Wordless Wednesday: Good Times

A wonderful visit from Nana.

Beach time with one of her best buds, Amelia.

I ♥ Mondays

Even Bean gets a Case of the Mondays. I hear ya, Beanie.

Ok, I lied, I don't. Or should I say, I used to not like Mondays. But I have found a cure for a bad Case of the Mondays, people! I glamour it! Monday night has now become my watch True Blood night, can I get a big WOOHOO!!!! Do I have HBO and watch it on Sundays like everyone else? Alas, no. But thanks to the wonderful world wide web, I can just watch it online the next day. (Doing the Carlton Dance right now.) That is, unless HBO gets wind and pulls it.... so far so good though! Seriously, how did we survive this world without the internet? How did I survive without Google? It feels like I am missing a limb when I can't get online. Anyways, I'm supremely and extremely grateful for the internet tonight, since having a Case of the Mondays really sucks.... err... I mean bites..... um..... I'm just going to watch my show now.....

Sadie Had A Little Goat

Sadie and the goats who probably weren't supposed to get out of their pen, but no one seemed to notice. "Uh, are they supposed to get out of that gate??!"

Petting "baby goat", Sadie's favorite.

This was one of those all around great weekends. Great summer weather, no tantrums or cranky toddler moods, and some fun things to do. You know how they say the best things in life are free? That's how it seemed this weekend. We finally took Sadie to the small, free petting zoo (turns out, really, really small) the next town over, and wow, she LOVED it. Sadie tends to be more on the timid side and when we pulled up, I could see the goats just milling around everyone and I thought she would want to be carried, that she might be afraid of the goats. Not so! You would have thought she grew up on a farm or something, she took to those goats right away! It was a blast just watching her. She fed them many little cups of food, pet them, attempted to hug and kiss them, and touched their little noses and long ears. She also got to see a turkey in person which she was pretty excited about, plus some geese, ducks, and chickens. In other words, she was in her glory. All the animals from her farm book had come to life! Wonderful Sunday morning.

Loving feeding the apparently ravenous goats. It takes them 2.7 seconds to eat a cup of food.

"Nose!" Also, on a different note, notice her croc's she has on- good choice to wear, since it wasn't just dirt you might step on there, if you get my meaning. Those shoes rock, clean up is super easy, whew.

We also got to spend a morning at the beach (free because we hoofed it!) and it was an awesome time. Last summer, Sadie hated the sand and the waves scared her. But this year it's completely different. We found a small beach in a cove near us that hardly has any waves and suddenly she has turned into a beach bum. Can't pry her away from the beach now! She plays in the sand, runs into the water, runs around the beach, chills out with us on our beach chairs (for a very short period of time!), and pretty much just loves every minute of it. She hates seaweed though. I can't blame her though, because she must have inherited the "EWW! Seaweed!" gene from me. Big seaweed hater over here. My favorite funny beach moment was when we are all sitting on the beach blanket, relaxing, and she suddenly stands up and announces "goin' to the water" and promptly books it to the water. HA! If you know Sadie, she always takes Mommy with her when she wants to play, but not this time. The attitude was totally "not sure what you guys are doin', but I'm going in the water. Later!"

A sand lovin' Sadie this year.

Sadie is doing well in the program, we're still in the beginning stages of it, so not much to report right now. She is working hard over there and they are trying something different- taking me more out of the picture and feeding her themselves and having her do playtime and nap time without me, at least in the beginning. Pretty much like a daycare situation. Trying to shake things up. This is hard on both of us, Sadie had never been away from me, and me from her. Doctors think this could help though, because she is so ultra dependent on me. We have a lot of hope and we're keeping a positive outlook, there is still a lot of time left that could make a big difference for her.

A Change In Summer Plans

A little blog update on Sadie. Last week at her doctor's appointment it was decided to put Sadie back into the program she was in last summer to help with her eating. Improvements have been made with her acceptance of food (big stuff for Sadie, but not in the grand scheme of things), but not a whole lot, and nothing that is going to gain her any weight. Everyone agreed to try the program again now that she is a little older and see what happens. It's an outpatient day program that will last from 4-6 weeks and we're there for 6+ hours each day. We're hoping being in such an intensive program, having others feed her and watching other kids eat, we might see some progress. I'm not getting my hopes up like last time, but I only would like to see some measurable improvement. Even slightly. I know she won't be eating normally after this and that this is a long term issue. But a little something would be nice. Any prayers or a little bit of good luck greatly appreciated. We start tomorrow, wish us luck. :)

The "M" Word

An enormous thanks to Greg (aka Paul) for helping us move all our heavy stuff. We owe you, dude, big time.

So it's been a little while since I wrote a real blog. Things got a little busy during the move to the new apartment. Things got a little stressful. Tempers ran high and I dare say I got more than a little.... Irish. If anyone is wondering why I haven't written about the move, well..... you know how the mind will repress any traumatic and awful memories? Well, that's exactly what mine is doing. Burying it deep and forever forgetting the horrible, awful, very bad move. We had better like it here- wait, scratch that- LOVE it here, because we are never moving. Ever. You will find me here to the end of my days. And if, and that's a BIG if, I ever become insane enough to move again, you can bet your ass I will be hiring movers to do everything. Packing, lifting, carrying, driving, lifting some more, and hell, they can even decorate the place if they want to. I don't care what it costs, it will be worth it. They can say it costs a million dollars and that the contract requires me to kill an endangered animal and destroy some rain forest. Ok, where do I sign? Sounds fair to me. With a toddler, busy schedules, and the three of us being sick almost the entire time, the actual move took about a month of packing, of driving car load upon car load back and forth, emptying boxes so that they could be filled again, cleaning,etc. That is all I will say about our move, it's just too painful to talk about. Now onward, so my mind can finish it's repressing.

Now some good news: now that we are unpacked and (mostly) settled in, we are loving it here. I love the neighborhood. Sadie and I are frequent park goers around here, one of them being an especially nice, large playground. We have found out that we are a 15 minute walk to a beautiful, small and family friendly beach. The food down the street at the upscale deli is absolutely delicious. (We lived off of it because no cooking was done here for a long time.) We also found out that one of the parks nearby has places to bbq and every week in the summer hosts little league games and free concerts. We even live in walking distance to a farm! So I guess all the work it took to get here was worth it. Oh, and we have LOTS of hot water now. JOY! I scald myself every day in the shower just because I can.

The infamous Monkey Bread. It actually still came out pretty good.

Oh, and my first real cooking experience with the new place? A heart-stopping experience. I want to preface with: I have little to no experience with a gas stove. I wanted to make us yummy Monkey Bread for breakfast on one of our first weekends here, to celebrate finally being moved in and to test out our oven. I followed the directions, put the dough in the bundt pan and used plenty of butter and sugar. Popped it in the oven. About 30 minutes into it, I see smoke coming from the oven. Hmmm, not good. Opened the oven, smoke billows out. Honestly, it billowed. I can see that the butter/sugar mixture has bubbled over and spilled down onto the bottom of the oven. Crap. So I take the pan out quickly and close the door and turn the oven off. That's when I hear a WHOOSH sound in the oven and in the little oven window I see fire. Not a little fire. The entire bottom of the oven is on fire. Immediate panic. Sadie is immediately elated at seeing real fire, running around yelling "Fire! Fire! Fire". I yell for John who looks just as panicked as I was, but luckily one of us can keep our head during moments like this (not me) and he put the fire out by pouring water on it. Big WHEW! Every window was open, trying to clear the smoke out. Interesting to note: the fire alarm never went off. Good to know that didn't work!! Maybe I was supposed to set fire to the oven to find that out! All ended ok, but now I'm ultra paranoid about the oven!

I am just going to leave you with a few photos of things we've been up to since we've m..... mo...... sorry, I can't even write it.

A visit to the farm down the street from us. It's only opened once a year to the public. Such a cool place.

Sadie and Ava, last day of music class, drumming together.

Tea party with Elmo!

First beach day of the year.