Thursday, June 17, 2010

Seven

Our boy is seven months old and scary close to crawling. Ugh. How did this...

happen so fast?


Zerbert=blowing on baby's belly/side/anywhere else that might be ticklish that day, baby laughing hysterically, Mom snapping pictures furiously, rinse & repeat. Why does this never get old?

Friday, May 21, 2010

Rhett's Freezer

This is just ridiculous...


The top shelf would be the result of a Marathon Baby Food Making Day Wednesday. My dear friend, Mollie, came over and held my Boy so that I could focus on peeling, steaming, and food processing. I now have over 50 servings of pears, apples, zucchini, carrots, squash, peas, green beans, and sweet potatoes. I did all this in under 3 hours and for around $20. Not too shabby. The bottom shelf is only God knows how many packages of breast milk. Since Everett's eating 2 meals a day now, I have alot more to save. Also, I'm having surgery in July and can't feed him for at least 2 days. I'm not supposed to hold him for 2 weeks after either. We still have 6 months until my year goal. Thus, I'm now a breastmilk hoarder.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Baptisms, Tornadoes, and sitting up

Here are a few pics from recent (major) events in our family...
Everett's Baptism...


We were delighted to have our two FAVE preachers involved in Everett's baptism. These two are really important to us because they have helped our family through so many things. Richard (on the right) was my preacher in high school. He was the solid rock during my crazy senior year and was usually one of the first persons at my side during the hard stuff. Eight years later, I asked him to be a part of the happiest day in my life (since he'd helped me through the worst days), November 11, 2005...the day I married my Homet. He also did all of our pre-marriage counseling. Two years later, we joined his church in Madison, Parkway Hills UMC. He will retire this summer which saddens me deeply but makes me happy for him. The one on the left is my one and only stepdad, Bert. He's married to my Mom and is the other preacher that married Wade and I. I don't even know where to start in how much he means to us. He's already retired but came out of retirement this one day to baptize his grandboy.

Don't know why my eyes are closed. Maybe I was praying that Everett wouldn't throw up on Richard's pretty robe.

Rook's fan club!

The next day, we found this at Dad's land. This was the path of the 2 mile wide tornado.


Dad's new barn. He just completed this project about 8 months ago. There was only half a wall standing.


Fragile, yeah right. Gwendy had started moving her china and dishes to the barn since they had already almost filled a storage unit.


Dad's "home." His bedroom and closet was to the right. This is what his neighbor saw when he thought my dad had been home. You can see why he thought he'd find a body. Dad's future home site is on the hill in the background. Another blessing is they hadn't started to build yet.


My uncle's camper was parked there too. They were supposed to start on the home this week and my Uncle was going to live down here (from TN) to help build.



Our 6 month old boy is sitting up unassisted which scares me. Why, you ask? Guess what's next?...crawling. NOOOO! Wish he'd stay small forever. At his 6 month check-up, he was 50% (17 pounds, 4 ounces) in weight again and 75% in length (27 inches).

Monday, May 3, 2010

Life

I will never apologize for not blogging because I have been too caught up living life to actually sit down and type about what we're doing. So if you're one of these Generation Y people that gets their feelings hurt because you aren't coddled nearly enough...here's a snapshot of our life in the last 3 weeks since my last blog:
--Rhett attended his first and second crawfish boil. We were eternally grateful for the first because it was at my Dad's land and I'll get to that. We fished, ate, laughed, and planted 5 magnolia trees symbolizing Dad's grandkids (Rhett has two step cousins--the other two trees don't have kiddos attached to them yet but we're holding out that their will actually be two more. If not, Dad figured he'd plant a few extra in case a couple die, the kids won't think "their" tree died...He'll just reassign who's tree is whom's.) It's called Grand Avenue and is fabulous.
--Dad finally married my wonderful stepmom, Gwendy, after 10 YEARS of being together. We are super fired up about it being official now. In fact, I dropped them off at the train station this morning so that they could begin their honeymoon trip to NOLA!
--Dad's land got destroyed by the tornado. This was quite a surreal experience and one I wouldn't wish on anyone. Dad has worked on this land for over 5 years now and all his blood, sweat, and tears has poured into it. See Dad's a bit of a minimalist and when he sold his Vicksburg house after being on the market one day (during the housing slump), he didn't really have a living situation back-up plan. Thus, he moved to his camper on his land in Ebenezer. He has finally finalized house plans and was supposed to begin last week. The camper is in pieces as is my uncle's who had left his there (he lives in TN) because he was going to help Dad build. Both barns were nearly destroyed. One of which he just finished building about 8 months ago. His canoe that he's had since he was a teenager was found hugging a tree about 15 feet up and riddled with holes. The hundred year old trees....don't even get me started. Luckily, Dad was in Oregon on business. His neighbor came to check on him and told Dad, "I'm glad to get in touch with you. I walked into your place, took one look around, and turned on my heel to head back to my place. I just knew if I even tried to look, I'd have found your body." Ugh. PS--Grand Avenue survived because the trees were so small! Glass half full.
--Rhett was baptized the day after the storm and we had so much to be thankful for. Namely that we were celebrating a baptism instead of burying his Paw Paw.
--Mom retired from the Ole Miss School of Nursing after over 20 years. She's now a full-time grandma and we are all happy about it.
--The last three weeks, Everett has been waking up a few times a night to eat which he hasn't done since about 2 months. Let me tell you, it's one thing to wake up and function several times a night when on maternity leave. Everyone expects you to be in a fog. However, when I have to wake up and work a 12 hour shift the next day, it's almost scary. Thank God I only work 2 days a week or there would be some serious kid's lives at risk.
--E got his 6 month shots and check up. He's 17 pounds, 4 ounces (50%). He's 27 inches long (75%).
Anyway, that's all that's going on here. I'm not even going to try to download pics because I'm flat out exhausted. To you Generation Yers--will try to update sooner next time. To Generation Xers--don't hold your breath.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Yumm-o Pears

Disclaimer for those of you wanting to make your own baby food and think that I'm some kind of super Betty Crocker for doing so---(I've gotten alot of comments on the squash post.)
Making baby food is SUPER easy. It's so not hard that I almost feel silly saying I'm making it. I've "made" squash, pears, carrots, bananas, and avocado and the most steps I've had to do is about 3. It's also way cheaper which, for those of you that know me, is big. I'm a bit of a penny pincher/cheap/Boxcar Willy but who's counting? The only disadvantage is the convenience with traveling which we do alot. It would probably be easier to just grab a jar for most people. However, if we're going somewhere I wouldn't feel comfortable pulling myself out to feed Rhett, I just pump before I leave and could easily put his food containers in the cold pack with the bottle. I'm not really sure how formula works but I guess you have to have a cold pack with you for those bottles? Wait...aren't they powder too? OK, maybe not. I digress...
So pears has turned out to be his favorite food yet. I'm not a huge pear fan. Something about the grainy texture kinda weirds me out. Anyway, the beauty of a pear is he likes it cold. I have discovered that he likes most things slightly warmed. I can serve the pears straight out the fridge. He also likes them mixed in rice cereal or oatmeal. The boy loves him a pear. Here are the steps and I'm telling you people, it's easy peasy so I won't even call it "making baby food" anymore. I'll call it...hmmm...any suggestions? I get such a bad rap for saying making baby food, I've gotta figure some other way to put it. Maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut and jar up his homemade baby food. That way I just don't have to hear it.
I used 3 pears and it made about 7 2-oz. servings.
Slice them up, roughly the same size and cut out the core remnants. Put the slices in a pot to steam. I, honestly, can't remember how long I steamed them. Just do it until they are easy to stab with a fork.
Peel off the skins...
I skipped a step in pics but you then Cuisinart them. I've found it purees better if you mash with a potato masher then Cuisinart them. Here's your pears.
Here's Everett dive bombing his pears. He does this arm out, mouth open thing for every bite. Is that normal? Wade contemplated how we'd all look if we all ate like that. Talk about people watching at restaurants.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter Arts

Project #1
This was one that Everett and I told noone about (for those of you who know me, that's a big deal.) Anyway, we wanted to send a few cards to the Grandparents, Aunts, and Uncles so we made these cards a few weeks ago. I searched online for Easter hand/footprint ideas but all I found was these lame thumbprint chicks. My son's thumb print is about as big as a pin top so I didn't really think I could make a chick out of that. I brainstormed and came up with these cards. I'm no artist so I was pleasantly surprised that they even resembled bunnies. Here's what you need (which you probably have most of these things lying around the house--maybe not lying around the house but if you have an art box, definately in there. or maybe you're messy and do have paintbrushes lying around your house. anywho...) Michael's or Hobby Lobby sells the blank cards.


Then, you need two of these adorable little things...

And here's the final result. Write a sweet message inside like Happy Easter (Hoppy Easter gets on my nerves for some reason?) and there you have it.


Project #2:
Mom came last week and we completed (read: I forced her) Project Easter Basket Liner. Mom wanted to just order a basket with liner from Pottery Barn kids but I refused. I had this fab basket and wanted Everett's monogram on it somewhere. Mom has all the equipment so my strong, willing stepdad lugged all this stuff down from Oxford so that we wouldn't have to lug all of Everett's stuff to Oxford. This is the original basket with some blue seersucker material and all those navy bags are sewing maching, embroidery machine, etc.
Here's the finished project. All that candy for a 4 month old? Don't judge. The Easter Bunny gave up sweets for Lent and anticipated being sick on chocolate for a few days. Hope everyone has a Happy Easter weekend!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Happy Easter! (or not)

Wade took Everett to meet the Easter Bunny today. He was underwhelmed.