Categories
Random

Fad diet?

I was poking around MSN today (as I am wont to do, I’ll admit) and found something called the “good mood diet.” The MSN articles talked about foods that help to promote a good mood even as you’re eating healthier and losing weight. These foods included things like olive oil, brown rice, omelets, burritos, garlic and ginger.

As I’ve established, I eat chocolate just about every day. The diet includes chocolate—even a cup of hot cocoa (or maybe even a chocolate bar) a day.

Sounds pretty tempting. Anyone “real” ever try this? They’ve got a book, mailing lists, “clubs” and lots of testimonials on their site, but . . . y’know. I’d like to hear it from someone not affiliated with them.

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Mr. Dobolina, Mr. Bob Dobolina… or Hayden?

A few weeks ago, Ryan and I became concerned that Hayden doesn’t know his name. It could be that he doesn’t respond because he’s far more interested in whatever he’s playing with. Or it could be that we often call him by pet and nicknames.

The giant list of things we call Hayden other than his name (I came up with 51. Obviously some of them are circumstantial. (Note a young Hayden’s blank stare.)

  • baby
  • big boy
  • boo
  • booka
  • booky
  • bug
  • bugga
  • buggle
  • crawlin’ guy
  • grump pot
  • Hayden Rossy
  • Haydie
  • Haydie baby
  • little bug
  • little guy
  • little man
  • little mister
  • little one
  • love bug
  • misser
  • mister
  • mister boo
  • nakers
  • nakey
  • nakey boy
  • nursey boy
  • pee
  • peeka
  • poo
  • pooka
  • pookely
  • pookelypookelypoo
  • pooker
  • pookiepookiepoo
  • pooky
  • pooper
  • poopie
  • punkin
  • punkin head
  • punky
  • small one
  • standin’ up guy
  • stink pot
  • stinker
  • stinker bug
  • stinker pot
  • stinky
  • super duper pooper
  • sweet baby
  • sweetie
  • sweetie pea

No wonder the kid’s confused!

(“Mr. Dobolina, Mr. Bob Dobolina” is a line from the Monkees song, “Zilch.”)

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Baby recipes

We’re getting much better at feeding Hayden solids consistently. Last night, I opened up a can of mixed veggies and Ryan let Hayden feed himself finger foods. He liked it. He ate about a third of what we gave him.

And I’m discovering my own baby recipes. Maybe this is my food niche 😉 !

Baby Peach Cobbler

  • 3 slices of peaches (from a can)
  • 1 graham cracker square
  • 1/2 Tbsp plain or vanilla yogurt
  1. Cut peaches into bite sized pieces and/or crush with a fork.
  2. Place in small bowl or mug. Top with graham cracker.
  3. Microwave for 10 seconds or less.
  4. Using feeding spoon, crush graham cracker into warm peaches and mix together. Top with yogurt.

Hayden liked this. He spurned the peaches the day before, but gobbled this right up.

I also made me and Ryan a snack mix yesterday (almonds, pecans & sunflower seeds with dried apricots, cranberries and blueberries; supposedly very good for you. I haven’t eaten any yet). I felt inspired, so I made one for Hayden today:

Baby Snack Mix

  • 1/2 c toasted oat cereal (Cheerios, okay?)
  • 1 rice cake (I used apple cinnamon; read the ingredients to make sure you don’t give baby anything he shouldn’t have)
  • 10 pretzel twists
  • 5 graham cracker squares
  • 1 1.5 oz box of raisins
  1. Break pretzels, graham crackers and rice cake into baby-bite-sized pieces.
  2. If the raisins are large enough to pose a choking hazard, or your baby isn’t very experienced with chewy foods, cut them up or omit them.
  3. Mix all ingredients.
  4. Serve with water—it’d be easy to get dried out eating all that!

Maybe I should get to work on my bestselling recipe book today! Or go shoe shopping… Hm….

Categories
Kids/Parenting Random Ryan/Married Life

Sometimes I’m so clueless!

Okay, I’ll take a shot for 5 things you don’t know about me, and we’ll see how many we get.

I was tagged by Lindsey.

  1. The first week I dated Ryan, we stayed up until 4 AM at least two nights. Week nights. And at least one of those, we were sitting (just talking!!) in my car. This is March in Utah, folks—we were lucky not to lose any toes! (We were so cold we could hardly move by the time we left!)
  2. Also that week, I overslept and missed work. I was working as a Teaching Assistant (my favorite job ever) and I had to be there—I was the teacher on Fridays. Woke up half an hour after my first hour of teaching started. Let my other two classes go after 15 minutes. To make amends, I had to give an extra make up lab (ah, it was just the basic principles of economics; they don’t need ’em!) at night (the one time Ryan got to see me in action). My boss opted not to hire me for oen of the limited number summer positions because of this, but she still wanted me back in the fall. I was still quite upset and cried for a long time. Karen (boss) was nice about that, though. It worked out okay in the end—Ryan and I got married during the summer.
  3. I’m a horrible eater. I’m picky about some things (I hate pepperoni—too spicy—eggs, crunchy peanut butter, yogurt or ice cream with seeds in it—even vanilla bean drives me nuts!) and often don’t realize I haven’t eaten anything until mid afternoon.
  4. I think I might be transferring this to Hayden. Up until last month, I was WAY too lazy to fed him solid foods often enough. I’m finally getting into the habit (although nursing is still far more convenient for us). However, I have the worst time trying to figure out what to give Hayden as finger food. My mom mentioned bananas, I replied, “Oh, we don’t have any.” Mom was like, “They have these things… I’m sure they have them in Utah… I’ve been in them in Utah… They’re called stores.” Riiiight. On the plus side, I do feed Hayden things I don’t eat such as sweet potato, squash and oatmeal.
  5. I’ve dropped Hayden approximately twice. Once, he was sleeping in his carseat and had a major blowout in the middle of the night. (It seemed major at the time; I would later learn better.) I picked him up to take him to the changing pad, carrying him with one hand under his head and one hand under his bummy. (I can’t believe we actually use that word, but I have to admit that I coined it in our family.) Bummy = slippery when covered in poo. His bummy slipped out of my hands and he fell about a foot onto the ground. The other time(s?) was just a dumb accident.

So, did you know those things?

I hereby tag… um… Jaime because she hasn’t updated in years (months, whatever), Brooke just because, Laura Wattenberg because I love her Baby Name Blog and book, The Baby Name Wizard (though I doubt she’ll ever see this or have time to respond), and um… Jasmine, Mom, Dad and Ryan to respond in my comments. They only count as half a blogger each since they don’t have their own blogs.

On that note, bonus #6: I’m tinkering with my comments. I’ve gotten them back to the old peek-a-boo style, but the JS to run that seems to be slowing my page loading time. I’ll also have to tweak the CSS so they’re not all caps. Bet you didn’t know I was so technical, eh? Yeah, well, I’m not. As I said to my coworkers (when I had coworkers), “We have a very low tech job (copywriting) in a very high tech field (Internet).”

Okay, so most of my list were about me in conjunction with my family. What can I say? They’re my life. They are a part of me. They’re who I am.

Though just about every day, I long to be my own person, if I’m truly honest with myself, I have to admit that Hayden, Ryan and the rest of my family are almost more a part of me than I am. And when I’m truly honest with myself, I’ll admit that I love it.

Categories
Kids/Parenting

So this (was) Christmas

As promised, Christmas photos:

We call him “Mr. Quackers.”
The duck puppet, not the baby.

Work it, dahlink.

Delicious. (del.icio.us?)

Take the picture already, Ma!

The ball was a gift from Santa, too. I like his “little young man” outfit here (and the one on Christmas, too).

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Toothsome

Okay, okay, I know that word means ‘delicious’ or ‘attractive.’ But come on, no other word sounds more appropriate for this timely (taken this morning) photo:

So what, you say? Look closer:

HAYDEN HAS HUGE TEETH!!!!

Coming soon, I promise: photos from San Diego including Christmas and the San Diego Zoo, and a response to Lindsey’s blog tag (even though when I last saw this meme you were only supposed to tag 5 people!).