Precious Moments

There are so many moments these days that I wish I could capture forever.  Very simple things that remind me of how blessed I am.  Here are a few from this week:

*Brooklyn sitting up at the dinner table with us for the first time, trying out rice cereal, and giggling at her brother across the table.

*Jack running out of his bedroom and straight to the front door first thing in the morning, saying "I play Roman?" (referring to hanging out with his little-man buddy, Roman Barton).

*Jack spotting and announcing every single windmill between Gilbert, Iowa and Northfield, Minnesota.

*Brooklyn's face when she saw Jeremy for the first time after three days of being away.

*Jack pushing his bike down the sidewalk, wearing boots that are too big and a helmet that's too small.

*Jack mooing at the cows at my Grandpa's farm.

*Brooklyn laughing hysterically at Jack, while he's trying to pick on her.

*Jeremy doing push-ups over a giggling baby.

*Jack bringing me a bouquet of dandelions with great excitement.

*Jack saying "Jesus loves you" in his sweet toddler voice.


It's in these moments that I am reminded of God's love, creativity, and sense of humor.  (Perhaps I'll put down the moments that remind me of His justice and judgment in another blog...)  And I am so thankful that I have the privilege of being a wife and a mother.  Oh, how I love my family!

Week in review

1.  This week was *supposed* to be Vegan Week in the Jennings house.  We wanted to try eating vegan for one week to see what it would be like for our little family.  We made it until Wednesday when I said, "You know what sounds good?  Pizza."  And that was the end of Vegan Week.


2.  Parenting a toddler is quite the adventure.  Jack's been testing the waters lately to find out how serious we are.  It's more important than ever that we are consistent and both on the same page.  Jack does really well when given options ("What should we do first-brush your teeth or put on your pajamas?") and takes pride in having a little bit of responsibility (i.e. being in charge of our shopping bags until we check out).  I momentarily forgot these things on Wednesday and ended up walking a screaming toddler out of Target.  


3.  I don't plan to go back to Pizza Hut anytime soon.  There are several reasons why going there this week (see items #1 and #2) was a horrible idea.  After waiting over 45 minutes for our pizza (I could make one from scratch in less time), our family was pretty much in shambles.  I hadn't brought any activities for Jack (mistake #27) and he decided that the phrase, "Please use your inside voice" actually meant shriek louder.  


4.  On a much more positive note, my niece, Grace, turned two yesterday.  Two years ago, our lives were forever changed when the adoption agency called my sister-in-law to say they had a brand new baby girl.  Seth & Sonya were holding Grace by the time she was 11 hours old.  You don't forget a day like that. 


5.  We got to hang out with some sweet friends tonight, the Bartons and the Rippkes.  We are blessed to know some really great people.  


6.  I made an amazing discovery in the way of stain removal this week.  For now, I will just say solar power.  More on that later.  


7.  Tomorrow marks six years of marriage for us.  Man, that's crazy.  I was just a kid back then (I turned 20 a few weeks before our wedding) and have changed so much since then.  But I am so thankful that I've had Jeremy beside me through all the changes.  Jeremy challenges me but shows me grace when I blow it.  He makes me laugh daily, and he's a really good listener.  We've been through some pretty big ups and downs together, and he knows me better than anyone.  I'm excited to see what the next six years will hold in store!


Maybe by then we'll be ready to go back to Pizza Hut.  

Read this only if you are super bored...

Now that I'm finished with piano lessons (I'll still teach a few over the summer, but they're pretty low-key), I have more time to experiment with food.  I'm trying to move in the direction of "from scratch" cooking as much as possible, but I still have a toddler and a baby, so time is pretty limited.  Being the uber-nerd that I am, I came up with a detailed meal-plan for this week (oh yes, snacks are included!).  Next week is Vegan Week, but for the time being, I'm still incorporating dairy/egg products.  

Here's what it looks like:

And here's part of my geeky shopping list, broken into categories:

Now, you may be wondering why on earth I would write such an incredibly boring blog.  When we switched to vegetarian eating, I felt a little lost because I'd grown up planning meals around meat.  There are a lot of websites on the ol' internets that provide great recipes for vegetarian eating, however, I have a young family keeping me very busy.  It's hard to find the time to look up healthy recipes, experiment with new recipes, and find something that everyone enjoys eating.  I kept saying I wish I had a vegetarian "mentor."  So I guess I'm just going to record our successes and failures, and if someone gets some helpful ideas from it, great.  If not, sorry for putting you to sleep.  

You were warned.  

                                     

Goals

I'm a very goal-oriented person.  I love making lists and checking things off.  Sometimes I write things down on my list after I've already accomplished it, just so I can check it off.  I notice that I have the most ambitious goals in the morning, after I've had two cups of coffee but before the kids wake up.  And that's where I find myself right now.  So I thought I'd put down some personal summer goals and see how they shake out in the next few months:

1.  Lose five more pounds.  I just finished up my 8th week of Jeff Barton's bootcamp (http://www.jeffbartontraining.com/), losing ten pounds total (yup, gained a pound this week).  This month, I'm going to try working out on my own.  I don't really need to lose more weight but having a weight-loss goal helps me stay on track with nutrition and exercise.  The plan:  run or ride my bike at least three days a week and try to eat well (curse you, afternoon sugar craving!)

2.  Minimize waste from my vegetable garden.  I let a lot of vegetables (mostly tomatoes) go to waste last summer because I didn't have a plan for using them.  This summer, I'd like to try my hand at canning and freezing so we can enjoy them year-round.  I'm thinking it might be fun to have a canning "party" with other hippie folks like us.  Interested?

3.  Sew something that I actually wear.  I have all these ideas and nothing to show for it.  I just need to start somewhere and not expect perfection. I have this pattern:

but I still need to buy fabric and get to work!  

4.  Write a song (or finish one that I've already started) every week.  Maybe I'll start a YouTube channel so I too can become a teenage pop-star.  Mostly, I just need to keep my creative juices flowing.  Writing songs about brushing teeth, peeing in the potty, and being kind to your sister is wonderful and all, but I'd like to expand my horizons just a bit.

5.  Organize my house.  Just seeing this listed here makes me tired.  I need to go through our kitchen cupboards and come up with a more organized system.  And I'm continually sorting through kids clothes because they just keep on growing out of sizes!  Speaking of clothes, I have a total smorgasbord of sizes in my closet that need to be packed up.  I've been finding it hard to get into big organizing projects because I know I'm going to need a few hours.  And hours are pretty hard to come by these days.


Ok, I better stop there.  The kids will be up soon, and all my good intentions will, no doubt, be forgotten until tomorrow morning's coffee.  :)

You might be a hippie if...

Jeremy and I have been going through a lot of changes over the past year, and I think we are slowly becoming Gilbert's hippies (minus the drugs, of course!). Here's what I mean:

*we use cloth diapers and wipes for Brooklyn

*we became vegetarian this winter and would like to move towards veganism

*we asked for a Wheatsfield giftcard for our birthdays and were overly excited about using it

*We have a vegetable garden in our backyard

*We prefer to use natural remedies as often as possible (putting breastmilk in Brooklyn's ear for an ear infection, etc)

*We use soaps made from goat's milk and/or almond milk

*Jeremy wants to HAVE a goat (this will never happen, mind you, and it definitely crosses the line from hippie to trashy)

The fact that I just blogged about being a hippie, however, means we're pretty much just posers.

It's catch-up time!

Good grief! How is it that I've let so much time pass between blogs? Here's another recap of the last THREE months:

Spring Break 2010:

My mom and I took both kids to visit my Grandpa in Minnesota over spring break. It was a short trip (three days total), but it was nice to get away for a bit. I was nervous about taking a two year old and 3 month old to a non-toddler-proof house, but the kids did great! It was actually very relaxing because my mom helped out the entire time.

Easter:

The best day of the year (you know, the whole Jesus-conquering-death thing IS pretty sweet) came and went without much of a hitch. We went to church, Jack threw a fit when I tried to take a picture of him in his Easter outfit, and we had dinner at my parent's house. Jack and Grace looked for Easter eggs, and Brooklyn had a massive blowout in her Easter dress (and all over MY dress). Good day!

Barton Bootcamp:

I started an early morning (6 AM) fitness bootcamp that one of my friends, Jeff Barton, runs. Each bootcamp is four weeks long, and I'm almost finished with my second one. I've lost 11 pounds so far and feel great!

Fred:

For four months, Fred Mergenthaler (one of Jeremy's good friends) and I had been planning a surprise for Jeremy. Fred flew up from Orlando to stay with us for a week, all without Jeremy knowing. It was SUPER hard to keep it a secret. I'm not good with surprises or secrets, especially not from Jeremy! I picked Fred up from the airport (while Jeremy thought I was teaching piano lessons), and we hid Fred in the bedroom just before Jeremy got home. Jeremy was so surprised! You can see a video of the week here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-PBO1ztFfY   Prepare to laugh.

Birthdays:

Jack turned TWO on March 21, and we had a small party with family and a few friends. He got some sweet toys, including a trike, which we have a hard time taking him away from. I made a cake that had a picture of Elmo on it. For my first cake decorating experience, I was just happy that Jack recognized it as Elmo. Jeremy turned 28 at the end of April, and I turned 26 the first of May. We celebrated with family and went out to eat a few times. Our own birthdays seem less important now that we're parents, but I am thankful for another year!

J-man:

Jack is definitely a two-year old! His vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, and he's putting 4-5 words together to make a sentence. He loves his sister "Bootin" and loves playing outside even more. I AM SO THANKFUL for all the nice weather after a wretched winter.  We've been able to spend a lot of time playing in our backyard. How awesome my life is that I get to sit outside enjoying my children. What a blessing!

B-baby:

My good friend, Heather Randall, coined this nickname for Brooklyn, and it has stuck. (Heather came to visit for a few days at the end of April and it was GREAT catching up with her) Jack tries to say "B Baby," but it usually just comes out "baby baby baby beeeeee." Brooklyn is doing well and is quite the chunk. We moved her to a crib in Jack's room around 4 months, and it was super smooth transition. We're still swaddling her and may do so until she goes to kindergarten. We've tried to go without, but she doesn't sleep well at all. With a swaddle she sleeps all night through or wakes up once. She has the sweetest personality and adores her big brother.

In a nutshell, my life rocks. I'm married to my best friend and get to stay home with my healthy, growing children. Jack's name means "God is gracious," and that pretty much sums it all up!

2 month recap

Somehow in between chasing a toddler, feeding an infant, changing massive amounts of diapers, cooking and cleaning, I've let 2 months lapse on here. So while both kids are sleeping for the moment, here's an update on how things are going:

First trip to the ER:

In the middle of January, we took Brooklyn to the ER because she threw up every time I tried to feed her for nearly 12 hours. After lots of tests, we found out she had a urinary tract infection/kidney infection. Ugh! She was admitted to the hospital for 3 days so she could be closely monitored and given a few rounds of IV antibiotics. It was so hard to have our 5-week old baby in the hospital hooked up to and IV, but we were so thankful that she was well taken care of. The infection cleared up, and she is now a perfectly healthy 10-week old.

Cloth diapering:

When we had Jack, we lived in an apartment which shared a coin-operated laundry room with everyone in our building. Needless to say, using cloth diapers was totally out of the question. We decided to give cloth diapers a try when we had Brooklyn, now that we have our own house. We use Gro-baby diapers and love them! We still use disposables at night as they absorb more and she is able to sleep better. We only have enough for 1-2 days of diapering, so I usually wash a load of diapers at night. They're not really that much more difficult to use, and I love saving the money!

I ♥ sleep:

Brooklyn's day/night confusion ended when she was around 6 weeks old, and I could NOT be more thankful!! Lately she's been sleeping 6-8 hours at a stretch, getting up for 15 minutes to eat, then going back to sleep for a few more hours. There is very little that I appreciate more than a decent night's sleep. I am a MUCH nicer person, and my outlook on life is so much more positive. I didn't really realize just how exhausted I was until I started slowly catching up on sleep. Those first 6 weeks are a blur!

My little girl is growing up!:

Brooklyn started smiling around 1 month and doles them out pretty easily these days. She is just the sweetest little thing, and her smiles make every sleepless night worth it! She loves watching her big brother run around, and I know that I'll blink and she'll be running around with him. She rolls over easily from front to back and is getting so big! She's in the 95th percentile for height and weight (no surprise there...we grow 'em big!)

Post-pregnancy bod:

If you're into wrinkly, saggy, muffin-top abs, then I am SO attractive! My belly button has moved at LEAST an inch to the right, and my abs have a large separation between them which could cause a hernia at any time. HOT. When I asked my midwife about the belly button shiftage, she said, "Hmm...I've never seen this before!" I really am a freak. I still have about 15-20 pounds to go before I reach my pre-pregnancy weight, but given that I gained 65 pounds with Brooklyn, I'm choosing to see this glass as half-full. And you know what? If my belly button disappeared altogether and I never lost the baby weight, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. My kids are so precious, and I wouldn't trade them for the world!

Although I am curious as to how many pregnancies it would take before my belly button ended up on my back....