Mommin' It Up!

January 21, 2013January 21, 2013

Words I Never Thought I’d Hear

Saturday Bobby called me into the kitchen with a “Hey, you got a second? I want to show you something.” When I walked into the kitchen, he was holding one of those over-the-door shoe organizers which is weird, and he said, “So, I was looking around on Pinterest…”

Umm, WHAT? Did I hear that right, honey? You were looking around on Pinterest? Am I talking to my husband or one of my girlfriends? I. Am. Confused.

“I know, right?” he said sheepishly. “Anyways, I was looking at kitchen organization ideas…”

We struggle with counter space in our small kitchen, and Bobby took it upon himself to find a good solution for our large amount of kitchen tools – spatulas, tongs, ladles, etc. were overflowing from the holder I used for them. So, the MAN got on Pinterest and figured it out!

Ta-Da!

He attached this shoe organizer to the inside of our very large pantry doors. More than enough room for everything!

Now I just need him to actually organize the hodge-podge of completely un-ordered food in our giant pantry.

Anyone wanna come help?

I know. It’s ridiculous.

But anyway, the moral of the story is, LADIES! Get your husbands on Pinterest! Stuff’s gonna get done!

Is the man in your life on Pinterest? Or is Bobby a pioneer in that arena?

January 18, 2013

Out of House and Home

I know that it is undeniably true that “every kid is different” but Jonah – Jonah seems to be a different species entirely than Joshua and Sophie sometimes.

For one thing, he eats. A LOT. Joshua and Sophie up to the age of five both ate “barely enough to stay alive” as I used to say. Sophie’s still that way! And she is SO picky!

But not my Jonah. He is the definition of a bottomless pit. He eats meals, he eats snacks, he whatever he can get his hands on whenever he can get it. At his two-year check up last week (in which he weighed in at only 27 pounds, 45th percentile) his doctor asked me how many snacks he ate a day. “I don’t know,” I said, “Probably 3 or 4.” The doctor then said, “I’m gonna ask you to cut back on that to one snack a day.” AND I LAUGHED. “It’s all GOOD stuff!” I protested.

Despite my penchant for sugar, I give Jonah healthy stuff. Yesterday he consumed two whole apples, three whole bananas, a bowl of plain yogurt with a strawberry mixed in, countless grapes, a bunch of diced ham, some Rice chex, countless plain raisins, and countless dried pineapple and papayas.

The one thing I cannot get him to eat is VEGETABLES, of course. But we are working on it. I can get him to eat corn…mixed with beans and canned tomatoes in one of our family favorite recipes. It’s too bad, he used to eat EVERYTHING but he has become picky in that regard.

We’ve also decided to take Jonah gluten-free, and this is day five of that venture for us. The reason? Well, for one, I have to eat GF and my husband is eating GF with me out of solidarity. So taking one more person off gluten wasn’t that hard in-house. But the real reason is that recently Jonah has been waking up from both naps and in the morning PISSED OFF. Just mad, mad, mad for no reason, and throws a big long crazytown fit that boggles our minds and usually lasts about 30 minutes.

Since I know that a gluten intolerance can manifest itself in this kind of way in kids, I decided just to try it. We took him off gluten on Sunday, and he hasn’t thrown a fit since Monday.

Could be coincidence, but I’m going with it for now!

So anyways.

My kid eats a lot. And now eats a lot gluten-free. So PLEASE SEND dollar bills or grocery gift cards to the Jonah Appetite Satiation Fund of America!

(Not really, peeps. No one sue me.)

Do you have big eaters in your family?

January 16, 2013January 15, 2013

I should’ve taken “before” pictures

So Bobby and I are going through that homeowner heaven-hell paradox known as “refinancing”. It’s heaven because we are shortening the length of our loan by 4 years at a reedonkulously low interest rate that will save us approximately 50 bajillion dollars (now all THREE kids can to college instead of us having to draw names for two lucky ones). It’s hell because OH MY GOSH AN APPRAISAL! WE HAD TO HAVE AN APPRAISAL! Translation: you better get rid of all the crap you’ve been hoarding for 11 years so there’s room for someone to walk through your house and tell you how much it’s worth.

We didn’t find out the date of our appraisal until six days before the blessed event, so we worked our butts off de-cluttering, hauling crap to the dump and Goodwill, and organizing the crap that had to stay. Then, Monday, we paid our 18-year-old friend and babysitter Krisha to clean the house from top to bottom for us. Because I came to the realization that you CANNOT clean your house from top to bottom with a two-year-old attached to your limbs. So it was either pay Krisha to babysit Jonah while I cleaned, or…pay Krisha to CLEAN while I played with my son at an alternate location. Let me think about it…hmmm…I’ll take option B.

So, after a week of de-cluttering and carpet cleaning by us and deep cleaning by Krisha, our house looked pretty awesome this morning when the appraiser came.

(Although what impressed her the most? Was the large shelving with hundreds of Bobby’s perfectly-folded t-shirts in our laundry area. She even asked if she could pick one up to “see how he does it”. Because my husband is like a t-shirt folding sensei and I will admit, it is pretty impressive. I hope it somehow adds to the value of our home.)

I should’ve taken pictures. Of course I did not.

Eight hours after the appraiser left, it looked like this:

livdinroom — Hurricane Jonah made landfall. At least the floors are pretty clean and shiny under all those toys!

I am SO GLAD this appraisal is over. I hope to build on Krisha’s great cleaning job and our de-cluttering and what not and do a better job keeping things clean this year. But for now, I am going to sit back and enjoy the rest of the lemon butter cream frosting I made tonight to go with my lemon gluten free cookies I made earlier (because Sophie said, “I want to bake something!”) and wash it back with the GIANT Mountain Dew my darling husband brought me when he got home from work.

frosting — IF you need me, I will be in the bottom of this bowl.

Remember when I said I was gonna give up pop at New Year’s? Well it’s January 15th and this is only my SECOND one! I think that’s pretty good for someone who used to have two a day. And let me tell ya, I earned it. But tomorrow it’s back to being a good girl. (Which is why I HAD to eat the rest of that icing…eliminating temptation, right??)

Oh, and also, please join me in giving thanks to God that the appraiser didn’t want to look inside my bedroom closet. Seriously large bullets were dodged there!