The Zoo

You guys, I love the zoo! And that is like the understatement of the year. My amazing husband surprises me a few times a year and takes me on impromptu zoo visits. Well last Saturday, for our family fun day, we surprised our sweet little Parker with a trip to the Como Zoo (in the Twin Cities, MN). Although we have taken Parker to the zoo in the past, this trip was a wee bit more special because Parker actually knows most animal names/sounds now and this kid loves his animals. Since it was a little bit early for the zoo season most of the animals were inside but we still had a great time & got to see a lot of Park’s favorites.

May Flowers

If April showers bring May flowers, what does a freak May snow storm bring? Answer: sadness, bitter tears of sunshine memories, and more sadness. If you live in the lovely state of WI (or at least Northern WI), this is what you probably woke up to..

And if you didn’t wake up to this glorious sight then count your blessings. Go on count them. Answer: at least 3. Normally I would love a snow day even one if freakin’ May but sadly this isn’t just a snow day for us but a sick baby day. Parker has a late Spring baby cold, although in his defense it hasn’t really been very Spring-ish but more Wintery as of late.

(sad sick baby still smiles at Mommy)

Anyways, my sad baby was up at 3:30 a.m. as was his sad mother. And to top off that horrible lack of sleep he has only napped a collective hour a half, a half an hour at a time. So yawn. And boo to snow. But yay for chocolate chip cookies & jammies all day long. We hope you and your own are warm, happy, and healthy. Merry Christmas! Happy Thursday y’all!

Currently {05.02.2013}

 

 

The Mommy (Me):

Admiring my bloggy friends who seem to balance this whole parent-working-blog writer thing and who have more than one post a week. Seriously, tell me your secrets. No really .. tell me. Do it.

Caring too much about the show The Tudors. I’m watching it on Netflix and am completely addicted. Also, I would be an amazing queen .. that is until I was murdered or died in child-birth.

Loving the sun. Please come back sun. I miss you and your glorious rays of warmth and happiness.

Cleaning not my floor or dishes or laundry…pretty much nothing. I am on a cleaning strike of sorts. Basically I have no want to clean so I just haven’t , sigh. I assume eventually I will have to clean but not today.

Creating memories with my family. Every Saturday (as you may know) is devoted to just my boys & I and, the hubs and I have been taking Parker on some pretty fantastic mini day trips. Last week we went to Hudson & then Como Zoo. (The picture above is of Parker & his Dad looking at the monkeys!) Have I told y’all lately how much I love the zoo?! Answer: an unreasonable amount. Well take my love of zoos and times it by a bazillion and you get how much Park loves the zoo. I will post some pictures of his baby mind being blown later this week.

The Toddler (Parker): <–sad times I changed it from The Baby to The Toddler (hold me)

Admiring his Daddy. This kid is totally in love with his Dad lately. I’d protest but I think his Dad is pretty amazing too.

Caring about & loving books. Parker is still big time obsessed with books and requests that we read to him all day long. He is so my kid!

Cleaning his own face & hands after we eat. He loves washing his hands in the sink like a big boy.

Creating amazing works of art. My handsome dude is the best little artist I know. I have a post coming up where I just brag & show off his amazing art because holy cuteness!

 

Currently {04.25.2013}

The Mommy (Me):

Eating healthy or at least trying to. I made the mistake of doing all this research on what wheat and sugar do to our bodies and now I’m borderline obsessed with cutting them out of our diets. Sadly it’s a lot easier said then done especially when one of the main perks of one’s job (read: my nanny job) is the free snacks and meals provided for not only myself but my son. With that said we have made some pretty impressive changes at home. We have limited our refined sugars to pretty much zero & the only wheat products we eat are the one’s we cook/bake ourselves. **sidenote: baking bread like real bread is a pain in the ass but so worth it!

Drinking so much water. As part of our eating healthier goal we gave up our main beverage of choice, soda, and have replaced it with water. For about a week there I didn’t think I’d be able to live with our my old friend Dr. Pepper but I can honestly say I don’t miss him anymore.

Wishing that we lived closer to my husband’s work. He works about an hour from home and third shift to boot so we miss out on a lot of extra time we could have together. We are seriously considering moving closer in the next few years.

Loving Parker’s new awesome dance moves. My favorite is this sweet little move we like to call kicky feet where he holds onto a chair or couch and stomps his little feet as fast as he can. It is seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen! Like my heart bursts from the cuteness.

Dreaming about Spring. There is still snow in WI and it is not appreciated or welcome. Luckily our forecast this weekend is much more Spring-like. It looks like the low is 50′s and the high  is in the 70′s. I so can’t wait!

The Baby (Parker):

Eating whatever I have on my plate. We could have identical meals and Parker still would rather have whatever is on my plate. He is the silliest little man.

Drinking almond milk. Parker is not a fan of cows milk and the few times we have tried to give it to him his little belly is not a happy camper so we tried almond milk on a whim and he adores it. He easily drinks an entire sippy and asks for more.

Loving his new slide. Parker had the best morning ever a week or so ago. His daddy surprised him one morning with a brand new toddler slide. Parker is totally in love with it and I love that my husband thought of the awesome surprise all by himself. Gold star for Daddy.

update on the great and wonderful Park-a-lark

I haven’t done an update on Parker in at least a fortnight. Wait..how long is a fortnight? **I’m going to run off and googl.e it.** Okay scratch  that, I haven’t done an update on Parker in like a bajillion fortnights (fortnight =14 days/nights, look you already learned something).

Anywho I already got off track there…lets start with the basics. Today (April 22) you will officially be 15 months old. You have 7 teeth (4 on top, 3 on bottom) and the cutest smile around. Your hair is crazy long and we probably should have cut it months ago or at least a fortnight ago but we kind of like it long and think you look pretty dashing just the way you are. You weigh right around 23 lbs and you are wearing mainly 18 month clothes and size 4 diapers.

You are an official walker. You walk, you run, you spin, and you stomp your feet. Sometimes you hold on to a chair and lift one leg really high in the air just because you can. You still like to knee crawl and “crawl” crawl from time to time but walking is for sure your favorite way to move about. We are so proud and amazed how fast you figured it out. You literally just stood up and walked one day.

You love to wave bye and hi. You love to blow kisses, ask for butterfly kisses by poking your finger at our eyes, and give us real kisses when we ask. You clap when your happy. You pretend to laugh and sometimes you pretend to cry. You like to pick up random things like remotes and shoes and pretend there are cell phones (which is funny since we never really talk on the phone in front of you). You love to dance to Laurie Berkner songs and the Go Diego theme song.

You love to read. You often toddle over to Mom or Dad with a book in your hand, baby signing “please” and saying your word for book – “Ba” “Ba”. You are perfectly content listening to the same book a ridiculous amount of times in a row and can easily sit for 20-30 min listening to stories.

You can baby sign more, please, milk, and all done. You can say Mommy, Daddy, Diego (go Diego), kitty, doggy, bye, hello, book, ball and much more (Mom can’t remember it all). You can tell us what a kitty, sheep, elephant, cow, and monkey say without us telling you. You love to repeat which is equally awesome and terrifying.

You love bath time, your dog Zoe, kitties & cows (pretty much all animals), your shoes, balls & trucks, going down the big boy slide Daddy got you, and spending time with us. You have recently started to throw epic fits when Daddy leaves for work and you no longer sleep through the night. You find comfort in stroking Mommy’s hair or your own. You love to eat just about anything we put in front of you and you are still nursing on demand. Mommy’s milk is your favorite! You are the most amazing child I know. We love you! Keep up the good work Punkers.

(*almost) Paleo chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache

One of our newest goals as a family is to try to eat healthier and live the healthiest lives we are able to. As part of meeting this goal we have dramatically cut back on sugar and wheat (gluten) as well as dairy. All of us have a huge sweet tooth and cutting back on sweets is hard. So hard in fact we have decided to start a new family tradition: sweets Saturday. Each Saturday we (read: me) are going to bake a healthy alternative to one of our favorite treats. The catch is these will be our treat for the entire week so once they are gone we are just out of luck. This week I decided to start by making chocolate cupcakes that are sugar and *mainly gluten free. These cupcakes would also work if you are on a Paleo or Primal diet.

 I found the recipe at the Paleo Spirt blog and stuck to it for the most part. Since I was making cupcakes instead of a cake I used the 9 inch cake pan recipe (making 24 cup cakes) and cooked it for 22 min. I didn’t have any coconut flour so I ground up what I had left of my coconut flakes. I only had about 2/3 cup of coconut after it was ground up so I ended up using 1/4 cup of whole wheat (and this is why it’s *almost Paleo). I have no doubt if I had used only coconut flour it would have turned out just as splendid if not even better. I will be trying that in the future. The batter turned out pretty runny which I expected since I used coconut flakes and not actual coconut flour but the end product was just as delicious. I did end up cooking them a little longer than the 22 minutes but I can’t remember how much longer, I just kept testing with a tooth pick.

As for the ganache frosting I simply melted a bag of cacao chips and 1/2 cup of almond milk.

These turned out so fabulous, it may be our new favorite treat.

winter blues (my whine-fest about winter)

You guys, right now in WI it is snowing. Like a snow storm snowing not one or two snow flakes. My entire family is just so over winter. We have had it with the colds/flus & ear aches. We have had it with the cold and the snow and the wet. I just crave the sun and grass and flip flops and summer dresses. And I can’t wait to watch Parker run in the grass for the first time. Or swim in the lake. There is so much we want to do but we can’t until the weather is better. Sigh. Anyone else dealing with the winter blues? Please tell me WI isn’t the only place that still has snow.

a love letter

Have I told you lately how deeply in love with my child I am?! You guys, this kid is amazing. He just makes every day a little brighter and I can’t wait to be his mommy for the rest of my life. I still look at him and think “I can’t believe he’s mine”. This miracle is mine. He was so worth the wait and I feel so blessed to have him in my life.

break up (a love/hate relationship with this blog)

If you haven’t noticed..me & my blog are sorta on the outs. I just haven’t had any motivation to blog lately which is sad. I blame a lot of it on the three weeks (yes 3 freakin’ weeks) of sickness that we have had in our home. We are in fact taking Park back to the dr for the second time in these last few weeks to see what our awesome Dr. P. suggest. **sidenote: if they tell me it’s a simple cold I will get stabby**  Other than sickness we have had a lot of big changes up in here. Parker is WALKING. Nay running. And spinning circles. And being adorable. How is it that babies grow so damn fast?! He is also talking a lot more and doing amazing things like diving off of couches and climbing on top of our TV stand. To say he’s a handful is an understatement/ But you guys, this kid is the best. Well this got really ramble-y. Probably  the lack of sleep. Anyways please bear with me while I get back in my groove and while we hopefully overcome this sickness. Oh oh oh also just remembered this: snow. We have snow. Like a whole freaking snow storm in April. WTF.

Currently {03.21.2013}

The Mommy (Me):

Cleaning up my potty mouth. Or at least trying to. Although I work with children I swear like a sailor, which is not okay (although slightly amusing) when you have a tiny parrot for a child. I may or may not have yelled “move the f*** over douche bucket” the other day whilst in the car with my boys. Hint: I did.

Planning our first official family vacation. Me and my boys are planning on taking a trip out West in June or early July and I can’t freakin’ wait! Eek. Can’t wait. Can’t wait. Can’t wait.

Skipping out on pretty much any event scheduled on a Saturday. My family will always come first and because my husband works third shift, Saturday is really our only day together as a family. Unfortunately, that’s when everyone likes to plan things so we end up skipping out on a lot of family & friend events. I hope everyone understands the importance of our Saturday time because if the tables were reversed I would understand.

Wearing ”real” shoes and not boots. Although according to Wisconsin our weather it’s still wintry and cold and gross but I say “nay Wisconsin nay. It is Spring and I shall wear real shoes”.

The Baby (Parker):

Cleaning every surface he can reach. This little monkey loves to clean. His newest obsession is stealing baby wipes and then cleaning the floor.

Skipping whole (cow) milk once again. Whole milk & Parker do not get alone. We gave him a sippy of it once a day for few days and poor wee Park had tummy troubles & no BMs soooo no more milk for Park. At least for a few more months.

Wearing his birthday suit. My boy is a wee little nudist at heart and is the happiest when he’s wearing absolutely nothing.