Wordless Wednesdays - Big Girl Bed

Site Share - Christy Jordan's Southern Plate

Christy Jordan's Southern Plate

I found this site a few weeks ago.  Her recipes remind me of my mom's and granny's cooking.  You can find recipes, crafts, household tips, just about anything.

Christy is from Alabama and she started her blog a year ago.  I love the recipes she shares because she breaks them down and gives you pictures for every step.

I have tried these recipes so far and my family loved them.  They are very easy and you probably have most of the ingredients in your pantry already.

I love to use my crockpot.  It is my favorite appliance.  I have made this Slow Cooked Pork Roast twice already and it is very tender and so very quick to put together.



Christy claims this is the World's Easiest Supper.  I think the Slow Cooked Pork Roast probably beats it in steps, but this Taco Soup is a close second.  This soup is my favorite recipe from Southern Plate so far.  It is very easy and the soup is so tasty.  We topped ours off with some shredded cheese and Bean's favorite oyster crackers.  I'd definitely give this one a try.



If you sign up for Christy's newsletter, she will email you a free beef e-cookbook, too.  Check out her site.  I bet you'll find some awesome recipes to try for your family.

Homelife Happenings

Things have been pretty slow at home.  We didn't do much of anything this weekend.  Our refrigerator died on Friday so we fought debated Saturday if we should buy a new one or try and find one off Craigslist.  I didn't want to buy a new one cause we didn't have enough saved for one that I would be happy with and Hubz wasn't too thrilled about finding one off Craigslist.  So The Man, my father-in-law, told us to take one he had in his garage and use it until we figured out what we wanted to do.  He had bought this one a year or so ago and it didn't fit in their space so it has been running and living in the garage.  So that problem is solved or at least shelved for awhile.

Bean is in one of her "I don't want to eat" modes.  She'll eat it if it is junk or fruit but other than that, forget it.  I am tempted to start dipping all of her food in chocolate to see if that will help but I just can't imagine eating chocolate-dipped green beans or chocolate-dipped chicken.  Ugh.

Bean doesn't know it yet but her bottle days are numbered.  Yes, she is STILL on the bottle.  I was very slow at getting to this stage because Bean was on the low-end of the weight charts and she got most of her calories from Pediasure and instant breakfast drinks through her bottle.  But I am thinking that she has a mindset that the "ba-ba" is her primary food source and real food is just a side-show.  So I think if we get rid of the bottle, then she might be more apt to eat the food we give her.  Any thoughts or tips?  I am really dreading this but I know it has to be done.  Hubz spoke up and said "I've seen 3 year-olds still on the bottle.  What's the big deal?  Leave her alone."  I told him he wasn't in the running for Dad of the Year and to get back on my team.

On a more personal front, I got out of jury duty this morning.  I showed up, sat around, and then they released us because all of the cases on the calendar had been settled.  Good job, lawyers.  What a way to earn your paychecks.  Then I did something pretty stupid.  I went to work.  Why?  Why didn't I go shopping?  Get a massage? Have my tea leaves read?  Something.  They wouldn't have known I was released so early.  I am so dumb.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

What does the week have in store for all of you?

The planets must have aligned!

I'm about to share something very amazing with you.  Something unbelievable and inconceivable.

Something truly extraordinary.

This will amaze and bend your minds so much that I will have to break it down bit by bit for you so your heads won't explode.

Last night.

My husband.

Took our daughter.

Into a public restroom.

And changed her diaper!!!!

"SHUT UP!!!!!!", you say!

I SWEAR IT'S TRUE!!!!

Bean is 18 months old today!

Woohoo! Happy Half-Birthday, Bean!

Today was also her 18 month check up. It was just an "okay" check up. The weight gain wasn't what I had thought it would be or hoped for. At 15 months, Bean was 17 pounds and I was told to try and get some weight on her. She only went up to 18.4 pounds. She is 30 inches tall.

But the somewhat bad news is she is borderline anemic. So I was given a list of foods to give her to try and get the iron levels up. For the most part, she is already eating all of those foods. But one day she'll eat well and the next day she just wants to pick at her food.

She got her finger pricked to check her iron and she wasn't bothered by that at all. Nothing. Then the two shots came and so did the screaming and crying...and the holding the breath. That's the worst part, well, the tears are right up there, too. Her reaction just surprised me this time. This kid has taken six shots at once and cried for maybe a minute and then was back happy and smiling at everyone. Today...no smiling at all. Just the screams and the cries. Then I almost started crying. I hate that part, too.

But the good news is no more scheduled doctor's visits until the Big 2! Go Bean.

*Did anyone else ever experience this...when the nurse said "we'll see you at your 2nd birthday", I thought "what do you mean 2nd birthday? Whahuh??? What do you mean "two years old"? Say what??? She's still just a little baby. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Confessions of a slacker.

Hello.  My name is Pinkie.  I am a slacker.

Slacker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term slacker is commonly used to refer to a person who avoids work (especially British English), or (primarily in North American English) an educated person who is antimaterialistic and viewed as an underachiever.^[1][2]

I thought I’d blog about how much of a slacker I am cause that truly sounds like interesting reading for all of you, right?  Well, bear with me cause maybe some of you have felt that way before and can give me inspiration to turn myself around.  If not, maybe I can just make you feel better about yourself.  Either way - win/win, right?

I have been a slacker all my life.  I don’t know any other way to be.  I slack at work.  I’m tired of doing the same thing all the time.  I have days where I just want to go into my office and I don’t want a single person to say a single word to me.  Let me be for the eight hours I’m chained to this desk.

I slack at home.  I have piles and piles of clothes to wash.  I have dirty floors that need to be swept, mopped and vacuumed.  I have tons of stuff on every surface of every counter top.  I watch Clean House just to make myself feel better about our house.  Thank God Niecy Nash doesn't know where I live.

I used to spend time on myself and how I looked.  Now I’m lucky if I remember to keep up my “landscaping”.  I used to feel like such a “girlie girl”.  Now I barely feel like a girl.

What’s going on with me?  I’m not depressed.  At least I don’t feel depressed.  I just feel like there isn’t enough energy in my body to do the things I need to do.  I also feel overwhelmed with all that needs to be done.  Once I do finish one thing, I turn around to find 100 other things that need to be done.  So now I’m in this mode of “why bother because it doesn’t even help”.

I read other mommy blogs and they all seem to have their act together.  They have meal plans, full pantries, they have de-clutter days, they seem to have it all.  I think to myself “well if I didn’t have a fulltime job, I could be like that”.  But I wonder if that’s true or if it would just give me more slacking hours in the day.

But I want to change.  I don’t want to be this slacker forever.  I want to be responsible.  I want to be a good employee (well, you get my drift), a good homemaker, a good wife and mommy.  I don’t want to be Slacker Sally any more.  But making this change is hard and there have been too many set-backs.

I want to be a better example to Bean but maybe I need to find a better example for myself first.  Where do I start?  How do I  begin?  Can I even do it?

Bye-Bye Birdies

Anyone have any great weekend plans? Me, neither. This is gonna be a sad weekend. My sister-in-law, Hair Diva, is moving back to Kansas. Her husband, my BIL2, G.I. Joe, is in the Army and they are stationed there. He will hopefully be home in a month and so they are all going back to the base. I am gonna miss them.

Bean will definitely miss her cousins, Smarty Spice and Sassy Spice, and the newest addition, Smiley Spice. Bean follows Smarty and Sassy around all day long. Even when they are not around, she is constantly calling their names. There will be some adjusting next week when she doesn't get to see them every day.

I just want to tell them that they will be missed and I hope these sweet birdies come back home to roost very soon.


"Don't leave me!"

Wordless Wednesday - Even Girls Like Home Depot

I know. It shocks me, too.







Mommy, what do you mean you're bored and ready to go???

I know it wasn't me.

Have you ever had something happen to you that you know you couldn't have done without an "outside force" helping? I had one on Saturday with Bean. And as soon as it happened, I knew it wasn't me that had saved the day.

We were visiting friends of ours this weekend. They don't have children yet but they do have beautiful glass tables in their living room. These are the types of tables that are a baby-proofer's worst nightmare. Glass tops, sharp corners, fingerprint-showing beautiful tables. Well, they would be fingerprint-showing at my house even without a toddler's help. At their house, they are just beautiful.

I was sitting in the floor next to "Dee Dee", the wife. She and I were catching up and trying to keep the Bean off their stairs and out of trouble. To my right was one of these glass end-tables. At one point, Bean was walking back across the floor to me when she tripped over her own feet. She gets that grace from her mother, sorry to say. But as soon as she tripped, she started on this trajectory towards a corner of this glass table. And I mean her forehead would have directly hit this corner. It would have been bad. Very, very bad.

As I mentioned earlier, and anyone that ever saw me in gym class would agree, I am not coordinated or graceful by any stretch of the imagination. My reflex time is always off. My hand-eye coordination does not exist. But I saw all of this happen like it was in slow-motion. I followed the probable trajectory with my mind's eye and I got this huge lump in my throat.

But as this was happening, I just put up my arms and caught Bean at exactly the right moment and she slid right into my arms and then right into my lap. No jerky movements, no flailing, nothing. It was a smooth move as any I've ever seen. But like I said, I knew it wasn't me that had the where-with-all to accomplish such a save. It wasn't me. And as soon as it happened, I just said "Thank you, God."

I still replay the whole incident in my head, over and over. As I said, it was so smooth that my conversation with my friend never stopped. And Bean just got right back up and went on her merry little way. No trauma, no drama.

I don't want to come off as hokey but I truly believe that God saved Bean from that horrible fall. Or he sent a guardian angel cause he knows Bean needs all the help she can get with the parents that she got. All I know is I thank him for it. It wasn't me. It was all him.

Wordless Wednesday - Just a swingin'