Happy Birthday Dearest Husband!

This post is long over due. Somehow it's been very hard to write down my feeling and the enormous gratitude I have towards my husband Chip. How can I express everything I feel in blog post? How can I do it without sounding sappy or even get close to truth?


I have known my husband for 6 years. Together we have experienced some rough times but through it all he has always been there for me. He is my rock and has brought calm to my life. He is my family.
Please let me tell you about the man I call my husband. He is loyal to the extreme to his friends. He is the most honorable man I know. He is a hard worker and most importantly he is a great companion.

We met on my birthday and soon there after we started dating. He made sure I ate (college student with no money), took me out and made me a part of his life. I was alone, my family far away, and he made sure I did not feel alone or homesick. I don't know if I would have graduated if it weren't for him. Chip was there when my mom was in the hospital and I was here in the US without a dime. He calmed me down and struck through the bad moments. Chip was there when my parents decided to get a divorce (when I was 8 months pregnant) and my dad literally verbally tortured me over the phone every weekend.

This is not my place to say but my husband is a great son. He loves his parents with devotion. He honors them and makes sure that he is there when needed.

Chip is the father I wanted when growing up. He is there for our son in such a way that takes my breathe away. When it came time to return to work I had no worries and no regrets. I was leaving the care of my baby, who was 3 months old to my husband. I could think of no one better. He is the center of the universe for Carr and I am not jealous. I consider myself so fortunate and blessed that I have been able to give my son a relationship with his dad that not many other children have.
September 13th is his birthday and I want to celebrate him and his accomplishments. I have seen him become a husband and a father and embrace each responsibility with dedication and never complain about anything. Thank you Chip, for making my dreams come true. All that I have, I have because you played an integral part in making it possible.

Happy Birthday Chip! Thank you for loving us so.

Those little things

It's the little things in life that take hold of your heart and leave lasting impressions. But sadly they are also the ones that sometimes are left unsaid. I want to dedicate this post to you dear Carr and those little things about you that make your mama smile.
My son has a funny sense of humor, he laughs when he hears the words YUCK and EWWWW, like they are the funniest words ever. He thinks Kipper "the dog" (on the sprout channel) is hilarious. When Carr laughs it is so contagious that his dad and I can't help but to join in, which makes him laugh harder.
Carr loves to listen to music with his dad. He has a favorite artist, Self, and he gets upset if you change the music he likes to something else. When riding in the Carr he requests there be music playing and he tries to sing along. He is not interested in baby music unless it's mama singing it to him at bedtime.
My little monster hates to get his diaper changed, clothes changed or anything that will make him stop playing. He doesn't cry but he makes his opinion heard. We especially have a hard time putting T-shirts or taking them off. This of course has to do with his 95th percentile in head circumference.
He is the most patience child ever when clipping his finger nails, not so much with his toe nails.
Usually, as above mentioned we have to wrangle him to change his diaper but when you say "nakitime" he runs and jumps on the bed, lays down so I can take off his clothes to bathe him. He loves bathe time.
Carr loves to dance with the wiggles and the imagination movers. Funny thing is, one show I encourage and the other I steered away from. What can I say, my boy has his own opinion. The same goes with "Thomas the tank engine", I prayed that he would not get sucked in this craziness. Not so lucky. I would say 85% of his Christmas gifts are Thomas.
When it is reading time, he picks out the book and sits himself down on your lap. Most of his books have seen better days but I am fine with that, it only means that he is playing with his books. What? Yes, I want my son to see books as entertainment not a chore or something that you do once a day (if lucky with mama).
He has never been afraid of the dark, he prefers it to sleep (no lights). He is not fond of heights but is a climber. Which makes no sense but let me explain. He will jump on our bed, on the coach and then climb over it but...if I pick him up and sit him on the counter top, he refuses to want to be let go. I have a theory on this, I think that once he knows his environment and has tested out the waters he is comfortable being a climber but in that mean time, he is very cautious about his footing.
Carr has a very high pain tolerance threshold. He will run into a door, turn around look at you and then go about his business. He fell from our bed about two days ago, didn't even cry. I really do not like this, I rather he felt a little more and respected the possibility of feeling pain.
My son has only had 3 very mild colds. He has only once had a fever of 101.5. For now, according to his pediatrician has a very mild egg allergy which he may outgrown. He has eczema, which if your child has it, you know how awful that is. He mostly has flare-ups when he is teething, and it usually concentrates on his legs. But we have tried every cream over the counter, I do not want to start with prescriptions until he is older. What has helped enormously is to keep him wearing pants, in order for him not to scratch the flare-ups.
His worst trait, and I know it's transitory, is he has an oral fixation. He will put everything and anything in his mouth. Makes me, a germaphobe, cringe and be extra anal about stuff.
I know I have forgotten some stuff but this will do for now. But these are the things I want him to know about himself growing up. His dad and I are trying to write out phonetically his speech but that will be for a later post. I hope I haven't bored you to death but this post is really for Carr when he is older.

Weekend Recap

Going into this weekend I promised myself that I was not going to run around like crazy. I was not going to inflict my obsessiveness to the rest of my family either. Result: I have gotten strangely an enormous amount of work done and managed to enjoy myself in the process.
I made up two weeks worth of menus for Chip and I and a week menu for Carr. This is the first time I do Carr's menu, as a trial run. I want him to enjoy new flavors but also have healthy meals. I have bought 3 new cookbooks that I am referencing to make his meal plan. Because of his food sensitivities (milk and egg whites) I have to take extra care of what I feed him. Finding cookbooks that proved to be useful and insightful has been quite an undertaking. It took me two months to go through websites, blogs and some trials & errors before I could say that I am happy with my new reference material. My best advice to you, if you are faced with such dilemmas, is that you first take the time to list what your priorities are: fast, healthy, varied, etc. Once you have that straight, you need to ask yourself "what you are willing to do with the workload you have to get to were you want to be".
I have a major flaw, which is I do not know how to store (my next objective) food, so this makes cooking and prepping for Carr more challenging - until I learn how to. Chip and I really do not like leftovers, and it has taken me years of practice run to learn the amounts to cook for us. When it comes to Carr, I do not feed him leftovers and his appetite changes frequently because he is a growing boy.
Ultimately, I finished planning my menus, made the grocery list and paid our household bills, all on Saturday! I had time to play with Carr, and spend some quality time with Chip. My plans today range from going with Carr to the grocery store and also to my local do it yourself store to buy shelving and some safety outlets for his room. I am always surprised of the things that I can get done once I have them organized in a process.

My space

Let me just start by thanking my husband for supporting me and all of my endeavors. He knows that I always have a full plate and he also knows that I operate this way. He normally stands back and lets me do my thing, whether it be decorating, organizing, crafting, he is now taking some time and teaching me illustrator, and photo shop. Learning this is something I really want to do in order to digital scrapbook and he has succumbed and has offered his help and time.
If your reading this and know us or if you are a parent, you know how hard it is to have time, let alone time for each other and impossible to have time for teaching someone a craft. And he is doing so, sacrificing his downtime...I love him so.



Well back to the main subject, my husband new what I wanted and was looking for in an apartment. It took us some time to find it but we did. Here are just a few pics, please understand that I haven't finished staging and decorating so it's pretty bland. I'll keep you posted!

This is my work desk. I am so absolutely happy to have this space that I cannot get enough of it.

Here is my "craft center". It holds a lot of stuff, knitting, scrap booking, photography, cooking, organization ideas, stationery, etc. Yay I have it all together and at hand!

Chip and I sacrificed a formal dinning room for our office space, so we came up with this idea. It works fine for us, somewhat problematic when we have people over.

This is me trying to be a handy man. Pictures are crooked, husband very upset, I had to promise to stay away from the walls. Well, I never said I was handy, I am better at directing :)

Baby stuff no use hiding it.

Still in progress.

Ok, we are geeks so we have many DVDs, this was for now the best I could do. Give me time to think about it.

Menu planner re-visited

Just wanted to leave a note saying that all went well all week. Highly recommend the Green Been salad and the Baby Bok Choy also. If you are interested in a particular recipe I will be happy to point you in the right direction.

In which he eats.

I have been fighting myself about this particular post. You see, I have procrastinated posting this, and now my husband and I disagree as to when it happened.
we at least have pinpointed it to be before moving "beginners stage" once we settled in the new apartment "Pro". It really doesn't matter.

Here are some photos for your enjoyment:

I love how expressive my child's eyes are.

What should I eat first?

Jax, our cat is always willing to help him eat his food.

Carr's First Haircut

My son has been cursed with having both my husband's hair and mine. He has always had a head full of hair and every morning it looks like a tornado passed through his head.
I know my son, he is not the kind of child that would sit calmly on my lap while he gets his haircut. It's hard to get him to sit still period.
So I decided to cut his hair myself. I planned to do this after his bath while he was watching Caillou. I think it went well.

A new super Hero is born

I have witness the birth of a new super hero ... Courageous Carr! I know, please don't think I am taking this to far but my little man shocks me sometimes.
Let's start at the beginning. I took Carr for a walk after dinner. He needed the fresh air after so much rain prevented his daily walk to take place. He was stir crazy and I was paying for it. After cooking his and our dinner, I geared him up and left to enjoy yet another muggy afternoon. I took him to a church near by and let him run loose. We were playing tag when my son spotted a lady with three dogs walking by. He yelled and darted straight at them. I am very weary about the whole situation and grab him by the waist and prevent him from hugging one of these dogs.

So lets talk about the dog. Well I do not know if you know this breed or not but it was a Newfoundland.


Yes, take in the shear enormous nature of this dog. Was my son afraid? Heck No! He was pulling and tugging towards, I soon found out, her. She, in turn, threw herself belly up on the grass wanting to be petted by my boy. I don't know how, even though every fiber in my body said no, but my son got to hug her and even gave her a kiss in the face. You should have seen his face. He was son happy.

My son's head is about the size of her muzzle. The owner said that never in her life did she see a child like Carr, fearless of a creature about 10 times his size.

I am in awe of him and I fear myself. I do not want to contain him, I want him to soar as high as possible but I want to instill some fear in him. Only the reckless are fearless and I want him to be wise about choices. I pray to God for guidance that I be able to guide my little hero into becoming a courageous man.

Menu Planner

I am taking my best friends suggestion and posting my two week menu planner. In these tough times it's hard to save money and also enjoy healthy good meals. One of the first things we took off our budget was eating out, but we still crave those gourmet foods. This was my solution to this, I starting cooking more involved foods, this might seem more time consuming but with a little planning, it can even help you save money at the grocery store.

Menu week one (aug 2nd thru aug 8th)

Sunday
Grilled Flank Steak and shrimp with sweet breads and salad

Monday
Mini Pork Loins with onion suace couple with green beans and almond salad

Tuesday
Cken drummettes coupled with butternut squash squares and browned butter

Wednesday
Baked Salmon with baby bok choy salad with cashews

Thursday
Italian pasta and homemade garlic bread

Friday
Teriyacki Shrimp and Sausage Stir fry and rice

Saturday
London Broil and twice baked potatoes

Week two (aug 9th thru aug 15th)

Sunday
Mussels and angel hair pasta

Monday
Cken breasts with creamed spinach and bacon

Tuesday
Italian peppers with tomato sauce on hoaggies

Wednesday
Tilapia and mash potatoes

Thursday
Stuffed peppers

Friday
Tacos and Spanish rice

Saturday
Pork Tenderloin with roasted white and green asparagus

So this is how it works. I buy a whole pork tenderloin and butcher it to my needs. I cut it by half and I have a loin to cook for Saturday. I then cut 4 mini loins and what is left I cut some medallions for another meal. One tenderloin makes 3 meals, and what did I spend $8.00 on sale. I bought a London Broil for $ 11.00 and I cut it in half and serves for two meals. This is only helpful for a two adult household but you can get the jest of it.