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!!

Merry Christmas! Including the Blooper Footage!

In hopes of getting the perfect Christmas picture of JD, we spent most of this morning taking pictures. When they get to be around 20 months old, they don't want to sit still...EVER.

We tried his favorite Christmas toy - Santa - to try and keep at least near the tree.



Not bad, but not looking at the camera!!

We tried the firetruck (most of our pictures involve the firetruck).


JD kept looking for the escape route.

We tried a present.


JD just wanted to open it. I can't blame him for that one.

We tried reason and logic.

Ha ha! With a 20 month old?? What a joke!

We tried bribery with gummy Lifesavers candies.

Hmm...can't get a smile with a mouth full of gummies.

And we finally ended with me holding the laptop over Jon's head as it was playing "Hot Hot Hot Chocolate" from the Polar Express movie.

Success!! And it only took us 180 pictures to get the shot! Thank goodness we don't have to do this for another year!!

Cat Says "Mow" (Rhymes with Cow)

JD learned all his animal noises awhile back and there are a couple that he loves to say with lots of exuberance. He says them really loudly and with a huge smile on his face.

His favorites are:

Horse - "NAY!"
Frog - "Bibbet"
Cat - "Mow" (like cow)

If we have a picture book with any of these objects, JD tells us loudly and many times over what they say. It doesn't matter where we are - church, a wedding, in the car, at a restaurant - he will tell us what they say!

On the way home from church yesterday, JD had a lot of fun with animal noises. It is a little long, but worth the wait if you can get to the halfway point where he starts in on the cat noises again.

In the Spirit of Christmas

Here are a few photos of JD getting into the holiday spirit with a Santa hat.

This one is kind of cool with the blurry tree background!

We also took JD to visit Santa and his reindeer near our house a couple of weeks ago. JD wasn't really impressed with Santa (been there, done that already Mom), but he liked the reindeer!

We can't wait for Santa to visit our house this year!