Katie: Homemaker – Page 5 – The Adventures of Katie and Family

03
Jun
2015

8 Months

8 months seems really old but our Theodore really is getting big!

The month started with Brian leaving for a trip to Las Vegas for Loopconf. A short stop at my parents’ house after bringing Brian to the airport turned into an impromptu sleepover for Benny. Teddy and I spent our time together going for a walk, running errands, and hanging photos in Ben’s room. It was kind of relaxing to have only one child for a day. The boys and I had lots of fun while Daddy was away but were thrilled that he came home in time for Mother’s Day and his birthday.

Teddy rolls like he was born doing it now. He’s also figured out that rolling can get him to places previously out of reach like Ben’s toys. He is particularly fond of the vintage Little People garage, sucking on the Little People’s heads, and hitting things with a toy golf club.

Play kitchens: Great for imaginative toddlers AND curious babies

We’re working on sitting now too. Learning to sit unassisted is such a gradual process and it’s not like first roll or first steps where there is a moment you can point to as the beginning. He loves sitting in front of his walker toy and attempt to manipulate all the slides, shapes, balls, and noisemakers but will tip himself over on purpose if he doesn’t want to sit anymore.

Teddy loves his people and “his people” encompasses pretty much everyone he meets. His daddy, brother, and grandparents all have special places in his heart. He gives glorious, slobbery, open-mouth kisses when you ask.

A sneak peek of what happens in our house between 5 and 7 pm

Sleep training has been going really well; I’ve even gotten to “sleep through the night” a few times in the last 30 days. We’ve completely dropped Teddy’s 5-6 AM feeding and if he wakes up, he can put himself back to sleep with minimal intervention from me. With Brian working crazy, odd hours lately, it’s good that I’m getting (reliably) better quality sleep.

We spent Memorial Day weekend at a Civil War reenactment at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI. This was Teddy’s first event and the kickoff to the summer reenacting season in Michigan. The weather was perfect, the boys were fabulously behaved, and we had more stress-free fun over the weekend than we’ve had in our two previous summers of reenacting with kids. Staying at a hotel instead of tent camping made all the difference in the world!

Our family! Photo courtesy of Ken Giorlando

Teddy eats like a champ and will put everything in his mouth, given the opportunity. I’ve been working with Ben on keeping paper books, flash cards, and pieces of cereal off the floor and out of Teddy’s reach. Ben is struggling with suddenly being expected to share toys so it’s rare that I have to remind him to move his toys away from his brother.

The first roadblock to Teddy’s love of all food: Green beans. His face says it all!

We heard over and over again at our reenactment last week that Teddy is the best behaved, most relaxed, happiest, smiliest, most content baby ever. So far, that’s proven to be true! He had one more short-lived ear infection this month (less than 12 hours of fussiness) but even that didn’t bring our boy down for long.

We bought an exersaucer to keep outside for Teddy. He loves it!

21
May
2015

Brothers Say Good Morning

categories: Photo Post

One of Ben’s first stops every morning is Teddy’s room. “Good Mawlin, Teddy!” he says cheerfully. Teddy lights up and squeals with excitement.

Just another start to another day with two crazy, adorable, loveable boys.

(Just to add a small dose of reality, Ben completely melted down at the store yesterday because Teddy grabbed and ripped the ad Ben was playing with. “Teddy ripped my menu!” They are far from perfect but the dynamics of their relationship fascinate me.)

17
May
2015

Lucky Number 7

categories: Photo Post

7 years ago, this guy and I walked down the aisle, said “I do,” and threw a wicked awesome party.

I love you, Brian. Thank you for loving me and taking such good care of me for 7 years. I’m looking forward to another 70!

04
May
2015

It Was a Good Day

categories: Photo Post

FullSizeRender — My grandparents had a wonderful vegetable garden in the backyard for as long as I can remember and one of the bonuses of having bought their house is the three plots of asparagus. I picked enough for the two adults around 5 pm, consumed by 8 pm. Delicious!

FullSizeRender_1 — Two year olds are not always fun (he threw himself to the ground in anger only minutes after this) but he is sweet, loving, funny, and smart as a whip!

There is nothing better, according to my boys, than playtime with Daddy. This photo is one of my favorites of all time, taken in our own backyard

03
May
2015

7 Months

categories: Growing Boys

I’m struggling to believe that my squishy newborn is a chunky, active, BIG baby already but for some reason, they don’t ask permission to get big!

Teddy saw the pediatrician for his 6 month check up at the end of April. He was 16 lb 6 oz (20%), 27.25″ long (63%), and has a 17.5″ head (73%). He got two more vaccine pokes and the rotavirus oral vaccine. He was fussy until bedtime but that’s pretty close to par for the course for Teddy and vaccines. He had a DTaP granuloma lump at the site of that shot so I’ll have to remind them to give his next dose at 18 months in a different place. He’s hit most of the developmental milestones expected by 6 months (rolls over (!), likes to look at himself in a mirror, likes to play, smiles at familiar people, talks, puts things in his mouth, raking grasp, sits briefly with support, transfers toys between hands) and now we’re looking forward to things like actual mobility and sitting upright!

He is on the shorter side so he’s still wearing all 6 month clothes. It took me FOREVER to get all of the outgrown clothes out of his dresser so I’m glad I don’t have to do it again soon. I did go out and buy a few more pairs of neutral pants and some long sleeves to help with the transition between seasons. There’s been about a 50 degree temperature swing in the last 30 days so almost every day calls for something different. It snowed since we got back from California but today is nearly 80! My favorite purchase this month was just this past week when I found a pair of R2D2 Robeez shoes for $2 at a garage sale. Score!

Teddy FINALLY figured out rolling over from his belly to his back at the beginning of the month. He is getting faster by the day. He’s also rolled from his back to belly several times (all in his bed). He gets really confused when he wakes up sleeping on his belly! We’ve been working on sitting unassisted but he either falls over or folds himself in half!

We started giving Teddy solid foods right after his 6 month birthday and he took to it like a fish to water! We started with banana and added in sweet potato sticks, avocado, carrot sticks and puree, applesauce, pear slices, graham crackers, rice crackers, and pea puree. He figured out the mechanics of getting the food to his mouth immediately and really enjoys playing with what we give him. I had forgotten how incredibly awful the diapers during this transition period can be. Ew! We’re still using cloth diapers but I’m not as vigilant about getting them washed and folded so it’s not too out of the ordinary to find the baskets empty and reach for a disposable instead.

Teddy doesn’t have any teeth yet but we’ve had a full month of issues with an ear infection, croup, and general fussiness from his vaccinations. Let’s hope that his 7th month is a free from those complications but I wouldn’t mind the teeth. Let’s just get them over with!

This was a pretty big month for everyone’s sleep habits. Teddy got moved into his own room at night right after we got home from our San Diego trip. Right after that, I stopped swaddling him cold turkey and he had to readjust. THEN I started pushing him to take 2 naps a day instead of 3 by lengthening his afternoon nap to longer than 45 minutes. We’re not completely successful every day (Ben refuses to take naps occasionally so some days I get nothing done in the afternoon) but it’s slowly getting easier for him to sleep longer. He usually naps for 30-45 minutes in the mid-morning and 2 to 2.5 hours after lunch. Sleep training is tough but I know we’ll all be better for it in the end.

Overall, Teddy is still a super contented little guy who loves to play with toys (the ring stacker is his favorite right now) on the floor with his people around. He is happy to be worn in a carrier of any sort, enjoys car rides, nursing, solid foods, the cats, and being tickled. He wakes up happy for the most part and is a much-loved part of our family.

I bought the boys’ Easter outfits last year right after we found out we were expecting another boy. I’m so glad they fit!

Sitting gives Teddy a whole new perspective on life

“No tummy time, Mommy. I’m just going to lay here.”

Almost every photo I have of Teddy from this past month is him on his belly. C’mon buddy, roll over!

Teddy’s “I have croup and am too stick to play” pose

Applesauce on a basting brush means he can feed himself but I can never reload it fast enough for his liking

Who has two thumbs and took a 3 hour nap? This guy!

Trying out the reenacting clothes. This dress ultimately became Ben’s but Teddy does fit perfectly in all of Ben’s hand-me-downs

Happily playing with a stuffed animal while Mommy tries to wake herself up

02
May
2015

Kitchen Garden

categories: Outside

The weather has been gorgeous here in West Michigan for the last few days. We’ve been hurrying through dinner so we can spend more time outside. In fact, the first thing out of Ben’s mouth this morning when I got him up was a request to go outside!

Last night the boys were happy playing with their toys so Brian and I got a little bit of bonus yard work done. Brian trimmed the back (western) hedge, I weeded half of the kitchen garden, Teddy played quietly in the bouncy seat, and Ben ran around but mostly played with the water table (best toddler toy of all time!).

Watching Ben and Brian from my weeding spot

Teddy happily played like this for more than an hour!

I finished weeding all the maples out of this bed today during the nearly nonexistent naps that the boys gave us and was able to make some plans for all the empty space I had uncovered. I forgot to get a photo before the sun went down so you’ll have to put up with the partially finished one from last night. I have two small chives to plant yet this weekend and will pick up some lavender soon. I’m going to split and move the hosta that are between the tree and the house to the empty middle of the garden so we have a place to store his outside toys without crushing plants.

My mom and grandma stopped by yesterday and identified some of the mystery plants as different kinds of lilies, astilbe, and columbine. The beautiful (yet scraggly) flowering bush below the window is a flowering almond. From what I read today, they put up with a lot of pruning so I’ve started clipping it back to (hopefully) encourage it to fill in.

Progress! We has it!

26
Apr
2015

Lurking Behind the Garage

categories: Outside

I finally got a chance to get back to work outside today. It’s been cold and rainy for most of the week and while I want to get the yard work caught up, I’m not that hardcore!

Today’s projects were to:

Trim the 4 spirea in front of our front entry
Deadhead all three areas of hydrangea since we’ve determined they’ll flower off old growth
Clean all off last year’s growth, leaves, and those dang maple saplings from the large 6′ by 20′ bed

Did I finish? Oh yes I did! I was able to sneak a little over two hours in while the boys napped. The spirea project was over quickly thanks to our electric hedge trimmer. I was able to pull out a lot of dead wood and cut them to a more uniform shape and size.

I quickly moved on to the hydrangeas. We have three areas of hydrangea, two flanking the mess where a spruce was cut down last spring and one really large plot along our back (western) fence. Cutting off dry flowers isn’t tough work so that was quickly finished.

I have been dreading working in the bed behind the garage since we moved in last summer. By the time we moved in, the bed was full of fast-growing weeds and unidentifiable plants. I pulled off last year’s flower stalks but the biggest issue, as with most of our yard, were these little suckers…

Little maple saplings! It seemed like thousands of them! Last year was a big year for errant maple growth because of the really heavy snow cover. With packing one house, cleaning and updating the other, growing a baby, and caring for a wild toddler, I didn’t have enough energy or time to pull them all by hand so they had a full season of growth in their roots.

Now to brag a little, the garden looks pretty awesome now!

IMG_6262-1 — Cleaned up and spiffy looking

Moving from the background to foreground we have lilies, a mix of irises and tulips, mystery plant (that will grow around 3 ft tall and flower purple? maroon? fuchsia?), three peonies, more irises, and mystery plant #2 along the back by the wall. I moved the cement stepping stone to this bed today too. At some point, my grandpa removed the gutters above this bed and the rain cascading out of open end of the gutter system was causing quite a bit of soil loss next to the path. We had a few extra pavers on the other side of the house that I could move over until I figure out a more permanent solution to last until we replace the leaky gutters.

What’s up next? This garden!

The window you can see through the branches of the tree is the window over my kitchen sink and this bed lays on the opposite side of the walkway from the bed I cleaned today. From left to right, we have stray maples, a rose bush, primroses, maples, the same mystery plant #2 as the other garden, a trillium, maples, tulips, maples, a few hosta, and some maples. The tree is a dogwood and the bush by the window is a…. mystery bush. It is about to flower what look to be small, pink blossoms so that’s exciting.

I want to add lavender and chives to this garden at some point and pave the area closest to the house with landscaping tiles to store the boys’ outdoor toys. I look at this garden a ton while washing dishes so I’m excited to get it looking as good as the other’s I’ve worked on.

18
Apr
2015

Guess This Plant II

categories: Outside

I’ve been chipping away at the weeds and spring yard clean up during naps and after the boys go to bed off and on this week. I still have so much to do but the yard waste bin is full again!

I wrapped around the house to the northwest end behind Teddy’s bedroom (left window) and the full bathroom (right window). I need to pull out about a million tiny maple trees and other weeds. The majority of this bed is taken up by the biggest holly bush I’ve ever seen. There are a few hostas in the foreground of this photo and then there’s this mystery plant to the left of the holly…

Mystery plant is about 2′ tall and kind of like a tree with leaves concentrated on branches, not up the stem

So, any ideas? Is it something that should be growing in a garden or is it a freakishly large weed?

11
Apr
2015

Pulling Weeds and Outdoor Plans

categories: Outside

I am not a gardener by any stretch of the definition. My parents enjoy telling the story of how I grumpily told them as a teenager that I was going to live in an apartment high up in a skyscraper so I’d never have to pull weeds as an adult. I didn’t end up in that apartment, however, and my feelings toward yard work hasn’t changed. We are on our second suburban house with loads of planned and beautifully landscaped garden beds. In fact, it’s probably pretty safe to say that we have twice the square footage of garden space that needs to be maintained at this house than what we had at the old house. Cue the sad trumpet noise!

Because I haven’t spent much time in the yard since my forced labor as a kid, I can’t identify very many plants nor do I know much of how to take care of them. Join me this growing season as I explore the jungle that we bought! I’ll make some guess, use Google a ton, and ask people who know more than me and hopefully not kill off everything in the process. By recording my work here, I hope to have a long list of completed projects that I can be proud of by the time snow flies later this year.

I headed outside today to start attacking the mess that is the front landscaping. Our house was vacant for several months last spring and we didn’t move in until the heat of summer when I was already uncomfortably pregnant so much of the yard hasn’t been weeded for more than a year. My goals for this afternoon were to get as much cleaned up during Ben and Teddy’s afternoon naps as possible including:

Trim the last of the ornamental grass before the new growth takes over
Cut back the butterfly bush in the front yard
Trim whatever else comes back as new growth in the front bed
Pull out invasive grass and tiny maple trees still growing from last spring

How much did I get done, you ask?

This is what the corner of ornamental grass looked like when I started and…

…this is what it looked like when I was finished. I cut out last year’s growth, cleaned out the remaining dead leaves, and yanked out the surprise baby maples that were hiding under the leaves.

I don’t know what this plant is (do you?) but it grows from new growth every year so I needed to cut off all the dead stuff from last year.

This is how that area looks now that the plants are uncovered. I can’t wait to clean up the edges of the garden and put in mulch to keep the weeds from taking over!

This is our butterfly bush. It has gorgeous purple flowers when it blooms and caps off the western end of the garden bed. It is another plant that sends up new shoots every year so everything you see in the photo had to be cut back. This was intimidating to me because some of the branches were an inch thick!

Here she is in the lower left corner! I cut off all the sticks from last year, dug out a surprise maple tree hiding inside that had gotten to nearly 3′ tall (yikes!), and pulled out the chunks of wood that had started rotting and were soft.

I worked on the middle of the garden bed but didn’t make as much progress as I had hoped. The bed is supposed to be kidney bean shaped but the middle was choked with invading grass. Grass in the yard = good, grass in the garden = awful!

I got about half of the grass removed before I started running short on time and needed to move on. There wasn’t a whole lot to uncover under the dead grass except a few lily bulbs and what might be hostas. I’d love to widen the bed a tad through the middle and add a few more flowering plants that can handle full sun yet this year.

As a bonus, I dug out two more 2-3′ tall, self-seeded maple trees that were growing along the north side of the house and tested to see how much effort it would take to clean up the bed below our eastern bedroom windows. The answer, a lot of effort! Depending on how sore I am when I wake up tomorrow, I may have another post ready soon!

09
Apr
2015

Teddy Starts Solids

categories: Growing Boys

The other title I was considering for this post was “Teddy noms on a banana and then throws up” but it was a bit too long for my taste.

We gave Teddy his first solid food tonight: half of a banana. Yes, we gave it to him in one piece. Our favorite way to teach a baby how to eat solid food is called Baby Led Weaning where you skip spoon-feeding your infant pureed food by providing age and skill appropriate whole foods. This teaches the baby how to hold, “chew,” pinch, swallow, and experience food at their own pace with the goal (at least in our house) of creating a healthy relationship with food from the get-go.

Teddy couldn’t keep the banana in his hands even though he tried really hard so I provided a little assistance at first.

Learning early that food tastes better if it smeared all over one’s face

It was about this point that Teddy gagged when he realized he had something that wasn’t completely liquid in his mouth and spat up his banana and some of the milk he had drank just before dinner. We’re not worried about that; it would be more worrisome if his body didn’t instinctively try to move the food away from his airway. Gagging didn’t stop Teddy from enjoying the taste of banana for the rest of dinner, though!