100% Boy

JD and I went to the grocery store yesterday and picked up a few essential items. It was already pretty cold, so JD was in his fleece and hat and some sweatpants. Perfect for going Krogering.

There was a nice Kroger lady where the carts were who got us a cart when we walked in. She chatted with JD and asked him how old he was, which he loves to tell people. He also showed her his muscles and how big he was. And the whole time I was calling him JD. But as we walked away, this nice lady said, "Wow, she is really smart for one!"

That is the absolute FIRST time that anyone has EVER mistaken JD for a girl. He just doesn't look or act like a girl, not when he was born and certainly not now.

So just to make sure there aren't any mistakes out in blogworld, I am including some recent pictures that show just how much boy my son really is!

JD thought it was funny when his foot got caught in the tractor.

Playing with the John Deere tractor that he got from his cousins in Indiana, who own a working dairy farm.

My boy can put away some food at meal times, especially spaghetti!

Take It Easy

This week has been a little rough for our house - even more than normal.

On Monday, we had such a good time on the playdate with JD's friends, but when he came home, I thought he looked a little more pale than normal. I chalked it up to too much fun with friends.

On Tuesday, he woke up from his nap with a little runny nose, but nothing serious for a 21-month-old.

By Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, he was up all night coughing (and I mean all night). None of our usual tricks helped - Vicks Baby Rub, Humidifier, Vicks Cough liquid in the humidifier, etc.

On Wednesday, my little guy was a snotty, coughing, drooling mess! He was coughing so hard that he actually gagged himself and lost his breakfast and snack all over me. Blech. He had a tiny temperature. All signs were pointing to a cold, but he wasn't really "acting" sick (moaning, laying his pitiful head on my chest, etc). So, on a mommy instinct, I reached into his little mouth (please don't bite mommy's finger) and sure enough, his last two "two-year-molars" were popping in on top.

So even though it has turned out to be nothing too serious, there has been a lot of this.

And this.

And finally this.

He is finally not coughing so much and is starting to dry out some. The "prongs" (don't know the dental word for it) of the molars have poked through, so even though we have a long road (the body of the molars are the toughest to break through), when it is over - we won't have any more teething until the Three Year Molars!!! Hooray!

Playdate with JD's Buddies

JD is starting to make some friends, even at this early age! He especially loves the ladies - I'm not sure how that is going to translate as he gets older.

Yesterday, our BBC friend Tricia and her daughter Margaret invited JD and I over to play with Katie and her son Cole and Jenny and her daughter Anna Claire.

They have a great house for playdates and have a whole room currently dedicated to Margaret's toys! JD had a ball!!

After a yummy snack, we headed outside and played with bubbles in the yard.

As many of you know, my son is very impulsive (and FAST) and will run off in a split second, paying no attention to Mommy who is screaming "NO!! STOP!!" Yesterday, JD decided to run over to the play car, after he got tired of looking at the dogs. No problem, except there was a beautiful pool in between the dogs and the car! At the VERY last second, right before he was about to go headlong into the pool, JD slightly turned directions to run around the pool instead of into it. Whew!! I was so close to taking a very early swim in their pool!!

The kids all had a really good time playing together. There weren't really too many battles over sharing toys or anything! Everyone took turns and played pretty nicely together.

We tried to get a picture of them all together, but that turned out to be nearly impossible with this group!

We can't wait to hang out with our buddies again!!

Love of Food

I have never been shy about my love for food. I love tasty meals, both simple and complex.

I am so lucky because my husband LOVES to cook! Don't get me wrong, he likes to eat it as much as he likes to cook. But he actually enjoys putting a meal together from scratch.

I'm a recipe girl and always have been. I follow a recipe to the letter and usually it comes out pretty well.

I've mentioned before that Jon cooks with our brother in law Josh and our friend Jordan from time to time. And they have come up with some really great meals for us!!

A little project that they have been helping Jordan with is called Food Creates Community. It comes from the idea that local, seasonal ingredients can be used to create a delicious meal to bring together a group of people. They started this idea back in the fall and it turned out really well!

Jordan is about to do another round, featuring Italian food, just before Valentine's Day! If you are interested in participating or just reading more about the Food Creates Community concept, you can check it out here.

Now I'm hungry just thinking about it!

JD's BarcaLounger

JD has a new favorite spot these days.




We brought out a portable booster/high chair for Miss Kenna when we babysat last week, so both kids could eat with us at the same time.

After she left, we moved the chair in the corner of the kitchen, since I intended to put it back in the storage closet later.


JD fell in love with his little chair and moved it personally to his favorite spot in the living room...perfect view for the television, of course.

The chair design has a reclined back, so he can just relax, while enjoying a favorite snack and his favorite tv shows. He insists on the tray being attached too and has figured out how to climb in and out around it.



He's eating a tortilla in this one and thought it was fun to let it dangle out of his mouth for awhile.

He's just perfecting those man skills...

Pizza Friday

During the years that Jon was on shift as a firefighter, they had several meal traditions. Pizza Fridays were always my favorite!

My husband is a pretty talented pizza chef and makes his dough and sauce from scratch. It is always a treat when Jon makes up homemade pizza because we don't get to do it very often!

This past Friday, Jon made us up some of his yummy pizza. Our niece Kenna was coming over for the evening, so we knew we would be staying in for the night.

We both knew that JD loved pizza, but I think he enjoyed Daddy's homemade variety the most!

Kenna was content to eat puffs and cheerios while we chowed down on a margarita pizza and a prosciutto and purple onion pizza.

Afterward, I played with the kids while Jon cleaned up the kitchen! Sounds like a great day for me!!

Is This Just the Beginning??

I wasn't really sure I wanted to blog about this because it may make me look like a bad parent. But I decided that in a few years, I may look back on this and laugh.

Last night, we were gathered around the table for a family meal - nutritious and delicious - which consisted of skirt steak and southwestern salad fixings. Neither of these items seemed to be appetizing to my son, so he ate some mac & cheese with veggies mixed in (the only way he will eat veggies right now) and an apple.

After his mac & cheese, he took some bites of his apple and then proceeded to whine about wanting bites and threw the apple around on his tray (like a ball). So we took away the apple and cut off a couple of bites and put it in front of him.

He played with the bites for a couple of minutes and then decided that he really wanted the whole apple. And proceeded to throw a huge tantrum to make sure that we understood that. We told him that if he ate the bites (to demonstrate that he was actually hungry and not just wanting to play with the apple) then he could have the apple back.

We decided, as good parents, that he is old enough now to not get his way just because he is screaming and crying, and that this was a battle of the wills.

Ding, ding, ding... BATTLE OF THE WILLS (sounds like a new gameshow on Fox)

Round 1:
Child: (Screaming and Crying) BAPPLE, BAPPLE!

Parents: (Calm and Patient) Not until you eat your two bites. Let's count them together - One, Two. Then you can have your apple.

Child: (Mucus and spit flying everywhere) NOOOOOO!!!! (Screaming continues)

Round 1 Winner - Too close to tell. Child didn't eat the apple bites, but parents didn't give in.

Round 2:
Child: (Crying loudly with red splotchy face) Car! Play! (Changing the subject)

Parents: (The picture of patience) You can play with your car after you eat the apple bites.

Child: NOOOOO!!! CAAAAAARRRRR!!!! (On the verge of hysteria)

Round 2 Winner - Leaning toward the parents on this one. After all, they did pick up on the subtle subject changing tactic of the sly child.

Round 3:
Parents: (Turning on favorite Wiggles show and bringing out cheese) Why don't we try to eat some cheese with the apple bites?

Child: (Calming down) Diddles! Cheese! (Eating cheese and watching Wiggles)

Parents: (Sneaking a bite of apple into child's mouth and waiting until it is chewed and swallowed) See! You ate your apple bite!

Child: (Looking around confusedly) Diddles? Play?

Parents: Now that you finished your apple bites you can go play.

Winner of the BATTLE OF THE WILLS: Parents!!

I'm not sure if we really did win that one. It lasted for nearly 45 minutes with a lot more rounds than I just described before we got to the final one. Both Jon and I felt terrible afterward, thinking that we had just destroyed our poor little baby...

...until, 30 seconds later, we saw him pick up his cars and start running around the room playing like nothing had ever happened. Hmmm....pretty quick recovery for a child who had been supposedly devastated by his mean parents.

And the Winner Is...

the Vtech Around the Town Alphabet game for the most annoying Christmas toy!

We got this for JD to help with his interest in the alphabet. In theory, it really did seem like a good idea. JD loves to point out letters and this toy has the whole alphabet that lights up and makes the letter and phonics sounds when you push the letter. It also does lots of other stuff like music, spelling, telling time and other things that he will like when he is a little older.

The only problem is that JD doesn't push one letter at a time or even wait to hear the answer when he pushes a letter. So we basically get - A, A, A, A, R, R, R, S sounds like, S sounds like, Q, Q, Q, etc, etc. He also likes to turn it on and off because it lights up the alphabet this way, so we get "Thanks for visiting our town today" interrupted by "Welcome to our town."

Jon has asked that we only play with it when he is at work!

Christmas and Colorado

We had so much fun over the holidays. JD really enjoyed all of the Christmas festivities!

On Christmas Eve, we went over to Dan & Heather's house to eat dinner and decorate Christmas cookies. JD helped out with the cookies that we put out for Santa.

On Christmas morning, JD woke up crying in his bed, and I thought that it was going to be a rough morning. But when we got up there, JD was standing in his bed, holding up his pajama pants which had come off during the night. Apparently, this was very upsetting for my fashion-forward son. He was much better after the pants were put back on him the way that they were supposed to be.

He LOVED opening his presents - everything he got was a hit! I guess Mommy & Daddy knew what they were doing when they gave Santa some ideas.

Then we went over to my mom's house for brunch and more presents! The cousins all did one posed picture for us before they had a meltdown. JD loved all of his gifts here too. It was hard for him to decide which one to play with since they were all so awesome!

The day after Christmas, we left at 4 am to drive to Colorado. Dara, Josh and the girls left around the same time we did. JD actually did really well in the car, sleeping for 3-4 hours and watching videos for the rest of it. We stopped and picked up a few grocery essentials, just in case we had trouble getting in or out of the house.

It turned out that this was a really smart idea since the day after we arrived, we got some blowing snow and all of the roads were snowed over. We had to live on the bare essentials that we had picked up for almost 3 days.

But the kids still had fun out in the snow and eventually, our neighbor plowed us out so we could get food and the guys could get in some skiing. And our friends Jordan and Emily were able to get in to the cabin!

The guys cooked up a great feast for New Years and we had lots of fun staying up to watch old episodes of '24.'

At the very end of our trip, we all packed up and left on Friday. We were going home by way of Colorado Springs and Jon surprised me with a night at the Broadmoor resort (where we got married). We had never stayed there in the winter, so it was so much fun to see all of the decorations up! JD loved the trees and lights.

Now we are home again in Dallas and excited to see what 2009 has in store for us!!