We Did Stuff, But The Coolest Part Is That He Swam!

This weekend, big things happened for Baby Fox. We went swimming, not a big deal you think right?

Well then this happened:

yep, that's right my 3.5 year old just swam across the pool! We told him that if he swam across the pool he could earn a pair of goggles (our reasoning is we want him to learn how to swim without goggles, cause if he falls into a pool, he's not going to have goggles). Don't get me wrong, he would still drown if he fell into a pool, but it might happen a few seconds slower then everyone else. But it's step in the right direction, yay Baby Fox!

We got in our baths and then headed out to Yogurtland, yep before dinner, time to celebrate!

incase you were wondering, he got m&m's, 1 sour gummy worm, 1 gummy bear and some red boba

Then we headed to Big 5 to get his goggles! Only to find out that Big 5 went out of business, yikes! Good thing for smart phones we found another sporting goods store.

So many to chose from..

But he chose these bad boys!

Then we celebrated some more with some yummy Mexican food.

Yep, we are those parents that buy ourselves a drink and then give our kid some...as in what you see is all he got, he thought he was too cool

And today was the last day that Baby Fox was in diapers, we're nap and night time training him, we're going ballz out and going cold turkey. Bottom line, I did a lot of laundry this weekend, wish us luck. I'll do a post about it when we're done and claim success.

Saturday morning I was back at the gym, doing some butt raises on the ball, and some leg presses, it's quite hard to take pictures of yourself working out...luckily no one is at the gym at 7am on a Saturday, so I took a LOT of pictures.

We had yet another birthday party. Let me tell you how cool this party was, it's theme was "breakfast at Tiffany's" so everyone got to wear their PJ's...comfy right?

Here's the birthday girl and her Mama and cousin.

For dinner Baby Fox wanted eggs, and he wanted to feed some to Mini Fox, he loved feeding her, and I think she loved the eggs too! So this was her first real chewing type of food, besides those puff things that turn into mush when they get wet. So she ate what we thought was the equivalent to a quarter of the egg. We're thinking she's doing awesome, and that she loves it...

We pick her up after she's done and guess what we found? Yep she didn't eat all of it, like we thought. but hey, some of it made it into her mouth right? It's a start.

Sunday was a really good day too, Father's Day. We celebrated both Mr. and my Dad (Mr.'s Dad too, but that was through a phone call). Mini Fox it's pretty cool being on top of Mr's shoulders.

We got some baseball practice in before nap time.

Then after nap time my parents and sister came over for some swimming and fun. Well Mr. and Baby Fox did the swimming while everyone else sat around and ate guacamole and chips. Ampa and his little chef BBQ'd the best shrimp EVER.

Ms. Serious and my sister.

Turns out we had a dinner of all salads and shrimp. Potato salad (Mr's favorite), Cole slaw, fruit salad, and a green salad.

Yum!

One of these days I'll get into a picture.

My plate, I made some rice since I knew I wouldn't be able to eat the potato salad and wanted some carbs with dinner, cause Carbs = My BFF

 Before we continue I have to bring this Nana Moment:

Let me set it up - we had the green salad but no one likes putting salad on their plate with dressing and have it mix with your other food (minus Mr. he thinks it's awesome, weirdo). So when we sat down, I said and no one had green salad on their plates I said I'll put something out so we can put our salads on it. Fast foward to me walking into the house and realizing we were out of bowls, so I put some salad plates out.

Me: I put some salad plate out for you guys.

Nana/My mom: For what?

Cue everyone staring blankly at her for asking that.

Mr.: (with the slow) Salllad....

Nana/My mom: Oh...(starts laughing)

Sometimes I wonder about you Nana!

Little Miss lighting up when Ampa was waving at her.

Ampa with his grandkids, love this picture!

That was our weekend, oh wait, I forgot to add the part...first have I told you guys about my fear/obsession with ants? I hate them with a passion. We got ants and I got obsessive and pulled everything out of the cabinets and sprayed, currently our pots and pans and random things are on our dining room table...kicking it until we figure out our next move against the battle of the ants. And when I say ants, it was really 2 dozen or so, but I'm fairly certain they told their friends and we're expecting a full frontal attack any day now.

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather for Mommy Moments
Carly and Molly for Funday Monday

and with Bella & Lisa

5 Tips to Get Your Toddler to Eat

I don't know if you know or not, but Baby Fox is somewhat of a picky eater. He still eats the food I made for him as an infant. No joke. What can I say, I make good infant food. He's never had jarred food, actually not true, we tried once and he hated it, so we never tried again.

Let's start with when Baby Fox was first trying food, this is his reaction:

 He had the defense down!

We decided that he just wasn't ready and we really didn't stress about it. We just went with the flow, and you know what? Eventually he liked food.

We use the same philosophy when he became a toddler and was STILL eating infant purees. We decided you know what? I'd rather him get his veggies  that way then none at all. And heck if I had what I made him, I wouldn't want to eat it either.

We kept trying new foods, but always made sure that he got his pureed veggies with each meal. You know what one of the first things he loved that wasn't in pureed form?

Spaghetti, he might have gotten this every night for a few months cause it's the only thing he would eat that involved carbs.

This boy loves him some ribs, totally random right?

Look Mom no hands!

Okay enough pictures, this is what we did/do:

5 things to get your toddler eating:

1. Don't stress about it. I think this is the most important, don't stress about it. Kids feel that and then it stresses them out. If he doesn't like something then find, leave it aside and eat what you do like. Kids won't let themselves starve! Keep that in mind when they refuse everything. They will not starve themselves!

2.  We give him something new to try and he has to take one bite, and sometimes we bribe him to do that, cause sometimes when he takes that one bite he likes it and will keep eating it, but he just needs to take try it first. But mostly we try to give him the foods that he likes. Kids are creatures of habit, so they don't care about eating the same thing three nights in a row, at least mine doesn't. If he likes zucchini (the only green veggie that he'll eat not pureed) then he's going to get that as often as he likes. We'll try new veggies, but always go back to the ones he likes.

3. We have set times to eat food and we usually don't stray from that. He gets breakfast, lunch, sometimes a snack after he wakes up from nap and dinner. That's pretty much it. No snacking inbetween, if he does want a snack we give him some fruit or something healthy (which is rare that he wants something between meals because he's so used to eating at those set times)

4. Make it their choice, but give them choices that you want. If he wants cookies for dinner and we say no and he starts throwing a fit we tell him, you can either eat your veggies (or whatever you're having) and get a cookie when you're done, or no cookie at all. Or do you want this veggie or this veggie for dinner? We make it seem like he is getting a choice when in reality we are choosing for him.

5. Eat with your kids. I know this seems simple, but sometimes when we're all sitting down to eat, and we'll ask Baby Fox if he wants something, he sees us eating it and asks to try a bite. I know harder said than done. Most nights we eat different meals, but I try to get everything done at the same time.

I know that if we just stopped making the stuff that Baby Fox likes that he would eventually eat what we ate every meal, but I would rather him get some veggies than none at all. You don't see any high schoolers still eating pureed veggies right? When he starts preschool in the fall, they serve him lunch, so he's going to have to start eating what everyone else eats. But for now, this is what works for us.

Currently Baby Fox's favorite meal? Persian Food. I know, he won't eat hamburger, but he'll eat the ground beef skewer like no ones business.

And just this past week, he started eating BREAD! Like honest to goodness toast.

Miracles do happen!

FYI, I don't think we're going to have the same eating issues with Mini Fox, so far she hasn't met a food she doesn't like. Even when we can tell she doesn't really like something, she'll still keep eating it.

This is her, every single time, mouth open ready for food to enter, okay lunging towards the spoon is more like it.

Linking up with One Year and Beyond Link Up and Nicole

Life According to My iPhone

I really need to learn how to pose when I'm not wearing pants, more ladylike, seriously.

 I loved wearing this outfit, it felt fun, flirty and the best part? I finally broke in my black pumps! While I could have done some color with my shoes, I decided I really wanted to break in my pumps, I have been dreading it. The last two times left my feet filled with blisters, but this time, not one! yay for breaking in new shoes...

Top - Loft (old), Skirt - Norstroms (old), Shoes - Franco Sarto (via DSW old), Necklace - Old (similar - but it's soldout, but you can get on a waitlist)

Remember when I told you guys this? Yep, was going through the pictures Mr. took and guess what, there's one of my butt again, LOL.

Random things at my house:

Mr and Baby Fox like to play "bump" Which consists of Baby Fox riding his tricycle and Mr. on the Plasma Car, and them chasing and running into each other. This time Mini Fox crawled up to the gate, stood up and then started yelling at them for her to join.

Good thing we have these covers, she goes right to them every time!

Cause if at first you can't get it with your finger, you can definitely eat it.

Don't worry I just snapped the picture and then got her

If those don't work then she this is a good alternative:

Baby Fox telling me on our way home from the park that he couldn't possibly walk any further cause his legs just couldn't walk any more.

Last but not least, I took Mini Fox for her 9 month check up. She currently weighs 18 pounds 10 oz (48%), 28.8 inches tall (87%) and head circumference is 43.8 cm (46%). The only time she really cried was when she was on the "crunchy" paper, she cried more laying down on it then the actual shots. She took them like a champ and recovered as soon as I picked her up.

My life according to my iphone.

Linking up with Because Shanna Said So, Get Your Pretty On, The Pleated Poppy, Cute and Little and Tucker Up
Also linking up with Ashley

Teenage Muntant Ninja Party

As promised here are some pictures from the party we went to this weekend.

Did you guess what kind of party it was based off of the picture of napkins?

If you guess Ninja Turtles you would be correct!

B's Mom did such a great job with the decorations. But first let's start with the venue. They had it at a place called Kidville. Talk about great place to have a party. They are no nonsense there. The party was exactly 1.5 hours and you were in and out in exactly 1.5 hours, they kept the party flowing. We hit a ton of traffic on the way there, but they did a craft for the first 30 minutes, they decorated tiny wooden airplanes. We got there as they were going into the play area...

And at the end, they had this...

I really wanted to go on it, but no adults allowed, boo!

After the kids played for 30 minutes they went into a room and had pizza and we did the cake, and then it was over, it was fast and perfect for a 4 year old birthday party. I highly recommend it!

How cute are those napkins?! I die!

Now I'm not sure where B's mom got all of her ideas, so to whoever she got them from, Thank you! If I do figure out where she got her ideas from, I'll edit the post to attach the sources.

I die from the cuteness!

Didn't everything turn out great! Sorry for the iphone pictures, but Mr. packed the car and you know how men pack, well at least my man, everything goes in with no rhyme or reason, so the DSLR was under the stroller, cause that makes sense right? And I couldn't find it.

All in all it was a great party and I can't wait for Baby Fox's half birthday party in 3 weeks! Got to get on top of decorations!