Walking!

Garrett has been so close to walking for so long. Tonight I was holding on to the back of his shirt while he was walking toward Brian to give dad0 a rock. I let go of his shirt and he took about 20 steps right to Brian without even blinking or stumbling and falling. I cried! I was so proud of him for actually doing it and sad that we just passed a major milestone and can never go back. I was also relieved, of course in the back of my mind I was afraid something was wrong with him! We continued to play the same "game" and he walked every time. Like he had been doing it forever!

I Am Going to be That Crazy Lady!

I don't know what it is but ever since I have had a baby I have fallen absolutely in love with ALL babies. The little boy that is trying to wiggle out of his grandma's arms, the little girl facing outward in the Bjorn with so many rolls on her little arms you just want to squeeze her, and the little girl in her stroller sucking on her paci and looking up at you... All of them are utterly irresistible!

I have always like babies and kids, but now that I have my own, I am even more in love with them. And I think that is it. Having a baby has taught me how wonderful and special every child is. Now every time I see one I just want to love on them like every wonderful child deserves to be loved on. They are such a bag of mysteries, so perfect, curious and new.

I know that at some point we will have another one and I can't wait to have a squishy little baby to love on (not that the one I have isn't sufficient enough for now.) But what happens when I have no more squishy wonderful babies to love on? I already look at everyone else's babies like I want to eat them up, what will happen when I know that we are done...I will be that crazy lady who won't leave other people's children alone. Just warning you.

The Smell of Smoke Takes Me Back...

The end of August has come around, which in Montana means hot days and windy afternoons. The hot days and windy afternoons kick up smoke from the forest fires and cover the mountains in a blanket of haze. Right now Brian and I are sitting in bed and the house is full of the smell of smoke from fires 200 miles away.

Brian and I really started hanging out in late August, he was fighting fires in Paradise Valley and I was working in a boutique and saddle shop in Gardiner. He would come wandering in after a long day of work with a coffee from the coffee shop next door, just to say "hi" since he was in the area. He later admitted that the coffee shop was a cover for seeing me (cause that wasn't obvious!) And he would be in his uniform from the day, a Gallatin National Forest tee shirt, that was bleached out from sweat and hard work, and those green Nomex pants...Oh man did those pants look good on him! (I still tell him he should have kept a pair, you know, to keep a girl happy!) Anyway... as the summer wore to an end the fires in Paradise Valley got worse. He always found an excuse to come back to Gardiner for the night. Those were the days when we would stay up till 2 and get up to go to work at 6. How we did that I still don't know!

To this day I see the hazy mountains and smell the smoke and all I can think about is that first summer and the way that Brian and I couldn't get enough of each other. I love you baby, and can't wait for years of smelling the August smoke and thinking of those first years, you know, before the house and baby that popped our beautiful little bubble!

Baby Food: A Journey

I decided early on that I would try making my own baby food and just see how it goes. I wasn't totally hard core, I didn't make my own baby cereal and teething biscuits and all that fun stuff.

What I liked:

• Being able to completely control the texture and ingredients of the food I was feeding Garrett.
• Being able to do everything in bulk and having a large selection of things to choose from.

What was hard:

• The time it took to make enough food to have a good selection and enough for us and daycare. Between cooking, pureeing, freezing and storing sometimes it would take a total of three days to get everything completely finished, and that was if I stayed on top of it.
• The planning and time it took to make sure that we had a good selection, so that Garrett wasn't eating the same things.
• Traveling. It is hard to take frozen baby food on a longer trip... You either waste it because it is defrosted but not eaten or have to count on having a microwave to warm it up.

I will definitely make baby food again hands down. Being able to control the consistency and ingredients was well worth it. A couple of things that I learned was that if something isn't pureeing very well add lots of extra liquid. We had a small food processor and a big one. Honestly, I thought that both were necessary. The big one I used in the beginning when I was making bulk of a lot of different things. The small one we used A LOT for the in between stage when he could eat what we were eating but it had to be pureed. I often put a whole meal in the thing and whipped her right up. Now he is eating mostly table food and I hardly puree anything. I still freeze stuff though, so that he has a meal when we are eating something that he can't really have, like steak.

I would freeze lentils and cous cous for a starch, and then freeze ground pureed turkey, steak and pork and lots of veggies. For a meal I would pull out a cube of each and mix them together, that way we could mix up flavors so he didn't get the same thing all the time.

It has been hard trying to find something to feed him while we are dieting. Yesterday evening I actually took the time to cook him a spinach and butternut squash lasagna. SO GOOD...and he seemed to like it. I cut the 9x9 lasagna into 16 pieces and now they are in the freezer. Hopefully that will help with the "I don't have anything to feed him that is halfway healthy and not processed" 5:30 panic. I think the challenge now is find a variety of "big boy" foods that are easy to prepare/throw together and aren't supper processed.

Depirvation Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

So, Brian and I are trying to knock off a couple of pounds. For me I am a little heavier than I was before I had Garrett, and I was heavy for me when I got pregnant. I want to loose 15-20 lbs and get down where I fit into my OLD clothes, and feel good about myself. And before I have another baby I want to be at a weight that I am comfortable with (not that we are close to having another baby or anything, don't get all excited or nothing!)

We started on Monday and so far it has been going really good (besides the coffee I got on the way home, because you know what, I made it all week without cheating AND had a really busy week at work, AND I deserved it!). We have started to diet a couple of times in the past year and not even made it a couple of days. But this time, I am not messing around. I just want to do it and be done with it. I am also working out to try and tone a little bit too. Mama's legs are in a very sad state right now! And I figure the weight loss will only benefit from the working out, right?

So, I have not had much cooking inspiration in the last two months. We have been gone a lot of weekends and there is to much going on to sit on the computer and spend time looking at cooking blogs and dreaming of yummy things to challenge myself with. Now that we are dieting...all I wanna do is make casseroles and pastries and yummy grilled goodness and try new cocktails and freeze ice cream and try making homemade pasta and...well you get the point. I guess I will have to store all the inspiration up for when we get done, cause none of the above is on the diet!

Where Have I Been?

I have had a lot of people lately asking why I am not blogging anymore, and such. Thanks for all the questions, it makes me feel like people ACTUALLY read this!

I have been wondering why I stopped blogging as well. I think that I ran out of inspiration. I used to spend quite a bit of time, esp. at work, online reading other blogs and finding things to talk about.

I feel like my life has narrowed into Family and Work. I am having a hard enough time managing both of those and feel like I don't have anything creative left to give.

I also think that a lot of the time I want to use this blog as a work release, but I can't because there are people that I work with that read this blog. Which is fine but it limits the work talk, since I want to avoid putting myself in a bad situation. There are people though who blog and don't talk about work at all. If they can do it I can do it!

So I am not promising that I am going to be going crazy or anything but I do think I will be trying to blog more, cause, well, I miss it!