February 29th, 2012
love.
On Sunday we went to Whole Foods, an entertaining trip we make every other week or so to stock up on baby milk (non-homogenized), baby snacks (hello Whole Foods homemade tortilla chips), produce and the miscellaneous crap we pick up that interests us. It’s the miscellaneous stuff that always causes trouble.
The Chop has an affection for their cream cheese biscuits, Fleur de Sel caramels and Evol pizzas and flatbreads – all of which are amazing, I admit. But my real problem lies with their chocolate truffles and the Bread & Circus chocolate chip cookies. And by problem, I mean we bought a small bag (six I think) of the cookies on Sunday and I’m down to the last one. Evil, those cookies are. Deliciously, fantastically, magically evil. One cookie and your day perks right up.
Especially when consumed with a nice iced coffee.
I have undertaken,
not to see differently from others,
but to look further than others,
and whilst they are busied for the morrow only,
I have turned my thoughts to the whole future.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The Chop’s sister got engaged yesterday. We’re quite excited, as her fiancee is really an awesome guy… and this means Ollie might get cousins near his age! Granted they live on the other side of the country, but still, near his age.
It also doesn’t hurt that her fiancee is a drummer who plays in some pretty famous bands. I’m looking forward to meeting celebrities at their wedding next year, hehehe.
Some friends of ours were over last night (seriously, did you think that I ate all that crap by myself!?), and this morning, the boys had a ball playing together. They were both incredibly sad when they departed, but we parents had stayed up until past three and the boys were up at 6 and 7. Oy veh. Parenthood means you aren’t supposed to stay up late. Why do we keep forgetting that??
I only vaguely remember not having self checkout at grocery stores. In high school, a kid that we knew worked one of the lanes at our local Safeway, and depending on what time of day it was and what we looked like (morning pajamas or afternoon clothes), we would avoid or beeline for his lane. These days I can walk into Shaw’s near our house, pick up the few items that I need, go through self checkout and be out the door in less than 10 minutes, without talking to a soul.
Generally I don’t mind the chitchat, but when you’re buying a small chocolate peanut butter cake, five tubs of ice cream (one pint, four individual sizes), eggs and sausage, it’s much easier without the judgement, lol.
I took the Peanut to the park today to play with two of his little friends. One is an adorably precocious girl, a month younger and full of attitude; the other is a little moppet of a boy with silky hair and clumsy feet. The three of them don’t quite play together yet – more around and next to each other – but when we first arrive and they see each other, they all smile.
At this point we recognize that we are picking our son’s “friends” for him, but it’s nice to see that the ones we pick, he actually does like. We met them both in a baby gym class we do once a week, we three mothers being entertained by the helicopter parenting going on all around us. All of us are transplants to the area and have felt it quite hard to “friend” other women around here, as it’s a surprisingly cliquey group, and newcomers are not easily welcomed.
When I first moved north a couple of years ago, I complained to my cousin about this exact problem, and she told me that once we had kids, everything would change. Your kids will force you to meet people, she said, and when they’re young, it’ll be easier for you to steer them toward the kids of the people you want to be friends with.
Who knew she was so smart? 😉
One of the Peanut’s favorite things to do is play on our bed. Especially in the morning when one of us is trying to sleep… the Porkchop is much better about keeping him out of the bedroom when it’s my turn to sleep in (he just loves his Daddy so much, I can’t keep him out!). He loves to stack his toys up there, sitting snuggled next to the dog, sorting puzzle pieces or blocks into separate piles.
And of course the minute I post about the Peanut being a picky eater he goes and decides to bite into an apple. Three bites and he was done, but we were suitably impressed.
The Peanut is not the best eater, a fact that surprised us, especially considering the Chop and I were both great eaters as kids. Now the Chop has some strong dislikes (onions, anything pickled, etc.), but in general, we eat lots of different things.
The Peanut, on the other hand, is currently subsisting on a diet of milk, water, oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, some pureed fruits with veggie mixed in, the occasional cracker, guacamole when he feels like it and a couple of chips. He is largely uninterested in feeding himself, aside from crackers, chips, a french fry when we’re out and most recently, a slice of apple with lunch.
Every week we go to the grocery store and pick out a few things that we think he might be interesting in trying to feed himself. Flatbread, pears, frozen pizza, hard breadsticks from Italy, carrot sticks – basically anything that might take on the approximate size and heft of a chip, if cut correctly, lol.
He tried pizza this weekend. Only a couple of bites, but we don’t sneer at progress.
