If you haven’t read it, read that one first. I was writing too much to answer Roz’s comment so I just made a new post.

When I feed him, he gets like two baby spoonfuls of bananas mixed with two baby spoonfuls of rice cereal and thinned down with breast milk until it’s a little soupy and he’ll eat maybe 2/3 of that. Then I nurse him. So he gets a little of both. They say (and by they I mean Super Baby Foods, apparently the bible of baby food making. Check out wholesome baby food or something like that, too, on the internet) that food should compliment breast milk at this point, not replace it. Honestly, we’re hoping it replaces it a little bit. I kind of think my milk producing has reached it’s max, so I’m hoping his consumption goes down a wee bit (I’m sure it will with the introduction of solids). Seems no matter what I do I’m only going to get 20 ounces during the day. We also feed him twice a day, we started out with once a day for 2 weeks or so, then moved up to twice a day. He’s liking the bananas ok, he’s pretty ambivalent to it all actually.

Here’s a pic or two…

See? He loves them right? This is pretty much his “why are you feeding me like that” face. Silly Mommy.

I need a 10 on Friday, I have all sorts of randomness today, but this will have to do. First, a baby pic to keep your attention…

We’ve started making our own baby food and I thought some of you wanting/expecting a baby might be interested. We’re not going to make everything, just the easy stuff. So far, it’s pretty easy. We started with bananas… Two bananas gives me 6 oz of food, and a 2.5 ounce jar of baby food (organic, so pricier) cost us around 45 cents. (We’re buying one of each thing to see if he likes it before I make a ton, I’ve heard a butternut squash gives you 40 ounces of baby food, and that’s a lot if he doesn’t like it. Or hell, if he does like it. Who can eat that much squash?)

Here’s a pic of the bananas…

I spilt the sixth one, he he.

And a pic of the jar of sweet potatos…

At least the jar’s cute, right? I wonder what kind of projects are out there using babyfood jars? I”m thinking an upside down spice rack with the lids screwed on and the food jars filled with spices, so you just screw them off to get some. Maybe, we’ll see.

And the freezing system we’re using…

I think this was 8 bucks at One Step Ahead, check them out online. It’s convenient enough, I throw the bananas in a blender, add milk or water, pour into these little containers and freeze, pop out two each night and stick them in the fridge to thaw for the next day.

On to more randomness.

I’m decluttering my house. I’m famous for leaving my walls one color with tons of frames, and tons of accessories all over the place which is neither baby nor non-cleaning-hubby friendly. Spending way too much time cleaning my house and I think it would at least go faster if there was less stuff to get out of place. I seriously did a corner of my kitchen last night, but that corner looks fantastic. Hid the food processor and the mixer, but the cannisters in the cabinets, wiped and dryed the countertops. I need some granite polish but that comes this weekend, I swear. I was supposed to do it 2 and a half years ago and still haven’t. I know, I suck.

I also want to spruce up my entryway from the garage. Guests usually don’t come this way but John and I do all the time and it’s a little shabby. Some scuff marks on the wall, not a nice rug to catch garage dirt… I’m thinking of painting it taupe and getting a “Welcome” decal from wonderful graffiti or just making my own. I’m leaning towards making my own. (not decal, just printing “welcome” on some cardstock and cutting it out, tracing it on the wall and painting. It’s only 19 bucks from wonderful graffiti though so I might just cave and buy it. So, I want to do it this weekend. And I have a ton going on this weekend so that’s ambitious. If I get up at 6 on Sunday, I think I can knock it out. It’s a small space and not much on the walls.

OK, I think that’s all for now… Have a fabulous weekend…

So I’m rearranging the blog and it’s taking a bit… bear with me…

Last weekend John, Dash and I headed over to Tate Farms for Dash’s first pumpkin patch experience. He was thrilled to say the least… OK, he pretty much just sat in his stroller. But I think he enjoyed the outdoors…

There were TONS of people there. And it wasn’t nearly as far away as I thought it would be.

The entrance to Tate Farms

Sylvester the Hay Cat

Goat.

Bunny.

Corn with a side of Dash…

It’s really hard to keep him from eating corn when you do this…

Dash being all tall…

John Deere-ing it… Think he likes that hat?

Mommy having some fun…

I’m sorry I’ve been such a slacker with the pictures, I have the last two weeks up on photobucket ready to go, I just haven’t done the webpages yet. Hopefully this’ll tide you over…

Is closed.

I won’t talk about it long because frankly it still ticks me off and it’s all I’ve been thinking of the past few days. But in summary, my former boss and a different boss who works in our office literally flipped out about it. Somehow it got all the way up the chain like 5 bosses and back down to my manager. He doesn’t think its fair because several developers already work from home, so he’s working on it, but I’m not holding my breath. I wish I could walk out of here but we can’t afford it. So I’m sucking it up for a few more years or until something else comes along. It’ll be a good day when my back is to this building for the last time though…

So I found this website, for anyone else ever interested…

www.dice.com

You can turn on “telecommute only” and it’ll show work from home jobs only. There’s a TON of them, including graphic designers, Roz, if you’re interested. I haven’t found the right one yet but I think I might eventually.

In other news, we went to Tate Farm’s this weekend on Candi’s recommendation and had a great time. I have pictures that I haven’t loaded yet so I’ll wait to say more until then. A post is always better with pictures, right?

Also known as the desk in Dash’s room…

:)

My boss let me work from home today to give it a test run. He wants me to write down every time I’m distracted. At least I don’t have to pump today, I’m sure I can get more done just because of that. Regardless, here’s my new cubicle buddy…

Check out that face. Everytime he sees the camera he squints like that. He doesn’t look away though, but I’m sure that’s coming. Guess I’d better investigate natural light photography unless I want a bunch of pictures of the back of his head…

I don’t think I’ve posted about this yet, but it’s interesting.

I have a giant TV, that is my pride and joy next to my kiddo. I LOVE it. It’s a 60 inch HD and it’s awesome. Until 3 months ago. I bought it in 2004 for just over four grand. It’s a Sony Grand Wega LCD projection and it was worth every penny. Then I was watching harry potter on a DVD and Harry’s face was blue. Slowly, everything became blue on one side of the screen. We looked online and found that this is a common problem, that the optical block has a manufacturing error and likes to fail. Sony however, will only cover this on certain TVs, not ours. So after a few phone calls, they finally told us to write a letter to the executive decision committee. We just heard back from them.

First, the blue blob.

Isn’t it glorious? Aren’t you disappointed that something from Sony would fail this badly? We were. My poor TV. It’s only gotten worse, too.

Anyway, they called us back and told John to get the specialists out there to look at it and if they say it’s the optical block, they’ll fix the block, but they won’t pay for labor. Oh and the whole fix is $1576, I’m not sure what the labor part is. I think it’s around 300 bucks. Still disappointed (why they suck a little) but at least it’s something. It’s almost unwatchable; now, it pisses me off so much when I’m watching TV. It has stars on it, too, little blue dots that show up when you change the channel and the TV goes black for a second. John and I have made a game out of counting them, you can’t count them all anymore before the channel changes.

So in summary, Sony made a crummy TV, and are kind of half-a$$ fixing it. Just an FYI to any future TV buyers out there…

I thought about doing Ten on Tuesday yesterday but I missed it.

1. Dash finally is getting to like the rice cereal. Last night I gave it to him around 5 and he ate each bite I had for him, and actually swallowed most of it. That’s the first time he’s done that and you could tell, he slept from 5:30 - 9:30, Jumperooed until 10:30 and then slept until 4:40 this morning. I forgot what a real night of sleep felt like…

2. I’m giving it to him later today; I missed my kiddo last night! Hopefully if I give it to him around 8 he’ll sleep pretty well and we’ll still get to play.

3. I talked to my boss again about working at home; I can’t imagine the benefits of it; less money on gas, getting to see Dash, getting to relieve John a bit during the day… no more pumping… yay! I haven’t heard back yet though…

4. I’ve been cooking a lot lately, I have the Weight Watchers cookbook and it has some fabulous recipes in there that aren’t weird. I’ve never been a fan of sneaky low fat food, like tofurkey… I like food that’s naturally low fat but flavorful enough that you don’t care, and this book has a bunch of those. I thought it would be ironic to steam veggies for Dash (we’re making some of our own baby food once we start solids) and eat a baconator while we’re feeding him. So here they are…

5.

Recipe here…

This one looks a lot better in person than in the picture… I think its called Creole Poached Chicken. Its just onions, green pepper, stewed tomatoes, chicken broth and seasoning and then you poach 4 chicken breasts in the liquid. The chicken was awesome, but it had too many onions for my taste.

6.
This one is by far my favorite, Chicken and Sausage with capers. Chunked up chicken, smoked turkey sausage, crushed tomatos, a red onion, green bell pepper, capers and Italian seasoning. Super good. And really, really fast. I’ll post the recipe later, that was my original intent with these pictures but I’m really, really lazy.

7.
This one was ok. I was trying to like broccoli and I just don’t. The meat was really tender but it needed more flavor. You just marinade steak in soy, ginger, garlic and cooking sherry and then stirfry it up. Really easy but just ok. Notice the authentic chopsticks I stole from a Chinese restaurant…

8. I don’t have a picture of the next one, but it rocked. It was pretty much the same marinade as the last one, only it had lemon and red pepper flakes in there too, but you put it on flank steak. I stirfried some asparagas, too, which I usually don’t like but I really liked it this time. It was in a soy sauce, too, and it was super-good. We added the stouffer’s cheesy potatoes side-dish, if you haven’t tried it, it’s really good too. Serves two, I think.

9. Let’s see, I can’t think of anything else so how about a couple of jokes? You’ve probably heard this one before…

A guy was in a supermarket and noticed a hot lady looking at him, like she was trying to place him. He walked over to her and said “I’m sorry, do we know each other?” To which she replied, “I think you’re the father of one of my kids.” Flustered, he asked “you’re not that stripper I met in Canada, are you?”

“No, I’m a kindergarten teacher. Your son is in my class.”

10. And then this one I heard while I was in the Walmart bathroom nursing Dash and the lady in the stall next to me was gabbing on her cellphone. Super sweet situation to nurse your baby, but at least I got a joke out of it.

Two old ladies in a retirement home noticed two cute little old men sitting on a bench. One lady said to the other, “I know how we can get their attention. Let’s take off our clothes and run in front of them.” So they took off their clothes and streaked by the two men, who acted as though they hadn’t noticed. Irritated, the ladies decided to try it again. One old man said to the other “What was that?”

“I don’t know, but it needed to be ironed.”

Corny, I know. In Walmart’s bathroom though, it’s pretty funny.

Have a great Wednesday all.

Oh, wait, one more. Amy and Erin heard this one at the Air Force / Notre Dame game, but I’ve adapted it for Auburn / Alabama.

Bear Bryant, upon entering heaven, was greeted by God. “Son, I’ve got a house set up just for you. Not many people in heaven get a house; it’s something special.” They walked up to an old tattered house with a “Roll Tide” sign in the front yard. Bear thanked God and God continued to show Bear the sights of heaven. Eventually, they came upon a grand mansion with an Auburn flag flying high. There was a tiger fountain in the front yard and a golden eagle statue on the front gate.

Bear turned to God. Assuming this must be Shug Jordan’s house, he asked, “God, I’m so grateful for my house, but why is it that Shug’s house is so much more beautiful than mine?” And God replied “Son, that’s not Shug’s house…

it’s mine.”

Big fat War Eagle

It’s been a busy few weeks for the Dashman…

First, we went and visited our dear friends Roz and KJ in Florida…

Dash saw the ocean for the first time…

And thanks to a tropical depression that was as close as he got…

And….

We started cereal on September 25th. I was torn about staring it this young, our doctor gave us the OK, but I’m pretty sure they all do that at 4 months. I held off for a week and then honestly, it just hit me what a hard time I’m having satiating a 18 pound baby. He’s just eating non-stop and chomping on whatever he can get his hands on (see picture below). At first, he was less than thrilled, kept giving us this face like “why aren’t you feeding me right?”. By Thursday he was leaning in for it though. So I guess the rice cereal gets a timid thumbs-up.

So that was two weeks ago to last week, on to this week…

Well, not much exciting has happened this week except for typical baby stuff. Dash can stand on his own if he’s holding on to something (like the ottoman) and that’s new… I haven’t gotten a picture of it yet though… So here’s a few pics of typical Dash-hood….

After a bath…

And the aforementioned knawing…

Week 18 and 19 pictures will be up shortly, sorry they’re late! Here’s the link