off to pick the perfect pumpkin

Last Saturday we headed to Rombach’s Pumpkin Patch.  It was a beautiful fall day, so we bundled the kiddies up in their Halloween attire and got ready for many photo ops (because that’s really why we go to the pumpkin patch every year, isn’t it??).  Here’s Molly, all gussied up and ready to go:

And then there’s me with the kids.  Evidently I wasn’t feeling quite as festive as they were…no attempt to be Halloween-y on my part.

Once at the pumpkin patch, we immediately plopped the kids down in the middle of all the giant pumpkins.  Owen was not into posing:

Neither was Molly.  But we got this great shot of their profiles!  And I love they are both making the exact same expression and how this photo really accentuates Molly’s chubby cheeks:

They may not have wanted to pose for a picture, but I was determined to get a good one of me and the kids.  Well, at least one of us was looking at the camera…and two of us are even smiling!  I’ll call that a picture-taking success!

One more attempt…we’re both looking!  Yea!

With the first round of pictures done, we set off to enjoy some of the fun at Rombach’s.  Travis spent the majority of his time at the pumpkin patch chasing Owen as he ran around saying, “Daddy, yook at dis!”.  I had Molly in the bjorn…definitely the easier of the two jobs.  Here are my boys climbing on some kind of tree house something:

We tried really hard to get a picture of just Molly propped up by the pumpkins.  We got some great ones of Owen at that age.  I think the sun was a little bright on this particular day, because all the pictures of Molly were less than flattering.  Out of respect for my daughter, I’m refraining from posting them on the blog.  Instead I’ll let you enjoy this less than fantastic picture of our two kids as we attempted to get them to smile for the camera:

And finally, the purpose of the visit…the perfect pumpkin!  We found it!  It’s now sitting on our front porch with my other two pumpkins (that I got at Aldi for $2 each…it was hard for me to stomach spending $9 on a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch when the Aldi ones were just as pretty, but it’s all about the experience, right?).  Someday soon we’ll be carving this baby up.  Stay tuned…

a belated birthday post

My birthday was September 25, but we spread out the celebrating over a couple of weeks.  My grandmother passed away on the 26th, so we delayed the big celebration with my family for a couple of weeks.  Even though my birthday was difficult because we knew what was about to happen with my grandma, Travis tried his best to make my birthday fun.  He started by taking the day off!  Having him home all day was great!  We kicked off the day by going out for breakfast at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House.  We’d never been there but had driven past it for years.  I was tickled to try it out…and it was great!  Here’s a shot of Owen and me eating our pancakes:

Then we headed back home to open my presents.  Travis enjoys picking out a “special” card for me every year, and this year my card came with stickers!  (And no, I’m NOT a Hannah Montana fan.)

That night, we had my brother and dad over to watch the Mizzou/Nevada game and eat Little Caesar’s pizza.  I think Molly was pretty impressed with my abilities at blowing out candles:

Last weekend we got together with my family to celebrate my birthday at my parents’ house.  My mom made a delicious steak and potatoes dinner, and we had our family’s traditional rainbow-chip birthday cake.  Owen wanted to help me blow out the candles.  We were successful!

To conclude, Owen loves singing the birthday song.  He can carry a tune pretty well…if I do say so myself.  Check it out:

owen’s favorite playmate

Waiting at the window…light saber in one hand, sword in the other.  He’s ready.  Who’s he waiting for?

who knew baby food could be so much fun?!?

So…I’m trying my hand at making my own baby food for Molly.  Yeah, I know I’m not special.  A lot of people do this.  But the thing is, I never once even attempted to try to make my own food with Owen.  I think I was a little overwhelmed by the fact that the child never slept and cried all day long.  Jarred baby food kept me sane.  My life with Molly is much different.  She doesn’t cry all the time.  I sleep at night.  And she takes naps!  Heavenly.  I actually have time during the day to do something exciting…like make baby food!

My friend, Abbey, got me started.  She’d been telling me how easy it was and how you can save so much money doing it.  I wasn’t convinced it was for me, but then I tried it and I love it!  I have saved so much money doing this.  Bear with me as I brag about my savings…Molly eats 3 solid food meals a day.  That would mean I’d need to buy at least a couple of jars of baby food per day.  At around 50 cents a jar (if I’m going cheap), it adds up!  When I visited Abbey, we made baby food sweet potatoes together.  I bought $1.80 worth of sweet potatoes, made them into baby food, and Molly’s been eating them for the past month!  So far (besides sweet potatoes) I’ve made bananas and avocado.  I’m getting ready to be more adventurous though…Schnucks had their winter squash on sale at 2 pounds for a dollar.  I bought a butternut squash, and I’m getting ready to cook it up. 

Abbey used this book as a reference for all her baby food-making endeavors:

The book is great.  It goes through all the different foods you can make for your baby and at what age they are okay to eat them.  Then it gives you detailed instructions on how to make, freeze, and then serve the food.  I found the book on Amazon for $2 and it’s been worth every penny.

Another reason I’ve loved making my own food is that I rarely have to worry about running out of food for Molly.  Because I freeze what I make, all I have to do is pull out her meal, warm it up, and then serve.  Way easier than having to make a run to the grocery store. 

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not saying I have anything against jarred baby food or think badly of those who use it.  Like I said before, I used nothing but jarred foods for Owen and he is a pretty healthy little guy.  I’ve just found a fun new hobby…and a great new way to save my family a buck or two!  (And those who know me well know that I’m always looking for ways to save the fam some money.)

Molly sure does seem to love the food.  Owen, on the other hand, looks at it and says, “Ewww, yuck.”  Here’s a video of them after Molly finished eating.  Owen is not a fan of messes of any sort…and he doesn’t want to get close to Molly until all the food is gone from her face.  Pay attention to Molly’s frantic kicking when her brother covers her face with the napkin…

she rolls!

The face says it all…”Wow!  Did I just roll over??”

That was fun…let’s do it again!!

So much fun that my big brother likes to roll over with me, too!

I can even roll over to play with my toys!  The possibilities are endless…  I think it’s even cooler when I do a 360-degree roll.  That’s pretty awesome.  I’m pretty sure I just made my mom’s life a little more challenging.  Rolling is just oh so fun…

a weekend of memories

Last weekend we went to Oklahoma for my grandma’s memorial service.  It was so good to be with family at such a difficult time.  Even though we were all grieving the loss of Grandma Nini, we enjoyed spending time together and laughing about all the good times we’ve had together.  Here’s a picture of the entire family after the memorial service.

We spent a lot of time hanging out in the hotel talking, playing games, and having light saber fights (of course!).  My cousins were so great to spend so much time with my kids.  I think they particularly enjoyed how much fun Owen is these days.  Here’s a picture of him having a light saber fight with “Crazy Uncle Mike”.

My cousins also enjoyed playing with sweet little Molly.  Here is a  picture of my cousins Heather and Matt.  I think Matt enjoyed snuggling with Molly and giving her a bottle.

We also took advantage of the fact that we were all back in Bartlesville together for what could have been the last time.  We enjoyed going to a lot of the places that we’d frequented when we visited Grandma growing up.  One night we went out for dinner at Murphy’s.  My mom and her sisters have always loved the place.  Therefore, we’ve gone every time we’ve visited Bartlesville…so I’m guessing I’ve been there probably at least 50 times in my life.  Here’s a picture of us sitting in our booth waiting for our dinner…nice and cozy!

The day after the funeral, we went to Woolaroc.  I’ve mentioned visiting Woolaroc before.  If you’d like to find out more about it, check out this post.  We’ve always taken pictures of all the cousins standing in front of this mosaic tile wall since we were babies.  Here we are in order of oldest to youngest (Heather, Emily, Mike, Lindsay, Matt, Nate, Lori).

We also visited the petting farm at Woolaroc.  Last time we were there, Owen loved it!  This time, he started off very excited about all the animals.  Here he is with Heather checking out the baby sheep right before it let out a loud “baaaa” in Owen’s face and scared him to death:

All of my relatives enjoyed helping us out with our parenting responsibilites.  Travis and I were happy to share!  We enjoyed being able to enjoy Woolaroc while others pushed our stroller, chased Owen, and fed Molly.  Here’s a picture of my Uncle Barry feeding Molly her lunch:

More fun times with cousins…here’s a picture of Owen with “Crazy Uncle Mike”.  (Owen has been walking around the house talking about “Crazy Uncle Mike” ever since we got home.)

One final picture of all the cousins…including the ones that married in.  We had a wonderful time together.  It was much needed.  I think we’d all agree that it went too fast.  We’ll remember these special memories forever.

remembering grandma nini

My precious grandma, Grandma Nini, went home to be with Jesus on Saturday evening.  Some of my best memories include Grandma, and she will be very missed.  Over the past couple of years, I felt so privileged to share my children with their Great-Grandma.  She loved them so much, and I think she willed herself to live as long as she did because she wanted the chance to love on her great granddaughter.  These two pictures were taken 3 weeks ago when we visited her in Texas.

Taken in January of 2009 when we visited her in Dallas:

She made a point to be very involved in her grandchildren’s lives.  Here she is with us at Owen’s first birthday party in May 2008:

I loved when she’d come visit us for the holidays.  Here’s a picture of her teaching me the family recipe for cornbread stuffing in November 2008:

Grandma was so excited to meet her first great-grandchild when Owen was born in May 2007.  She spent 2 weeks in St. Louis when he was born just holding him and helping me learn to be a mommy.  She loved little kids so  much.  I love her sweet expressions while she’s holding Owen.

Grandma and her daughters:  Aunt Suzi, Aunt Kathy, and my mom.

Grandma and her grandchildren and great-grandchild:

Grandma was a very special woman and the best grandmother I could have asked for.  I’m so thankful that my children got a chance to meet her.

great news…that i just forgot to mention

Bring on the ice cream, pizza, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, chocolate, etc… because Little Miss Molly has outgrown her milk protein allergy!  I kept meaning to do a blog post about this, but I kept forgetting.  And I also felt like, if I made it public, she’d regress and we’d end up back where we started…living a life free of dairy products. 

At her 4 month doctor appointment, the doctor advised me to try dairy to see how Molly would tolerate it.  She said lots of kids outgrow their allergy by 3-4 months.  I thought she’d suggest I start slow to break her in easy, but she said to eat LOTS of dairy because you want to see the reaction, if there’s going to be one. 

I was nervous, but also EXTREMELY excited to eat dairy foods again.  It’s been a little over a month since I reintroduced dairy, and things are going great!  There’s not even been a trace of the scary reaction to dairy that sent us to the hospital when she was 2 weeks old. 

So, after 4 months of abstaining from dairy so that I could continue nursing Molly…I’m back!!

another monthly update

Molly is 5 months old!

As you can tell, she’s still just as smiley as can be!  She is becoming more and more social everyday and loves to hear herself talk.  She’s WAY more interested in interacting with us than practicing moving around.  I having been trying to get her to practice rolling over, but she has absolutely no interest.  She will let me flip her over then she just looks at me and starts talking.  She actually did roll over for the first time the other day during her naptime, but then proceeded to spit up massive amounts all over her crib sheet.  When I came in to check on her she had her face pressed into her sheet and was a bit freaked out because she had spit up covering her face and in her eyes.  How gross is that?  I felt bad for her, and I really can’t blame her for not wanting to try again.  Darn that reflux.

Besides not being interested in practicing her gross motor skills, all of a sudden Molly has no interest in sleeping…although when she does choose to sleep, she’s just so stinkin’ cute!  I just love those chubby cheeks!  Back to her aversion to sleep…she’s beginning to remind me of her brother.  Uh oh.  (For a refresher on the oh-so-fun time we had with Owen’s sleep, or lack thereof, check out this post.)  The difference between Owen and Molly is that he never took a pacifier.  That has it’s ups and downs…the paci is great at calming her down when she’s upset, but it is VERY frustrating because she freaks out when it falls out of her mouth while she’s sleeping.  Recently we’ve started letting her cry it out when it falls out so that she can learn to put herself back to sleep.  Depending on the night, she’ll cry anywhere from 1 to 3 hours due to lack of paci.  Wow…we’re tired.  We’ve also discovered that she’s not awake when the paci falls out…she’s actually asleep and is screaming in her sleep.  This will continue for hours, or until we put the paci back in her mouth.  The issue with that is, if the paci is put back in her mouth, it will fall out again in a matter of minutes resulting in very short bursts of sleep for the parents.  It’s a no-win situation.  Hopefully it will better itself soon.

As you can tell from the above picture, Molly enjoys putting EVERYTHING in her mouth…specifically her hands.  (Which is why it grosses me out when random people at the grocery store come up and touch my baby’s hands.  Why the hands, people?)  I keep expecting to see some teeth popping out because she’s constantly gnawing, but nothing yet.  Anyway, she’s been ready to start cereal for a while, but I’ve been kind of putting it off.  It’s so much easier when you only have to worry about milk for each meal.  Now that life is getting back to normal after our crazy summer of traveling the country, I decided I was ready to start (and so was she).  Owen HATED cereal the first time he tried it.  Much like with the potty seat, he freaked out and I put the spoon away for a few days before trying it again.  Molly, on the other hand, LOVES cereal!  She acts like it’s the most exciting part of her day. 

She loves to try to grab my hands while I’m feeding her to shove the food in her mouth even faster.  She always finishes her entire bowl and probably would eat a whole lot more if I’d let her.  She’s really working on chunking up her thighs.

Moving on…

Owen is 28 months old!

Do you like the goofball smile?  Owen is big into smiling for the camera, but he never gives me his real smile…unless I can catch him without him knowing I’m taking a picture. 

And then you’ve got the sleazy, used car salesman smile he’s particularly fond of lately.  (Notice the blue, chocolate egg in his hand.  I’m now to the point that I have to bribe him to get him to pose for a picture.  It’s amazing what he’ll do for a chocolate egg….or a sock-ick egg, as he calls it.)

And then sometimes I catch his sweet, innocent smile.  Rarely. 

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Owen started Toddler Time.  He’s been loving school, so much so that he doesn’t want to leave when it’s over.  He’s been working on learning  his colors, but so far he still calls everything blue.  Someday he’ll catch on.  After school I love talking to him about what he’s learned.  Last week he said, “God made the world, sun, and flowers.”  I love how much we can communicate the older he gets. 

Other big news…Owen is obsessed with sitting on the potty.  No success yet, but he loves to sit there.  That’s a good start, right?  I took a really cute picture of him sitting on the potty, but Travis told me that it wasn’t blog-appropriate.  Maybe he’s right.  But it was just so darn cute.  He’s sitting there completely buck-naked reading a book.  (Owen insists on being completely naked when he sits on the potty.  Not sure why.  It’s rather a pain to have to totally undress him before he’ll sit on it, but I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to get this potty-training going.)

Okay, that’s all for now!  There’s a whole lot more I could say about both of them, but this post has already become a novel.  More later…

tour of texas, part three

The wedding…Wimberley, Texas! 

After leaving Sea World, we drove to San Marcos, Texas (right between San Antonio and Austin) to our hotel.  He arrived just in time to get ready to go to my cousin Mike’s rehearsal dinner.  We had been looking forward to this wedding for a long time.  Not only was it a time to get together with all my cousins, but we were also getting to meet Mike’s then-fiance, Meghan!  Here’s a picture of Mike, Meghan, and my aunt Suzi (Mike’s mom):

The rehearsal dinner was so much fun!  Mike and Meghan met in Washington D.C. but both have roots in Texas.  Mike lived in Los Angeles most of his life before moving to D.C. for work, but my aunt and uncle (his parents) left California several years ago to build a beautiful horse ranch and live in Texas paradise!  Meghan has a family ranch that she grew up visiting, thus the common roots in Texas.  Anyway, Mike and Meghan decided to have their wedding at Meghan’s family ranch in Wimberley.  It was a beautiful place for a wedding.  They had the rehearsal dinner in a local restaurant/brewery.  They hired a couple to come teach the guests how to line dance and do the Texas two-step.  My mom generously offered her grandma-arms so that Molly could sleep, and my cousin Lindsay’s husband, Jody, played with Owen so that Travis and I could get out and enjoy the dance floor.  Here’s my mom with my sleepy girl:

And my Uncle Barry, cousin Matt, and Jody…Owen’s buddies!

My aunts, cousins, and I were all in the same sorority in college (Pi Beta Phi…them at Oklahoma State and me at Mizzou).  We took a picture of all of us together:

We had a great time at the rehearsal dinner.  Our kids cooperated enough for us to be able to stay until the end.  The wedding was another story.  It was a BEAUTIFUL wedding.  Mike and Meghan were so happy and I loved being able to see them get married…from the furthest corner of the yard while Owen talked incessantly about his Star Wars guys.  We tried to let him sit in a chair and watch the wedding, and that lasted about 5 seconds.  Molly, my normally easy child, decided to have a major freak-out at the precise minute the wedding started.  So Travis hid her away inside the house to keep her loud, frantic crying from disrupting the wedding.  My one major regret from our Texas trip was that I didn’t get to see more of the wedding and enjoy celebrating with my cousin on his big day.  Oh well.  Such is my life right now.  Anyway, here’s a picture of their beautiful wedding:

The weather was PERFECT.  When I thought of an early September wedding in Texas, I thought one word…HOT.  The weather was actually in the 80’s and cloudly…which was great for the wedding and pictures.  It couldn’t have been better.  After the wedding was over, we released Owen from his quiet corner of the yard and he loved running around greeting people.  Here he is with Mike, the groom.

And here’s my cousin, Lori, holding a very sleepy Molly.

And one more picture of the girl cousins:  (Lori, Heather, Lindsay, Melissa, Megan, and me)

We didn’t get any pictures at the reception because we stayed a very brief time.  Our children were starting to fall apart, and we decided we wanted Mike and Meghan to continue being the center of attention rather than the tantrum that we could feel brewing from our little wild man.  We realized it was time to go when he closed up a folding chair with his body inside…quite traumatic for him and definitely our cue to leave.  I do wish we could have stayed.  The reception was one of the most gorgeous I’ve ever been to.  I wish I’d taken a picture of the room…it was breathtaking.  Meghan, if you read my blog, you did a fantastic job planning your wedding.  It was perfect. 

Anyway…our tour of Texas was great.  We were really tired by the end of it.  Sharing a room with our children for 6 nights was less than ideal.  We did end up having suite-style hotel rooms which saved our lives considering Molly has decided that sleeping at night is not her thing.  I’ll write more about that later.  We loved spending time with family and really look forward to getting to see everyone again.