Breakfast, Birthday Gift, and a Bonus

BREAKFAST

This is the sunshine I get to have every morning, even when Indiana weather doesn't cooperate:) These are two kids that Love breakfast. Orange juice is the equivalent of coffee/caffeine to start the day-seriously, we have to keep big jugs of the stuff around because Avery would go nuts without it in the morning! Even Mr. Spencer has shown that breakfast is becoming his favorite part of the day too:) He is almost completely off all baby food! He did it himself, not wanting to eat it when it was offered. He only wants to feed himself. Spencer loves pancakes and waffles and cinnamon sugar toast. He also enjoys cheerios and breakfast bars! He is still really in love with formula, but in just over a month he gets to try milk. Spencer's pretty picky with the other two meals of the day and it is so hard to find him stuff that he'll eat, especially since we don't have the cushion of baby food (since he won't eat it). Mostly, it's a texture issue for him. He used to love eating pasta when he first started table food, but he won't eat it now because of the texture...so we're trying to be creative:) He's still a growing machine though and we guess that he's within 5 pounds of Avery (who weighs 26 lbs.)-let's just say it feels the same when carrying them!

BIRTHDAY GIFT

As promised, a picture of my birthday gift. So, three years in a row now I have chosen a kitchen appliance for my birthday. I'm not sure why that is, I think it's because I want to get something more than just I can use and it has happened to be all kitchen stuff. Three years ago all I wanted was a toaster oven-I had never had one before, not even growing up! That thing has turned out to be the most used appliance in our kitchen with two kids around. Last year, I got a new griddle that folds up and also has grill plates. We use that mostly for weekend breakfast. So, this year Artie really wanted one of these Keurig machines. Yeah, I said Artie:) After we stayed in a hotel that had one in the room, he became fascinated with it, and I have to say I started to too. Artie found an incredible deal on a display model at Sam's Club and so now it has joined our kitchen appliance for Steph's birthday family (should that be hyphenated??) Funny thing is, neither Artie or I drink coffee-but this machine also makes tea and hot chocolate-which we do drink:) And since lots of people we know do drink coffee, now we have something that can just make them a cup when they come visit!

BONUS

And here's the bonus picture. Avery all cuddled up with her popcorn and a movie:) She won this as a reward for being an angel at the doctor's office when she had to pay them a visit earlier this week. Last week she had what we thought was a diaper rash. Then she started getting red spots on her tush and down her legs, they looked like chicken pox. We were concerned, but knew that she was up to date on her chicken pox vaccine and that sometimes when her skin gets too dry she gets red spots (she had baby eczema so she has extremely sensitive skin now). All week last week we slathered her with aquaphor, but weren't really seeing a lot of change. Then over the weekend the spots were really spreading and we didn't go anywhere for Easter. I had been watching for a fever, but she wasn't really getting one. Then Monday morning when I got her up and changed her, the rash had gotten much worse and that mommy instinct said, ok she needs to get to the doctor. So I called Artie and let him know what I thought and he called and made her an appointment. Turns out Avery had a bad case of folliculitis, an infection in her hair follicles that had been spreading all over her (by this time they were down her legs, groin area, up to her stomach and on her face). So, thank goodness it supposedly isn't anything serious. It was possibly started when we all had that GI bug and it infected Avery's hair follicles and then continued to spread the last few weeks. By today, the antibiotic seems to be kicking in-phew! So, that night, after going to the doctor and being amazing, Avery got to watch a movie on her dvd player and eat popcorn and she couldn't have been happier! By the way, she was watching Princess and the Frog-good movie if you haven't seen it:)

Happy Weekend Everyone!