On cold rainy days we like to go to the indoor playground at Seattle Gymnastics Academy. It’s a great way for toddlers to work off some pent up energy and climb run and jump with almost no restrictions.

recently Simon has been into these parallel rings. He jumps off the stack of foam in the background and swings back and forth, back and forth until he can’t hold on anymore and has to drop on to the mat. He has a big grin on his face the entire time.

My whole life people have made fun of the way I walk/run.

unfortunately for Simon he may have inherited my funny gait.

At least he is having fun!

The foam pit – it’s like quick sand!

until next time!

-Emily

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Last weekend we celebrated Simon’s 2nd birthday. 2 weeks after his official birthday but this kid has a busy social calendar so it was hard to fit it in! The party was of course a “digger” theme. Simon loves all things construction as most 2 year old boys do so we went with it.Everyone got construction hard hats and we laid down some “road” and made a bulldozer out of cardboard.

Here is the big boy blowing out his candles

And look, I made a cake that didn’t fall apart (I am not a very good baker).

He scored big time with awesome presents – and now he totally gets the opening thing.

baby Rowan, Naomi, and Simon

And a good time was had by all! – but boy was I wiped out the next day. Birthday parties are a ton of work.

Have you guys seen the January/February edition of Mothering magazine?  Check out page 47 for a photo of my boys!

The story is about how fathers make great story tellers.

When I was putting together that slide show I realized that it has been forever since I took photos of Simon in the bath. He really hammed it up this time.

he is almost 2 and just looks like a little boy now – where did my baby go?

(I told him to flap his wings)

(screech owl!)

Whenever I have an idea for a costume there is never a pattern for what I envision. So I just end up making up the costume. This results in me making a lot of mistakes and having to buy a lot of extra fabric to compensate. I wanted Simon to be an owl last year but gave up and went with turtle when I couldn’t  think of a way to make an owl costume nor find a pattern that would work. This year I just went for it. I had to cut out the body 3 different times and ending up sewing two different versions before I got to this version. Then I was a little worried that people wouldn’t know what he was but everyone who say him at the park today recognized right away that he was an owl.  And Simon loves the costume, which is a huge surprise since he screamed every time I tried it on him and I had to bribe him with a piece of candy to get him to put it on and go to the park. He really thinks the padding in it is funny and quickly learned that he could run into things with his padded belly and he kept running into me on purpose. Only at one point I was trying to take his photo and he  ran smack into my camera lens – which hurt! and has now resulted in a circular bruise on his face (you can see it starting to form in some of the photos). He cried when I had to take the costume off him to put him in his car seat. I think this year is going to be fun trick-or-treating. Simon already knows how to say “trick-or-treat”. At first he would only say “Want a treat!” but now we have “trick or treat” down.  I have also been practicing with him trying to get him to say “WHO! WHO!” on command (so far no luck). If there are any other owl babies out there please send me a photo of your costume as I would love to see what you came up with.

have a happy Halloween everyone!
-Emily

P.S. if you want to see Simon’s Halloween costume from last year (and how much he has grown) here is the turtle baby.

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I have declared October Pumpkin month and we are on a mission to make and consume as much pumpkin as possible. So this recipe is part of the pumpkin project. Risotto is  really not the most photogenic of foods but this was sure delicious.I am giving it 5 stars and i will most definitely be making it again. Here is the recipe if you want to try it. I did add mushrooms and spinach to the recipe and we ate it as the main dish. It was very hardy and satisfying.

Here is everything that went into the risotto minus the pumpkin, onion, and garlic

They were such beautiful mushrooms I thought they deserved their own photo

I tried to get Simon to do some of the chopping for me but I don’t trust him with a real knife so I just gave him pumpkin carving tool. It’s nearly impossible to cut yourself with it because you have to saw with it to make it work and it’s pretty dull. Turns out it’s also pretty hard to cut mushrooms with it and Simon gave up pretty fast. On a side note anyone sell pampered chef? it seems like I remember them making a kid knife that was similar to the pumpkin carving tool but only better. I would love to get one now.

stirring stirring stirring…

This is probably the main reason that I don’t make risotto more often. It requires nearly constant stirring for 20 – 25 min. Simon was only interested for about 2 min. Notice the Thyme in his hand, I did get him to pick off the leaves for me :  )

and here is the final product. So I know it looks like a blow of orange rice but tryst me it is amazing! The pumpkin flavor is very subtle though and I thought it could actually do with more. Maybe even chunks of roasted pumpkin in there.

until next time!

-Emily

I have been reading the blog Foodie Tots. It’s a good read and it has inspired me to cook with Simon more. Simon really enjoys “helping” (read: making a mess) with all things kitchen related. Truthfully Myles is much better about incorporating him. I get in the mind set of “I just need to get it done!” So this week I set aside some time to bake with him, no stress to get it perfect or time constraints I just wanted to let him experience it and have a good time. Since it’s October and we are into all things pumpkin related I deiced to make pumpkin cookies. (We are going to try and eat as much pumpkin as we can stand this month – more post about this to follow shortly).So here is the story of our pumpkin cookie adventure told through photographs.

“you’re the one who thinks this is a good idea mom.”

smelling the ingredients (nutmeg) – it’s important to experience your food with all your senses.

Measure out the flour. (I quickly learned that I can’t step away to take a photo as Simon will just shovel as much flour out of the container as fast as he can.

adding the other dry ingredients – I think this was the highlight for Simon he liked dumping out the contents of the “poon” (spoon).

Sifting the dry ingredients

being annoyed with mom because she has taken over sifting the dry ingredients because they were being thrown all over the counter and floor.

adding the pumpkin puree.

Simon is afraid of the mixer – well the sound the mixer makes, so at this point he left the kitchen and I dropped the cookie dough on to baking sheets.

The hard part, waiting for the cookies to be done. This was the first time that I have thought to show Simon the window in the oven. He was fascinated!

having some dinner while waiting for the cookies too cool.  Whole wheat pasta with fresh pesto – maybe he is a foodie?

Here they are iced and ready to eat…

and the verdict is…

YUM!

Thanks for reading! That was actually fairly painless, I am going to try and include Simon more in the cooking. After all at some point I  want to hand over that task to him and let him be in charge of making dinner!”

until next time!

- Emily

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Pum-key is how Simon is currently pronouncing “pumpkin” It’s very cute since there are pumpkins to be seen everywhere. This past weekend we went to the south 47 farm and picked out our pumpkin. I should say one of our pumpkins because I know I will buy more but nothing beast the beautiful evening light and all those beautiful orange pumpkins.

Last year it was a lot easier to take Simon’s photo, he had really just mastered pulling up and pumpkins were just the right standing height for an 8-month-old. This year he ran away from my camera and was a lot more interested in the wheel barrels than the pumpkins.

After selecting our pumpkin and several verities of squash we headed over to Theno’s dairy for some pumpkin ice cream. I have been going to the south 47 farm for years and I had know idea that there was an amazing ice cream place just across the street. (Thanks Andrea for the tip). Up until this point Simon has hated ice cream, I kid you not. I think he found it too cold, he would just spit it out and there was no way you could get him to lick a cone.  That all changed on Sunday. Simon got his first real taste of pumpkin ice cream and then devoured half of Myles’s cone.

I think Myles’s face in this photo is so funny. He was trying to teach Simon to lick the cone, not just try and suck it. Yum it was good. So good we brought a quart home.

Until next time! We have so many fun things planned this month, I am going to have tons of Simon photos and stories (which I know are everyone’s favorites anyway).

-Emily

P.S.  If you wait until a few days before Halloween Fred Meyer will drop the price of their pumpkins to 10 cents a pound and their produce scales only go up to 30 lbs so you can get the biggest pumpkin you can find (and right before Halloween only the giant pumpkins remain at the bottom of the bin) and only pay $3 for it.

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My mom spoils Simon just enough : ) I think she was feeling bad that he was so sick. She just got him this shiny new tricycle – well actually it’s sort of a combo balance/push bike/tricycle. It’s designed for young toddlers and it doesn’t have any pedals. The idea is that toddlers can learn the concept of steering and controlling the trike before they are coordinated enough to use pedals. Simon got the concept right away, and over the last few day he has gotten really fast at going both backwards and forwards. We can also get him to put his feet up on the front platform and push him around. The steering on the trike is controlled so that it can’t make too sharp of a turn and tip over. They thought of all the details, it has real ribbon streamers and a little bell that Simon can even ring.It a really fun toy and I think it will get a lot of use. So thanks Grandma for the cool present!

If you want on it’s by radio flyer and it’s called a “Scoot About”

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Poor Simon has been SO sick. After we returned from camping all of us got sick, first Simon, then Myles, then me. It was just the stomach flu, it lasted a few days, we were miserable and then we got better. Only then Simon got sick again. At first I thought Simon never really got completely better and he was just suffering from the same flu. He had a low fever and vomited a few times. Last Saturday he seemed to be healed so Myles too him to the zoo but that night he woke up vomiting with a fever again so first thing Monday morning I took him to the pediatrician. She examined him and determined that is was just a bad virus but to keep him hydrated and that he should soon be better. Only he didn’t get better, he kept vomiting, and the fever continued and got worse, by Wednesday it was 103 so we headed back to the doctors office. She told me she was sure that he would have an ear infection but when she examined him his ears were fine. There was no sign of any bacterial infection anywhere. She even checked for a urinary tract infection, and lets just say that getting a urine sample from a dehydrated 18month old is not fun. But everything checked out normal so she wanted to wait one more day to see if the fever would resolve on it’s own before putting him on antibiotics. He had gotten really dehydrated because he was refusing to eat or drink much of anything. Our Pediatrician pointed out that it is difficult for little bodies to break a fever if they are dehydrated so she asked me to keep him on a regime of ibuprofen very 4 hours to keep him comfortable so that he would take some fluids and that seemed to work. We got a lot of helpful suggestions from friends and family on facebook about how to get a sick toddler to drink. Crazy straws worked like a charm and he decided he liked water and those electrolyte drinks  again. But every time I let the ibuprofen wear off the fever would come right back so on the amoxicillin he went.  It can take up to 48 hours on antibiotics to see an improvement and he has only been on them for a little over 24 hours (and the first does he threw up) but he already seems to be much better. This morning he drank a lot of water and even ate a bit and the fever hasn’t come back. So our current thinking is that perhaps we originally all had the same stomach bug and when his immune system was down he got a bacterial infection. So thank you everyone who has been following us on twitter and facebook who have been praying for us and offering us encouragement and good advice. We appreciate you a lot. Hopefully I will soon be able to report that Simon is 100% healthy.

-Emily

This picture was taken on Wednesday right before we left for the pediatrician’s office. The doctor wanted to examine him unmedicated so I hadn’t given him any ibuprofen and his fever was 103 and he was so lethargic and just wanted to lay on  the couch.