Photo overload!

Lots of pictures in this post!!

We'll start with the mundane. The chickens have moved out to their new home. They are happy happy birds (too happy at dusk, when their gleeful chirping makes me cringe and await the neighbor's complaints, but no one has said anything yet--it wouldn't really matter since we are following all the city ordinances, but it's nice to not be at war with the people living 100 feet away). Their coop gets moved about every three days so they can "free" range. I've found it takes them a matter of hours to search out and eat all the clover, the other grasses soon follow. Dandelions are the last thing standing and only get moderately pecked at even when most of the other grass (and probably the feed too) is gone. The dog hasn't gotten used to them yet and seems unable to avoid her canine instinct to run laps around the coop while barking. Thankfully no chickens have had a heart attack and they have now learned to just go into their roost and ignore her.


Sedona has started eating the gerber puffs and *loves* them. I now have trouble getting her to eat regular baby food. It's not uncommon for her to take 2 or 3 spoons, then bang on her tray and yell "PUH! PUH!!" until you give her a few puffs, then she'll eat more baby food. We started her on Kix and she does well with those too (and they have way more calories). The good news is eating now keeps her entertained while I cook or fold laundry or whatever...just keep tossing a finger food her way and she's a happy camper (by the way, her shirt is so wet from all the drool...as sierra says, "she's a drooly drooly baby):

She is also REALLY wanting to crawl. She's not yet getting anywhere--she's doing the typical "crawl" backwards thing where she just rocks and then pushes herself back, which is apparently infuriating, because it's the source of more crying/yelling than I've ever seen from the child.


So Easter was this week. Following Sierra's thoroughly confused questions about why we need a 6 foot tall rabbit and what a rabbit has to do with eggs, we've (for this year anyway) ditched the easter bunny. She was no less excited about everything. She got to dye eggs:


And she was very excited to get her easter basket in the morning:

Sedona was a little less sure about what this whole easter basket thing was about

But she was excited to get a new can of puffs anyway and took the opportunity to inspect the ingredient list and find out just what it is that makes puffs so darn tasty:


We all headed outside at 8:30 in the morning to hunt eggs and Sierra found them all pretty quickly and was very excited. She spent the next hour standing in a chair at the kitchen window looking outside to see if she could spot anymore eggs. She finally told us she found one and it wasn't an egg, but she wouldn't believe us, so we told her to go look. She puts on her shoes, heads out to the very back of the yard and yells out, "It's not an egg". As she's walking back though, she suddenly veers off and starts shouting, "I FOUND AN EGG! I FOUND AN EGG! I FOUND AN EGG!" The kid was SOOOOOOO excited she literally ran out of her shoe.. "I FOUND AN EGG! I FOUND AN---MY SHOE!.....I FOUND AN EGG! I FOUND AN EGG!" So, I can say with confidence that everyone within a 10 mile radius was definitely awake by 9am because our child graced them with egg hunt excitement even if they didn't have kids of their own.

Later on we learned that a cheapo $1 kite is one of the coolest toys ever to a three year old. Each time I resist the urge to get her big expensive stuff, I get reminded that she's really happy without us spending tons of money (besides, why bother having to "one up" myself every year this early??).


We got video of her flying the kite as well, because most of the time she was jumping up and down and going, "my kite! my kite! look at my kite! my kite's way up in the air! my kite! my kite!" I guess flight is pretty amazing when you're 3.

And here are the resident partners in crime. Sierra is completely a daddy's girl:

Lies for your own good

I gotta give two thumbs up to the recipe book: Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (as in Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld). I had heard a lot of people talking about this book, but I have the kid who won't touch a vegetable and wouldn't eat anything green (including green jello) until very recently, so I was skeptical and didn't want to buy it. I looked it up at our local library and they had a copy (yay!) there were, like, 3 people in line ahead of me to borrow, so I had to wait a LONG time to get it. Anyways, got it last monday and have been trying things out and I highly highly recommend it. The premise is to make vegetable purees (think stage 1 baby food) that you mix in with kid favorites. So far, I've made blueberry oatmeal bars that have pureed spinach mixed in with the blueberry filling and grilled cheese that had sweet potato puree mixed in with the cheese. Both went over with no comments whatsoever from Sierra. Some of the others I plan to try---mac and cheese with sweet potato or butternut squash puree mixed in; scrambled eggs with cauliflower mixed in; "fried" rice balls with pureed chicken, sweet potato and spinach mixed in; homemade chicken nuggets with pureed carrot. Everyone also tells me the chocolate chip cookies with garbanzo beans are wonderful, but I haven't tried that one yet.

I was really surprised about the blueberry oatmeal bars--okay, so yes, it's a dessert type thing, but if I'm gonna give the kid dessert anyway, I might as well throw in some spinach (which I would never in a million years get her to eat otherwise). It took me the longest to eat them--I couldn't get the sight and smell of spinach puree mixed with blueberry jam out of my mind. I finally did though and the spinach is completely undetectable (tip--you have to let them *completely* cool off or you can still taste/smell the spinach).

You're gonna miss this

My last day at work was Friday. Ask me again in six months, because I may be climbing the walls (that's how long I stayed home with Sierra before I started working), but I'm LOVING my time at home. One of my friends recently made a blog post about "mommy paychecks"--I have gladly handed over my money paychecks for mommy paychecks. Josh is a very very smart man. Whenever Sierra says something about momma not working anymore, he slips in, "momma still works, it's just that she only has ONE full time job now" ;-) Have I mentioned lately that I married the best man in the world? ;-) Anyways, I am really enjoying rocking Sedona to sleep for her naps. In the past that's been one of my least favorite baby-care activities, but I missed out on it for the last 8 months (I'd put her in the wrap at work and then continue working, I couldn't stop for 15 minutes to rock her), and have found I really look forward to it now. Nothing beats baby fine hair against your cheek, one baby arm wrapped around your arm and a chubby baby hand against your neck. I'm also pleasantly surprised that when I haven't used up all my patience on grown people who need baby-sitting to get a job done, I have plenty left for my own three year old at the end of the day. There have been many fewer power struggles between Sierra and I this week, and when she gets upset, I'm able to respond in a completely calm tone of voice, which just sorta difuses her anger/frustration. I think that's probably been the biggest benefit so far---I'm still sane when everyone gets home! I do miss the clients, but I'm working on getting set up to teach some breastfeeding/childbirth classes (which is a nights/weekend independent working type thing).

So there's a new country song called "you're gonna miss this" that gives me goosebumps now. The first part talks about missing being a teenager or married without kids, and sorry, I don't miss those (I've always been in a hurry to grow up and while the responsibility that comes with being grown up can be tough, no way would I trade it to be a kid again), but the last part is:

Five years later there's a plumber workin' on the water heater
Dog's barkin', phone's ringin'
One kid's cryin', one kid's screamin'
And she keeps apologizin'
He says "They don't bother me.
I've got 2 babies of my own.
One's 36, one's 23.
It's hard to believe, but...

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna miss this"

And that part gets me, because I know I'm gonna miss having my babies around. I'm sure there are fun times ahead (especially when they're big enough to really go hiking, climbing, biking, etc...), but there's not much in life that beats rocking babies :-) So, yes, we're incredibly short on money now (though a benefit of frugality is we have savings instead of revolving debt), and with gas prices so high we walk or bike where we need to go most of the time, and we count taco bell as "going out" and even that's a rarity, but the trade-offs are great. The amount of money I was getting was not nearly enough to justify the stress on our family.

A big, big, BIG rabbit

Last weekend was the Easter Egg Hunt at the George Bush Library. They do a really neat set up every year. It's all free and all the kiddos under 7 get a goody bag (candy, pencils, bracelets, activity book, stickers, etc...) and they do an easter egg "hunt". They outline three huge rectangles on the grass and scatter a bunch of easter eggs out there. The kids are separated by age and when the easter bunny blows the fire truck horn all the kids rush for the eggs. In the past it's been a little "dog eat dog", even in the 0-3 year old set. This year was exceptionally tame for some reason. It was also the first year Sierra was willing to do the hunt. Pics of Sierra:

Sedona also got in on the action, though I think any brightly colored object would've drawn her attention



Another part of the annual Easter Egg Hunt is a chance to sit on a fire truck. Last year Sierra totally freaked out and would not get on the fire truck. For an ENTIRE year we've have heard (repeatedly) about how she wanted to sit on a fire truck. When we saw a fire truck going down the road (sirens blaring, racing through red lights, etc...) she wanted me to stop the truck so she could ride on it. When we saw firemen in the grocery store, she wanted me to go ask them if she could sit on the truck. Everywhere we went, every truck she passed, she asked about this. We told her she had her chance and she would have to wait until next year. Anytime she didn't want to do something that was sort of a one time thing, all we had to say was, "remember the fire truck?" Anyways....she DID get on the fire truck this year. At first, she refused, but that was because the fireman was lifting the kids up. Once we told her daddy could lift her up, she hesitantly agreed. You'll see from the picture just how thrilled she was


On the way home though, she was ALL sorts of proud of herself...."I got on the fire truck this year!"

Here she is showing off her big bad "happy easter" fake tattoo. I have no idea where she got the notion to make that face LOL


And the only thing better than homegrown free food is WILD free food! I discovered a plethora of wild onion in our backyard! I kept pulling weeds in the strawberry bed (note: strawberries and onions are good companion plants) and commenting that the weeds smelled like onion. Then a few days ago I noticed a clump of these "weeds" next to the raised bed with a seed pod that looked an awful lot like onion. I pulled on it and a small chive looking thing comes up and over powers the air with the smell of onion. Then I look up and notice these things are growing like CRAZY all over one section of the backyard. I just casually pulled a bunch and got this:


There's lots and lots and lots more out there. I looked up wild onion and apparently they are indigenous to Texas. There are a few wild onion mimics (though I'm not sure if they're around this area), but everyone says the mimics don't smell like onion and these most definitely do and look JUST like the pictures of wild onion. Everything I've read says they're just as good for food as cultivated onion (unless you're a cow or horse and eat an entire pasture of wild onion leaves).