My Top 10

Last night I went to MNO out Out Back, random I know. A friend had recently moved near one and a few of us had mentioned we had never been, so we decided next MNO was going to be there! I had a post planned for today, what we made for Mr. for Father's Day, but I still needed to load the pictures I took, and well I did this instead. So you'll have to wait for later in the week, I know you're all holding your breath.
 

I was reading Courtney's blog this morning and I wasn't going to post, but decided, what the heck, I'll do a top 10 too.

1. Thanksgiving - I love me some Thanksgiving especially when you randomly decide to make a Thanksgiving dinner a month early and celebrate it with friends. (I tried to do another Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, turns out, it's SUPER hard to find a turkey in the middle of summer. Even the frozen kind, go figure)

Man I want to eat this right now!

2. Yummy food I can actually eat, since I am allergic to so much, it's hard to find yummy treats. But when I do find them, you better believe I stock up like it's going out of business. Like these yummy things!

drugstore.com has the best deal on them, trust me I've searched everywhere for them

3.  Family Days, while I love spending time with my siblings and parents I just love when it's the 4 of us having fun and doing whatever whenever like last Friday, perfection.

4. The calmness of morning just before the sun comes up, when it's crisp outside and the grass still has dew on it and the birds are just starting to wake up. Everything is calm, everything is perfect for those few precious moments before everyone/everything starts waking up.

5.  Reading a book so fast just to get to the end, only to re-read it immediate because you want to read it slower and really enjoy it.

6.  Hanging with my cousins and their kids, nothing is better than showing them what it was like when I was growing up.

7.  The smell after it rains, everything smells clean and new. It's like God gives us a fresh new start with each rain (coming from someone who only gets rain a handful of times a year)

8.  Watching Baby Fox with Mini Fox, nothing is more precious, sweet or endearing. The love they have for each other is crazy, and even though she can't talk, I know she just idolizes her big brother. Knowing that they have each other, comforts me.

9.  I hate working out, but the feeling you get after a hard workout especially when several times  you wanted to stop but kept going, that feeling of accomplishment and feeling good about yourself.

10.  Spending time with Mr. Nothing beats it. We can talk about nothing and everything at the same time. We have comfortable silences and can have fun anywhere, anytime. I love that about us.

Like hiking in the rain

Linking up with Ashley

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