Monday, March 31, 2008

Climbing

When you have a 15 month old who has learned to climb on everything, it's tough. He's learned to climb up in the big chairs and has on multiple occasions, climbed right up on the table. So, momma gets smart and puts a gate up so he can't even get into the kitchen. Then, two little boys revolt against said gate and this is what you get:





Funny things from Zane

Zane says the darndest things sometimes! I wanted to write down a few just so I don't forget and I thought I'd share them with you as well.

After a long day with the boys, after Mike got home, we drove out to the suburbs to shop. I guess I was a little too excited and animated as I talked to Mike in the car. From the back seat, I hear this: "Mommy, mommy, stop talking. Stop talking for a little bit."

And one day I was cutting up something in the kitchen and touched my finger with the tip of the knife. The conversation goes like this.

Me: "Ouch".
Z: "It's okay, mommy."
Me: "No, it's not okay, I almost cut my finger."
Z: "Well, you shouldn't have had it there."






This is a picture I love of Zane! We were staying at University City, PA with Mike recently. He thought it was so neat that the housekeeper put his monkey under the blanket when she made up the bed!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I Approve this Message

After seeing many, many Barack ads while we were in Texas, Zane now does quite the Barack impersonation...Enjoy!



Sunday, March 16, 2008

Unplugged

We are officially on a TV sabbatical. At first it wasn’t by choice because our TV gave up on us, I’m sure from overuse. Actually it was 9 years old and had been warning us for sometime now. However, after much discussion we have decided not to buy a new TV. At first there were some withdrawals from not being able to watch some of our favorite shows but we’ve had the infamous writers strike and a trip to Texas to help us cope through the first couple of weeks. We are officially at day number 39 and counting. We cancelled our cable but are hanging on to our online movie rentals--since we do have a computer.

What have I learned during this transition? 1) A new big screen plasma with all the bells and whistles that my heart could desire doesn’t come cheap. If I give it some time maybe I’ll convince my self that a television that has images as tall as my children is not a necessity in life. 2) As a family we’ve gained a huge chunk of time back in our lives that we didn’t realize was missing. We’ve become more oriented and tuned into each other instead of the box in the center of the room. We play games, talk about our days, read, play outside and just rest. We’ve also been able to reorient our living room. 3) It is not necessary to keep up with the Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, House, American Idols and Wolf Blitzer’s. (There are many, many, many other shows that filled our time) The world around us will go on and so should we. 4) I don’t feel as isolated as I thought I would. The water cooler talk that I thought I would miss really is very minimal. Again more time in my day. 5) Children really are like a sponge. Around the time that our television was going out we had been watching a lot of CNN and there were several election ads, not to mention the fact that we were in Texas just before the primary elections. Needless to say Zane now does a really good imitation of Barack Obama. Whenever he sees a picture of him online or a billboard he says in a deep voice “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.”

I’m sure we’ll have a television again some day but for now we are enjoy being unplugged.

Michael

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I'm not calling it a diet, but....

So, I’ve decided that I want need have to lose some weight. Before you try to say something nice, let me say I have seen pictures of myself and I know I’m overweight. Now, I’m not expecting to look like I did in high school or anything, although that would be lovely. But I do need to be healthier. My eating habits have taken a tumble. I love my chocolate and I love soda, or Coke as we from Texas call almost any carbonated beverage. I used to be great about drinking my daily requirement of water, but that has long gone out the window. And Coke had taken its place. Not so good on your system!

So I decided that upon return to Texas from our two weeks of visiting family and eating almost any and everything in sight, I would get my act together and start a very late new years resolution. At first I had this lofty goal of cutting out all cokes, chocolate, sugar, white flour, etc., but I just can’t go cold turkey. In my ideal world, I would go to whole wheat everything, cut out all sugar, eat lots of salad and veggies, but I need to dip my toes into this slowly. I don’t want to overwhelm myself. I had read on some blogs about drinking “green” smoothies and thought I would give that a try, but I quickly decided that I would much rather just eat my lettuce/spinach/etc out of a bowl with a little dressing on top of it, thank you very much. More power to those that are able to do it, maybe some day I will join you!

And if you know me very well at all, you know I don’t “do” veggies or even many fruits. I’ve slowly started to appreciate and even enjoy veggies over the last couple of years. Now, there are some that I flat out still do not like, but I’m getting there. I’ve even eaten salad by choice in the last few months. It used to be that I would begrudgingly take a bite or two only if I had to…you know to be polite or something.

So, long story short is that I’m making some efforts to change. I have some changes that I need to make and I’m trying to set some goals. My goals as of this moment are to:
* eat at least salad once a day
* have pancakes or donuts only one time per week (this one is hard b/c Zane loves pancakes and I’d gladly make and eat them every morning that he says he wants them, but I know that are really kind of just carb/filler/nothing great for you! And well, donuts, that an obvious one, but equally as hard with a Dunkin’ Donuts on every corner around here!)
* add more whole wheat and fiber to our diets (I’m thinking of getting a bread machine and trying to make our bread. I’ve never really enjoyed whole wheat bread, but I wonder if I find a good recipe I might enjoy making and eating my own homemade bread.)
* be very conscious of my coke and chocolate intake. I’m not going to ban it completely, because I think that I would just rebel anyways, but I’m going to be more careful and not just pig out! For example, I’m not going to order my own coke when I go out, but I will most likely share a coke with Mike or have some of his.
* drink more water! I started the other day drinking my water out of a measuring cup just because that helped me to “see” how much I was drinking, but Mike looked at my like I had a third eye or something. So, now I’m drinking out of a Mason jar. Same idea, it has the measurements there for me and I do like the feel of drinking out of something glass. I like water bottles, but the “green” in me just cannot stand to buy individual bottled waters any longer. And I just can’t seem to find a reusable bottle that I love.


Now, why have I shared all of the goals on a public forum like this for all of the world (okay, my four friends and three family members) to see? I don’t know. Maybe it helps to have it written down. And maybe some accountability. I don’t know, but there it is, it’s out there! I’ll keep you filled in as to how it’s going!!!

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Raffle for a great cause

Take a look at the button below. Our friends David and Amy are raffling off a cool Ipod Nano to help with the cost of an upcoming adoption from Africa.