Menu.

I saw on another blog I followed that this lady posts her weekly menu for the week every Sunday. So because I'm a copy cat and I adore lists (per my previous post), I thought I'd start doing that as well. Not so much because I think any of you that read my lil ol blog care about what I choose to feed my family for the week, but mostly to make sure I actually make my menu. I find that when I take the time to think of meals, look in my cupboards for what I have on hand and plan accordingly, we spend so much less money at the grocery store. Last week, I don't know what I did but I went to the store with the stupidest list ever and we've made 3 or 4 runs up to the Fred's on the corner to fill in what I didn't plan for.

So without further ado - my menu for the week. These aren't in any particular order, I'll make them as they sound good (although they are in beef, chicken & meatless order so I don't have 3 nights in a row of beef dishes, etc, so maybe I will make them in this order):

Beef & Bean Burritos

Chicken & Rice Chowder

Baked Macaroni & Three Cheese

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Skillet Lemon Chicken with Rosemary

Beef & Veggie Stew

Primavera

I'm also currently reading: Saving Dinner: The Menus, Recipes and Shopping Lists to Bring Your Family Back to the Table by Leanne Ely, which is chock full of recipes and all sorts of tips. She breaks her book out into seasons and gives you about 8 weeks of menus per season, she also creates a shopping list based on the ingredients needed for each week of meals and tips to save you time when planning ahead for tomorrow's dinner. Right now I'm just mostly using her book for dinner ideas but this could really be a time saver for some one that doesn't want to sit down and plan a menu.

Check.

I heart to-do lists. Even more, I heart checking things off my to-do list. On Saturday, we're having the awesome Carissa from ckg photography do some pictures for us. We had her do Ben's 6 months pictures, after we saw what a fantastic job she did on some friends pictures. At first I wanted to do them at a pumpkin patch but I guess Idaho does things a little different than what I'm used to from Washington as far as pumpkin patches go. I've never had to pay admission to a patch before and to be honest, after shelling out money for our outfits and props and the photos themselves, I'm not looking to spend any more money - just to gain entrance to the place where we're taking pictures. So we're going a slightly different route but I think the overall effect will still be super cute. Only two things left to do on my to-do list and we're done with that list!

Projects, however....well, finishing projects is something I apparently have a hard time with. If I can pretty much work a project start to finish non stop, I'll get it done - no problem. But if it's something I do that takes a few days or weeks (or months, in the case of a certain VERY overdue gift to my sister in law and her new baby), it seems like I never finish it. I'm working on that vaguely mentioned gift, refinishing a free desk, converting our front room into a crafting space and some other things. I feel like I'll never finish. I think this is why I can't really seem to get into scrapbooking. I love the idea of scrapbooking and I do like to sit down and create pages but it always feels like a work in progress. And going back as far as I want to go seems like an enormous task. Blah.

Making decisions is another thing that I both love and hate. Some times I'm really focused and can just plow through what to do, where to do, if I should do it, etc. Other times I agonize and worry and wonder what others will think....then I have to almost yell at myself and make myself do what's right for me, and try not to worry so much what others think. Let me tell ya, as soon as the decision is made and put into action, I almost always feel instantly better. I've been in a deep funk the last few months (getting steadily worse - feeling things about myself that I haven't felt in a very long time) and I finally decided that it just wasn't worth it any more.

I'm still working on my Operation Purge & Simplify. I haven't really made any changes since my last post but the guest room is next. I've sort of been shoving things in there that I don't want to throw away, in hopes that I have some sort of meager and sad garage sale next spring. I'm thinking that that'll probably be way too much work and I'm just gonna donate the whole shebang to the Youth Ranch.

I do have a new goal, though, that I need to update to my goals blog. I want to make sure I make at least one new dish a month. I feel like we eat the same ol' things, over and over again (spaghetti and burritos, spaghetti and burritos) and I need to change it up. Plus, Ben is eating more and more "people" food (as opposed to "baby" food) and I want to offer him a variety of tastes. My mom kind of pokes fun at me because I was hesitant to let her feed him ice cream. It's not that I don't ever want him to have sweets - I just want to make sure he gets an appreciation for all things that are good for him before I start adding in the bad stuff.

So there's my random blog post du jour. I might regale you all with some "before" and "after" pictures of a few projects I've done around the house recently. If you're lucky. ;)

10 Months.

Holy cow, it feels like just yesterday that I wrote the post for 9 months. I can't believe 2 months from today, he'll be 1 year old. :(

Not too much is different from last month, as far as skills go:

• Pulling up to stand on just about anything he can use for balance
• Cruising
• Copying/repeating
• Making new sounds (ga-ga-ga is his newest sound)
• Casting things aside when playing with toys - it's very deliberate and super funny
• Stands in his crib (this isn't really new) and throws his binks on the floor (it's a bink graveyard when we go in to get him after nap time)
• Champion waver and does it really fast now. It used to take quite a bit of prompting to get him to wave back but now it does it almost instantly
• Transitioning from an army crawl to an all fours crawl. He's doing it more and more every day.

He wears:

• Anywhere from 6-9 months to 18 months. It really depends on the brand and what he's wearing. Pants are most definitely 9 months (Children's Place & Baby Gap make pants in size 6 to 12 months that fit him awesome) otherwise they're much too short or much too long. Shirts are 9 months to 18 months (the 18 month ones are a bit baggy but fit).
• Size 4 shoe (but they're a bit loose, but any smaller is too little) and he doesn't really wear them at all.
• No hats. He pulls them off. I have to find hats with a chin strap for winter.

He eats:

• Just about anything. Loves: plain yogurt with applesauce & cinnamon mixed in for breakfast; toast with mashed banana; tortilla; spaghetti; tortellini soup; avocado with mashed banana; any veggie (but not super excited by potatoes and HATES peas); toast; Cheerio's...not a big fan of chicken yet.

Still waiting for:

• Teeth (I keep thinking he's totally teething but...nothing yet!)
• First words (he says "mama" and "dada" but I think I've said before that I really don't think he's directing them at us)
• Standing on his own

People remark on:

• That his hair is darkening up (and it is getting kind of long for him - he has total bed head after naps)
• His friendliness

Explore

{12/21/2011: This was originally posted on a blog I started just for Ben. I no longer keep up with that blog, so I'm moving them all over to this one}

yes. he is eating a tube of butt cream. yes, the cap is firmly on.

That's what our little monkey does during all of his waking hours. He explores. He explores his toys by selecting, discarding and moving on to the next. Within minutes of being set in front of his little toy basket in his room, it looks like a tiny toy war zone. He explores his books, and he absolutely has favorites. He really loves the Look Book that his awesome Aunt T sent and the two touch & feel books he has. Everything is still automatically put in his mouth for a taste. Even things we would rather he not have a sample of. Like the small carpet fibers that our lovely and well mannered cat pulls up.

Ben is a PRO at pulling up to stand. I find him standing in his crib at the end of almost all his naps. He can use just about anything to get up and is pretty good at plopping back on his bottom when he wants back down. He's still working on cruising but is getting better and better at that as well. Today he used one of the dining room chairs to pull himself up, then used the craft cutting mat I have stashed behind the chair to make it over to the dining room window sill, where he had a grand time playing peekaboo with the curtains.

He's learning plenty of hard lessons. Like drawers can really hurt when they're shut on tiny fingers (he did that all by himself and I felt TERRIBLE - we don't have locks on all the cupboards, just the ones under the sink and with things like all of our glass casserole dishes or our small appliances). He's learning that just because he can see a space, doesn't mean his body (generally his giant head) will fit there.

Two of our most challenging things to try to get over are #1: his constant gagging of himself. He does it ALL the time, shoving his fingers down the back of his throat til he gags. It's awful and some times he does it after dinner and then throws up everything he ate. I have no idea how to discourage this behavior. #2 is rolling over while being changed. This includes diapers and getting dressed. It's frustrating because he gets really upset when I won't let him roll over and I get really annoyed because I can't change him upside down. Sigh. We'll get through it.

He's starting to recognize words. I must have said "duck" to him 500 times this evening and I swear he said it back once. We were playing with one of his bath towels that has a duck on it and I just kept saying "duck, duck, duck" over and over (til the word lost all meaning haha) and I'd say "Ben, where is the duck?" and he'd reach for the duck. It amazes me to no end when he learns something new. He can also show you his toes. :-)

Lots of jabber (ga ga ga is his new favorite) from him still but no actual words - that we've noticed anyway. Still no teeth.

Next Saturday we're getting more pictures taken. The same lady that did his 6 month photos is having another mini-session sale and we're taking advantage. These aren't for any special "month" - I just wanted some cute pictures of him in a pumpkin patch. I think we'll actually just do it at a park, with some pumpkins I'll bring and a few bales of hay. I'm gonna be on the hunt for a wagon this week as I want one in the pictures and he'll wear his Halloween costume (a pumpkin, har). Nick's work is doing a special day where trick or treaters can come through in their costumes, so I think we might get a little extra mileage out of my $5.95 costume deal (I heart children's resale stores) and take him to that. Our local zoo also does a deal on the 30th that we may go to.

So that's really it on Ben news. No more "sickness" necessarily, but he has been rocking a snotty nose pretty consistently for a week or so. I'm hoping that's a teething queue but again, no teeth yet and no real signs of them. They'll show up eventually!

Spirit.

Recently I've gotten into the Halloween spirit. I've always enjoyed Halloween, I like to pass out candy to the kiddo's (okay...I don't personally like to hand out the candy, but I like to listen to Nick to do it - he's all "oh, that's a great costume, Happy Halloween!" and I'm all "here's your candy, get off my lawn") and I liked throwing up a few decorations. Fall, however, is one of my all time favorite seasons and Halloween just happens to fall in the middle of it.

Usually for fall, I do up my mantle with lots of cute decorations. This year, though, I have a tiny Ben art gallery on my mantle that apparently I'm not okay with taking down (it's not like I can't just go LOOK at him any time or like I don't have thousands of photos of him on my computer I could look at in case I forgot what he looked like), so I've got it spread out a little. And this year I'm incorporating more Halloween goodness in with the fall stuff. Probably I'm more into it this year because I stay at home and have time to decorate (especially now that he takes nice long naps - I can get so much accomplished in 2 hours, it's fantastic - and would rather play on his own than play with me). I also read a lot of blogs during the day to pass the time when I'm not cleaning up after Ben. These women are SO crafty. I wish I was even 1/10th as crafty.

At this point, I'm not really going too much overboard because pretty much the only one that appreciates it is me. I know Nick doesn't care if I decorate or not (he got a kick out of the thing I made last night - more on that later) and Ben has NO idea so right now it's just for me. As Ben gets older and is more aware of what's going on, I'll probably do up all the holiday's more to make them fun and special for me. I remember my mom used to make all the little holiday's fun. The one I remember the most was Valentine's day. V-day is 3 days before my birthday so V-day morning, I would get a special Valentine's day breakfast and a little present (I always thought it was a birthday present early - for all I know my mom could have just been getting me a special prize).

I find myself really enjoying being a stay at home mom. I wasn't sure I would - I thought after a few months I'd be dying to go back to work. To be completely honest with you....I don't. I don't miss work at all. I suppose it doesn't hurt any that I really didn't like what I was doing before I quit. It wasn't a good fit for me (although I did like the people I worked with, just not the actual job itself) and I didn't enjoy doing it. I really just have no desire to go back to work. Sure, I get bored and I long for some social interaction, but over all, I love it. I love tending my home, my child and my husband. I enjoy cooking a great meal and watch Nick all but eat the paint off the plate. I enjoy watching Ben destroy a room I just picked up (really I do, that's not sarcasm. For such a tiny kid, he makes a big mess and fast and he selects and then discards a toy with such deliberateness (is that a word?) and speed). I like finding that I have time to do all the crafty things I admired before but never seemed to have time to sit down and do.

I'm trying to spend less time with the dramas of Facebook and more time tending to my house and working on things that inspire me. I've been a spray painting fool this week and spent a stupid amount of money at the dollar store ($30? really? at the DOLLAR store?? hey, it's all stuff I can use when I'm feeling inspired, which is a lot lately) and crafting up a storm. Here's some of my more recent projects:

I found these bottle idea here

Here is a close up of the label. It made me laugh that it says "Mr. Bones" and I have it sitting by a skeleton....ahh, it's the simple things in life. The bottle is just filled with food colored water

Okay so this isn't something I made, but it is something I decorated. I created this little "office" station since we don't have an actual office any more. It's a place to keep the calendar, our bills and other miscellaneous office stuff. It makes me smile every time I look at it.

I made this ribbon wreath yesterday afternoon during one of Ben's nap. I keep finding spaces where the foam base is peeking through so I'm going to get another ribbon color (I'm thinking ivory) and fill in. I found the idea here ages ago and I have been dying to make it. I LOVE it.

So that's my craftiness as of late. I have a few more projects I'm excited to do (this & this) and of course I'm constantly moving things around my house and discovering something else I can spray paint.

Happy fall, ya'll! :-)