I don’t know about you other moms out there, but after having my belly skin stretched out 15 inches larger than my normal waistline, I no longer have any feeling in my skin on my belly.  I mean, I can feel pressure when I touch my belly, but I can’t actually sense my finger touching my belly.  Nor can I really sense heat or cold very well, or wetness (like when I lean against the dishrag draped over the front edge of the kitchen sink).  It seems all that stretching did something weird to the nerves…hopefully it’s not permanent.  The big problem I have with a numb belly, besides walking around with a huge wet-spot on it, is that well, I never know that my shirt has hiked up and I’m flashing several inches of raw, stretch-marked, flabby, post-baby jelly-belly skin to all the world to see.  It’s one thing when I’m bending over in my room to put on my socks and catch my reflection in the mirror of my belly hanging way out of my shirt and reaching for the floor…and I can’t feel that it’s hanging.  It’s even better when I do it at work!  Like when I got up to leave for the day, put on my jacket, and as I bend down to look at the zipper of my jacket, I saw my shirt was hiked up and belly hangin’ out.  How long has that been there????  It had probably been that way for over an hour because that’s when I last stretched my arms up way over my head.  And several people, including my two office-mates, had been in and out of our office, going past my desk, or standing talking to me, in that last hour of the day…and there I was, showin’ off the numb belly!  I’m surprised no one took me aside to discuss the appropriateness of middriff-baring tops in the workplace.

Today Cooper is 5 months old!  I can’t believe it!  On one hand, he still seems so little, especially compared to Gavin.  But on the other, he seems huge and that we’ve had him forever.  So what better way to celebrate his birthday than to have him try peas!!!

What? Peas?

Oh, they’re not so bad.

Hmmm…what’s this?  Ice cream?

I ate all my peas…no reason I shouldn’t celebrate my birthday with a little ice cream, right?

It’s so yummy!

It’s in my belly!

This weekend I decided to try my hand at making baby food, because well, those jars are ridiculously expensive!  They’ve gone up in price just since Gavin was eating out of them.  The little 2 to 2.5 oz jars of Stage 1 foods were averaging just under 50 cents each…not cool, especially consider Cooper has a good-sized appetite, as seen below:

So I looked up some articles online, got some basic info to start with, and went nuts in the Produce department of my local Harris Teeter’s:

• 8 oz of fresh shelled peas–$2.99
• 16 oz of fresh baby carrots–$1.50
• 5 oz of fresh green beans (I am famously not a fan of green beans…but want to try to make them for Cooper anyways…without gagging)–$0.68
• 2.2 lb of butternut squash (it was the smallest butternut squash they had…and it is huge!)–$3.25
• 2 avacados–$4.58 (what?  I paid that much!  must’ve grabbed the “organic” ones by accident…I’m only interested in giving him pesticide-covered produce to boost his immune system adn protect him against insect infestations…don’t laugh…it could happen…see all those chins?…and his rolls on this thighs?…prime places to hide with plenty of food to keep them fed)
• total produce bill–$13.00–this does not include the price of the 32-4oz rubbermaid take-along reusable/disposable containers ($11.96), or the strainer ($8.99) that I had to buy since the only strainer I had was a tea infuser…but talk about some smooth puree if I could’a used that!

I got busy steamin’ the peas…took forever.  Made a mental note to screw fresh peas and to go with frozen ones.  Then I dumped them into my little mini-cuisinart food processor and pureed them summa-guns…added a little of the water from the pot…and pureed some more.  Whee!  fun!  Makin’ baby food!  Not too hard!  Then I scooped out my pureed pea mess into a large strainer to strain out the peels…and I mashed and strained and strained and mashed for 30 minutes.  By the time I was done, I had just under 4 oz of pureed peas, about 2 heaping tablespoons worth of pea peels, and heard plenty of “don’t pea…heh heh…on the counter!” jokes from Justin.  So I might just BUY the peas until he’s at like Stage 2 when I can make him eat the peels.  Or maybe break down and buy this.  Is it worthwhile?  Will it get the pea peels off?  Will it shuttup my snarky punny husband?  I also read that the green beans may be difficult with the peels like the peas were…so not looking forward to that.  But I think the other items will go alright.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I did the little take-along containers instead of ice cube trays because

1. my freezers are a huge mess and I don’t have the time or motivation to clear them up enough to make room for a few ice cube trays to lay nice
2. my freezers are a huge mess and I don’t have the time or motivation to clear them up enough to make room for ziploc bags of food cubes once they’re frozen
3. these little cups stack nicely and fit in small places, like my overcrowded, poorly organized freezers
4. I wasn’t sure how I’d transport the food cubes to school for Cooper to eat during the week–I mean, I’d have to put a couple in a container anyways, and this way I can make sure I can fit more than one cube in a container…or getting my hands messy handling the food cubes and stuffing them in containers…or trying to not get hands dirty and pour the cubes into containers but more dumps out than needed onto counter and floor…bah!  This will be kind of like having the traditional jars of food, at least in my head.  Just grab and go.

If anyone out there has any good tips or tricks, be sure to let me know…meanwhile, guess I’ll be pea-ing on the counters.

I don’t claim to be of any great intelligence…maybe slightly above average.  I mean, I did well enough on my ACTs and SATs and my high school classes to get a really good scholarship at Ball State University, but I am no means brilliant.  And this list is a testament:

1. Took me several years, and a dirty look from my husband, to realize that cocoa butter smells like chocolate brownies because it’s made from cocoa.  I seriously just thought it was a coincidence that I smelled so yummy after slathering up in that stuff nearly every night throughout both pregnancies and several winters.
2. I consistently wear heeled shoes (loafers, pumps, boots) when it’s icy out.  Not too much of a problem when I lived in Chicago or was at school in Muncie, IN, but here in we-get-significant-snow-every-year-but-freak-out-and-don’t-budget-for-road-and-parking-lot-clearing-northern-Virginia, the roads, parking lots, and sidewalks are generally not cleared off in a timely manner (or at all, sometimes), and for whatever reason, I still wear the heels, and then wonder why I end up on my butt out in the parking lot.
3. To make matters worse, I will wear heels while it’s icy and while carrying a fully-loaded infant car-seat, thus, possibly setting myself up for child neglect charges when I slip and fall with the baby.
4. You would not believe what I walked out of the house wearing today.  Seriously.  I am wearing light colored jeans, a teal t-shirt, and a charcoal sweater.  Seems okay, right?  well, read on:  I am also wearing navy and baby blue socks (that look okay with the jeans…in my head at least), and faux snakeskin/croc skin heeled loafers that are kind of black/grey.  Not sure what I was thinking.  But I’ve done that before, where I obviously have two different thoughts in my head about what I’m going to wear and somehow merge them, and don’t realize it until I’m in public and very far away from my closets.
5. On a regular basis I will walk all the way into my office building, past three sets of locked doors, sit down, and realize that I left my laptop in my car.
6. Which at least is better than when I get all the way to work and realize I have left my laptop at home.
7. I have left Cooper’s diaper bag full of pre-made bottles sitting in my foyer next to the garage door where I exit the house each workday several times.  One time I got all the way to daycare (15 miles and 30 min away) before I realized what happened.
8. While I might be big and feisty here on my blog (well, not too feisty, I know my parents and my friends’ parents read it), I can be painfully shy in social situations.  And to add to the fun, I will blurt out weird things, almost involuntarily.  I’m sure I have mortified my husband more times than he can count with my social ineptitude (that’s not to say that you shouldn’t ever invite me over…I do warm up to folks fairly easily and am then reasonably tolerable and funny and endearing and less-weird).
9. While still in college, I went to a party with some co-workers.  We were having a great time drinking something, I dunno WHAT it was…I just know it was good and I drank a lot and it was that liquor that has the crystals in the bottle.  Well, someone broke off the side of the bottle so we could get to the crystals.  I reached clumsily into the broken bottle to pull off a few crystals and managed to slice open my thumb.  I bled all over the place and probably should’ve gotten stitches.  I still have that huge scar on my thumb today.  Even if I was 100% sober, I would’ve still reached into the broken bottle and would’ve sliced open my thumb.  *note*  I remembered what alcohol it was:  Aftershock
10. I’ve bought the same gift for my husband for Christmas two years in a row.  Thankfully I realized it the second time before I gave it to him.  If he’s reading this post, he’s just now learning about it.  Hi honey!  You almost got a second copy of The Princess Bride.
11. I’ve left Ginger outside all day while at work.  Got home after a good 9 or 10 hours away from the house, go to let her out of her crate and it’s open.  Maggie is wagging expectantly by the back door and I’m running all over the house screaming for Ginger, thinking she must’ve eaten something and was passed-out or dead somewhere in the house.  Nope.  Instead, I left her out in they yard the entire day without a bowl of water.
12. I drove nearly 20 miles with Cooper not strapped into his seat.  We were at Babies R Us and he started crying.  I pulled him out of his carseat to rock and soothe him (he was only 3 weeks old), and set him back into his seat without strapping him in, just in case he started crying again before we finished checking out.  Well, I forgot and didn’t realize it until I got home.  I actually started crying because I scared myself with my own stupidity, and because I was so grateful that I didn’t get into a car accident.
13. A few weeks ago when I picked up both boys from daycare, I was trying to get them loaded in the car quickly because it was really cold.  As usual, I had Gavin get in on Cooper’s side of the car, the clicked Cooper in.  He sat immediately in his seat and I got into mine.  And I drove away.  It wasn’t until I took a quick corner 4 blocks away that I realized I forgot to strap Gavin into his seat because I hear “whoa!!!!” and I see is butt going behind my shoulder.  He got out of his seat to see Cooper and when I took that corner, he was standing on the hump on the floor of my backseat and went swinging around into the foot-well on his side of the car.  I freaked, but managed to safely turn into a subdivision and got him strapped in.

So there you are…13 knucklehead moves…enjoy them…I’m still laughing at most of them.

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Yep, after fighting bronchitis for over a week, Gavin got sick with a nasty cough, slight fever, and congestion. Justin stayed home with him on Monday and I stayed home with him on Tuesday and today. Turns out he also has an ear infection. Fun.

So while I was home with Gavin I got really creative and decided to cut his hair. So we went from this:

to this:

Doesn’t he look like a model from one of those hairstyle magazines?

Yeah, a little George Clooney circa ER years, but hey, he’s three. And wiggles a lot, even while watching “The Emperor’s New Groove”, hence the slightly crooked bangs. And I wish he didn’t have ears…would make it a lot easier if I didn’t have to cut around those things.

While I was home with Gavin, I worked so that I didn’t use up more of my vacation days, so it was kinda busy balancing those pesky emails and IMs from work with my Disney movie-watching, train and car playing, laundry,caring for my sick son. And of course, I got to have a weird breastpumping incident, since you know, my day couldn’t be complete without having some weird thing happening. I was up in my room pumping while Gavin was watching a movie downstairs in the family room. Now this happened without a hitch yesterday and this morning, but just when I thought I was home-free, as I was starting to remove the collection cups and breast cups, he comes running into my room. I quickly grabbed a shirt to put over the equipment still on my chest and asked all nervously, “hi buddy! what’s up? what’s wrong?” He comes running up to me, smiles, says, “I need a hug!” He gives me a quick hug and goes tearing out of my room as quickly as he came in.

So it’s incredibly late and I actually have to get up and go into work tomorrow. If work doesn’t get in the way, I’ll try to get a Thursday Thirteen posted. They have actually been keeping me busy, lately, which is kind of nice (time goes by quickly), but kind of annoying (realize way too much time has gone by and I need to go pump).

Oh, and for those of you who watch “Dirty Sexy Money”, any ideas on what happened to Carmelita?