2009 In Review and 2010 Goals

2009 was a pretty good year.  I quit my job and had a baby.  I have made huge improvements in my ability to cook.  I learned how to bake bread and make ice cream.  I have made significant progress in eliminating processed foods from my diet.  I wasn't able to sew as much as I would have liked the last half of the year but I did make some great soft structured baby carriers and some nice maternity shirts.  I read 52 books this year, which I find amazing, because I honestly didn't feel like I had much time to read.  I read a lot about gardening and attempted a small container garden that was a little bit successful.  I didn't run much, but enough that I'm not so that I can still run a few miles without it being too difficult. 

For 2010 my main goal is to make an attitude adjustment.  I have been feeling grumpy, frustrated and stressed often.  It is mostly small things that get to me--taking an hour to get out the door, not having any time to myself, the house always being a mess despite feeling like I am constantly cleaning, being pulled in different directions all at once, not getting enough sleep.  So for 2010 I am going to try and put things in perspective and simplify. I want to enjoy the time I spend with my family.  If I get sometime to myself great, but I want to stop dwelling on what I would rather be doing and enjoy what I am doing.  It doesn't matter how long it takes us to get out of the house, and it doesn't matter if the house is not clean.  I'll do my best to get as much as I can done, but my best won't every be perfect, and that is ok.  This is going to be a hard goal.  Not getting decent sleep makes it hard to be in a good mood, but I am going to try. 

There are some things I'd like to do in 2010, but if I don't get to them it is fine.  I'd like to keep working on eliminating processed foods.  I'm going to work on reducing my sugar intake and contemplate eliminating sugar (except right now I can't possibly imagine life without ice cream).  I'm going to work on getting Selena to eat more variety.  I'd love to sew a pair of pants that look good and fit.  I want to do a vegetable and fruit garden.  I'd like to read at least 50 books again.  I want to run some more, and possibly do a half marathon (very slight possibility). 

Happy New Year!

Another Rave for 5 Minute Artisan Bread

I wrote about this bread the other day, but since then I actually got the book from the library (and have now ordered it for myself, plus the new 5 minute healthy bread) and made some other recipes with the dough and it is fantastic.  I apologize in advance for sharing this, but I made sticky buns from the dough and they are really, really delicious, and pretty easy.

I also made some Naan flat bread and have been making more pizza as well.  Usually when I make pizza I cook at a high temperature (500 degrees), I pre-bake the crust before putting on the toppings, and I let the dough rest before rolling/stretching it out.  But I've found that I can make a pretty decent pizza in 15 minutes by cooking at 450 (less time preheating the oven and reduces the chance of the fire detectors going off), not letting the dough rest, and not pre-baking the crust.  So for just a slight bit more inconvenience I can get a way better pizza than a frozen one in almost the same time.

Allie is 7 months

Our little cutie is doing good.  She is working on her cruising.  She's still a little wobbly and slow, but I'm sure in a few short weeks she'll be speedy.  She is also getting into the pulling all the books off the shelf stage.  I just can't wait till she actually wants to sit down and read a book.  Selena loves reading books, but it is hard to read to her and keep Allie happy at the same time.  It will be great when I can snuggle up with both of them and read. 

She got strep throat earlier this month.  It was very sad.  Babies should not get sick.  Fortunately she wasn't too upset as long as I held her so she spent most of the day in the backpack and slept all night in my arms.  She thought it was very luxurious to sleep in my arms and nurse all night long so she's been trying to continue doing that since.  She liked taking the medicine and she got all better.  But now she has a super runny nose and she uses every trick she knows to not let me wipe her nose, so she has spent the last couple days with a permanent booger encrusted on her nose. Yuck.

She's also been eating lots of new foods.  I'm being real lazy about it but she seems happy with what I'm giving her.  I just cut up whatever we're having into tiny pieces and let her have at it.  She manages to put lots in her lap, some in her mouth, but usually ends up gumming it and then spitting it out.  Which is fine with me.  She does manage to eat a bit, and I'm sure when she is ready she'll eat more. 

Christmas was fun.  I think she enjoyed all the wrapping paper.  She mostly got jammies and cloth diaper covers, but she has more toys than she needs, plus her sister got a ton and she can share with her.  It is funny though because Allie really likes toys.  Selena never really played with toys when she was little and still isn't too into them.  But Allie really enjoys crawling into the toy closet and finding all sorts of stuff.  I think she plays independently about the same amount as Selena does now, maybe even more.  She did get Sophie the Giraffe from her grandpa since I saw it blogged everywhere and she does like it but not excessively so.

She is still really grabby and abusive.  When you hold her she is constantly lunging for everything in sight and if she isn't doing that then she's giving you fish hooks, pinching your nose, pulling your hair, or just whapping you.  Sometimes when she is in the backpack she just sits there and pinches the back of my arms, which really hurts.  We definitely need to work on being gentle.  She's lucky she is so dang cute and you know she doesn't mean to hurt you.

She is getting more and more adamant about doing everything her sister is doing.  The other day Selena was painting and Allie was crying because I wouldn't let her paint too.  What baby cries because they aren't allowed to paint?  She likes brushing her teeth too.  She gets very mad if I don't bring her into the bathroom let her brush her teeth with her sister.  The other day she had a toothbrush she was playing with and she kept trying to brush my teeth with it, so I took it and pretended to brush my teeth, and she got so happy and gave me the biggest smile.  It was really cute. 

Picture Book Recommendations

Here are a couple books Selena has enjoyed:

Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale and Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity - Mo Willems is a funny author. His Elephant and Piggy series are good too. But these two books are really cute. We had to look through Selena's stuffed animals to find her and Allie their own Knuffle Bunnies.
Good Night, Good Knight - I've been surprised at how good some of the easy readers are. This is a cute story about some dragons who need the Good Knight's help to get to bed. The dragons are cute and it has some fun repetition in the story.

Blog Makeover

I gave my blog a little makeover. I think I like the minimalist look, but I'm not sure. I think that it would be fairly easy to add a background to this template if I want to. It was kind of fun dinking around with the blogger templates. I changed some font sizes and widened it a bit from the default.

Selena Update

Selena has been getting really cute in her imaginative play. She's been taking her toys and creating extensive conversations between them. She enjoys playing in her kitchen making pretend meals. Floyd was asking her to make him some bear cookies and she said, "We don't have any bear cookies. I'll make you some pretend ones in my kitchen." Both her and Allie got strep throat last week so we had a couple trips to the doctor so she started pulling out her headphones and using them as both a stethoscope and as a light to peer into her patient's ears and mouth. She uses Allie as her patient and says to Allie, "I'm Selena the doctor, and you are the patient." Then she tells Allie to open up her mouth so she can see how perfect it is. Completely adorable. She has also pretended she was the teacher and Allie and I were her students. She had us do art time.

As I mentioned she got sick last week. It was really sad. She had a fever, a sore throat, and an awful cough. Fortunately it wasn't the flu so we could get antibiotics that made her better fast. But for some reason I was kind of lame and didn't get her a shot, but chose to do an oral liquid for 10 days instead. It has been very hard to convince her to take the medicine. Lesson learned.

We have been cooking a lot lately. Most of the time she loves to help. Unfortunately her style of help is sometimes the opposite. She is frequently pouring flour into stuff she shouldn't or scooping ingredients out of the bowl or reaching in and eating the mix. So when she put a huge chunk of ginger in her mouth the other day I didn't feel too sorry for her. She also created her first recipe. Casadias are one of her favorite things to eat and I was nursing Allie and apparently she was hungry. So she goes to the fridge and starts taking tortillas, cheese, and much to my dismay eggs out. I'm yelling at her to stop and she continues to grab a box of eggs and hold it vertically, carry it over to the table, take the eggs out (thankfully there were only two left) and roll them across the table. She said she wanted casadias with egg. Despite my frustration with her in not stopping when I told her to, and getting stuff out of the refrigerator without asking I was pretty impressed that she came up with that all on her own.

She's pretty excited for Christmas. Getting our tree was fun for her. She really was looking forward to putting the angel on top. Every time she goes into the living room she points out the tree, notes how pretty it is, and talks about the angel on top. We've been recording Christmas movies on TV and watching them. She really likes "Rudolf with the shiny nose." I think she has watched it at least 5 times already.

Potty training is going good. She does really good at home and for short outings, but when we go visit family for the day or overnight she'll have a lot of accidents and then it takes a few days before she is back in the groove. But her diaper has been staying dry most nights and she will even wake up and go to the potty in the middle of the night.

Other random cute things she has said:

She just got finished watching an episode of Blue's Clues about opposites. She really doesn't like wearing clothes and most of the time she just takes them off, this time she provided an excuse. She said she was doing the opposite of me and since I was wearing clothes, she needed to take hers off.

Floyd loves to tease, especially me. One of the things he likes to tease me about is that I eat the scraps from meals. So Selena eats some of her lunch and is done and tells me that she saved some scraps for me. Or she'll just be talking and say that her and dad eat the food and then me and Dyna get the scraps.

Also influenced by her dad she will tell me that she needs to brush her teeth really good so she doesn't get cavities like me. (I recently had a cavity filled, but I have had far fewer cavities than Floyd has so I think this is a very unfair comparison, but it does get her to brush her teeth well.)

If you say something is hot, she'll say, "It's hot, but not THAT hot." She pretty much does this with anything you say. "It's scary, but not THAT scary." Then one day I caught myself saying it to Floyd. He said the cookies I made would get hard and I said, "They'll get hard, but not that hard." I'm not sure if she got it from me, or if I was copying her.

She calls Allie a tomato monster baby. Except she doesn't enunciate the first T in tomato so it sounds like a homato monster baby. Not sure where she got that from, but its funny.

Easy Way to Bake Your Own Bread

So this has been blogged all over the world, but I guess I'll join in too. This bread really is simple. I admit I have messed up this recipe the first time I made it (I used old yeast) and I was a little annoyed that all the blogs I read said it was idiot proof. But it really is easy and it takes only a few minutes a day and it tastes really good. Here is a link to the 5 Minute Artisan Bread Recipe. I've been trying to eat less bread, especially stuff that isn't whole grain, as it isn't good for blood sugar levels, but I have decided that if there is something I'm trying to eat less of and I make it myself then it is fair game. ;)

This bread tastes great. It has a slight sourdough taste. It is very convenient to always have dough in the fridge. Whenever I make a meal that would taste good with bread I can just pop it in the oven. It also makes good french toast. I keep my dough in a ceramic bowl with saran wrap over it with a small cut in it. I also took the suggestion of not cleaning the bowl between batches to get a head start on a sourdough flavor.

I have also used the dough for pizza. It isn't as good as this recipe, but since I always have this dough in the fridge it is more convenient. I'm impatiently waiting for the author's books at the library (see little amazon ads). I have heard there is a good cinnamon roll recipe and I also want to try to make sandwich bread. I would love to find a fairly easy recipe to make bread like Dave's Killer Bread. We spend a small fortune on that stuff every month.

The other great thing about this recipe is that it provides instant toddler entertainment. Selena loves to roll the dough, so I give her a chunk and a rolling pin and she is entertained for at least 20 minutes. We even used cookie cutters to cut out dough shapes and baked them for bread sticks.

Allie's Half Birthday

Allie isn't a newborn anymore. She is a big moving baby. She started crawling, pulling herself to standing, eating solid foods, and getting teeth this month. It is amazing how they can learn so much in such a short amount of time.

She is an opinionated little girl and lets you know it. I can't believe how much she can communicate without talking. If she is on the ground and you stop to talk to her and look at her, you better pick her up. If you walk away, she lets you know her displeasure. She wants to grab and mouth everything in sight. If her sister has it that makes it even more desirable. She is constantly lunging out of my arms to try and get what she wants.

It is fun to see the absolute adoration of her sister already. She is always tracking Selena, watching her play, and wants to join in. Selena is fairly accommodating, but is also known to throw fits, or yell at Allie to stop slobbering on her toys. But other times she'll bring Allie toys and tell her to put it in her "baby mouth". Allie loves to play chase with Selena. I hold her and we run around the circle in our house chasing Selena, but Selena is so fast she laps us which Allie thinks is hilarious.

At the beginning of this month when she wasn't crawling but could scoot a bit it was funny because she was lying on Selena's bed (mattress on the floor) and was trying to play chase with me. She was facing away from me, but would turn around and smile and then start to giggle and turn back around and do her best to "run away" from me, but in reality only managing to scoot a few inches. So adorable.

She now can fit in the soft structured backpack carrier I made without sinking inside it and will be perfectly content back there for long periods of time. I had been putting her on my back a bit for the past couple months, but she was a bit small and would "fall" inside it so she didn't really like being back there for too long. But now she does and often falls asleep back there. I use it occasionally while shopping or around the house since it makes it real easy to cook and clean as long as Selena is occupied. I occasionally will give Selena a turn back there as well, but she is quite a bit heavier.

Today I swore that she signed for milk, but Floyd is accusing me of interpreting a random hand movement as a sign. But I don't know; it seemed pretty deliberate. But I've only shown her the milk sign a half dozen times or so... I don't know. I'm going to maintain she did sign it, and she is brilliant. :)

Her first teeth are poking through on the bottom and she is biting me a lot while nursing. Selena only bit a few times and stopped after a firm NO. Allie isn't cooperating so well.

We've given her a little bit of real food. I am really not too excited about feeding solids though. It is so messy. But we gave her some avocado, banana, and sweet potato. I also occasionally let her suck on an apple slice or a carrot. But I made a batch of sweet potato puree and froze it today so at least now I have some homemade convenience food.

I wish she would start consolidating her naps more. She still naps 3 - 5 times a day. Maximum of 45 minutes, often only 20 or 30. It makes for a long day when Selena doesn't nap at all and Allie's naps are so short that there isn't much of a break. A few times she has taken two long naps and those days have been so nice. With Selena I was able to work on longer naps, but when I try to coax Allie back to sleep I often have Selena or the dog come and check on us and thus completely waking her up.

Toddler Antics

Selena has always been a little monkey. Climbing on things. Jumping off things. But the older she gets the more acrobatic her antics become. She loves making dad be a jungle gym and climbs all over him. She also loves to ride on his shoulders. She likes climbing and flipping in and out of Allie's pack-n-play. We still go to Toddler Gym at the Y and she likes walking on the beam (the real sized ones), holding my hand, and then jumping off the edge. She also likes swinging upside down on the bars pretending to be a bat.

Her play is becoming more imaginative. She likes to play with her stuffed animals and baby doll and she makes them have little conversations. She likes blocks, and we build multiple story houses for her toys. She also really likes TV and her favorite show is Blue's Clues and she also likes to watch Kipper clips on youtube. I dislike her watching as much TV as she does, but it does make life much easier. I can have her watch a Kipper clip or two while I put Allie down for a nap and it prevents her from coming into the room and waking Allie. Or if I need to pickup the house I can have her watch an episode of Blue's Clues and get my chores done without her whining, or making messes faster than I can clean them up. It will be nice when she can read on her own, then she can read a book instead of watch TV.

For rainy day activities we've started doing some toddler yoga. I got Yoga Kids\ dvd from Netflix and got the books Itsy Bitsy Yoga for Toddlers and Preschoolers and Little Yoga: A Toddler's First Book of Yoga. So far she likes the yoga dvd and the Little Yoga book. I haven't tried the Itsy Bitsy Yoga with her much. But she seems to enjoy it and it gives us something to do.

Halloween was fun. She dressed up as a pumpkin and was very excited about it. She remembered trick-or-treating last year and was excited to do it again this year. We just went around our cul-de-sac and she got plenty of candy. We've been slowly doling it out as bribes to go potty.

I'd like to say she is potty trained, but its still a touch and go sort of thing. Some days great, other days not so much. We're making progress, but it is very slow. We've tried potty charts, rewards, etc and they work to an extent but not completely. I think emphasizing that she is in control of when she goes and not showing any reaction when she has an accident is what is working the best right now. I really wished I had waited longer before we first started. With Allie I am going to wait till she can pull her pants on and off by herself. With Selena I was going to wait for this, but I thought it was a long ways off, but it really wasn't, and I was anxious to get her potty trained before the baby came.

We have a new bedtime routine with her and it has worked out well. She now lets Dad get her dressed, read her bedtime stories, brush her teeth, and tuck her in, while I put Allie to sleep. Then I come in and snuggle a bit and sometimes I will leave before she is all the way asleep, which is a huge milestone. Now if she would just stay in her bed longer through the night... But I'll take what I can get.

Dealing with new behavior issues has been a challenge. It seems every few months she hits a new behavior stage and I get really stressed trying to figure out how to deal with it, and then I figure it out and relax a bit. Thankfully running away has not been a problem for a while. (Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself by writing that.) I'm not sure if she outgrew it or restraining her in the stroller as soon as she bolted was the key to fixing that problem. Right now tantrum/crying when she doesn't get what she wants, hitting, spitting, sharing and not doing what she is asked are what we are working on. I am very lucky to have a private message board I belong to with a wonderful group of moms to get support and ideas from. There are a bunch of us with 2 - 3 year olds and babies so we are all in the same boat. Specifically two pieces of advice I have gotten that have worked really well are for not picking up her messes when I ask her to and for dealing with spitting. When she says no when I ask her to pick something up, I physically take her hands and help her pickup what I want her to. As soon as I do that she picks the rest of the stuff up happily and willingly. It is like magic! To deal with the spitting I take her to the sink and have her spit in the sink over and over till she is tired and bored of spitting. So I have small successes and I am working really hard on maintaining my patience and teaching her acceptable ways to behave.

5 Months and Almost Crawling

Allie is 5 months old and is working so hard on crawling. She is up on all fours and moves her legs up, sometimes gets her knees off the ground in a sort of downward facing dog yoga pose, but she hasn't quite figured out how to move her hands so she either ends up scooting backwards or landing on her chest. She also has a move where she is almost getting to a sitting position, which is funny because she can't really sit. When you put her in a sitting position she tips over after a few seconds.

She is very grabby. While you are holding her she will lunge for everything near her reach. When she gets something she studies it hard until she drops it and goes for something new. She also is already very into what her sister has. Whatever Selena is playing with is at the top of her must grab list.

She's a bit ticklish and you can get her giggling pretty good by tickling under her arms. Lifting her over your head is another good way to get her smiling.

Sleep is a struggle. I really don't understand why it has to be so hard. Sleeping is fun! Why don't these kids understand that? She rarely naps for longer than 45 minutes and I really think she, me and Selena would be a bit happier if she would nap a bit longer, but she won't. It doesn't matter if she's napping on her bed, in my arms, in a baby carrier, in the stroller, or in the car seat she always wakes up after 45 minutes. Every once in a while I can get her back down by nursing her right when she wakes up, but more often than not that doesn't work either. Night time sleep hasn't been great either. She's had a few really rough nights where she was awake for a couple hours in the middle of the night, mostly due to the fact that Selena is waking her up. Makes for a tired and grumpy mommy.