on Sunday night to read to her:

Cooking

I have been cooking this weekend! I never cook, as many of you know. Since it is what Jason does for a living I figure I should leave it to him. Saturday I made a chicken and rice bake and it turned out pretty good. Jason liked coming home from work to dinner on the table and I liked being able to eat together before I had to leave for work. Saturday will probably become my day to cook. It will give me a chance to practice and it will also give us the chance to have another meal together each week.

Today I made enchiladas. Another mommy-blogger posted a recipe she uses for enchiladas and it sounded good and seemed fairly easy, so I tried it. They were tasty! We also had refried beans and spanish rice with it. My mom had expressed wanting the recipe, so I decided to just copy and paste it right from the source:

Beef Enchiladas

1 lb hamburger meat
1 small onion, chopped (you can leave this out if you want)
1 can of chopped black olives (I don't use these. Olives gag me)
1 can of Hormel Chili
1 can of enchilada sauce
1 bag of shredded cheddar cheese
6-8 flour tortillas

Brown the meat and saute the onions in with it. Once the meat browns, add in olives and about 1 cup of cheese until cheese is melted. Fill each tortilla with the meat mixture and roll up. Place in baking dish side by side. I usually use my 11x7 baking dish. Combine the chili and enchilada sauce in a bowl and pour on top. Top with remaining cheese. Bake covered with foil at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

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Our day has consisted of this:


Jason has been watching football/sleeping most of the day. I am jealous! Given our late night last night, I am pretty tired too! The kitchen is in order again, so I am going to attempt some paper-writing as soon as I publish this!

Amelia is still playing with her stacking cups:


They are not Jason's favorite toy of hers! I like this one:


Her staring at him while he points at the cup at his feet :)

Hopefully everyone had a good weekend!

Jason's Bad Night

We'll start with a picture:


Now for the explanation...

See the little red cup in his hand? That little red cup is what we have to thank for our terrible, horrible, awful night.

Around 9:30 I got a text from Jason that he stepped on one of Amelia's toys and hurt his ankle. I didn't think much of it. The texts kept coming though, about how much his ankle hurt. I ended up rushing out of work 30 minutes early to get home and take him to the emergency room. Our neighbor's downstairs were still up and were kind enough to "watch" Amelia for us (ie- we gave them the baby monitor).

After an hour and a half at the hospital, Jason was on crutches and we were on our way home. He has a severe sprain. There is bruising going up his leg even. An x-ray technician is looking over his x-rays tomorrow to check for small fractures. He was hoping for some of the "good stuff" for the pain but was told, just Tylenol and ibuprofin.

He realized on our way to the ER that he didn't have his phone and assumed he left it upstairs. We got home, I called his phone so he could find it and call his boss about not being able to work in the morning and some guy answered. He had found Jason's phone on the sidewalk and was outside of the Cactus Club (next door, literally). I asked him to please wait and I would be right down to get the phone and he said he'd leave it.

Guess what?! He didn't. He was nowhere to be found and neither was the phone. I went into the bar (my first time being in a bar in about a year and a half, by the way) to ask about it. Nothing. Thanks a lot guy. Happy Holidays.

So, not only is Jason on crutches but he has no phone. We had to call T-Mobile and suspend his and get a new one on it's way. It won't be here for 3 business days. That was the fastest they could do. Great.

He had to find a way to get ahold of his boss about tomorrow. His shift starts at 6 a.m. -- a few short hours from now. We poured over Facebook, trying to find the number of anyone who might have this phone number we needed. We were about to give up when I realized that Comet, the other restaurant the guy co-owns, was still open! We called there, got the number and all is set. That number is safely in my phone, just in case. As is Comet's number.

To top it off, the live music next door tonight was some guys Jason really likes and he couldn't go. Don't ask me to recall who, I couldn't tell ya if my life depended on it. Something like Dose-one and Gel? He went next door (to the owner's house) to see if he could get a couple of records signed but Eric (the owner) wasn't home. As he was standing there the guys he wanted to see got out of their van and Jason went over and they signed his records AND gave him an additional one they had in their van. I guess the whole night wasn't terrible for him :)


(see the drawings? Those are their "signatures"...)

200th Post!

This is my 200th blog entry. Not bad for being a "blogger" for about a year!

Amelia is taking her nap, still! I have the house mostly in order, mostly. Sometimes I wonder why I even try to keep the house clean. Amelia is into everything.

Today I cleared the coffee table off, with the exception of a candle (that we will only light when she is in bed for the night) and the remotes. I am chancing the stuff under the table for a bit longer. She tends to leave it alone, so far.

While I was at work yesterday, Jason got Amelia's pet net up:


This afternoon she seemed a bit worried that her friends were so far away and out of her reach! It is so nice knowing that we won't walk into her room to find all her friends all over the place anymore.

Amelia has been busy this morning! Crawling and standing are her main activities lately. I love and hate it at the same time. I love that she is growing and learning but I don't love that she is into everything and making messes! For example, she was crawling around this morning and when she came back into the living room, this is what she looked like:


We really need to find better ways to keep her away from cords/shoelaces/scarves...basically, anything that is string-like!

While she took her nap this morning/afternoon, I took down her play mat that we have been using as a barrier to keep her away from cords, of course, and made it into an "obstacle" for her. When she woke up we tried it out.

She wasn't too sure at first:


Then she started going through:


Found the piece that fits into the hole and got sidetracked:


She eventually made it all the way through. Next, she tried to go back through, with the new toy she discovered:


It didn't work too well! We have been having fun with this all afternoon! I keep putting things on the other side and she keeps going through to get them:



Here is a video of her going through:



I am cooking dinner for us tonight. Shocking, I know. I am wanting to learn how to cook more and more these days for some reason unknown to me. I am making a chicken and rice bake from a recipe that I found on a can of mixed vegetables in our pantry. It seems easy enough. I can mess anything up though...we'll see how it turns out I guess!

Oh yeah, here is a picture of Jason's new hair:


No no, he won't be wearing it like this, but I thought it was funny!

Snowball Fight!!!

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Amelia was a triple threat. She wooped us.

9 Month Well Check-Up and more...

This morning we went to Amelia's 9 month check-up and all is well! She is still long and thin :) She is 28.5 inches long and still right around 19 pounds (which I think was off because when we were there a month ago for a flu shot and I had them weigh her she was 19 lb, 10 oz. Oh well). She is following her growth curve nicely, she is still in the 75th percentile for height and 50th percentile for weight! There are no routine vaccinations at the nine month visit so we thought we were off the hook! Nope. We decided to have her H1N1 vaccine done and she will go back in one month to get the second one.

While we were at the doctor we made a recieving blanket into a "toga" for her, so she would be warm:


Jason thought of doing it and I made it a reality. The doctor got a kick out of it too!

We spent a good chunk of time talking with the doctor about Amelia's rice "allergy". Since rice is not commonly an allergen, the doctor was confused as to why Amelia's skin reacts the way it does when she has rice, rice cereal in particular. I mentioned that she had the same reaction to baby oatmeal, which started a whole 'nother conversation regarding a gluten allergy (eek!). Long story short, we are going to be holding off of most grains for a bit. In a couple weeks we will have her try some regular, adult oatmeal because the doctor seems to think that she could be reacting to something that they add to the baby version and not to the oats themselves. We will eventually try rice again and if the same issues arise, we will have to have her tested for food allergies :(

This afternoon, after the doctor, we went to Wal-Mart to finally get camera cards put onto CD. I avoided it the past 2 months because I have such terrible experiences with Wal-Mart;s machines here but today it went great! They had some new computers that were much better than the old ones. I am finally able to clear off my cards...500 pictures (October and November)!

We also got Amelia a pet net today at Toys 'R' Us because she has "found" her friends that have lined the top of her crib the last 9 months. Jason will have to get that up tomorrow!

Lastly, Jason got his hair cut today, which I wrote about, here.

Oh yes, the SNOW has finally come to Milwaukee:


By the time some had accumulated it was already dark, so the picture isn't the greatest. I made it black and white, which made it better though! I am not convinced that this snow will be with us in the morning...it always seems to disappear when we don't get tons of it. I will know tomorrow morning!

Locks of Love

Yep, Jason cut his hair today! It was finally long enough for him to donate so he went for it. I don't think he likes it too much, yet. I keep reminding him that he has to get used to it. It is a big change:


We got him some styling product, so hopefully within the next few days he can figure out a way that he likes his new hair!

For anyone who doesn't know about Locks of Love, you can learn more about it, here.

2 More Pictures!

I forgot to include a couple of pictures in my last post...oops!

First, Amelia has found "another" baby to occupy her time:


I love it. If you enlarge the picture and look at the expression on her face (seen in the reflection) it is priceless!

Second, with fall and winter comes one plus...we have a lake view apartment:


See that blue beyond the trees? Yep! That is Lake Michigan :) It is nice to sit at the kitchen table and see it, even if it isn't the greatest view. How many people can say they have a view of Lake Michigan from their apartment for what we pay in rent? Not too many!

On Our Toes

Wow! Amelia has gotten a LOT stronger this week and she is into everything and she goes everywhere. It has really been taking it out of us this week, especially Jason who is sick right now (just a cold, we think).

Sunday afternoon we went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Vikings and Bears play each other. It is impossible to talk to Jason when he is watching football on a big screen. Almost every single time I said anything to him he would "ignore" me and then look at me 30 seconds later and ask, "Huh? You say something?". Not even his daughter in his lap could break his concentration on the game:


Monday was routine for us. I left for school, spent the day in classes and in the library, researching. Jason and Amelia picked me up and we had Oakland Gyros for dinner and picked up a movie. Jason said to me, "So I was thinking, we could watch a Christmas movie, but only if it is one that we have never seen." I was a bit confused and asked him if there was one at home that we had bought last season and hadn't seen yet. He said, "No, but we could Redbox something...". Then it hit me. I had mentioned to him that I wanted to watch Four Christmases and he said no because he didn't like Reese Witherspoon. Well, he realized that Vince Vaughn was also in it and wanted to see it. We laughed so hard!

Tuesday I made baby food and picked things up around here. Amelia made her usual rounds through the house. She likes to pull on my phone charger cord and has been able to unplug it lately. After she realizes that it is not connected to the wall anymore she just takes it around the house with her:


Before anyone reminds me of the danger of cords, I know she shouldn't have them. She doesn't get them very long. Once she has it we take it. We are taking every precaution we can think of to keep that girl away from cords but it is like she has radar for them. She finds them no matter how well they are hidden, no matter how heavy the object in front of them is.

While we were in the kitchen I gave Amelia some puffs for the first time:


Just as I suspected, she wasn't interested in them. She did, however, think that her cats would like them. She threw them all on the floor for her furry friends.

Tuesday night we (Jason) had to lower Amelia's crib to the last setting. Now that she is standing all the time we can't take any chances that she will get the strength to pull herself over. Poopy was there, helping Jason with the crib:


He is always with us, "helping". *sigh*

Another thing that Amelia loves is a cat toy. It is a springy tiger that hangs from a doorknob. It is seriously one of her favorite things to play with. She tries to take it everywhere with her:


She pulled it all the way down the hall and into the kitchen before I took it from her. I was afraid it would snap somehow and hurt her.

The changing table is no longer a safe place to leave Amelia, even for a minute:


I find it humorous, she spends so much time crying to get out of her crib and here she is, trying to get back into it.

Amelia has been saying some new things lately:



Pardon her crabiness in the video. She didn't nap well today Jason said and it showed in her behavior tonight. I love that it sounds like she is trying to say "mama"! I also think it is hilarious that her mouth moves longer than she is saying "ma-ma-ma". She is so cute!

Adventures in Baby Food: Mixed Veggies

Today I experimented with using frozen vegetables to make Amelia's food. I used chopped spinach, carrots, peas and the remainder of a bag of mixed veggies we had:


First I boiled a big pot of water. I added the veggies in the boiling water and waited for it to return to a boil:


Once everything was done cooking I pureed the mixture and ended up with this:


Look tasty? I am not sure how Amelia will take to it because the texture of it is different than she is used to. It is lumpier. We'll see what she thinks of it tomorrow I guess! It is a healthy mixture though!

The verdict on frozen veggies is: I liked them! The only thing I would do differently is use whole leaf spinach instead of chopped. It was a pain to try and get all the chopped spinach out of the water. I save the water to use to thin the puree so that any of the nutrients that I boiled out of the food will make it back in partially, therefore, straining is not an option.