Spring Cleaning

A while back I wrote about Simple Mom on my favorite things blog, and this week she has inspired me to get involved in some spring cleaning!

Here are some before and after shots of Day One's assignment: Clean All Flat Surfaces

Book shelf in sun room before:

Book shelf in sun room after:

Desk in library before:
Desk in library after:

Top of filing cabinet before:
Top of filing cabinet after:
I also cleaned off the kitchen counters, dining room table, the two coffee tables, the two speakers in the living room, and the speaker contraption at the top of the stairs. It took me two days to do it all, but it was well worth it! I hope that spring cleaning fever is contagious and this inspires you to do a little cleaning of your own!

Cooking with Mommy

So the last couple of times that Ethan has wanted to "Eat!" before dinner is ready I've had him pull over a chair to the counter so he can help me cook. I know one time he could just watch and play with measuring cups, but tonight he really helped me make french toast. He broke the eggs with a fork and then helped me flip the bread after it was in the custard mixture! I know that when we have more kids this might become more difficult but I really enjoy this sweet time to pass on my love of the kitchen.

Speaking of meals I have been inspired by simple mom to use my google calendar to plan my meals, and by my friend Betsy to plan two weeks of meals at once. We power cooked on Saturday morning and I'll be using some of those meals next week, but here is what I have on the docket for the next two weeks:

• Today: French Toast with fresh strawberries and sausage pie
  
• Tuesday: Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas (using leftover shredded cheddar)
  
• Wednesday: We might go to a cook out this day, but if not we are having Mean Soup
  
• Thursday: Manicotti (one pan for MOPS and one pan for Philip)
  
• Friday: Going out for our anniversary!
  
• Saturday: Pizza (movie night)
  
• Sunday: Leftover manicotti
  
• Monday: Herbed Chicken from our cooking day
  
• Tuesday: Chicken Risotto (inspired by Betsy)
  
• Wednesday: Ethan and I will eat out (Philip out of town)
  
• Thursday: Fish Packets with rice (just Ethan and I again)
  
• Friday: Hot dogs and Mac-n-cheese (Movie night)

I may copy Betsy and just repeat this menu for the last half of May, but I haven't decided yet.

I do have a quandary and I wanted to know how other moms dealt with it. I have a weekly grocery budget that I go off of, but I struggle when I prepare a meal for an event. How do you balance your normal grocery needs, plus another meal for an event? Betsy brought up the good point that when you cook from your freezer that counts as a "free"meal. I also noticed that this week one of my planned meals may be bumped to next week because of the cook out. My real issue this week is that I power cooked (which used up my normal budget), and then I also have an event to bring a meal to. I hate to use my freezer meals the week after I make them because it doesn't feel like I've gotten ahead at all. Please let me know how you deal with potlucks, budgets and such!

Happenings.....

As I am winding down what may have been the busiest 8 months of my life, I am looking forward to being able to post here more often!

The past few weeks Ethan's vocabulary and verbal skills have grown by leaps and bounds. He went from using possessives (Mommy's car) to now putting together other two and even three word phrases (More milk please). There is still a good size pause between milk and please but it is super cute. He is also calling Yoda and Abbey (our neighbor) by their recognizable names.



While you await my new posts please go and check out the pictures of the gardens that my wonderful husband built for me! I will take new pictures every week so that you can see the plants grow and change!

I will also be adding pictures on our Shutterfly site.

Easter Sunday

We spent the day at the Jawdy's house and I posted all of our pictures here. Enjoy!

I hope you all had a blessed Easter. I only have three more weeks of class at Master's Monday and six more weeks of work! Expect more blog posts then....

Nanny visits and Easter Eggs

Helping Daddy in the garden!

So my Nanny came to visit this week and we had so much fun! Last Saturday Ethan helped Philip and I in the garden and then we dyed eggs! I figured I would not try to stop him from making a mess. I just gave him two eggs and set the two least-stainable colors in front of him. He had a great time and this fingers were yellow until that night when he took a bath.

Then our neighbor Abbey helped him hide eggs in the backyard. I took video of his hunt but they are on my camcorder and they are not easy to download. I've uploaded pictures from my Nanny's visit onto our Shutterfly site, so you can see more pictures there! What was really sweet about her visit was that she got to stay home with him a few times while I worked or when Philip and I went on a date. Since Ethan has a Nanny Sara, we were telling him to call my Nanny "Nan Michelle" (just like I call my Dad's Nanny "Nan Ruby"). I haven't gotten it on tape but what he says comes out more like "She-shell". It is really cute!

Potty Report: We have gone #2 in the potty once and for that he got a Cars notepad that he can use to collect future #2 stickers (Thank you Allison for the sticker idea). We also peepee in the potty about twice a day and he is still enjoying getting M&Ms for that.

P in the Potty!

Well, we are yet again moving on to another step towards becoming a grown up boy! This all started when we had my pediatrician Dr.Brice in to talk to our MOPS group. He mentioned that a lot of the milestones that we take for granted (walk by 1, potty train by 2 or 3) are very culturally influenced. He mentioned that his last practice was located in a real rural town and that there babies were expected to walk by 8-10 months and potty train by 1.5! Then, two Sundays ago on my "run around town with out a kid" trip I picked up a potty ring at Target for about five dollars. I figured that we had talked about the potty for long enough, let's actually potty!

For the first couple of days whenever I was changing his diaper or clothes I would offer him two mini M&Ms if he would just sit on the potty. "Mnms?" Anything for those! So for a couple of days we just sat on the potty, talked about peepeeing, got our two "mnms" and grunted a little bit. Then I went to Duck Duck Goose on Wednesday and I got a Baby Bjorn Potty Chair for $5.00! When I got home Ethan was really excited to sit on his new potty and low and behold he actually went peepee. For this he recieved five whole mini M&Ms. Since then he has gone on the potty about once a day at least and I have transitioned so that M&Ms are only earned if something is produced. I don't consider this potty training yet, I like to think of this stage as more of a training for our training! Until the actual traingin begins I will continue asking and rewarding (I figure this part can't hurt) and when we are home in the mornings I will especially try to catch a number 2 in the potty (#2 in the potty = great)!

Here is what I have in mind for the actual training: PLAN A (I guess I'll call this one ambitious.) I will have a free week at the beginning of the summer and I think we can use that week to start our ambitious plan! Here are the keys to my plan: I have about a package and a half left of regular diapers to use up and then I plan to transition to g-diapers whenever he is not at preschool. These allow Ethan to feel wetter right when he goes and they have cloth exteriors so they seem like a logical tranistion tool. Then on May 30th Ethan will put on big boy underwear and I suppose we will hang out at the house for that week! My friend Allison just posted about her progress and I think I will steal her stickers idea for the actual training. I see some Cars stickers (or temporary tattoos for #2s) in my son's future! We could even get some bonuses for accident free days or half days!

I'll keep everyone posted on our progress....this could get really interesting!

Camping and a Big Boy Bed!!

So when Philip and I got back on Thursday he offered to take Friday off to be with us. We decided to take this opportunity to go camping with Ethan for the first time. What stinks is that my camera had died sometime on Wednesday at the Boudreauxs and so the only pictures I got were from my phone. What really stinks is that I didn't know how good the pictures from my phone were and so I only took two pictures. We went camping up at the Obed wild and scenic river campsite. One of my favorite things about this campsite is that it has a river that runs right near most of the campsites so there is a nice white noise effect (more on that later). Philip and Ethan walked down to the river and Philip was showing Ethan how to skip rocks into the water.
He could have thrown rocks into the river for hours. He even pitched a fit when we told him it was time to go back to the camp site.

Here he is by the fire with his sippy cup.

We did buy him a sleeping bag before we left Knoxville and he did great in it! When it was time for bed I changed him into his pajamas and told him to lay down in his sleeping bag. I think that the noise of the river helped him, but within 15 minutes he was fast asleep. The only problem with our little excursion was that the low that night was 31 degrees! I barely slept because the whole night I kept thinking that Ethan was cold. In the morning when he woke up he did not want to get out of his bag and when I stuck my hand in he was nice and toasty! Of course then we had to get up to eat breakfast and such. I dressed him all the clothes that I had brought with us but we still couldn't keep his little hands warm. Finally at the end he would stand by the fire for short periods of time, but ultimately we packed up and went home.

Even though it was cold and we had to leave early we had so much fun and we are looking forward to our next camping trip! When we got back on Saturday I decided that with such great sleeping habits it was time to move to a big boy bed. Try as we might, we could not find the guard rail for the crib. I know that it is in the house somewhere, but we have yet to find it! I went ahead and converted his crib anyway and he did fall out the first night, but he hasn't since. For those who think that sounds barbaric please know that his mattress is less than two feet high.