We are having some good meals this week, and I'm looking forward to them. Some of them were chosen because of leftover items we had, and I chose chili because it all of a sudden got cold again today! This week we are having:

Open Face Turkey Sandwiches with leftover potato salad and fruit

Chicken Enchiladas from the freezer, with black beans

Roasted Sausage and Grapes with mashed potatoes

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Burritos - double and freeze

Chili served with rice

39 months old, and Noelle has finally had a haircut! She has grown increasingly more resistant to me doing anything to her hair, sometimes even refusing to let me put one single solitary hairclip in to hold her hair out of her face. Even while eating cereal and having to hold it back with her hand so as not to coat her hair in milk, she says no thanks to a hairclip. She often starts to cry at the mere sight of a brush (and my mom is thinking "haha! you got one just like you!). I told her again last night that unless she started allowing me to at least brush her hair regularly, I was going to have to cut it. So, she said "cut it right now." I gave her a bath first, then got out our haircutting scissors and chopped off about 2 inches. Easier said than done to cut a straight line on a moving target, but I think I did a pretty good job!

Our other first this week is that the little man has an ear infection. Noelle has never had one that I'm aware of, so we weren't sure what to look for. He has been pulling his ears for several weeks off and on, but I knew there were lots of factors that could make him do that. The first being "hey look! I have ears! and I'm playing with them!" Along with teething, being tired, or what I finally concluded, an infection. So we went to the doctor yesterday and sure enough, he has a mild case. A bottle of bubble gum amoxicillin should do the trick. Hopefully after this is past he will get back to his regularly scheduled sleep programming. We're beginning to think Noelle has been talking to him, telling him he's making her look bad and to knock it off with the good sleeper act. He is still a pretty sweet boy most of the time though!

I'm a day late on posting my meal plan for the week, and can't believe it's been a week since I posted anything. Oops! My parents were visiting for the weekend, so I spent time with them instead of getting a post ready to go. This week we are having:

Fried Rice (never got around to making it last week)

Pork, Black Beans, and yellow rice

Brats and Potato Salad

Tortellini Alla Carbonara

Egg Salad Sandwiches

So we plan 5 meals a week, and obviously each week has 7 days. For the other two days we either do leftovers, eat out, or pull from a list we have of quick meals that we always have the ingredients for. These are things that are easy to pull together on days we just haven't planned. Our list consists of:

Waffles
Grilled cheese
Pancakes
Chicken Nuggets (sometimes chicken nugget salad if we have lettuce)
Spaghetti
And 3 (all sides, no main dish)

And here's what we're having this week:

American Tacos

Fried Rice

Tortilla Pizza with fruit salad

Rice-a-Roni Casserole with salad and rolls (double and freeze)

Chicken Salad Sandwiches with Spicy French Potatoes

Noelle has never been a good sleeper, but we've managed to push through every phase she has thrown at us and still get her to nap. This time I'm not so sure. It used to be that if we laid down with her during her nap she would absolutely fall asleep, but even that doesn't work every time now. Having the video monitor allowed me to see what she was up to during today's "nap" and be ready with camera in hand when I busted her. She usually stays in her bed because Andy has instilled a fear of imaginary alligators that are waiting to bite her if she gets out of bed. So this was her method of still playing around while not technically getting out of bed, I guess. At least she is entertaining herself!

I recently mentioned on Facebook that I am going to start posting our meal plan for the week here, with links to recipes on my new recipe blog. We plan for two weeks at a time, but I will post each week's meals on the previous Sunday. I just added a bunch of recipes to the blog to start, but as I make them I will try to add in some pictures.

First I'll tell you how we're currently planning our meals. We started out by creating a list of meals we make regularly, divided into categories like crockpot, bakeable, vegetarian, sandwiches, and quick meals. I noted the @ symbol next to ones that Andy has to make (he has the skills) and put a * symbol by the ones that are good to double and freeze.

Each week, we choose five different recipes. We don't set a specific day to make them during the week, but we just see how the week plays out. We try to choose one vegetarian meal and one meal we can double and freeze. Also, if we ever have to cook chicken or ground beef for a recipe, we make at least double and freeze what we don't need. I can't tell you how nice it is to open the freezer and see a bunch of neatly stacked meals ready and waiting for my family to eat.

So, here's what we're having this week:

Southwestern Salad

Nacho Chicken & Rice Wraps with Black Beans

Shepherd's Pie (I'll post a recipe later)

The Big Frittata with fruit and yogurt smoothies

Santa Fe Soup with crusty bread

So Jaime's at a women's retreat. I'm glad she's going actually. It'll be good for her. Hang time with other mamas, away from the kids and the stress of being a stay at home mom, and all that. Plus I'm looking forward to seeing just how I fare with two kids and not much experience managing both of them together.

So far they're doing quite well, semi-surprisingly. Evan's eaten twice so far, both times with very little fuss. They've both been asleep for about an hour and Noelle is just now waking up. We're roughly halfway through the weekend and I'm pretty happy so far.

We went to Dragon Park this morning because it was so beautiful. Noelle played around while Evan and I relaxed and watched her. What will the rest of the weekend hold for me and the kids? Not sure but I know I'm glad to make this sacrifice so that Jaime can relax as well.

Hope you're having a great time baby. Be safe.

Retreat: an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable.

In the morning I am leaving for our church's annual women's retreat. It starts tonight, but because Evan isn't always willing to take a bottle, I didn't want to leave him for 2 nights. He has been giving us some grief lately, waking up 3-4 times most nights and only sometimes going back to sleep without eating. At 5:15 this morning, when he wanted me to feed him for the 3rd time and Andy and I were beyond irritated, I thought about making the decision to stay home from the retreat. How was Andy going to handle this without the option of me feeding him? What if, like last night, Evan won't take a bottle? I was disappointed, but I thought there was no way around it.

Then today happened, and I didn't get even a minute to myself between taking care of the kids. I got drooled on and spit up on a ridiculous amount of times, I was falling asleep every time I sat down to feed Evan, and I realized I just need to go. He will be FINE. He's not like Noelle who absolutely refused the bottle. He's just very slow to warm up to it, and that is okay for the under 30 hours I'll be gone. I need a day where my clothes stay dry! It will be great to get away from the sometimes difficult and more often disagreeable experience of being a mom and spend time with just me and God. And of course in fellowship with other women, which is always a great thing.

Tonight Noelle was doing something I had told her not to, and having skipped her nap today she was a little more dramatic than usual. She started to cry and ran off to her bedroom, and she threw herself down on her bed. When I went in a minute later to check on her, I noticed that she had obviously thrown herself face first onto her pillow. I just had to take a picture because it was so funny to see her tear print in the shape of a sad face. 30 hours without that kind of drama will do me some good.

This is Andy's favorite picture from the ones I took of Noelle yesterday. He said it looks very dreamy. I have to take about 1,000 pictures of her to get a handful of good ones, because she (like all 3 year olds) is constantly on the move. She'll ask me to take her picture and then be gone. Sometimes you can capture that moment, sometimes it's a blurry mess. This is somewhere in the middle, I think, but I like it.

I did a little photo shoot with the boy today, here's one of my favorites!