2 etc

Just start with something small and mundane.

That's what I tell myself when I sit down to blog and instantly feel overwhelmed.  There are 100 posts in my head.  1000s of things I don't want to forget.  And then I sit down and find that posting on facebook or reading other people's blogs is just so much easier than writing my own.

So.

I just put lasagna in the oven for dinner.  It already smells good.  I don't know what I'm going to have with it cause I think my lettuce is bad and so my salad idea isn't going to work.  I guess probably some frozen veggies.  We'll keep it simple.

Anyway.

The biggest thing I should blog about is my sweet Elizabeth turning two years old.  TWO.  It's curious, how different it feels for her to be 2 than it did for Abby.  I have to remind myself that E is, in fact, NOT a baby anymore.  She can do so many things.  She knows so many things.  More than I give her credit for.  I suppose that's the curse of having an older sister who is also somewhat of a talker herself.  I forget just how big E really is.  She's growing up fast.

She had her 2-year check up the other day.  You may recall, my girls don't do well at the doctor's office.  Kyle and I have tried to do all the tricks to get kids to like the doctor.  We talk, we play, we roleplay, we prep, we reinforce, etc.....but that doesn't matter.  Most of our appointments still end with a note on their chart that says "partial exam due to anxiety" For real.  We're the family the nurses talk about and compare others too.

All that to say - E did amazing for her visit.  I was shocked.  She complied, she didn't really cry for her shot.  She did cry during the blood draw, but was fine once it was over.  It was...surprising.  And I wasn't the only one who was surprised.  All the nurses commented on how "good" and "quiet' the girls were today.  They got stickers from one nurse, they got a book from the doctor, they got fingernail polish from another nurse.  They got a post-doctor trip for donuts from mom.  I was quite pleased that the visit went so well.  Oh, and right when the doc asked me about how many words E has, she pipes up with "what're you guys talking about?"  It was *perfect* timing and the doc was happily impressed with that sentence.

E is 60% for height and 66% for weight.  Or is it the other way around?  28lbs, that's all I remember.

Earlier in the week, we had E's party.  A general transportation theme since the girl loves all things with wheels and wings.  We had our playgroup over to our house for snacks, pizza, ice cream...and lots of noise and toys and general craziness.  With adults included, there were about 30 folks running around our place...which is kinda a lot.  But, it was fun.  E had a great time.

So.  At two years old E is:

- in size 2T for most things and some 3T shirts
- size 7 shoes
- size 4 diapers
- 34" tall
- 28 lbs

- her vocabulary is good and she's fairly easy to understand - although she certainly has babyish enunciation of many words.
- she can go up stairs fine and can come down forwards or backwards.
- she's now forward facing in the car (we flipped her just before her birthday and I still felt guilty)
- she sleeps in the bottom bunk bed.
- she's not very good at falling asleep at night (she'd much rather get up and keep playing). She falls asleep closer to 8 most nights.  She wakes up between 5:30 and 6:30 most days.
- she likes most foods.  Her favorite veggies are green beans, peas, and broccoli.  She likes carrots and tomatoes.  She loves all fruit.  She doesn't like guacamole or tuna.
- she loves her sister, so much.
- she's also more aggressive than her sister and will hit and slap and bite if she's angry (whereas Abby never hits, but instead will just melt into tears)
- as antagonistic as she can be, she hates seeing Abby sad and will go out of her way to find a way to make Abs happy.
- she responds well to time-outs and goes willingly when needed.
- she loves to paint and any other activity that is messy.  The messier the better.  Playing in a sandbox full of sand and paint and glitter and mud while blowing bubbles would be her heaven.
- she can sing twinkle twinkle the best of her songs.
- she can count to 10, but needs help.  Most of the time she counts "one, two, one, two, ten!"
- I think she knows most of her letters, but not all of them.  She gets excited when she sees one she knows somewhere.
- she loves her cars.  They are her favorite toy.
- she likes to point to my belly and ask if it's the baby...but I'm not so sure how much she really understands that there's, y'know, an actual baby coming.  

That's E in a nutshell.  here are a bunch of random pics.

day one of being flipped forward

bed head 

birthday party!

morning breakfast with mom 

party favors

birthday trip for ice cream

her first ice cream cone 

(we don't really eat as much ice cream as it seems)

party decor 

mini me

like seafood?

party stuff

love this picture. 

hiding from mommy-monster

post-doc donuts

party food

clean eating

I've had a few friends recently bring my attention to the way I/we eat.  My friend Hannah probably started it with her successful switch to the Paleo diet. It got me to researching such things.  After a lot of reading, I realized a few important things. 

1) Paleo isn't really for me - not so much because I absolutely couldn't do without grains and dairy and legumes etc (although, yeah, that *would* be really hard) but because I just don't feel the need to eliminate them from my diet or my kid's diets.  We really like green beans around here, and milk, and oatmeal.  And I'm cool with that.  However, it did bring my attention to how much other stuff I was buying. 

2) I do want to eat better.  We, as a family, tend to go through cycles with food.  We go from pretty healthy to super healthy to having weeks of convenience eating.  Winter is the hardest with a more limited selection of produce and fruits and less energy to deal with it all.  Spring and Summer, by contrast, are just teaming with freshness - so I figure now is the perfect time to start making a few changes. 

3) Clean eating.  This is the term that I was missing from my vocabulary, but was trying to pinpoint.  The first thing you'll read is that clean eating means something different for everyone.  For me - it means eating foods that fresh, whole, and have no ingredients that I don't know to pronounce.  I'm making 2 big exceptions here.  The first is that I'm not buying "clean" bread and tortillas yet - I'm buying relatively healthy ones still - but bread is too hard for me to add to my clean list right now and I need to start manageable.  The second exception is that I'm not gonig to throw out all my "bad" food. I paid for that frozen lasagna in my freezer - so we're going to eat it.  The change is that I'll stop buying them in the future.  I suspect it'll take a few months to really weed out all the old stuff - but that's ok.  Slow and steady.  

Love a newly stocked pantry. 

 Still got some not-so-great foods in there, but I bet it's 75% clean food. 

So, I will fully admit that this is me nesting.  It feels like it.  I don't have a strong desire right now to clean out my closets and scrub my baseboards with a toothbrush (yet - that phase may still come) but this clean eating idea is exciting and is giving me a satisfaction about providing for my little ones.  I have this week off of work for April vacation, so I have more time than usual to cook and plan and I'm feeling very optimistic about maintaining this.  It all just feels good.  The word that keeps coming to mind is "empowering"

No more sugary insta-oats.  I'm making them homemade from now on. 

The other part of this that I find exciting is that this is providing me so many opportunities to teach Abby about food - more than we've done in a while.  It would make me so happy and so proud if she grew up with a very healthy sense about food.  She loves helping me cook, and this plan requires a bit more planning and prepping and cooking - so we've been doing more of that together.  It's been nice.  

omelet muffins - prep.

 omelet muffins - done. 

I froze a bunch of these - 1 min in the microwave and it's a quick breakfast option.

And finally - even though I'm purposely taking things slow - I've found that cutting out processed foods and things with weird ingredients has been really pretty easy.  Most of our dinners haven't changed too much.  My grocery list wasn't severely altered.  I've still been able to coupon - which is key for us.

So, it's going well.  I like doing it.  I think it'll become easier and easier.  Thanks to Hannah and Bobbi especially for getting this ball rolling.  

ruby red through and through.

I won the BJ's strawberry lottery this week with a perfectly ripe bunch

a quote from E

Last night, E came into my room at 1:30am.  

She's been doing pretty well staying in bed, so I was a little surprised.  I met her at the door, but before I could say "back to bed," she was saying, "I don't wike it mama.  I don't wike it my bed.  My mouf fell down.  My mouf fell down off my buck-bed"

I had no idea what that meant.

Until, of course, I went into the room and saw vomit all over the floor, bed rail, and sheets.  

ah.  Ok.  Got it.  Your mouth fell down.  Indeed.  

I managed to change her gross sheets and clean everything up and put on new ones without waking up Abby. So, that was good.  

E seems fine.  She fell asleep at the table during lunch...I think because she was up from 1-3 last night while we dealt with her bed and got her back to sleep.  So who knows why she was sick.  Hopefully it really was just a fluke because changing the bedding on bunk beds while you're 7.5 months pregnant is not my favorite thing in the world.