Desolation of the Week

By the looks of the blog, we had a great week last week... unfortunately our most recent blog posts reflect a much bigger portion of the week before. I tend to blog a ton all in one day and then post everything a bit at a time. This process works great in that I don't have to be on the computer all that much during the week, but y'all still feel like you get glimpses into our day to day lives. It doesn't work all that great when we have any major catastrophies strike... other than you still get cute pics of our kid while we go around picking up the pieces of our inconveniences.

Here's what happened: Last Tuesday I started a load of laundry. Ellie and I sat down to eat breakfast. I suddenly heard A LOT of water hitting concrete, ran down the stairs and saw water gushing out of the pipes behind the washer. I stopped the laundry, called Seth and halted my plans for laundry and house cleaning. I didn't, however, think through the fact that the washer and the dishwasher run through the same pipes in the basement... thus I started the dishwasher only to go through this experience for the second time. Eleanor and I continued through our day in pretty normal fashion except that I was a bit more annoyed than normal. Most important detail: I continued to use the kitchen sink.

When Seth got home in the evening he went down to check everything out. He found lint, chunks of broccoli, etc coming out of the pipes and laying on the floor (thanks to me continuing to use the sink all day). He called a friend, borrowed a snake and went to work emptying the nasty clog. Now, I really don't know the details beyond the garbage disposal clogging the pipes, getting a snake stuck in the pipes, several snake attempts not fixing the clog and an entire bucket of super-strength Drain-O-like product being poured into our pipes and stinking up the house so much that no one really slept well Tuesday night and Ellie and I stayed away from the house completely on Wednesday.

By Wednesday night, when it was time for Eleanor to go to bed, I was really tired of being away from the house all day, afraid of the smell and ready to be able to clean up. Luckily, the work of Seth and his friend, Bobby, paid off and by the time Ellie and I left them at Los Agaves to come home for baby's bedtime the house smelled completely of PineSol and nothing worse.

The rest of our week was spent catching up on our lack of sleep and large of amount of stress. The good news is, the pipes seem to be working great.

The consolations attached to this same situation are as follows: Wednesday was a MOPS morning, so Eleanor and I already had a planned, fun, several hour long activity to take us away from the house. While at MOPS we had several very nice moms offer their houses and services to us as we stayed away from our place. (Thanks everyone!) So, Ellie and I relaxed into our morning activity and then called Seth when we were done. We took a short trip to the library, stopped at the local Christian Bookstore and then met Seth for lunch. It was good to see Daddy in the middle of the day. After that, we headed over to our friend, Nicki's, house and played with her kids for the afternoon. This was such a blessing! It was great to be able to let Eleanor play, eat and take a nap in a clean environment. It was also really good to have some adult conversation and continue broadening a new friendship. Nicki, Adeline and Christian, you guys are the best!

Since all this... we spent Friday with Amanda and Kayli, newly returned from a Spring Break trip, and celebrated Amanda's birthday at a surprise party on Saturday and a planned brunch extravaganza on Sunday. Sunday evening a blizzard came through WYO and we got a foot and a half of snow (or more) along with 40-50 mph winds. Yesterday was deemed emergency travel only, so Eleanor and I were very much confined to the indoors. Seth went to work, though, since he works in a hospital...

And in Ellie growth, we've been working on learning "no" (oh, the joy of mommyhood), attempting to retrain the beginning stages of temper tantrums, and have picked up a crying, crashed child many, many, many times as she has decided to work very hard on speed walking. In general, Eleanor is doing very well with her walking, but she wants to run so badly! Ellie is also participating in many more games these days and that is really fun. Her favorite activity before heading to bed in the evenings is chasing Mom and Dad around several pieces of furniture in our living room. She just giggles and giggles when we pop out from behind something and say, "Boo!"

Okay. Enough talking. Here are a few pictures from last week:

The effects of a blizzard... snuggling with Daddy and stuffed animals... our Little Ray of Sunshine... and avocado for breakfast!

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny came a little early to our house this year.

Beautiful

Springtime Toes

Whoa!

Grandma Tippin

Grandma came and went last week. It was a fun, quick visit and we were sad to see her go so soon. Eleanor was very sweet with her – excited about her presence and sad when she left. The visit itself was low-key. We went out to eat at Ole’s, a local pizza and pasta house, for the first time since moving to Sheridan. Ellie did wonderfully in the restaurant and the rest of us enjoyed pizza and the salad bar. We spent long days in the dining room and living room drinking Earl Grey, talking about life and God, and entertaining a high energy little girl. When Ruthie left Seth said, “I can’t believe my mom is already gone. I didn’t even really see her!” I guess that’s the tough part about being the “working” man of the family… We also had a short trip downtown to the local coffee shop and shoe stores. Unfortunately, we were a bit slow on the uptake for that trip and hit the shops just at or before closing time.

So Big!

Ellie's been practicing her Peek a Boo and So Big skills while I've been working on the computer. What a great morning. :)

Today is a Snuggle Day

Ellie and I are still in our jammies. It is snowing and snowing outside. The wind is blowing the flakes against our windows and the piles are visibly getting bigger. Yesterday it was 70 degrees... it rained all night in big drops and I watched the rain turn to snow around 3:30 AM after I got up to attend to our whiney cat. There have been many, many sirens this morning as people had trouble getting down our hills to work. After several days of beautiful, warm spring weather where we noticed tulips peeking out of our yard and began planning our landscaping and vegetable garden, this return of winter is hard to take. So, our plan is to hunker down with hot coffee, tea and hot chocolate, stay in our jammies, catch up on our blog, read all our friends' blogs and continue our plans for our outdoor paradise so that we're ready when spring decides it is actually ready to stay for a while.

Friends

Eleanor has been going over to another MOPS mom's house on Tuesday afternoons while I teach piano and work on piano related stuff. They have 2 kids at their house - Adeline and Christian. Adeline is 3 and Christian is 17 months. Ellie is learning how to be a princess from Adeline and loves to climb on the couch or crawl-chase after Christian. Addie and Christian came over to play at our house last week, too. Both the kids and moms had fun. :)

She's Done It!

Ellie started walking on Friday afternoon. Luckily for Daddy, she decided to begin by walking to him when he got home from work. 22 steps in a row for the first time! Now she's walking everywhere. Her favorite thing about not needing our help is that now she has both her hands free and therefore can carry all sorts of things along with her. She's been sighted over the weeked carrying bananas, yogurt cups with spoons, hats and Mom's gatorade bottle.

We took this video on Saturday morning:

This was Sunday afternoon... silly girl! One shoe off and one shoe on makes things a bit more difficult - not to mention the chip clip in her mouth.

We waited a couple of days for this announcement because Grandma Tippin is coming to visit us today and we decided to let the walking be a surprise. I'll try to keep blogging this week, but you know how it goes when we have visitors... I tend to vanish from cyberspace.

More Food

I don't know what it is with me and food lately, but I've made a few things that I've enjoyed emmensely, and they really are so good that I feel it important to share. This is a Columbian Black Bean Soup - sounds kinda boring, but is super tasty. I've had the recipe for a long time, but neglected to make it because it called for some fairly gourmet ingredients as well as dried beans and I always forget to soak them overnight. I finally decided I should just try it with some easy substitutions and see what happened. The result is easy and amazingly delicious. So good, in fact, that I've now made it twice in 2 weeks! (I've also made a couple more batches of my amazing muffins). It is very full of Spanish flavors. If you like tacos and enjoy cilantro, you've got to try it! It's super healthy, too, which is also a bonus.

So, here's my "version" of the recipe:
1 1/2 c dried black beans (place in a saucepan to soak in the AM and they're ready to cook by dinner time)
1 t cayenne pepper
6 c water
1 1/2 t ground cumin
1 T olive oil
1 meduim onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 bag frozen pepper strips, chopped into small dice
1 celery stalk, diced
salt
freshly groud black pepper
3 T orange juice
3 T lime juice
green onion, sliced
cilantro, chopped

1. Drain the soaked beans and place in a medium saucepan with the cayenne pepper and water. Bring to a boil over high heat, lower heat, and simmer for an hour and a half, partially covered, until tender. Remove 1 1/2 cups of the beans with a slotted spoon to a blender. Add 1 cup of the cooking liquid and blend until smooth. Return the puree to the bean pot.

2. Warm the oil in a medium saute pan. Add the onions and garlic and saute over medium-low heat for 7 minutes, or until the onions are softened. Add the cumin, peppers and celery and cook an additional 5 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.

3. Add a couple of ladles of beans with cooking liquid to the saute pan an simmer a few minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon to loosen any bits sticking to the pan. Stir the contents of the saute pan back into the bean pot.

4. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and a sprinkle of black pepper and simmer, uncovered, 15 minutes. Stir n the range and lime juices and add salt to taste. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with cilantro and green onions.


P.S. I'm sure you could use canned black beans if you wanted to make it even easier, but I have found that the texture of the dried beans is really nice.

P.S. 2 Mom, you guys will really like this one.

The Yummiest Muffins Ever

I made these muffins a couple of days ago because I had a whole bunch of slightly over ripe Granny Smith apples. They were AMAZING! So, I thought I'd share the recipe.

1 1/2 c whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
2 T powdered milk
3 T oil
3 T honey
1 egg
1 c chopped apple bits
3/4 c water

Preheat oven to 375 F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Stir the honey into the oil. Beat in the egg and add the apples and water. Place the wet ingredients in the middle of the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Spoon into the muffin tin.

Bake 10 to 14 minutes, or until the center springs back when pressed. The muffins will be rather pale.

Tickley Feet

Toilet Paper Escapades

Ellie has found the TP (along with all the items in our below-the-sink cabinet). The other day I locked her in the bathroom with me while I took a quick shower and when I got out she had pulled everything out of the cabinet, dumped an entire box of q-tips on the floor, unrolled the entire roll of TP and was ripping the TP into little tiny shreds. It's pretty amazing to me how much choas can be created in a matter of 3 minutes or less.

Cookie Monster

I love these barley teething biscuits! Eleanor will sit in her high chair and chew on one for 30 minutes. She makes a huge mess, but I get a bit of peace and quiet while she's contained, not screaming because her teeth hurt and not sleeping.

Bad Hair Day

Whoa, 10 Months!

At church (yet another new one we tried...) yesterday morning someone asked me how old Ellie was. I replied automatically, "9 months," and then promptly realized, no, she's actually 10 months now. This month has gone by REALLY quickly!

Each and every day Eleanor learns something new or notices something she hasn't encountered before. She's still working hard at walking and has taken many single steps as well as a few steps strung together. I wouldn't call it walking quite yet, but she's definitely stepping. :) She loves to stand by herself and still takes off as fast as her little feet can carry her when she's holding someone's hand.

Ellie loves "big girl" food and is sometimes a pain during meals now because she would really rather do it herself. Thus, we usually give her a spoon and use one ourselves. She dips her spoon in the cup and takes it either to her mouth or ours. She really loves to "feed" daddy. We give her a lot of food in small, soft chunks for her to eat with her hands and this is her favorite. She also begs for any food she sees someone "big" eating. She's recently added asparagus, onions, black beans, blueberries, pineapple, chicken and beef to her food list. She loves them all - I could hardly get a bite myself of my black bean soup the other day because she was standing at the edge of the sofa, whining for more. Last evening she enjoyed small chunks of our stew, cleaning her plate in this order: potatoes, carrots, onion, beef.

Last week the weather was so lovely (totally different from the blizzard conditions we're experiencing at the moment) that we walked, ran and played a ton outside. Eleanor enjoyed a couple of trips to some parks in town. She loved crawling her way up the big toys and sliding down the slides on my lap. She also had fun on the baby swings, riding in a bouncy red sports car and crawling around on a firetruck that wobbled to and fro.

The greatest aid to my life this last month has been Ellie's willingness to move her bedtime up an hour and thus her waking up an hour as well. This morning person of a mom is very thankful! Unfortunately, daylight savings time semi-foiled this schedule. I'll be working very hard this week to get her back to an 8:00 bed time (up to this point she's been a pretty stubborn night owl, sleeper-in like her daddy).

Probably the most fun aspect of her growing lately has been her understanding of waving hello and goodbye. She waves a lot. Sometimes it's practice and you can watch her little mind working hard while staring at her waving hand, fascinated by it's movement. Sometimes it's copying one of us as we say "bye bye" to dad in the mornings or "bye bye" to friends who come to visit. She's also started staring at the door and waving while whispering, "buh buh" on days when we haven't ventured outside for a walk, run or other outing. She'll say it over and over until we make an exit. She has also grasped the concept of saying goodbye to people well enough to wave to the clerks at the grocery store as we leave. She sticks her right hand waaay up in the air and waves her little hand while again whispering, "buh buh." Yesterday she happily waved to me as I made my way to the door for a run. In the last week she's done most of her waving unprompted and we've enjoyed watching the exent of her understanding grow.

Peaches for Me

Ellie loves her peaches! Apparently she loves them so much that using her fingers to eat them one at a time just doesn't cut it.

More Teeth!

Ellie cut two new teeth the night before last. I just couldn't figure out her strange blood curdling screams every few hours through the night. Then Seth spotted the new buggers when he got home from work. She's now got four on top and four on the bottom.

Despite our Sickness

Eleanor and I have had quite the last couple of days. Yesterday, despite Ellie's temp still being up and some stomach sickness issues, we had Kayli over because she, too, is sick and was home from school. We all lounged around, wached a movie and drank hot cocoa.

We've also baked yummy bread, Learned to make silly sounds with our lips,

tried to eat the camera every time Mom wants to take a picture,

Practiced our walking while enjoying pretty bows in our hair (Ellie finds this headband around and sits for minutes at a time trying to get it on her head - it makes me giggle - she is then really excited when you put it on her),

And learned we can fit on the bookcase shelves if we take everything else off first!

Eleanor has also enjoyed climbing on the couch with one or all cushions off, has learned to turn around backwards to slide off, and loves to sit on the springs and bounce or jump. She has practiced walking outside a lot because the weather has been beautiful. Daddy even let her squish her feet in the soggy grass - what fun!

Today her temp is back down to normal (yay!) and most stomach issues seem to be resolved. She's still been fussier than normal this morning, but it seems she's on the mend. We will try to take advantage of the beautiful sunny day before us - maybe a walk to the library or downtown for me to get some new running shoes.

Yucky!

Yesterday Ellie came down with a mystery illness. She isn't eating, fusses when things go slightly outside of her plan and had a 102 temp last night. She slept poorly and thus I slept even more poorly. This morning her temp is down a bit, and she's giggling at me from the floor, playing with her blankie (yay). Hopefully all will pass soon... but I have to decide if I should take her to the doctor or not... I hear a lot of yucky stuff is going around right now.

A Girl After Her Mother's Heart

Oh, how we love the show tunes!