The Zoo, among other things

Today Emma got to go to the Zoo for the first time. She liked it, I think, but she is still just a little too little to appreciate it yet. She really loves animal noises, so she most appreciates the animals she can hear, a la birds. She chirps too when she hears them. She also has a noise that she thinks is barking like Larry(my parent's dog), and she makes another specific noise when she sees our cat. She is fascinated with creatures, but I think a lot of them today were just too far away for her to pick out, and were also foreign to her. So we will try again later, and I am sure she will like it more the next time.

We also got to have our first experience swimming last week! She got a little freaked out in the float, but she loves the water so she enjoys splashing around in the shallow parts. Brian and I took her to the pool again on Monday and she had a blast, again disliking the float. I think she will like it a little better once it gets warmer outside. Emma has started saying real words as well. We can tell that she is now meaningfully saying Dada, Lele (our cat), Mama, Yeah (though not quite like that), and Nanana(which CLEARLY means food.) That last one is what we have decided was her first word. She started saying it two months ago when she was hungry and still does now that she realizes it gets results. I don't know why on earth she is so verbal! Don't know where that came from...

Anyway, life is just movin along for Brian and I. Nothing much to tell so I will leave you with some pictures of the past week or so.

My latest recipe rave

I already told you about the cookbook that I love, so I thought I would quickly give you one of the recipes. Let me start out by saying that I used to be terrified of whole chickens..but not anymore!

Stick a whole chicken in your crock pot. You can add whatever you want inside: celery, garlic, onion, carrots..you know the drill. I just put a whole bunch of garlic cloves since I have one million of them (I love costco!) Anyway, don't put any liquid in. Cook it on high for 4 hours (I was skeptical, but it was done) then take the chicken out (I used tongs and a spatula...it was pretty difficult though becuase it was falling apart) and let it cool. Also at this point drain out the broth and stick it in your fridge. Scrape off the fat when it cools and then use it when you need chicken broth. Now pick the chicken apart. That's pretty much the hardest part, by the way. It takes about 15 minutes to do. Then you take the meat (you can use half or all of it depending on how many you are feeding) and throw it in a skillet. Add a can of black beans undrained, some garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper and there you go. Heat it up and throw it into a tortilla with salsa, sour cream, cheese...whatever your heart desires. And serve it with Publix yellow rice, and you have the most insanely cheap and tasty meal on the planet!

Let me just say that I do not like dark meat and neither does Brian, but when you cook it in the crock pot it's so tender that it really doesn't matter. Also, when you add it into that recipe you really cannot taste it. I LOVE this recipe, and I am so impressed with how cost effective it is and how GOOD it is! If you buy the chickens from costco, it's a phenomenally better deal than if you buy a whole chicken from a regular grocery store, so you're cutting costs all over the place! So anyway. I will stop ranting now, but you have to try this. It's so easy!!

What goes on right under my nose...

The bag my cat is sticking out of is food that he got really sick from eating. So I have been in a constant search to find something that won't make him sick. Apparently he doesn't like what I have chosen for him! =)

Brian is officially done with his first year of law school!!! He got a whopping three days off, and now he has started his summer semester. Thankfully that will be ending at the start of July, so he will get about a month off. Maybe we can finally go to the beach...hmmm..Anyway, he is thrilled to be done, and the one class he was sure he failed he did not, so he can proceed. (I never thought he had, I would just like to say for the record.) He has also started the deacon training classes, so he will be gone three nights a week again, but that's ok. At least he's home for dinner one of those nights.

Emma is doing ok. I thought we had kicked the ear infection, but I think now that we have not. Yesterday she woke up with a high fever that she maintained pretty much all day. She slept almost all day and then all night, and she didn't have any other symptoms at all but that fever. She woke up today with a slightly runny nose, but no fever, thankfully. So I am unsure how to proceed from here. I don't want to hurt her ears, but all the stuff I have heard about antibiotics make me very nervous, so I just don't know. For now, I think I will continue to give her vitamin c, cold and flu drops, and ear ache medication, all of which are homeopathic. I have also given her some more peroxide in her ears. I am praying we can beat this ourselves!!

I am doing well considering. It's been a very busy month, and I have recently taken to not sleeping at night, which I think is lovely. I think once I have had a few more days of calm maybe I will be able to sleep again. I also think I got myself a case of whiplash at six flags. All of the rides were fine except the scream machine, which Brian and I spent the whole ride saying "OUCH!!!!" at every bump. I recall thinking at the time that it was going to hurt later, and all day yesterday I had a pretty awful headache from it all. Oh well...that will be the last time I even so much as LOOK at that ride!! On a much lighter note, I have found a cookbook that I absolutely adore. It's called Healthy Foods by Leanne Ely, and the advice and recipes are great! She has a recipe called Rubber Chicken which gives you three days worth of food off of one baked chicken! I am very impressed with this book and would highly recommend it.

Well. That's that. I will leave you with a picture of my cutie pie from yesterday when her fever came down enough to play for a few minutes. Poor sick baby!!

Multivitamins

I am wondering if any of you use a multivitamin, or have you ever tried costco's multivitamin. I think I really ought to be taking something for just overall well-being, but I am unsure which to take. The one from Costco is a great price, I am just curious if anyone has used it and actually LIKES it. Any help on this matter would be great!

Worth a try

HAH!

My new reason for not having anymore children. Right.

And...I don't suppose I should be surprised, but this makes me so sad!

Poor Ems

Munchkin seems to have contracted an ear infection. I am betting the cause is allergies, both food and enviromental, so I am working on both areas. But I am curious what you have all done to cure such things for your kids. I am not ready to give her an antibiotic by any means. I have given her a few drops of garlic extract and put a hot pad on the ear. Any other ideas?

Our Life

So it's been a while. But I was also without internet until about a week ago, so it's not ALL my fault! We have been doing just fine around here. We chug along and are thankfully reaching the end of Brian's first year of law school!

Brian is loving his job with Andy. He really looks forward to going there, and is sad that it is currently only once a week, though that will be changing in about three weeks. He is learning a lot, and loving working in a christian atmosphere where there isn't competition. He is the most dressed up of the three of them, and Sarina and Andy make fun of him all the time for wearing a suit every day. (Andy MIGHT come in in jeans, which he tells me is a big step up from the sweatpants he used to wear all the time.) They are even joking about having a dress like Brian day. Ah, my overdressed sweetie. He has two exams to go, one of which is tonight, and then he is free for about two days. Then he starts his summer semester, but it will only be two nights a week, so that's NOTHING. Never again will we have a semester as bad as this has been. Four or five nights a week with him gone has been very nearly unbearable, but it's OVER now!!

Emma is doing great. Since her awful well baby visit I have grown more bold in trying new foods. She seems to have just passed the hump, and I can pretty much feed her anything. She eats mostly finger foods now, though I usually give her some form of baby food too just to be sure she is full and getting all that she needs. She can eat wheat with no problems at all, and she ate chick-fil-a with me yesterday! My life just got SOO much simpler! And since she is finally eating carbs, she is chunking up nicely. Brian was joking that they are going to chew me out at the doctor because Emma will have gained too much weight. Ah well, I can't ever make them happy, so I won't even try. My sister came to visit a few weeks back, and she was showing Emma how to work her push toy(which I had been trying to show her for a while, by the way). The next day at home, Emma crawled right up to ours and started using it perfectly. So now she pushes that around like crazy and walk/crawls all over the place. She is into EVERYTHING, and has also dropped the frequency of her naps. She says "nanananana" when she is hungry, and rubs her eyes to mean either tired or hungry (which is so much fun to guess which is which!), and says mamam and dadada. She doesn't QUITE get who those are aimed at yet, but she is so close. I could say a million and one things about how she is growing, but I cannot remember them all! She has five teeth fully in. She is so curious about everything and is so joyful! She just goes full tilt until she collapses for a nap. And lastly, we went to the park yesterday to celebrate Eden's 2nd birthday, and there was a fountain where tons of kids were playing. It never even occurred to me to bring a bathing suit for either of us, but I figured we could play anyway. She had a blast! She splashed the water all over us and thought it was hilarious. She would even start to reach for the water then anticipate the splash and pull back and giggle before she got wet. It was so adorable! We will be going back, but with bathing suits next time.

I am very well. I am so looking forward to summer with its swimming and cookouts and possible vacations. Just having Brian home more will be great! I just putter along and have quite a full plate between Bible study and watching Kate! I love to be busy, so it's right up my alley. I cannot think of anything more to say about me, so I will leave you with a million pictures since I am woefully behind!