Food Fight

Alright moms I need your help here. I may have started a pattern that I am not sure how to get out of. I am not a strict parent on eating ridiculously healthy foods. I get excited when Annie eats something that is good for her and I offer her new foods often, however I dont make her eat something that she doesn't like. I figure I don't like all foods and I don't want to eat brussel sprouts at dinner just because my mom does! However there aren't many foods out there that I don't like.
I don't fix a lot of different meals, we have our favorites and our tried and trues and we stick to them. The problem with Annie has always been 2 things,
1. what I make is too spicy for her
2. Joe doesn't get home until late and she is starving so badly that I feed her something before he gets home and she has dessert (or sometimes colors) in her high chair while we eat dinner so that we are all still together at the table as a family.
If our meal is too spicy then I usually give her a Gerber meal or something that rounds out the food groups according to what she has had during the day.
Problem. The past few days she has been eating a little of what I give her, then pointing to our food on the table and wanting "this", we offer it to her, she spits it out and points to something else and this goes on until she has refused everything at the table twice and is screaming because we will not give her what she has already spit out twice!

Today at lunch after 2 bites of a gerber meal (which she clapped and celebrated over when I got it out) and half a banana she wanted my lunch. I offered her everything and she just kept pointing saying "this"! Finally I told her that she had to eat her meal or she could go to bed and she took her bib off and opted for bed!

So I ask you, does this mean she is old enough for the all or nothing discipline? Do I start making her eat foods that she doesn't like? I realllllly don't want to! Do I start making food that is more Annie friendly?
Another few contributing factors is that we have been eating so randomly at different peoples houses and in restaurants in the past month that this could just be a reflection of no routine, however I foresee fights over food in the future and I want to start early! Also she has been with Joe's family a lot and french fries, chicken nuggets and fruit are staples in their diets and what child wouldn't eat that for every meal?

So I ask, what would you do? Clean slate, start new, new dinner time rules? I like that I am laid back about some things and food is one of them, but I dont want to ruin my childs diet forever!

Update on Life

I don't feel like anything in my life is really exciting right now however there is plenty that I would like to document in history so here's a little update on the simple everyday life of mine lately.

We have been homeless for a little over 3 weeks now and looking at just under one more! It has been going very smoothly as far as I am concerned (I guess you should ask Charlotte and Nathanael). I was worried about Annie not sleeping through the night or being crazy bad or something. But she has been sleeping like CRAZY, 12+hours, and she is not acting up more than I think she normally would be :o)

Now that all of the wallpaper is off the walls at the new house I have been banned from it! I have to say it makes me crazy to just sit by and let Joe do all the work! He has a list a mile long to finish by tuesday but its all painting so I am not allowed in the house due to fumes! And he is so particular about things that he doesn't accept help!

Speaking of Tuesday that is The Day! The day the carpet is being installed! Other than carpet I don't care if all I have is a bed set up in the middle of the room I just want to sleep in it! I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I know that spoiled little me will want the rest of the house in order quickly after my good nights sleep in my bed, but for now I will pretend that is all I want :o) Joe is concentrating on the upstairs getting finished before carpet comes and will finish the downstairs after we move in because its all hardwood floors.

I promise I will sneak over there soon and get some pictures of the house so far!

Annie and I have been filling our days with busy things so that we are not sitting at Char's trying to entertain her with baby toys and the same 5 toys that she has been playing with for the past 3 weeks! Luckily it has been nice out and so we have been going to the park and such.

I have been feeling pretty good pregnancy wise. I am 29 weeks and officially in my final trimester! I passed my glucose tolerance test just fine, and am not surprisingly just a little anemic. I suppose I should have been taking my prenatal vitamins a little more often than once a week :o) So its some extra iron for me and I am hoping that it makes me feel a little more energized along with getting back to my exercise routine. I started back a few days ago and I can not express how much it helps! I have been having such belly discomfort in the afternoon and get winded so easily with no endurance whatsoever! After just two days I feel so much better and don't have the discomfort that I was having before.
I have been experiencing what the Dr and I think are some heart arrhythmias lately. Normal pregnancy stuff and not often enough to worry about it yet, just keeping an eye on it. I have to admit its scary annoying though.

I will leave you with a few pictures of Annie at the Creation Museum that I took today. We went out to the petting zoo because she has been so obsessed with animals lately but she was scared of them and was as usual excited to point out all of the common birds flying around. She also liked the floating bridge which I took advantage of as a photo shoot. ;o)

Annie Update from AZ

Annie has been changing and saying so many new things lately. I wish I could record her all of the time, instead I fail to get the camera out at all! Oh well, I have lovely still shots of her :o)
In her new list of words is "oss" = gross, she says this when I clean her ears out with a q-tip!! "Nik-Nis" = Nicholas. Me = Gram (Joes mom), I think she says this because my mom is "mammie" = Grammy and so Gram is just shortened to "Me" which I think is BRILLIANT! She counts random numbers up to 10 I never know which ones she is going to know, its a surprise every time! Someone taught her Pop Goes the Weasle and she loves it! She also says "Aaaas" =Outside! I am trying to teach her the second part of that word because I forsee her walking around all summer pointing outside and exclaiming "aaaas!"

She also has been a difficult child lately. I fully expected it with not having a home that you can plan a few days to just get back on schedule, routine and disipline. She has been whiny and defiant which could also be coming with her age. Its just tough when I don't see an end in sight because even when we do have a house it will be crazy for a while and then we will throw a new baby into the mix!

Here are a few shots of our last couple of days of vacation. Do you want to know that I got a little bit of sun yesterday? No? Ok never mind :o)

I know this isnt a very good shot but I love her face!

Trying to go up the slide

Went to the Phoenix Zoo

Talking to the Baboon

p.s we found out that we are closing on Saturday morning!!! Wooo Hoo!!

Arizona Fun

So far it has been a wonderful trip! I have to admit I wasn't so much anxious about flying with Annie as I was curious about how she would do and what it would be like. We spent Thursday night with Andrew and Tiff at their house in Dayton so we would only have an hour drive Friday morning to the Columbus Airport. We got quickly checked in and through security without a hitch. We had some lunch before getting on the plane which for Annie consisted of a banana and french fries. Our plan for the day was appeasing her without giving her everything she wanted. So she could take a walk in the airport but she had to hold our hand. She could stand on the terminal seats but not jump off of them... see some rules with few fights, we were doing good. Our flight was during her nap time and I honestly didn't think that she would nap on the plane.
She was so cute on take off she just sat on Joe's lap, looked out the window and said "woa" over and over again :o) We started by letting her page through the magazines in the seat backs, she had some cheese its, she read books, she had raisins, she played with her baby doll, she had cookies, she colored a picture, she had gerber puffs, and finally she watched her videos which ended up being our best bet however it did not entertain her NEARLY as much as it does normally which was disappointing. We tried giving her a bottle and telling her it was night night time, but she did not appreciate that so we didn't push it. It wasn't a bad flight, we could tell she was VERY tired but she just wouldn't sleep.... until we landed! No lie, not even when we were descending, she waited until we were hitting the runway before she decided to give up! I am sure she was feeling the pressure change when she laid her head down on my chest, but I couldn't believe that as we bumped along the runway she closed her eyes and fell asleep! I have a few pictures on my phone that I plan on sharing but I can't get them off till we get home. She stayed asleep through us getting off the plane, loading her into her car seat carrier and claimed our bags, she slept through riding the transport bus and picking up the rental van! She of course woke up for the 45 min trip to the Lang's house in which she was starving and fussed at us the whole way for food! Like she hadn't been eating all day long! We arrived at the Lang's around 6:00 so we pushed her and kept her up for another 2 hours which was 3 hours past her bed time so that we could attempt to fight the jet lag. I have to say it worked pretty well! She woke up around 4 very unhappy but took a bottle and went right back to sleep until 8am western time! I was very happy she pushed through. She has held up pretty well today although when she is tired she is overly fussy. While she napped at the house with Dada, Tiff her Mom and I went to get pedicures! Its only the second pedi I have ever gotten and it was lovely! Tiff talked me into getting flowers on my toes and although they are REALLY not "me" I think they are cute!

Homeless and Happy

Well, we did not close on our new house yesterday. However we did close on our old house. Which makes us Homeless!!!! This is not something that I have realistically had to think about. I mean when we listed our house we knew that we would want to sell it before we bought something else, however we found something we liked right away, so I never had to process the homeless feeling.
Rewind to yesterday morning... we closed on our house at 11. The buyers were very nice and we chatted a little, they are our age and this is her first house his second, they are not married yet but we wont judge ;o) She promised to be very nice to my hydrangea bushes and was down right excited about the lilac bush out front so I am happy with her :o)

ANYWAY... the closing took a miserable hour and a half which was declared around the table as the longest closing in history when the lady that was doing the closing stepped out of the room! She was AWFUL! She chatted about nothing, sounded very goofy and flighty (although knew her job very well, which we will come to later) She had a story for everything and went into entirely too much detail in the paperwork with the buyers. But at last we were done and we all shook hands and gave them the keys and told them when trash day is and they were on their way!

Because it took so long I used our little intermission between closing on the new house to call my mom and update her on our afternoon moving in plans. I realized when the phone was ringing that we were homeless! I laughed, popped my head back into the conference room to Joe and John and said with a smile "hey we are homeless"! Little did I know I jinxed us :o)

The lady who owned our new home passed away 2 weeks ago and her daughter was her POA, so they came in, we greeted, I offered our condolences and we got to work, this closing was going much faster and when we were 95% done Miss Blond Law Office Lady realized that the daughter was never appointed executor of the estate and was legally not allowed to sell us the house! I was VERY glad she caught it but the process was like slow motion. She realized it... we all looked around the table at each other slowly... she calmly called the lawyer down from his office... we knew it wasn't good... he looked at the paperwork and said...."This aint happenin today"!!! AUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH as he explained that she needed a lawyer and the will and a court date and her other 3 out of town siblings to be at the hearing etc, etc, etc!
The lawyer was only slightly caring about the situation just mostly rude and flippant, everyone else in the room was looking at this poor woman who just lost her mother feeling sorry for her (although it was her fault she didn't become executor before the closing) feeling awful for Joe and I with our trucks packed sitting waiting to be unloaded (I have to admit I FOUGHT back the tears hard but couldn't help lose a few) and looking at their realtor thinking "shouldn't you have known she wasn't legally ready" I felt bad for him because he admitted that he felt responsible which I appreciate him manning up to.

So long story wrapping up they went directly to a lawyer to start the process of becoming executor, they handed us the keys and we are "renting" the house until closing. Their realtor is paying for our extension on our mortgage rate which went up considerably this very day and we all went home after many phone calls to insurance companies and the bank etc. and went to the new house to unload the trucks! It didn't feel real because I know that the house isn't ours yet, it felt mostly like a cruel trick and a pretty storage facility!

HOWEVER Welcome to Suburbia!!!! We met 4 of our neighbors who came over to introduce themselves, the family that lives behind us brought over a "P&G care package" as he works there and it was SO MUCH FUN! I hugged his wife, (do you think my emotions are shifting :o)
I am soooooo excited about living there! Do you know how long it took me to meet neighbors in Bellevue?!? I know I could have been the one to go knock on their doors, but I have to admit I only knew 2 of my old neighbors names and just did the smile and wave at one other.

Funny side story, our old neighbor, the bane of our Bellevue existence, the one with the broken down car and the dogs and the messy back yard who is scary and weird that Joe had to mow his yard so you could see our house when you came up the street... yeah well the broken down car that we have tried over and over with the police to make him move and he just puts a new battery in it to prove that it runs and moves it 3 feet back and forth for a week to get around the law of not leaving a car in one spot for longer than legally allowed.... he sold it the week we moved!! No lie! Its gone! Joe wanted to know if it was a practical joke and Kelly said that God was the jester :o)
Anyway to end this crazy update I will say "adios" as we are leaving for vacation in AZ until next friday!!! I am very happy to get away for a while and try to make my husband relax! We should be able to close when we get back home and will just have to live with Joe's family (gratefully) until we can move in after all the work is done on the house!



p.s the countdown offically begins, as of today I have 99 days left of pregnancy...YIKES!