Eating My Words

Thank you to whoever fired the the director from Twilight and hired Chris Weitz! I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really liked New Moon! I didn't even want to see it because I thought I'd be so disappointed, but I did and am so excited about how good it was. MUCH better than Twilight! Better quality, better special effects, better acting.

I love being surprised by something being more than I expected. Now I can't wait to see Eclipse!

The First Thanksgiving...

..as a family of 3! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year and were thrilled that Will got to spend his first Turkey Day with both sets of grandparents. We spent the holiday in Belton at Steven's parents' house and my parents joined us there. We are very fortunate to have families that get along so well. Here is a recap of the trip, not necessarily in order.

Some Thanksgiving Day backyard football.

Will with his Uncle Brian & cousin Kyler.

Playing the piano with Daddy.

"Perusing" (or eating) the Black Friday ads.

What a shame, my pie slid right off my plate.

Not quite sure of his first bite of turkey.

A feast of baby turkey and sweet potatoes!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Steven about to dig in.

Will & Mommy

I just love the holidays and besides spending time with family, the best thing about Thanksgiving is that it really kicks off the Christmas season. Yes, we are those people who start listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving and decorate the house as soon as possible. I am so ready to experience my first Christmas as a mom. Lights are up outside, the tree is up, and Will has already been sleeping in Christmas jammies. Pics to come of this soon, once the decoration chaos has been cleaned up!

Once A Month Cooking

So a couple friends and I are trying out this idea of "Once a Month Cooking". We really only made 7 meals (this month is mostly an experiment) so obviously we'll have to cook more than once this month, but it will be nice to have some pre-made meals in the freezer for when I need something quick. They are all chicken recipes and should only require dumping the ingredients into a dish and baking it. We split up the shopping and then spent about 4-5 hours on a Saturday afternoon assembling the meals. Each meal is put into a freezer bag with the cooking directions on the outside. So far I've tried two of the meals and they weren't too bad. It did take some time to assemble them, but I really love the idea of having dinners on hand when I'm just too pooped to do anything else. The idea and recipes came from Recipezaar (although I just found a new site dedicated to this idea- see button in left column) Each of the 'cooking sessions' is already planned. It's really great b/c there is a master ingredient list that you can remove items from if you already have them. A detailed step-by-step plan is also included to help you stay organized and on track when assembling the meals.

Here is a list of the meals we made:

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Baked Honey Mustard Chicken

Herb Wine Chicken

Honey Sesame Chicken

Golden Honey Chicken

Sangria Chicken

Chicken Bruschetta Casserole

Monterey Chicken

A couple pics from the day

My cooler full of dinners!

Super Quick

So it's 12:30 and my son is just taking his first nap of the day. He has been fighting it all morning and been quite a little bear. I'll probably only have about 10 minutes until he wakes up with my luck, so this will be quite short. I just have a couple of things on my mind that I need to send out into the universe.

1. What's the big deal about Susan Boyle? I know this makes me sound like an awful person. I'm sure she's a wonderful person and doesn't sound terrible, but really? I guess maybe she's inspiring and it's not really just about her voice...

2. (Now I'm really going to stir things up...) The Twilight books are excellent. The Twilight movies are terrible. Yes, I said it- terrible. They are cheesy and cheap and an insult the novels. Maybe it's the directing, maybe it's the acting, maybe it's just me and my literary snobbery. However, I'm also quite a hypocrite because I'll probably break down and see the dang thing.

So there they are, my two cents. or would that be four cents since it's two cents per thought...

Go ahead and judge me.

7 Months!

Our Will turned 7 months old today! He has started doing all kinds of big boy things too. His bottom two teeth are working their way in. It's going to be so cute, but I'm a little worried that he's going to be a biter... and I'm still breastfeeding... yikes! He is sitting up all by himself now and is still working on getting up onto his knees. He really likes standing up and holding onto my hands to "walk" around. He loves to bounce on his knees and still screams at the top of his lungs when he's really excited.

His meals consist of avacado (his favorite), sweet potato, acorn squash, pears, bananas, apples, green beans, oatmeal, and brown rice cereal. I'm not sure yet what we're going to try next, but I have no doubt he'll eat it right up. He is so impatient when I'm getting his food ready and can hardly stand waiting for the next bite. He makes the mmm, mmm, mmm noise the whole time!

Best of all- the last two nights Will slept until 5:30 and 6:00 before waking up!!!!! We're praying tonight will be the same or better. I've been doing better about not letting him sleep with me. I can't help it, sometimes he just looks so precious I can't stand it and need to cuddle him.

We just love him more than we could have imagined!

Hey, there's that paper...

..I'm going to eat it..

..hi mom...

...oh, Dex, maybe I'll eat you too...

... hey, get off me...

..oh, a kiss...

...eww, that was sick.

Trip to Belton

We took a trip to Belton this weekend for some Lentz family pictures. I didn't take near enough pictures at Steven's parents' house and missed some good shots of Will with his Mimi, Pa, Uncle Brian, Aunt Kendy, & his 3 cousins- Kyler, Brandon, and Kaden. I'll have to make up for it at Thanksgiving. Anyway, I can't wait to see the shots from the photographer, but I did manage to get some good ones of my own at the creek. Will sure loves yanking out grass and eating leaves! (of course, what doesn't he like to eat?) I only let him put a couple in his mouth long enough to take a picture, it was just too cute!

Quit Teething Me!

Well, I thought it was funny.... Anyways, what's not funny is teething. Oh boy, poor Will has been so cranky and fussy and drooly. We just haven't known exactly what is wrong with him. We suspected it was teething, but really how can you tell? He had a tooth bud that had been poking through for about two months and then about a week ago it was gone! So weird! Then this morning Will was gnawing on my hand and I felt something scratching my knuckle. He has one or two little teeth starting to poke through! No wonder he's been so cranky, I'm sure it's very uncomfortable.

Also, last night around 3:00 am I found him smiling and working on getting up onto his hands and knees. It was hard to not get excited for him and want to encourage him to keep going, but like I said- 3:00 am.

Here are a couple of pics from the last couple days. Hopefully these teeth will go ahead and come in and we can see some more of this happy baby around here!

Free Whataburger!

I'm all about free food, but this requires some dressing up. Tomorrow from 5-8 if you show up at Whataburger dressed in all orange, you get a free burger. Now, I'm not sure if we'll go that far just for a burger, but my husband loves their burgers- so we'll see.

The other deal that I did sign up for on their site is their "12 Days of Whataburger" promotion. You can sign up to receive a coupon for a free item every day from December 1 to December 23 (Which is actually 23 days of Whataburger, but I guess that doesn't have the same ring to it). Anyway, that sounded a lot better and doesn't seem to have any strings attached.

More Baby Pics... What else?

Here are Will's 6 month pics from Target. I've been trying to have his picture taken every month. It's super cheap and really only takes a minute to plop him down and snap a picture. If we had a better camera I'm sure we could do it at home, but for now Target gets the job done. October pics were in his Halloween costume, November will be his Thanksgiving outfit, and Christmas will probably be his Christmas outfit... possible topped off with a Santa hat.

I also got one of my baby pics from my mom. I thought Will held the title for the fattest baby ever, but I was sure mistaken. I was the original title holder! Good heavens, I was one fat kid! Steven calls me a "juggernaut", I don't know, something about me not having a neck. Anyway, I think Will looks a lot like me. We'll have to get a baby pic of Steven on here to compare. WHat do you think?

Look alikes?

The Good, the Bad, and the Super Cute

I've been meaning to update for awhile now. Do you ever have those times when you feel like you've been really busy, but you aren't quite sure with what? That's been me lately! Here's a little bit about what we've been up to and a few pics that show off my wonderful kid.

The Good

Will is such a happy boy! Unless he's really tired or hungry, he's smiling and playing. He is rolling all over and often ends up in interesting places.. the kitchen, under his bouncer, in his closet... He has started a new sound, it's a cross between a 'b' and a 'v'. Sitting up is getting better, but I have to stay close b/c he just throws himself backwards out of nowhere. Naps are still hit and miss. SLEEP-oh boy! Last night Will slept from about 7:45 to 4:30am without crying! I couldn't believe it, and of course once I realized it, I thought somethingmust be wrong and ran to check on him. I'm a nut! Eating is still going good. He is on a 4 hour schedule, which is just the best. He eats 3 solid meals a day that consist of some of the following: avacado, sweet potato, pears, bananas, acorn squash, oatmeal, or brown rice cereal. I've yet to find a food he won't eat and he is really beginning to eye adult food. It makes me feel so bad to eat in front of him b/c he just stares at every bite that goes in my mouth! I don't want to wish away these days, but at the same time, I just can't wait to see what the next stage holds! Being a mommy isn't easy and isn't always the most fun (lots of the time it is though), but it's so fulfilling and incredible- we just love him more than we could have imagined!

The Bad

Well, maybe not bad, but unbelievably frustrating! Sleeping until last night has still been terrible. Napping, falling asleep, nighttime sleep...all of it- he just hates it! He will scream and scream, not just whimper or whine, but SCREAM at the top of his lungs like a little girl. It is physically painful for me to listen to, but we are sticking to it and hopefully it will work. Maybe last night it did. We prayed with Will before bed last night and it went excellently, so thank you Jesus!

Spitting up- still a ton! And not just a lot at once, but it happens frequently. It has made for more loads of laundry per day than I thought possible. And since I'm not the best at getting laundry put away, we sometimes have huge piles of clean clothes all over our room. We have to wipe, mop, scrub, shampoo, wash, & sanitize everything from our clothes, his toys, the carpets, the couches, the car seat, etc. It's very disgusting and doesn't smell wonderful either! Oh, I didn't even mention how much worse it got once we introduce avacado and sweet potato- now the stains are green and orange- lovely!

Momma's Boy- I'm sure it's normal and natural for his age, but he is becoming quite a little momma's boy. He wants me to hold him much of the time and wants me in eye sight at all times. Plus, when he's upset, no one else will do. So sweet, but very inconvenient at times.

The Super Cute

Just some pictures, all out of order of course, but when there's a baby in the house you can't worry about details like that. I'm doing good just to get this done!

Love those blue eyes

New trick- pulling off socks

..which happens to be really funny!

Halloween

Will & his girlfriend Bailey
Just playin'
More Halloween
More happy