A fun day

We took the kids out for a fun-filled day yesterday, including an open house at the fire station, lunch at In-n-Out, and then the pumpkin patch. The fire station was not planned, but we saw the signs when we drove by to the bank, so we stopped there. Nate got to meet "fireman Mark," who showed him the fire truck and around the station. He got to sit in the truck and hold the captain's hat. We read the words on the hat--"Captain" and "O'Hare." Later, when we got in the car, we were talking about all the things we had seen. Nate loved that he had gotten to sit in a fire truck, and we also talked about the hat. Jon asked Nate what the hat said on it. Nate thought for a minute and said, "Ummmm.... Old Head!"



(The shirt he is wearing was a coincidence!)

Next we went to In-n-Out, always a highlight for our family and especially for Nate. Lucy now eats an entire cheeseburger on her own--with everything on it. She's a piglet for sure.

Last we headed over to the pumpkin patch at the mall. I didn't get too many wonderful pictures (the first one is the only picture of both Nate and Lucy together), but I did catch some funny shots, including Nate before the train ride started (all smiles), Nate after it started (not a happy camper), and Nate after he decided he was OK. :)

Bath fun

Artwork and teeth

Here is some of Nate's work from September and October:







And some fun pictures of Lucy (you can really see all of her new teeth in some of them):

Note home from Nate's teacher yesterday:

"Nate is such a joy! Today he was teaching all the children the months of the year... Miss Ann and I said, 'Maybe we aren't needed--we have Nate to teach.' :) It was adorable."

Friday pictures and video

Nate is in Cubbies this year (the 3- and 4-year-old class in AWANA). That is a whole separate post--he is doing great--but I wanted to post pictures of him in his vest, which he is so proud of. :)




Lucy has been doing a hilarious scrunched-up face when you ask her to smile:

Pregnancy cravings and baby names

Eating a snack right now, I just realized that I've had some food preferences this pregnancy. I guess you could call them cravings, but they are foods I do like anyway. The craving this pregnancy (besides citrus in the first trimester and Del Taco all the time, which has occurred all three of my pregnancies) has been balsamic vinegar. My snack right now is a diced tomato and half an avocado in a bowl drenched in balsamic vinegar. The other day, I made my mom's cucumber salad (just cucumbers, a little bit of sour cream, pepper, and balsamic) and devoured a big bowl of it. I've been doing carrots, celery, and cherry tomatoes in a bowl with bv too. I guess it's not unhealthy, so that's good. Yum!

As for the name of this baby, Jon and I have thrown around a few ideas but haven't settled on anything yet. We might head to the hospital with a short list and decide there! :)

Look how sweet

Caught the kids being sweet last night:

Easy dinner: orange mango chicken

I made this recipe last night. It was very easy and used all ingredients I always have on hand (except the mango, which is easy enough to get).

INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1/8 teaspoon ground thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 lemon, juiced
1 cup orange juice
1 mango - peeled, seeded and sliced
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Place chicken breast halves in the skillet, and cook 5 to 10 minutes on each side, until no longer pink and juices run clear. Season both sides with thyme, salt, and pepper. Remove from heat, and set aside.

Heat the lemon juice in the skillet over medium heat, and scrape up browned bits. Mix in orange juice, mango, ginger, and cinnamon. Over high heat, cook and continuously stir 4 to 5 minutes, until thickened. Spoon over the cooked chicken breast halves (and rice) to serve.

P.S. This recipe is GFCFSF!

Dollhouse Frock Giveaway

Dollhouse Frock GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Because Greg asked...

...here I am yesterday at 28+ weeks (7 months). Feeling good and big!

Getting more sleep

I remember the story of Mama and Daddy getting a digital clock for Greg when he was a boy so that he would stop coming out of his room so early in the morning. They told him, "You may come out when the first number is 7." In Greg's effort to obey, things didn't go quite like my parents had expected. He would come into their room at 6:27, or 5:57, or 6:17, etc. This ended up being one of my mom's first indications that Greg might be left-handed. (Years later, when he learned to write, he wrote in mirror image--backward letters and from right to left--crazy!)

A couple of weeks ago, we got a small digital clock for Nate's room. We told him he should stay in his room in the mornings until 6-zero-zero. (Back story: Nate gets up capital-E Early. Most of it is from the various supplements he is on, many of which indicate hyperactivity and/or change in sleep patterns as a side effect. He had made a habit of coming into our room in the mornings some time between 4:30 and 5:30, sometimes going back to sleep and sometimes not.) The first few nights, we reminded him about the 6:00 rule, but we didn't do a great job of enforcing it (how much willpower do YOU have in the middle of the night?), but we kept reminding him about the new rule. On about night 3, it happened. I heard Nate open his door at about 6:02. He came down to our room and said, "Daddy, I stayed in my room until six zero zero!" We made a big deal about it for him, and he was so proud. Since then, he has done a decent job of giving us a bit more sleep! This morning, when I came upstairs, he was sitting in his room in the recliner, with the light on, reading the pages in his children's picture Bible. So cute!

What will they come up with next?

Here are a couple of new baby inventions I'm eyeing for this next time around.

• Zip-top crib sheets. It is a big pain trying to get a crib sheet off and a new one on, especially in the middle of the night. (I often have to remove the entire crib bumper and take out the mattress and put it on the floor.) These sheets are two pieces: a base (which doesn't usually get dirty), and a top that zip together. When the sheet needs to be changed, just zip off the top and zip on a new top.
• A swaddling blanket. If Baby likes to be swaddled as much as Nate did, I will want one of these. (Lucy, on the other hand, hated swaddling.) The blankets made specifically for swaddling seem nice because they are big and have pockets so baby can't kick them off or wriggle his/her arms out. If you go to the site, scroll down and watch the video of the precious baby getting swaddled. (Oh--I'm also thinking of just making some of these. The picture here pretty much gives away how I could make one version.)

You'll notice that the things I like take up little to no space... I don't want to buy any new toys, big play mats, etc.--no space suckers!

Update

We had a full weekend here, including a baby shower (for someone else--Ricci, she loved the airplane burp cloths!), a trip to the District to run in a fountain, a full church day on Sunday. The weekend began on a sad note, though: Jon's Uncle Paul (his dad's younger brother) passed away (from very aggressive cancer) last week, and the funeral was Friday. We will miss him!

I had my 28-week appointment today; everything looks good!

Here's Lucy last week doing a new funny face she created:


And Nate saying the pledge of allegiance, which he learned months ago (but can now pronounce almost everything correctly):

...And beautiful

Here are some cute Nate sayings from the past few days:

• Yesterday, I asked if he knew the name of his OT teacher. He said, "Yes. Miss Christy." (That was correct.) I asked if she was nice, and he replied, "Yes, she is nice... And beautiful."
• On Sunday, he needed a tissue, and I told him to get one. He wanted me to get it. We went back and forth for a minute, and I said, "Nate, I am not your servant." While he was walking to get the tissue, he said, "You're not? That makes me so sad."
• He is finally starting to pronounce his Ls correctly (at least when he's thinking about it), even for Lucy's name.
• The other night at the Great Park, he had fun running back and forth on a long painted line with lights. He would run by and say, "Look at me go!"

Payback

When I was about 10, Greg was 8, and Lucy was 4, we took a family vacation. On the way home, Mama and Daddy surprised us with a trip to Magic Mountain. This made them the coolest parents who ever lived. Mama took Lucy to the children's area; Daddy talked up the rollercoasters to Greg and me, and we enthusiastically asked to go on one. The three of us got in line for Viper, where we waited... and waited... for well over an hour. The closer we got to the front of the line, the bigger that coaster looked. At the last minute, Greg and I chickened out. We wouldn't go on it. This was frustrating to Daddy, I'm sure, but maybe he thought he had started too big (Viper is quite a big coaster and also goes upside down). So we went next to the coaster with the cars that hang down from the track instead of riding on top of it; this one didn't go upside down. We waited for a long time in this line. And then we chickened out again. Daddy was M-A-D mad. Even at the time I realized he was mad, and I felt bad about that--but not bad enough to go on the ride. I actually remember seeing my dad look longingly at Viper as we left the park, him having not ridden anything.

Fast forward 17 years to last night. Jon and I took Nate to ride the big balloon at the Great Park in Irvine. He points that thing out every time we see it from the freeway. His eyes grew big when we told him that's where we were going. (Side note: we would have taken Lucy, too, but it was nearing her bed time, grampy was already at our house, and she is teething something fierce, so she stayed home to be put to bed.) We arrived at 6:30 and put our names in, not realizing there would even be a wait. We made the best of the wait, running on the grassy area and exploring a little bit. When it grew dark, Nate had fun running along the flashing red lights that were in a line on the ground. Finally, at 8:30, our buzzer buzzed, and we went to the next place to stand in line, right next to the balloon. We just had to wait for a couple of rounds of people to ride in front of us (4-5 minutes each ride), and then it was our turn. Nate was excited... until we were within 15 feet of getting on. Then he decided it just wasn't for him. Ah yes, the ride we had just waited 2 hours to go on? Apparently, it sounded fun for those 2 hours, but not now. So I went on the balloon by myself while Jon waited with Nate on the ground. (It's a good thing we didn't force him to go, because the lift-off was a bit jerky. I didn't mind it, but in his little mind it would have confirmed his fears, I'm sure.) And then we went home.

Pictures during the wait--having lots of fun:




Thoughts as we are walking to get on the ride: concern


And then worry. Notice the clenched fist:


And then making a run for it:

Another dress already

I definitely had the crafting bug this week. Here is the second dress I made for Lucy, with most of the things I did wrong on the first fixed this time around. I liked it so much I thought it was worthy of an outdoor photo shoot. :)

My brother

Today is Greg's 26th birthday. (What an old man!) I thought part of my gift to him could be a compilation of some of my favorite memories of him and thoughts about who he is. Sister Lucy has also contributed some fun memories.

• As kids, we played together every day in our family's back yard or around the neighborhood. I remember a lot of imagination-based games, like using our plastic golf clubs to stir the huge pile of leaves Daddy had raked--we were chefs cooking our soup. We also played a made-up game, "Friend," where I was the older (and of course wiser) sister, Samantha, and Greg was named Ducky. Once, in all seriousness, I asked our parents if we could change our names to Samantha and Ducky, and I remember being so angry when they said no. (I was probably 6 or 7, Greg 4 or 5).
• Even as a child, I think I had a sense that Greg adored me. Mama says he "worshipped the ground I walked on," and I probably knew it even at the time. I was definitely the boss, and Greg seemed content to do whatever I told him.
• Even though he is two years younger, Greg rode his bike without training wheels way before I ever did. I think he was a daredevil (OK, and I was a wimp).
• When we lived in California during elementary school, we used to ride our bikes or sometimes rollerblade to school together every day. On the rollerblading days, it seems more often than not Greg would forget to bring his shoes. (Perhaps my memory is exaggerated; maybe he only forgot them once or twice.) He'd have to call Mama when we got to school and wait around in his socks until she brought the shoes.
• In high school, Greg was impossible to get up in the mornings. Mama would make the "time to wake up" announcement to him, but he rarely did. I would usually forceably rouse him with about 10 minutes to go before we had to leave the house, and somehow, he was always in the car when it was time to go.
• Greg's high school wardrobe (at least early high school, while I was still there) consisted of plain white t-shirts and shorts. Every day.
• When we were both in high school, we usually ate lunch together every day with a few of our other friends (including another brother-sister combo).
• For my high school graduation, Greg gave me a necklace that he had had made with a family-heirloom diamond. It is probably my favorite necklace I've ever owned.
• There is a host of stories to be told about Greg and his best bud, Ryan. Most of those I know only second hand, but they include adventures with a potato gun, stealing a street sign (and getting caught), shooting each other with a BB gun to see how much it hurt, and I'm sure many, many more.
• Some of Greg's admirable attributes: his work ethic (passed down directly from our dad), his easy-going nature, his ability to have fun doing almost anything, his tender heart, his contagious laugh.
• Greg is already the favorite uncle. :)

Lucy's thoughts:

• Some of my most vivid memories from our childhood are from our living room in Massachusetts where Greg used to make me play "wrestlemania" with him. This would involve him chasing me around the room, tackling me, and things of that sort. He found a way to get me excited though by inventing my wrestlemania stage name of "Ninja Lucy."
• Greg was a big man on campus of our high school when he was a senior and I was a freshman. He was the captian of the football team and an all around popular guy. I would be walking down the hall and all of a sudden be surrounded by huge senior football guys all saying, "Hey! It's little McCann, it's little McCann!" Greg really was well liked by everyone, including his teachers, who would ask me about him four years later.
• When we moved to Virginia and Greg moved back in with the family after being away at school, we got to be closer than we had been before. He would hang out when friends came over sometimes, but mostly just to embarass the guys in polish ping pong. I always enjoyed having a big brother who was protective and wasn't afraid to scare my friends!

Not bad for a first try

I have never made clothes before. I'm really not that good of a seamstress, and I always need LOTS of instruction and clear directions on how to make something. That's why I'm proud of how this dress turned out. It's OK for a first try, and now I know what to tweak to make the next dress turn out much better! (And I will add trim or contrasting fabric or something to the next one; this was just a plain-as-possible first attempt.)

I found instructions here. The creator included lots of pictures and a detailed step-by-step guide, which is why I love it.

A video request

Here is Lucy saying "no." When she says it in defiance, it's a little more mischievous, but I wasn't going to try to encourage that just for a video. :)



Oh, and here's Nate how I found him sleeping last night. He hadn't done this in quite a while.

Second day pictures

I didn't remember to take a first-day-of-school picture yesterday, so here are some from Nate's second day. :) He's supposed to be waving in that first one.

First day back

Today is Nate's first day back at school. He has the same teachers and same classrooms as he had May through July, so there shouldn't be too much to adjust to (except the return to a quicker morning routine!).

I really enjoyed our last month together--Nate, Lucy, and me. Nate and I had some special times together whenever Lucy was in her hour of therapy (hour each on Wednesdays and Thursdays). We went to Starbucks together a few times (I brought him some juice), some parks on other days, and he was my special helper on some errands. I also loved our water park days. Nate rrreally loves those places, and Lucy ended up loving them more and more too (once she got over the fact that she has to get wet). :)

Now it's back to the daily routine, which is comforting but also busy!