Friesencold

This is where my friend Gretchen lives in Texas.

And I really think she’ll like these shirts.

I got this one for Cash because they didn’t have Bauer’s size. I was tempted to buy it in every size they had, though, so my kids can always represent for the side of leafy greens.

And I got this one for Bauer. Who says the force can’t be vegetables?

Here’s Cash with 2 little boys about his same age. My friend Carrie came by this afternoon for a quick visit with her son Jay and our friend Jamie’s little boy Grant. From left to right, it’s Jay, Cash, and Grant.

We had a fun time celebrating Easter with some friends yesterday. We went to church and then to the Meyers’ house for a meal together. Here are all the kids after the Easter Egg Hunt. From left to right, it’s Cash, Bauer, Branton, Adelyn, and Callie.

I did my weekly grocery shopping at Meijer today. It was quite exciting to use the Grocery Gadget App on my iPhone for the first time instead of having a paper list and having to dig in my purse for my Sharpie to mark things off with. I loaded up on some leafy greens today, including one we’ve never tried before. You guess which one. From left to right, we have Kale, Dandelion Greens, and Swiss Chard.

And last for tonight, here are a few pictures that TJ took of me and Cash during the Easter Egg Hunt.

Of course, I’d do left to right here if I could get the pictures to show that way. From top to bottom, it’s Cash with a jelly bean in his hand. I was waiting and watching to see if he’d automatically know it was food (or should we say, a foodlike substance). He thinks about putting it in his mouth, then holds it out for me to take. As soon as he sees me eat one, he knows it’s okay, and the rest is history.

Here’s a picture of the rest of our groceries for this week. I usually go to Meijer once a week and Trader Joe’s once a week, and then fill in every now and then with a few things from Whole Foods, Target, and Michael’s Fresh Market.

Here’s a list of what I got at Trader Joe’s and some notes of explanation:

-Orange Juice with Calcium – We have never been an OJ-drinking family until very recently. TJ used to get sick anytime he would drink orange juice, and I only associated orange juice with having a cold and needing to get extra Vitamin C. But lately TJ has discovered he can drink OJ just fine and now he really likes mixing it with the Peach Juice from Trader Joe’s. Cash and Bauer will have a cup of OJ every now and then, but I still don’t really ever drink it. I just buy it.
-Organic Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup (regular version)
-Organic Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup (low-sodium version) – I like to mix the 2 versions of this soup together so it’s neither too salty nor too bland, but what I’d like even more is to make my own dairy-free version of this type of soup. I have a recipe that looks good but haven’t attempted it yet.
-Raw pecan halves – I haven’t bought these before, but plan to use them to make my own version of the Pecan Pie Larabars.
-Kalamata olives – I haven’t bought these before either. I guess you could say this was an impulse purchase today, but I really like kalamata olives and thought these would be something good to let the kids try. I enjoyed having the olives on my hummus and veggie pita today for lunch. Both Bauer and Cash tried them and neither reached for a second
-2 containers organic hummus – I used to buy the regular (non-organic) hummus from Trader Joe’s, but they stopped carrying it in the small size. I had started buying the larger size of the non-organic, but we kept having to throw out partially-used containers because it would start to go bad before we had eaten the whole thing. So I figure it’s cheaper to spend a little more on the organic small one and use it up, than to buy the larger non-organic and have to throw some away. I was making my own hummus for a very little while, but could never get it good enough that Bauer would happily eat it. I may try again in the future. I still have some frozen chickpeas in the freezer.
-Whole wheat pita pockets – I usually buy the smaller ones, but today they were out of those. They taste the same, of course, and made a delicious lunch today.
-Flour tortillas and whole wheat tortillas - I’ll use these tomorrow night for making Super-Stuffed Tortillas, which have quickly become one of our family’s favorite recipes!
-Organic Reduced-Sugar Blackberry Preserves – This was another brand-new item for us today. We usually buy the strawberry version of this but Bauer saw the other kinds today and wanted to try blueberry. I convinced him to get blackberry just because I thought it sounded better and I know he likes fresh blackberries a lot.
-Organic Raisins – Bauer eats raisins nearly every night as part of his bedtime snack while we read books. It’s usually a banana and a little container of raisins.
-Brown Rice Bread – We mostly use this for making toast to go along with certain meals such as spaghetti.
-Grape Tomatoes – I love these! And Cash is quite fond of them too. Trader Joe’s is the cheapest place I know to get good tiny tomatoes.
-Snow Peas - Bauer is the one who loves these. They are the veggies he always picks first from the veggie tray.

We also got our usual balloons from Trader Joe’s, but today Bauer was lucky enough to get 2!

Note the Lego booklet in Bauer’s hand and his toothless grin.

You know how the very hungry caterpillar ate all that junk, but then on Sunday he ate through one nice big green leaf?

Well, I kind of did that through my shopping experience today at Meijer.

Here are the fruits and veggies I bought:

24 Fuji apples
39 bananas
5 Bosc pears
1 Asian pear (tastes like candy, but because they cost $1 each, I only bought one)

2 one-pound clamshells of organic spinach
1 head of celery, or is it stalk?
6 cucumbers
3-lb bag of yellow onions
5-lb bag of organic russet potatoes
3 one-pound bags of organic baby carrots (on sale for $1 each!)
8 avocadoes
1 head of cauliflower
1 head of broccoli
1 yellow pepper
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 bunch of kale

And here’s the other (non-produce) stuff I bought:

2 jars of mild salsa
4 large cans of diced tomatoes
1 loaf of whole wheat bread
1 pack of whole wheat hamburger buns
1 package raw walnuts

The thing I spent the longest time deciding on at Meijer was what bread to buy. I’ve noticed that I’ve done the same thing during several recent shopping trips. I just stand there on the bread aisle, looking at all the options, looking at all the prices, looking at all the ingredient lists, trying to pick the best overall. We used to always buy the Pepperidge Farm 100% Whole Wheat Hearty Texture, but when the regular price of this loaf went up and held at $3.69, I started looking to substitute with cheaper, yet similar loaves of bread.

Now I’m starting to think I might try to make some homemade bread. Maybe I will make that my project for March. We recently were given a loaf of bread from Panera and TJ really enjoyed slicing the bread himself for thick pieces of toast. I liked the idea of it, and how it seemed healthier somehow. There was no label on it, so I don’t know what the ingredients were or how much fiber or sugar or protein were in each slice. But just having that loaf of bread made homemade bread seem more achievable somehow.

During the same week as the bread from Panera, I read this article on a website that my friend Gretchen from Texas told me about and it made me feel part-inspired, part-overwhelmed. I know it’s supposed to be simple, but when you’ve never used a packet of yeast or kneaded a lump of dough in your life, well, it’s a little scary. I know the best way to start is to start small, so for the rest of February, I’m just going to think about making homemade bread. I’m not going to do it yet.

But what I am going to do this month is try to make some homemade Larabars. I searched online this past week for some recipes and found a few that look to be good copies of the real thing. I will let you know how it goes. My first kind to make will be the Cinnamon Roll kind. TJ will thank me.

Legos are the all the rage around our house lately. Or as TJ would say, Lego. I always called them Legos – did anyone else?

Bauer has also been pretty excited lately about putting on his Kenny Chesney outfit: jeans, button-up shirt, cowboy boots, and cowboy hat. No pictures of that, but here’s Cash trying on the garb.

TJ has gone skiing today to Devil’s Head in Wisconsin with his buddy John, so it’s just been me and the boys around here. I had planned for us to get back to church today (we have missed a lot this month due to various sicknesses), but yet again we couldn’t go. Cash was running a fever of 103.8 last night and was just not himself at all yesterday. He is a lot better today but I still didn’t want to put him in the Toddler room at church. I am not feeling well myself, in fact (go figure, with all the sickness I’ve been around). It’s a head cold and it’s gettin’ old. I feel like if I could go outside and breathe in some of that fresh cold air, it would really feel nice about now.

We ran out of facial tissues unfortunately so we really needed to make a trip out this morning. The roll of toilet paper just wasn’t cutting it for all the blowing we were having to do around here. So I took the boys out for a couple small errands and we bought 12 boxes of Puffs at Target (we are not fans of the Kleenex brand, which is why I said facial tissues above), along with some Dove Dark Chocolates, sponges for the dish scrubber wand thingy, 12 oz blackberries on sale for $2.99, and a few avocados for a buck a piece.  Isn’t it fun to know what’s in someone else’s shopping cart, besides 2 little boys?

We had to get the carseat carrier back out just for this picture! But here’s Cash, at 11 months.

I took Cash to the park all by himself the other day and got a few good pictures of the munchkin.

On Thursday morning, I took the boys on an outing to Oakbrook Center, which is a nice outdoor mall about 20 minutes away. We browsed in two of my favorite stores there, Anthropologie and The Afternoon, and then we had a picnic lunch. In the third picture below, Bauer is doing his monster fingers. For some reason he is totally into monsters and dragons lately.

And last, there are two new things to report:

First is that recently we had to say goodbye to Bauer’s CD player, which used to be my CD player. It’s the one I got when I was in high school I think.

It has been close to quitting for a long time now. It had gotten to the point where it would skip for no reason, play songs on fast speed, not play certain numbers of songs, or not play at all. Bauer was a good sport about it all, considering he is the one who listens to music all the time and who had to deal with the frustrations of it all. But we really didn’t want to just get him a new one until this one was used up. And now it is!

Thankfully we were able to get the new CD player using our Vitality Points, so it was free. Which is why it’s red and not blue, or at least black.

The other new thing are some shoes I bought last week. I had seen them on a sale rack outside the running store in downtown Naperville and thought they looked cool. I even stuck my foot in the one 7.5 shoe they had out there and thought they felt cool, too.  A couple days later, I decided to go back and really try them on. They still had my size and they were still on sale: $60 instead of $120. Wow! No more walking around town in those worn-out but well-loved black Privos. Here’s a picture Bauer took of me and Cash at Oakbrook, in which I’m wearing my new shoes. I feel like Alexander McCall Smith’s book Blue Shoes and Happiness.

TJ decided to return his shoes to DSW and look for a different pair.

Bauer decided to play so nicely with our neighbor Anna last night when we went over to their house for dinner. I couldn’t believe that the first thing they did was climb up in the chair together to look at books. (Isn’t she a doll?)

And Cash, well, he just decided to squint his eyes and be about the cutest 11-month old ever.

Our small group was cancelled this past Tuesday night but TJ and I kept our babysitter anyway. We decided we needed the break from the kids together, and Bauer seemed to need a break from us too. You should have seen what a good mood he woke up in the next morning!

TJ and I decided to do some errands in the couple hours we had to ourselves. First TJ had a return at Menard’s, where I sat in the car and read the book I was about to return to Borders.

Borders was third, so I’m going a little out of order. I had received two copies of the Elizabeth Berg book Home Safe for my birthday, one from Dena and one from Meghan. I got Dena’s first, and Meghan had included a gift receipt with hers, so it worked out perfectly for me to go there to return it and look for something else. I was wanting to get Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s new 2-book set called Eat for Health, but unfortunately the store didn’t have it in stock. I had a 30% off coupon to use too. Oh well. It ended up that I placed my order on Borders.com and found a 10% off online coupon to use and only had to pay just over a buck. Thanks, in a roundabout way, to Meghan.

TJ and I did get to enjoy browsing through a few other books at Borders, though. TJ looked at Mark Bittman’s Food Matters, and I looked at a book on eating more mindfully and another book on fasting for health. The Food Matters tidbits that TJ read sparked some good conversation for us on our ride home and for like an hour after we got home. That was the best part of the evening, talking about things like why eating healthy shouldn’t be just about us and the health of our own bodies but for the good of the world (like if we don’t eat as much meat, more crops can be grown on that land that will go further to feed more people, which I know it’s not quite that simple, but that was one of the premises Bittman was making).

Before Borders, we went to DSW to look for some new shoes for TJ. I’ve also been thinking of getting some new shoes ever since the spring, but haven’t really been motivated to go shoe-hunting or to spend the extra money. I thought I didn’t want to wear my black Privos all summer, but now I sort of like the black look with shorts.

At the shoestore, I realized how much I like the feeling of putting my old shoes back on after trying on new ones. Even if I like the look and feel of the new ones, they are not my old ones that feel so familiar and friendly to my feet. I could feel fancy and prancy, or fuddy and duddy, in whatever new pair I happened to pick, but the second I put my old black worn-out Privos back on, I am myself again. I just slip ‘em back on and off we go. Not a second thought, unlike when you’re wearing new shoes and you keep wondering how they look and you’re checking out to yourself how they feel, like Did I buy the right size? I hope I bought the right size. Is the lace on the right foot too tight? Am I getting a blister? I better not be getting a blister, these shoes cost me an arm and a leg and I sure don’t think I was paying for a blister too.

Well, taking the shoe thing a bit further, what occurred to me next is that I want my relationship with Bauer to be like my old shoes. I want it to fit the way old shoes do, like where I’m not always having to think so hard about being a nice, kind, patient mommy, but where niceness, kindness, and patience come naturally based on the relationship I have with Bauer, which is pretty much not in the same ballpark as me trying to control Bauer all the time. I find it hard on a regular basis to be the emotion coach for Bauer that he needs me to be, but I also find that I’m noticing the error of my ways a lot more quickly and I’m wanting to change a lot more badly than I used to. God keeps giving me lots of second chances, which helps too.

The new shoes in my life can be something else, like, I don’t know, cleaning the bathroom more than once a month, or making our bed everyday. If I did either of those, it would feel a bit strange and unfamiliar like new shoes might feel. But then I’d get used to those and I’m sure I’d find another pair of new shoes as I seem to be always working on some kind of self-improvement or another. (I’m not really planning to clean the bathroom or make our bed any more regularly at the moment, though.)

Or at the least, the new shoes can be those occasional moments when I lose my temper or blow a fuse or whatever anger-management term you want to give what is probably better defined as trying to do too many things at once instead of letting the little person who is my son have a well-deserved right to my time. Those moments of meanness could be the new shoes that just don’t feel right. And the old shoes that I quick go back to and feel most like myself in and can go for miles and miles in without a second thought or a blister will be the gift God gives me of relating to my son well and for keeps.

P.S. TJ got shoes. I didn’t.

Today I went to Once Upon A Child, a local consignment store, to look for some shorts for Bauer to sleep in. He is such a hot boy. His pillow is always soaked after his nap, and with the warmer weather, and the fact that he still wants to be all cozy under the big covers, he definitely needs to be sleeping in shorts.

Just before we left the store, I decided to take a quick glance around the used toy section, and lo and behold, there was a big bag of Thomas wooden trains marked at only $10. I really thought it was either a mistake or these weren’t the real wooden trains, you know the ones that are $12.99 for the shorter ones and $19.99 for the longer ones with the tender behind them. And those are the Target prices, so anywhere else is probably even a bit more. Well, anywhere except Walmart, but theirs are probably $12.97 and $19.97.

Bauer has a small collection of the real wooden Thomas engines. He has Thomas, Percy, Billy, Gordon (with tender), and Henry (with tender). Billy was a birthday gift, but I believe we purchased the other ones for him over several different occasions. I don’t know for sure, but I’d say we have probably spent at least $50 in the past on Thomas stuff. All of his other wooden train stuff is from IKEA (cheap, but great!) or from a small Imaginarium train set he received for his birthday last year.

Today, though, his collection tripled in size. I could not pass up getting the bag of trains, even though it wasn’t his birthday or Christmas. TJ and I had recently been talking about wanting to buy Bauer a new wooden engine just as a way to reward him for his generosity recently (he even gave away one of his GeoTrax trains to his friend Brooke). So part of me wanted to just buy them for him for no reason except to reward him for being generous.

Another part of me, and this is what we ended up doing, wanted to have him trade in his money from his piggy bank to buy the trains. On our way home from the store, I actually gave Bauer the choice that he could buy them (pay me back) using his money from his piggy bank or that he could wait until his birthday and receive them as a gift. I know he probably doesn’t really understand about the money from his piggy bank being a sacrifice of any sort since all that money is just change we have given him anyway, but I had already been thinking recently about letting him buy something with his own money just to expose him to the idea. And this seemed like a good chance for that. Of course, Bauer wanted the trains now and was happy to dump his piggy bank first thing upon arriving home. We counted out $10 in change – I was actually surprised there was that much in there since two times lately he has taken a bunch of change out to take to church to put in the Goat and Chicken jars (Kids City was collecting money to buy a goat and a chicken for families in need in other countries).

I know it might sound a little silly, but I truly felt like finding those trains was a big blessing from God in my life today. Like he wanted to just reward me by letting them be out at just the right time when I was going to be in the store. I am convinced the store had just put them out before we walked in because I know they wouldn’t have stayed even for an hour on the shelf. In fact, as we were walking out of the store, a lady who was walking in with her son commented on the bag of trains Bauer was carrying and it was clear from our brief conversation that she would have grabbed them up in no time had we not. It’s like God knew that TJ and I were thinking of buying a new train for Bauer to reward him for his generosity, but then God beat us to that blessing by providing all those trains at such a low cost as a way to reward us for being generous in different areas. Now as I write this, I’m thinking maybe I should not have made Bauer use his piggy bank money….but then again, I think that’s fine too. I am just grateful that I could see this as a gift from God in my life today, and in turn, a gift in Bauer’s life. Bauer was in train heaven this evening at home.

I went online tonight to see if I could calculate about how much money’s worth of trains we got for a mere $10. I don’t have the time or motivation to be thorough at this task, but from what I can tell, several of the ones we got are considered Rare or Retired and are VERY hard to find, supposedly. Two of them are selling for $49.99 and one for $54.99. A couple of the other hard to find ones were $24.99 and $29.99. I think I could safely say that we got over $350 worth of trains in that bag. And what’s even harder to believe is that the consignment store would have paid only a bit over $3 to the people who sold them to the store (I know from personal experience of selling stuff to this same store that they pay the seller 1/3 of what they intend to sell the item for….in this case, that would be just over $3 paid to the seller for them to turn around and sell the trains for $10).

Below is a list of all the ones we got in the mystery bag of assorted trains. All of them are the real Thomas wooden engines/characters, except the final one is a Brio train. We also got the square Brio track piece that you see in the center of the above picture. Bauer is so excited about the little gates that open and close.

1. Wilbert
2. James and Tender
3. Duncan
4. Stepney
5. Thomas
6. Duke
7. Thumper
8. Big City Engine
9. Murdoch and Tender
10. Daisy
11. Diesel 10
12. Boco
13. Handcar
14. Aquarium Car
15. Blue Brio Train and Tender

I happily discarded 5 pairs of pants yesterday to make room for the new ones I bought. I have been NEEDING new pants for a long time. All, and I mean all, the ones I have been wearing all winter (and all last winter) were on their last leg. They were not only shredded at the bottoms (which actually I thought added to their cool factor more than anything – although the dragging in the snow and ice was a big ole pain), but they were also so droopy that every time I wore them there was the real possibility that I might just lose them in public by accident. I’m not exaggerating. Over time, I guess the 3% spandex that is in literally all the pants these days had lost all stretch-back ability and just plain gave in to being stretched out. They were comfy to a point, but then they just got annoying because I was having to tug them up all day long.

So yesterday was the day for me to go out and not come home till I had some new pants. TJ kept the boys and took them to IKEA for a while in the morning, while I went to the mall. Previously I had looked at both Old Navy and American Eagle to no avail. So I had decided that a department store was in store. I picked Macy’s, mainly because the last time I was on the pants hunt, I found a couple pairs from Macy’s. (I didn’t think of the fact, until just now, that those are the same pants that I eventually had to throw away due to wearing out, but I think I just haven’t accepted the wear-out factor of anything yet, which is my problem, not Macy’s).

Ta-da!

I like green pants and green smoothies.

I found 4 pairs of pants and 1 pair of shorts at Macy’s (after trying on about 47 and being in the dressing room for well over an hour). I decided to swing by American Eagle for one more try since it’s my favorite store although I’ve never had any luck finding pants there. Just those super-soft t-shirts made in Peru. Anyway, I scored with 2 more pairs of shorts and a shirt, all on clearance.

Ta-da! Again!

I was just waiting for this shirt to go on clearance!

So now I’m all set. It’s heavenly to be wearing pants today that are actually staying in place.

Here’s Cash a few days ago, trying to pull himself up on the basket of library books.

The puzzles in the background are Bauer's new ones that he loves from Gigi when she visited.

And here’s Bauer this morning eating spinach from the big clamshell container while watching the Berenstain Bears on TV.

Look, he's NOT wearing his punkin pie pants!

Here is the spring rules chart that Bauer and I made the other day. The rules are the same, but it was time for an updated look. Bauer loved decorating the chart with spring stickers and he did a great job not putting them over any of the words.

Here are the new vitamins I had promised a picture of a while back. Bauer takes the VegLife Vegan Kids Multiple multivitamin at breakfast, the Natures Way Primadophilus Kids cherry chewable at lunch, and the Dr. Sears Go Fish Brainy Kidz Children’s Omega-3 DHA soft chew with dinner. The best part is he likes all 3 and wants to take them.

I had a great time in NYC with my mom. Here are a few things we did:
-Saw Wicked and it was amazing
-Saw Alexander McCall Smith and I got his autograph
-Visited Times Square

-Had some great meals, including Toasties, Zen Palate, and Houston’s (yes, the Houston’s)
-Went to Rockefeller Center and shopped in Anthropologie and a few other stores

-Shopped a little in the SoHo District
-Bought some jeans for me
-Bought some shoes for my mom
-Watched “Little Miss Perfect” at midnight on the WE channel
-Bought fruit from a fruit vendor
-Visited FAO Schwartz and the Toys R Us with the big ferris wheel inside
-Bought Bauer a t-shirt from the M&M’s store

-Looked at cool cards at Papyrus
-Read in our hotel room
-Did a ton of walking which meant lots of time outside

I already want to go back to New York. And I want to take TJ and have him see Wicked (I want to see it again!). I have visited NYC 4 times now and each time I like it better. Thank you, Mama, for a great early birthday present!