Who Is Going To Watch My Kid?

You all may remember that back in December/January we were on a full-on nanny search.  After interviews and meetings with plenty, we finally found 'the one' (here).

We have been absolutely spoiled with nanny J. I feel it was meant to be when she contacted us through our care.com profile page and I know I loved her bubbly personality from the moment we met her.

What we loved most about her interview:

• Previous nanny experience, both in Omaha and in her home state of Arkansas.
• Friendly, easy to talk to, great personality. 
• Twenty years old (so none of the bar scene nonsense to cloud her pretty little head). 
• Prior day care experience. 
• Seemed to have her head on her shouldlers at the ripe young age of 20. 
• Going to school for early childhood education. Mmm, hello? Can you say perfect?

What we have loved about our experience with her:

• Convenience. I can't tell you how nice it's been being able to let Little Man sleep in most mornings, while I'm out the door for work. 
• Time saver. No need for me to have to wake up extra early knowing I have to feed, change and get Cruz ready for the day and drag him out into the cold or heat.
• One-on-one time. We haven't had to worry about our guy getting looked over in a room full of other kids. J has had time to really work with him on everything from walking, to talking, to colors, numbers, spelling/saying his name and most recently potty training. It's usually us who have to make sure we work with him on what she has taught him, so he doesn't forget. 
• And we haven't had to sacrifice interaction with other kids. J meets up with other nannies all over town and Cruz loves playing with other kiddos, so we have the social aspect as well.
• Well-rounded. He has been to more places in this city than I have. They go to baby gym, parks, swimming pools, museums (lord knows he wouldn't be getting this from us!), toddler times, libraries, you name it. I oftentimes find myself extremely jealous of my son's extra curricular activities...
• Flexibility. She has been more than willing to change up the days of the week she works depending on my schedule and staying late if something comes up at work. Plus, she has babysat for us on random weekend nights when needed. 

But...she's leaving us.

I know I make it sound a bit dramatic, but the truth is I am dramatic. I don't want her to leave. I want everything to continue as is. And I definitely don't want to be thrown back into searching for childcare yet again.

Why, oh why does she need to change her major and have to go to class during the day starting in September?

So now the big question is nanny or daycare.

We have absolutely loved our experience with having a nanny, but on the flip side would it be good for Cruz to get back into a group experience that a daycare can offer? Is the convenience of having a nanny come to our home and care for our son where he is comfortable outweigh the major cost difference? I mean girlfriend isn't cheap...I'm talking more than our mortgage not cheap. But it is the care of our kid we are talking about.

At this point I'm not exactly sure what we are going to do. We have appointments to check out a couple daycares in the area, one very much not in the area but the price is right and a couple of interviews with nannies.

I suppose only time will tell on this one.

Nothing Short Of An Amazing Weekend

Another weekend in the books and a great one at that. I have to admit, there was A LOT of drinking. Loads. Like that's all I did the past three days. Well that and spent some time with some pretty amazing people.

Friday
After work I met up with Angie and Austin at Berry & Rye downtown, an eclectic drink menu with a lot of flair behind the bar. My bestie from high school in my town? Hooray! This bar used to be called, Myth...the place I told my mom I was knocked up (ahh, the memories). We had a couple of drinks and then I headed to meet Nick & Cruz at Tony & Marcy's BBQ. Following  a couple glasses of wine, I was done for. Fortunately Nick had taken it easy and drove his light-weight wifey home.

This was the Trinidad Smoke. The most amazing presentation of a drink ever. You uncorked the wood chip smoked bourbon and poured it over the sphere of ice. I would generally say "and enjoy" but there was no enjoying this drink. It looked crazy good, but it didn't taste that way. Well, it wasn't my thing.

Saturday
With Cruzer as my date, we picked up Angie & Austin and took off for Lincoln for a high school friend's wedding. We met up with mom & dad as soon as we got into town. Of course, the bride was gorgeous, the day was absolutely beautiful and the drinks were flowing. Pre-reception cocktails at The Bar (yes, that was the establishment's fine name), photo booth, dinner and dancing at the Rococo Theater, retiring my babe with my parents after he lit up the dance floor all night, back to The Bar for more drinks and the dunk tank, spending a full day with my bestie & her man and then 3am pizza & breadsticks at some local grease pit. A.really.great.day.

Sunday
Just when I thought the weekend couldn't get any better, fast forward to Sunday where I planned a day full of activities for Jill and I to belatedly celebrate her birthday. Prior to C man, she was my Sunday Funday regular and I hate to admit that I can't remember the last time she and I partied like rockstars, just her and I...it's been that long.

We started with brunch at Louie's Wine Dive where the bottomless mimosas were flowing and then headed to Chill Body for pedicures and gossip, err girl talk. The highlight of the day - well there were TONS of highlights actually - was surprising her with showing off our mad paint skills at The Corky Canvas - where you learn to paint a picture WHILE drinking your guts out. We have been talking about checking this place out and I knew this would be the perfect day. Ah-freaking-mazing. I would so do it again in a heartbeat.

After our artistic awesomeness, we headed to the patio at Johnny's for a couple dirty martinis and caprese and then over to Kona where we wound down with some sake bombs. Jill had nev-ah had one. Say what?!

Why are good times always that much better with good cocktails?

Until next time!

Getting My Cleanse On: Follow Up

I woke up Friday morning, the day following my three days of cleansing and felt absolutely amazing. My head was clear, I felt lighter (if that makes sense), I was rested and felt like I could go run a marathon (instead I stuck to a couple workouts from my Beach Babe DVD since I was running short on time).

While I was getting ready for work, I chugged a bottle of water and then grabbed a hard-boiled egg - my go-to breakfast. It was fantastic.

I missed you, little buddy

I wanted to ease back into normal eating, so I packed a container of fruit for my mid-morning snack. Lunch was a meeting in the buffet (no wonder I eat badly, I have two buffets, cafes and steakhouses at my disposal every day) and I filled up on a salad with loads of veggies and may have snuck in a crab rangoon. :) I was beyond stuffed.

I definitely noticed that I wasn't as hungry as normal and didn't have the urge to grab a snack in the afternoon. For dinner, I had a piece of sea bass and bread from the steakhouse (see? a long day at work meant eating two meals there) - while I'm very lucky to have this perk, it's very tempting in a negative way.

After work I met my bestie, Angie, who was in town from Houston for a couple drinks and then met Nick, Cruz and the fam at Tony & Marcy's BBQ and let me tell you after a couple glasses of wine there...THIS girl got sick as soon as I got home. Like hovering over the toilet sick. :(

A couple of things about the cleanse:

• Drink the juices cold…and I recommend quickly
• As of Friday morning, I had lost 3.5 lbs, although I wasn’t doing this to lose weight, just as a detox 
• Like it states in the directions, if you are a caffeine drinker, definitely don’t have any one to two days prior if you can help it. I did one day prior but had a big headache end of first day and morning of second.
•  Drink tons of water – sometimes I milked the juice and it took an hour or so to drink and I should’ve been drinking water in between.
•  I recommend doing it during the work week – if I would’ve been on it on my days off I would’ve been too tempted to cheat.
•  I did end up having a piece of fruit each day – the first two during the afternoons and tonight it was when I got home from work
• If you enjoy imbibing in a cocktail or two as I do, I definitely recommend easing back into it...or you too will be hovering over the toilet in no time.

About the juices - I definitely have my favorites after drinking these bad boys for three days. And I've decided some are just plain terrible but you can still manage through them. My scale of judgment is based on whether or not I would purchase these outside of the cleanse to drink them. The first three? Absolutely. The last three, um I would rather do without.

• #1 - Vanilla Cloud
• #2 - Fuel
• #3 - Green Supreme
• #4 - Glow
• #5 - Fiji (this is a close tie for last place)
• #6 - Purify

Would I do the cleanse again? Absolutely - I would consider doing this quarterly or if I get back into an eating rut, it definitely set me back on track and made me feel great.

Ok...this is the last time post about this damn thing. Sorry for boring you all!

Getting My Cleanse On: Day Three

And onto Day Three.

Again, woke up feeling great. Not hungry, full of energy. Then I got into my car and realized someone (not me) had left it on empty and I was going to be late for my first meeting. {Enter crabby Katie.}

7am - I drank Glow on the way to work and all but finished it.

10am - arrived to work and was over the car / no gas situation and started Fuel (one of my faves) but didn't finish the last drop until 1:25pm since I was busy in meetings all morning. I was hungry at this point, but that's because I missed drink #3 Purify in there somewhere. Not the biggest loss since I'm not a huge fan of it, but I did gulp down half right after finishing the rest of my Fuel.

I spent some of the afternoon setting out taste test cups of the juices for my co-workers to try. I have to admit I quite enjoyed the looks on their faces as they tried to make it through some of them. This provided me much amusement today. It's the little things, people.

Around 3pm I started Fiji and finished about half of that before I couldn't handle the celery, cuke and lemon taste any longer. I will say one thing with Day Two and Day Three versus Day One - I'm not sure if I was giving the juices more credit on the first day, but by Day Two it was evident I was not event the least bit a fan of Purify or Fiji. Although, I did manage to drink them because, let's be honest, it was the only thing I had!

I drank half of my Green Supreme on my way home from work around 7pm and got into play mode with little man as soon as I walked into the door.

Another cave happened when I cut up some fruit for Cruz that night and I had a couple pieces, not a full piece of fruit, but I definitely ate some of it. (I've gotta be honest!) And I about crumbled when I was making him and Nick a PB&J sandwich (chef extraordinaire right here) and he kept bringing me half of his sandwich, saying "peanut butter, mama?" When I told him no, he had the saddest little face that I had to fake eat it.

Then I pulled out my Vanilla Cloud - the last juice of my 3-day cleanse - and enjoyed it while Cruz climbed all over me asking me if he could have some "choco milt" too. I gave him some and he must've liked it because I got this face:

Don't mind the blurry photo - I'm too lazy these days to use anything by my iPhone

I started feeling really tired after putting Cruz to bed, so I finished up some work emails and then called it a night.

**For those of you who have asked, I weighed myself again on this morning and was down 2.4 lbs total. Again, it wasn't about the weight loss for me, but more about just detoxing and cleaning out my body that I was going for.

Getting My Cleanse On: Day Two

So...yeah. Um this right here is what my "lunch meeting" looked like at work today.

Are you kidding me?

Anywho...

Day 2:

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling good...not how I expected. I expected a growling stomach and a growling Katie rampaging the house for some food. And I really thought I would have taken up sleep walking over night and wake up to find myself hands deep in a bag of baked Doritos. But that didn't happen either. Maybe I do have a tad bit of willpower.

And although my wake up time was 4:36am, I felt rested and alert. I jumped on the scale, not because I've been trying to lose weight with this cleanse, but I was curious and have wanted to share my entire experience because I know some people do them to lose weight. I was down 0.9 lbs from the prior morning. Nothing earth shattering.

I cracked open my first drink of the day at 6:50am after a glass of hot water and lemon. I'm not going to go through all the dirty details of the day, but to give an idea of how I felt. I completed the first drink on my ride to work, but the rest of the day I found myself having trouble finishing the entire bottle of the rest of the juices. I also found myself drinking more hot decaf tea with lemon throughout the day.

Lunch was a bit difficult (did you see the picture above??). If you know me, you know I can clear out a bread basket like no other. Seeing that bread basket and the yummy cake staring at me as I was chugging down the Purify juice was not easy. I'm proud to say I didn't cave one bit.

Once I got back to work from lunch, my hunger took over. And I'm not sure what it was about the afternoon - I must be a snacker - but I caved again and ate a peach. I needed something of substance and that did the trick.

I worked straight up until 7:15pm and then had to rush to a day care appointment to meet Nick & Cruz. On the way I sucked down part of my Vanilla Cloud and almost finished it on the way home. After taking care of some work emails, I called it a night.

How I felt:

• Tired - I had many yawning spells throughout the day and seemed more tired than usual despite how I felt early in the morning.
• Hungry - I definitely had hunger spells. My stomach growled loudly but really only when I didn't get to my juice on time because of a meeting, etc. I think if I would've been better at sticking to my timeline and finished the entire bottle, I wouldn't have felt this way.
• Jealous - Nick was at home with Cruz all day and took him to lunch at La Mesa (my fave Mexican restaurant) - of course he had to send me pictures. Really?! And then later that night after an appointment with a prospective day care, he stopped at Firehouse Subs (my fave sandwich shop) for those two AND I had to feed Cruz his sandwich. I may have muttered some angry words under my breath at that point. Did he not realize how unfair that was? :)
• Tempted - I think I walked over to my pantry no less than 10 times when I got home. Looking for what, I don't know. Or better yet, why? I don't know that either. I would walk over, open the door, take a look, shut the door. Repeat. 
• Clean - I feel differently inside. Just good. Clean. I can tell that I haven't been filling my body with junk - Coffeemate in my coffee, complex carbs, junk food, wine. That is the best part of this whole experience. Well, that and the fact that I haven't caved yet and binged on a box of donuts.

All in the day was not bad. I'm proud of myself for sticking with it and happy with the way I feel. I don't notice dewy skin or a silky, shiny hair that I've read some people experience, but let's be honest, my skin is already a bit oily and my hair is drier than a bird's nest. I don't think a fifty day cleanse could help that.

Getting My Cleanse On: Day One

On Tuesday, I woke up feeling pumped, excited and just ready to start this little cleanse.

Here is what my day consisted of:

• 5am - I started the day with hot water and lemon on my way to meet Britt at what has become our regular Tuesday morning workout - Spinning/HIIT class at Sweat, Cycle and Soul. Lydia kicks our asses each morning and I love getting my workout done and doing something different than just running.
• 7am - halfway through getting ready for work and time for my first juice of the day, Glow. This is the first time I've had it and at first sniff I wasn't excited. The cucumber was evident and this girl is not a fan of cukes, however, after a couple drinks it wasn't too bad. I ended up milking it through my car ride to work.

• At work the Keurig was calling my name - I saw my regular coffee buddies walking by my office getting their piping hot caffeine fix and I was a bit jealous. Nope. I.Can.Do.This.
• 9:45am I opened my second juice of the day, Fuel. I have had Fuel before and really like it. I love carrots, although they aren't overpowering, and it's also filled with tons of fruits so it's sweeter and pretty damn good. I had gotten busy at work by this point and actually didn't end up finishing it until 11:45am.

• At this point, my stomach was growling and I'm just plain hungry for real food. I also had a caffeine headache which was to be expected I suppose when my regular day consists of about three cups of coffee. Plus, I made the mistake of opening my desk drawer for a Kleenex and see a chocolate peanut butter Luna bar. Mmm...chocolate and peanut butter.
• 12:30pm was time for the third juice, Purify. Don't be mistaken by the pretty reddish pink color, this is not a fruity treat. No way, no how. The dirty beet taste was overpowering and I had to all but chug to finish it, although I only drank about two-thirds. Have I told you I don't like beets very much? Oh, and if that wasn't enough, just as I got over the flavor of beets came the cucumber taste. Definitely my least favorite so far, but manageable.
• 2:30pm - a co-worker and I had some off property meetings so I had to drink and drive with number four, Fiji. This one had cucumber in it, but I don't know if I was just immune to the taste by this point, but I really didn't taste it. The apple flavor was good in this juice. However, during our drive it seemed we passed every single fast food restaurant in Omaha and all I could think of was pulling off the road and right into the drive-thru. Any food sounded phenomenal at this point.
• I ended up going home to work the rest of the day after our meetings. This was probably a bad idea because I knew I would be tempted by everything that resided in our pantry and cupboards, but I was already so far out west that it was silly to head back to work.
• 4:30pm is when I broke down and ate a banana. You know that whole mind over matter thing? Yeah, I don't have that. I needed to put something in my mouth that wasn't liquid (yeah, yeah, insert jokes here). That really seemed to help the light nausea I was feeling, so while I know I broke the rules, I'm glad I did it because it made the rest of the night more bearable.
• 5pm was time for juice five, Green Supreme. This is another I've had before and one of my faves, so it was easy peasy. Again, the apple flavor in this juice is excellent. However, at this point I was somewhat full - of what, I have no idea - and ended up sharing it with Cruz after he got home. 
• 6:30pm is dinnertime for Cruz and I knew I couldn't get away with only feeding him Green Supreme, so I was going to have to try my willpower in the kitchen in order to whip him up something to eat. Pasta with marinara probably wasn't the best idea I've ever had considering it's one of my fave dishes, but it was bath night and I like to get him nice and dirty before a bath, so that's what we did. Oh, and I may have accidentally licked some of the sauce off my finger from C's spaghetti...intentionally or unintentionally? I will let you decide.
• 7:45pm time for a little Vanilla Cloud while Cruz and I were playing and doing laundry. In honor of the glorious, creamy, cinnamon-y taste I let Cruz have a small glass of chocolate milk. This was a great treat and really felt like I was drinking a shake.

• I ended up going to bed relatively soon after Cruz, being that I would be left alone and to my own devices and didn't trust myself not to have someone watching over me with some accountability.

I definitely didn't drink enough water throughout the day - I'm a slow drinker (unless there is a Corona Light in my hand, that is) and felt I was sipping on so much juice all day that there wasn't time for me to chug down the H2O. I will make sure I do that tomorrow.

Bottom line:
Day one wasn't that bad. Yes, I was hungry. And I really wanted something solid to eat (hence, the banana cheat), but once I kept myself busy it was definitely manageable.

Good night!

"You're Trying What?"

I have heard this exact phrase from Nick more than I'd care to admit.

Yes, maybe I like to try some different things as it pertains to various parts of my life, generally food consumption or my diet.  Like what, you ask? Well to name a few, like trying Gwyneth Paltrow's seven day Goop detox back in 2012 (and stopping after day 4), jumping on the super food bandwagon (this is legit, Nick just thinks it's not), filling the fridge with bottles of sparkling water to help curb my love for Diet Mt. Dew, compiling lists of good-for-you recipes and filling drawer after drawer in our kitchen because I know I'm just going to start making these at some point.  See? Just a few.

Since the end of May I have had a really poor diet, loads of stress, a half-assed exercise schedule and I've probably drank more bottles, er glasses of wine than I care to admit.  I just don't feel like myself. So I  knew I wanted to do something to jump start my health back in the right direction or I was going to continue to feel unlike myself, crabby and have very little energy. But I kept telling myself "next week" and we know how that goes.

So that brings us to the reason for this post.

I had heard about the Suja Cleanse a few months back. At the time, I didn't have the chance to fully look into it. Then it started popping up all over, in some of the magazines I read and blogs I follow.  I took some time to check it out and read some reviews to better understand it. My body has just felt crappy lately and I want to flush out the junk and get back to fueling it with the good stuff. This seemed to be just what I was looking for.

I decided the three day cleanse was the route to go - just enough time to detox, but not too long that I would go bat shit crazy. Let's be honest, these will probably seem like the longest three days of my life. (I'm a bit dramatic, remember?)

Here is where you insert a "you're trying what?" from Nick when I let him know what these next three days were going to have in store for all of us me.

The juices are a bit expensive in the scheme of things, but when you realize that each averages about two pounds of straight fruits and veggies, that makes sense. Fortunately, our Whole Foods had them in stock (and on sale, score!), so I didn't have to shell out $60 for shipping.

Here is what my day will look like.

I will check in each night to let you all know how things are going. Let's hope this cleanse cleans the yuck out of me and puts me back into a better mood. And let's also hope I don't eat my hand in the process...

Weekend In Pictures

Another great summer weekend in the books.

I absolutely love Cruz at this age and he continues to amaze me with his growing personality. He is just turning into a little man right before our eyes.

This weekend started a bit early for me, on Friday to be exact. I had the day off work for our Angels Among Us golf outing at Tiburon. Nanny J had to cancel because she was sick, which put me in a bit of a tizzy right off the bat wondering what we were going to do with little man for the day. Thankfully Grandma C saved the day and dropped everything to drive to Omaha and watch C man. (She is so, so good to us.)

While we were waiting for her to get to town, I took Cruz on my morning run. I can't tell you how different it is running while pushing a stroller with a growing 25+ lb boy in it, but he definitely made the 45 minutes breeze by with all of his questions and excitement at the birds, deer and water....except that is when he decided he needed to "iisten" to mama's headphones and stole them for the remainder of the time.

The day only got better from there. This is what I was doing at 11am. Yes, drinking an ice cold beer at 11am on a Friday can only be described as um, well, awesome. (Remind me of this when I get to Saturday and the fact that I was deathly hungover all day at work.)

Our family and friends have helped us put together a couple of teams every year for the tournament since I started on the Angels board almost six years ago and each year we have a kick ass time. This year was no exception.

Tessa's wound from the day

The dream team
L to R: Grammy J, moi, mom & Tessa

We continued to drink our way through 18 holes and by the time we got to the last few holes, our team had grown by 4 more and there may or may not have been some inappropriate "dropping like it's hot" over the cup on the last couple of putting greens. 

The awards banquet was next and our table had the honor of sitting with Colton, one of the kiddos who has been affected by cancer. What an amazing little guy he was. He and I hit it off and were fast friends - having cheese and tomato eating contests and talking about meeting up to play golf sometime soon. I cannot wait to find some time to get together.

Most of the group headed to Shevy's (our favorite little watering hole) afterwards for more cocktails and shenanigans, which resulted in dancing, karaoke'ing and a massive headache on Saturday morning. Nothing a Firehouse sub and an extra large soda couldn't cure.

While I was at work, the hubs played in a softball tournament and little man spent the day with his cousins and Grammy and Nanu - they went out for donuts, checked out the fish at Bass Pro Shops, went to the movie Turbo and then swimming. You can imagine Cruz had a great day.

On Sunday, Cruz and I got up early to check out Gretna Days and our guys playing some softball. These are the days that bring back great memories of my childhood and being schlepped all over northeast Nebraska for my dad's slow-pitch softball games.  I loved running around and playing with my friends back then and couldn't have been happier to see Cruz doing the same yesterday. One of the other guys on the team had a little guy just five days younger than C, and they didn't leave each other's sides.

I can't wait for a couple more of these great weekends while the summer comes to an end. This is exactly what I envisioned when I found out we were having a little boy....well, maybe without the inappropriate dancing on the golf course, but you get the idea.

Kayden's First Communion

Lately I've been notorious for not getting super cool stuff posted on this little ole blog of mine. Like really late. I still haven't posted about my sister trip to LA, or 4th of July, or last weekend. I intend to get there, I promise, but in the meantime let's just pretend this post happened in April...which is when my handsome little godson's communion actually occurred. As my niece Dayvaney would say, "epic fail, Katie." 

Kayden Christopher

Regardless of my failures, Kayden hit a big milestone in his life and we celebrated his communion...and everyone who loves him turned up to help him understand the importance of his belief in the church and God. I have to say that as his godmama and auntie, I absolutely adore this little guy. I can't believe what an amazing man he is becoming and what a great kid he really is. I'm so proud to be in his life.

Now for some really, really bad iPhone pics. They really don't do the night justice.

The godmothers - Jackie, Kayden and moi
(I'm assuming the blurred photo of me is 
because I did a lot of hair tossing that night to attempt to get the right look.)

Ace, the babysitter

The Lynch's

My guys
(Guess I didn't feel the need to fix up little man's mop top for the occasion either.
I must have been to busy flipping my hair around too notice.)

My most amazing family

The man of the night taking care of my boy

Missing Miss DeLaney, but otherwise the kiddos of our fam

Apples!

Here's to getting back on my a-game with a plethora of posts!

Talking Up A Storm

I love hearing the sound of little man's voice...and the fact that he is talking up a storm these days makes me love it even more. This kid is crazy awesome. He is actually talking in sentences...that we can understand, not just the mumbled gibberish that we have to pretend to understand. 

Granted I'm not trying to pretend he's in full on communication mode and speaking eloquently while using big words or anything, but the kid just amazes me with how he picks up on what we are saying and then we hear him using those same words minutes later. And in context!

His most recent word - 'another'. Just the other day we were on the patio looking at airplanes (we spend a lot of our time doing this these days, I'm sure our neighbors are thinking we are just a weird family of three who stare up into the sky for minutes at a time) and then switched gears to practice colors using one of said neighbor's blue swings. He turned around to the other neighbor's house and pointed at their swing set and said "mama, anuhdah swing?"

Seriously, it just blows my mind when he does things like this.

And we are practicing other words as well. When I ask Cruz where he is from, he says, "Ohmhaa, Braska." When you ask his name, he loves saying, "Cruz John (and then almost silently) Manaroh" I think because Manganaro is just so darn hard to say. Honestly, buddy, don't worry. I don't think I said it right for the first four years I dated your daddy either. Too bad I couldn't wise up and find me a Smith or something.

Just when I think he can't get any smarter than he already is, he throws one of these out there (see video) and I remember that he still is just my little guy who just loves to talk about "poo poo."

This video was taken at Kona Grill the other night after he made a big numero dos in the big boy potty. We were all celebrating pretty loudly and he just wanted to join in on the excitement. Who can blame him, I get pretty excited when I poo poo too. :)

20 Months Old!

Twenty months old! Happy day, little man!

What's new with Cruz...

Eating - overall he eats really well, but still seems to be getting more picky than usual. We've figured out how to make him eat certain foods, like chicken, other meats, some veggies...dip, dip and more dip. Whether it's grilled chicken dipped in applesauce or hard boiled egg dipped in yogurt. If he can dip it, he's usually bound to eat it. I've also tried reintroducing him to berries, specifically blueberries and strawberries. If you remember a few months back he was having an allergic reaction to both. When he ate them the outside of his mouth would break out in little red bumps for about a day. This month, he's had both and seems to be doing ok with them.

Sleeping - still good on this front, as long as he has his normal routine (here). One nap during the afternoon for about two hours and a 9pm bedtime keeps him sleeping in until 8am, which is perfectly timed to when nanny J arrives for the day.

Toys - he is all about swimming and water, so his new pool has been a big hit. He also has a floatie he uses in the big pool that he loves as much as us - he gets to splash and float around and we have our hands free for an adult beverage or two. He got his first baseball mitt and ball and set of golf clubs. I'm not saying we have the next Tiger Woods on our hands here, but the boy can connect a plastic golf club to a plastic golf ball better than most adults I know. If only he would learn that it's a "golf club" not a "bat" like he runs around calling it.

This kiddo has a better tan than I do. Not.Fair.

Words - the best of the month was when he spent an entire day fake burping for J and then would say, "I burp, 'cuse me." He may or may not have learned that from me the prior day when I burped while we were driving in the car and we both laughed so hard about it. Man, I'm a classy one. He's also added more colors to his language - white, pink (pint because he's not quite good with the k's yet), purple, black and brown. As well as started calling us mommy and daddy instead of mama and dada. Nick wasn't a fan of daddy, but I thought his little "mommys" were too cute. And of course he is copying everything we say, so he's picked up "be right back", "see you soon" and "here we go" to name a few.

Travel - let's not get excited here, it's not like he was jet setting across the US. Instead he had a couple trips up to good old northeast Nebraska to spend some time with my parents on the farm and with grandma Carol and D in West Point for the 4th of July. Mom & dad helped us out one weekend and Cruz is ecstatic anytime he can get to the farm to see the tractors and cows...and, of course, nana and papa. He also got to spend tons of time with his cousin, Laney. I absolutely love that these two are just under a year apart. They love playing together and saw each other not once, but twice this past month.

Speaking of cousins, his baby cousin Cole was born this past month and he is just the sweetest, little nugget ever. We just cannot wait to watch them grow up together.

The only place in America where little people can run free on a golf course

Cruz's first 5k - West Point Fun Run on the 4th

Potty chair - yes, we have officially broken out the potty seat this month and are slowly working on potty training. He tells us sometimes when he is going "pee pee/poo poo" so we decided that when he says this we are going to strip him down and stick him on the chair to see what he does.

He is going to hate me for posting this pic when he's older.

Parenting fail - He may or may not have also had his first drink of vodka this past month. Okay. He did. But it wasn't on purpose. He's just too quick for us. And no, this isn't the vodka drink. I'm not THAT bad of a mama to make him pose with the drink for a picture. This is him loving his Gatorade. He rode around the golf course like this most of the day.

 Until next month!