Carousel Festival

A couple weeks ago grandma and grandpa were in town and we headed over to the carousel festival one day. We went last year and it was P's first time on a carousel and she was a little hesitant  She seemed to really enjoy it this year along with all the other rides they have there. Although in most of my photos, she seem really serious!

Every time we read the book "If you Give a Cat a Cupcake" now there is a page where they ride a carousel, and P gets all excited and talks about how we rode one and we rode a train with grandpa. Very fun!

Miles for Matthew 10K

Wow...a race report from me...

Although I will keep this brief. 

I ran a 10K a little over a week ago. It was a super small race on a somewhat hilly course (blah). One of my dearest friends has started running and wanted to do her first 10K and I agreed to train for it and run it too. 

I had been having some groin issues just slightly but decided to race anyway (maybe not the best idea). I probably took it out a bit too fast, and died somewhat in the last mile but also probably could have worked a little harder the last mile too but had somewhat just become complacent. 

I ended up winning the race (hence why I was complacent) with a somewhat respectable time of 48:07. My friend ended up coming in second just under a minute behind me. (She did awesome). 

What was great is that I won a free pair of running shoes! (So sweet!!)

What was not so great, is that because of my groin I overcompensated on my one leg and have had some major hip/glute (periformis pain). Not cool. It is slowly going away, but not as fast as I would like. :)  

Pool Fun

P has loved going to the pool all summer. She is like a little fish. Loves going under the water, jumping in, everything. And we have such an awesome pool with a zero entry and fun kid splash area. I of course didn't take photos all summer, so last weekend when the pool was having its last few days of being open, we headed up with a camera to take a few pictures. We are hoping that if we go to the indoor city pool maybe once a month through the fall and winter and spring that she will continue to enjoy it and be ready to learn how to swim perhaps next summer!

Photo Shoot

I had received these matching outfits for P and T when T was born and was suppose to have a photo shoot done with them, but some cancellations happened and rain and so I resorted to trying to do it myself. I am by no means a great photographer and really just wanted a few pictures of them in these cute outfits. I go almost no good pictures of T but tons of good pics of P. Here you go!

5 Month Update

Well T is about 90% crawling now! Beating P out by about 3 weeks. I still say she isn't really crawling, but she can move across the floor where she needs to go by scooting/pulling her way slowly. She is up on her hands and knees a lot trying to figure out the crawling thing for real though. I imagine within a week things will get interesting.

Because of her increasing mobility, she is going after P's toys. This makes P a little upset, but I think she is slowly getting over the fact that T will soon be all over all of her toys.

We have pretty much dropped the dream feed and she is sleeping in until 6:30ish too now. This means she eats at 6:30ish, 9:30/10, 1ish, 4ish, then 7ish and down to sleep. She sleeps all the way through from 7:30 (by the time she actually is asleep after eating) until 6:30ish in the morning. And she hasn't been waking up at all at night either which is awesome!

She can sit up a bit on her own, but not all that well, she is way more interested in moving and crawling and being on her belly.

I haven't tried to feed her any solids yet, but meant to test out something over the weekend like bananas. Maybe this weekend.

She still spits up a lot and drools a ton too. I attribute this to the fact that she can't sit still and wants to be on her belly all the time trying to crawl or move. We soak through a lot of bibs every day. I am still squeezing her into some 3 month stuff, but I should put her into 6 month stuff since that is what actually fits her right now!

She loves P and loves watching her run around. She loves to giggle and laugh and is typically a very happy baby. Here are some pictures!

Ice Cream

For those of you who don't know, I have a seriously ice cream addiction. At some points in our house we might have over 12 half gallons of ice cream in our freezer or deep freezer. Yes, it is a problem. I have always loved ice cream, then I got EZ on board and now he has somewhat of an addiction too.

A couple weeks ago while I was eating my second bowl of ice cream for the evening (yes, sometimes I have two....and so does EZ) I said that I think I have a problem. And EZ agreed with me that yes I did, but so did he. :) So we decided we would try together to not eat ice cream every night.

There is no way we could do this challenge unless it was together meaning we would stop buying ice cream at the store! Yikes! We also both realized that while we might not eat ice cream every night, we knew that we would just replace it with another snack. We thought that would be fine, maybe get some varied sweetness in.

We finally ran out of ice cream a few nights ago. But we have kind of been trying new snacks out too on some nights, like pirate booty or chips or for me I pop my own popcorn and use Wildtree's simply sweet seasoning to make my own kettle corn. Last night though my air popper died, so I resorted to popping my popcorn on the stove which took a while. Then of course I had lots of dishes to do.

After all was said and done, yes I did enjoy my popcorn...but the hassle of popping my own and cleaning up all the dishes I don't think is worth the easiness of having a bowl of ice cream. I have an extremely brief conversation about this with EZ where we both agree and decide our not buying ice cream days are done. We will once again be stocking up our fridge this weekend!

Hectic

It is definitely a bit hectic being back at work, but thats ok. I am starting to get back into the swing of things. But I haven't had much time to post and so this is mainly for just posting photos. We haven't been up to too much around here, just grinding away. I have so many photos that I've taken over the last couple weeks that are just too cute!  Oh and yes, I did chop my hair off and donated over 10 inches to Pantenes Beautiful Lengths program and see in the photo below. It has been an adjustment but I'm getting use to the hair being really short and curly.

Some funny anecdotes:
P has taken to singing songs. She loves Twinkle Twinkle and the ABC's, and Old MacDonald (probably her favorite). But the other week she has also started singing Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds". It might be one of the cutest things ever. We have a CD of kids folk music by Elizabeth Mitchell which is her favorite cd to listen to and this song is on there. One of these days I will have to try and get a video of it.

Today was an excellent potty day. She wore underwear some and kept it dry and I think we are making some progress. What is funny is that we always tell her good job (all excitedly) when she uses the toilet. And she also tells us good job when we do to, in the form of "Good Job Mama" which always makes me laugh.

She absolutely loves puzzles. We do puzzle after puzzle all day which is awesome. I love it.

T is doing well too. Still not really sleeping much at all at daycare but sleeps really well at night (thank goodness). She is all over the place on her stomach, turning in circles and even trying to get up on her hands and knees. I have a feeling she is going to be an early crawler just like P was. She loves P though and watches her run around and laughs at her all the time. It is quite cute!

T is slowly learning to hold the bottle by herself

This outfit I just bought at a consignment shop for $2.25 (total for both the top and bottom). It is a 3T but P wanted to put it on when I came home with it. I was super excited about the deal I got!  

 Up close and personal:

Happy T

Loves climbing into EZ's car when he comes home from work every day

Back at Work

I started back at work last week. Wow, I realized at some point it has been over 5 months since I taught in a classroom. Crazy! I'm slowly getting back into a routine and figuring out how to get out of the house on time with 2 kids. I use to take my leisurely time in the morning not getting to daycare until close to 9 since I never had to be at work that early for my classes. But I've had to leave the house by 8 most days which has been a bit of an adjustment.

I don't know who picked up the cold first (I think P), but P, T and I all have lovely cold/sinus junk that isn't pretty. Blah. Piper doesn't seem too phased by it except for her crankiness has skyrocketed. T though has been having lots of trouble sleeping and breathing. And then trying to drink her bottle when her nose is all plugged up has been hard for her too. My head feels like it is going to explode but I'll get by.

I was planning on doing a short triathlon in a few weeks but the friend that wanted to do it bailed so I am out too. It was a long way to go for such a short race and I hadn't registered yet since I was waiting for her. I was riding a couple times a week but haven't in almost 2 weeks now. As crazy as it sounds Ironman has created the inaugural 70.3 race in Raleigh next year and I am contemplating signing up. But I think that is just the lure of the brand name, I know I wouldn't be happy training for it and now with 2 kiddos I don't have as much time to go out and ride and run that much.

I have been running doing abs and plyometric type stuff. I definitely am getting faster and now that the weather is cooling down, it has been nice out to run. I ended up running 7 miles Saturday averaging 8:25 pace which is pretty good for me. I just signed up for a 10k which is in a few weeks, so we shall see how that goes. I have another friend wanting to run a half marathon in November, and while I haven't committed yet, I might end up doing it if training goes as well as the 7 miler this weekend.

New GF Goodies

So, I've been messing around in the kitchen testing out recipes I've found through people. And Here are some of my favorites:

Chick Pea Cookies-these kind of fell apart for me but I think I put in too much oil. I didn't have the natural peanut butter which is more oily and based on the recipe she recommends adding some oil if you use regular. They were still pretty good considering they had no flour in them.

Flourless Zucchini Brownies-OMG these were unbelievable! I did 1 1/2x the recipie and made a 9x13 pan. These were gone in a few days. I seriously could not stop eating these. They are much more cakey then fudgy and I added an extra tablesppon of coco powder per some of the suggestions and these were to die for!

Cake Batter Energy Bars-These are definitely interesting and tastefully. And were super easy to make. I didn't have cashew butter so I used half PB and half sunflower seed butter. Maybe this was my problem, I'm not sure but mine didn't set as nicely so and were sticky, so I def had too much liquid of some kind in there. Not sure, and I didn't add the sprinkles because I didn't have any. I would make these again in a minute though because they were super easy and quick and yummy!

Honey Beans and Spinach Dinner (crockpot)-My sister said she had tried this and thought it was yummy, and so I tested it out at a bbq we went to the other day and it was super good.  It is hard to describe what this tastes like, others at the bbq asked me if it was indian food and it has the cumin and corriander in it which maybe contributes to that but they liked it too!

Pics of P

We have been chugging along with odds and ends. Here are some of the latest pictures of P.

Together with mama at the park:

Swinging with KEL:

At the childrens museum in the train:

Laughing with Sophie:

 Morning attire: PJ shirt, diaper and rain boots