June

Hello everyone! It's been a while again. It seems like we rack up all of this important news that we want to put on our blog, but then we wait so long that we forget. So here's the most recent pictures and we'll see if that jogs my memory.
The picture above was taken today. We had just gotten home from Payson from Grandpa's Birthday in Payson. Peter started getting fussy so we took him to the bathroom and were going to change his diaper etc. but he was throwing such a fit so we just gave up and let him be "free" for a little while. It looked like he was wearing a little loin cloth. I took him to the bathroom a couple of times just in case he needed to go, but he didn't. Then sure enough a few minutes after I had taken him, I found a puddle over by our shoes. Thankfully our floor is just hard tile and he only got my shoe laces wet and that was all. It was interesting though because after I cleaned up the pee, the floor was exceptionally clean where it had been! you can see the area where the puddle was cause it's sparkling white. I never knew pee could clean things. Maybe we should let him go diaper free more often . . . j/k
This is Peter in his new high chair. He's started to eat food recently and it's gotten hard for us to eat dinner with him in our laps so there was a cheap high chair at wal-mart that we decided we'd try. It's awesome! We love it, he like's it too, and it collapses completely flat so that's nice.
Peter has also started pulling himself up. He loves, as any child does I'm sure, to make his rounds in the apartment making a mess wherever he goes :)
This is his favorite cupboard to get into.
I don't remember how we found out, but Peter likes apple cores. It seems like we're mistreating him or something, but he just really likes them, so oh well. I wonder if he'll always prefer our scraps . . .
We are extremely excited to have our first garden this year! We have a little plot that you can rent in the student housing complex for $5 for the summer. So we bought plants and seeds, read some books, and here's our first attempt. We don't have extremely high expectations, but we want to be master gardeners someday, so we're excited to give it our first shot and make a bunch of mistakes. After 20 or so years of this, we'll be awesome at it. That's the plan anyway.
Here again, he's getting into the cupboard.
He loved to make a mess of the cd's n'stuff until recently. We got a really perfect entertainment center at a yard sale for $3!!! It was awesome! We weren't even looking for one, we weren't even looking for anything, we were just passing through and we saw it for $5 and stopped to look for a second and the lady who was selling it said "Do you want it? Where's your apartment? I'll wheel it up there for you and everything. I'll give it to you for $3!" and she started loading it onto a dolly! I said "hold on, we've gotta go take some measurements first" so we did and it worked out and she almost ran off without her $3. She was very excited to get rid of it, and we have been equally excited to have it! It's old and scratched and stuff if you look close but it's so perfect for us in our mismatchy apartment and it's incredibly functional. We LOVE it so much and we're very thankful that we were in the right place at the right time.
Another favorite mess making spot is where we've got all of our food storage.
Peter is helping Andrea do her Pilates! I was around one morning for some reason and she started exercising and he just comes and crawls all over and around her while she's doing it. He has fun, she get's a workout!
This is a while ago. Peter's first easter egg hunt at the Wright's house.
Stretching in the morning after a good night's sleep. It's so funny and cute all of the gestures that baby's make! They're just like little adults sometimes. I love it!

This is a really cool phenomenon in our court. Somehow with the way that the drainage system works, a big water bubble can form in the lawn if it rains enough! We were at an activity talking and some of the people who've lived here longer than we have were saying "Remember that weird bubble that formed a few years ago etc. etc." and a few minutes later someone said "It's back!!!" It was so cool! Little kids were running over it and jumping on it but it didn't even break!

And this is our beautiful baby boy crawling!!! Andrea said it's just like a flip switched or something and he decided that he'll get around this way from now on!

Other than that we are enjoying our summer of a little less stress since I'm not in school. It's fun to be able to get home and just spend time with the family and not worry about H.W. We enjoy taking walks to see our garden, grocery shopping, rewatching old movies we haven't seen for a while, and reading the harry potter series. We also listened to another interesting book lately called "The China Study." My sister had read it and we wanted to see what it was about and suffice it to say that it's a very interesting book about nutrition and disease and how they are related. If you're at all interested in nutrition you'd probably enjoy the read.

Well that's that. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

April Showers

Peter loves bath time. Here he is, splashing happily.



And here are some pictures of him in the bath.



He is so curious about everything and loves to explore. Here you can just see his feet as he's getting into something that mom and dad can't see.



And now mom's catching him.


Peter had a friend over for a few hours one day, and right after I sat her down next to him he got the biggest smile on his face. Looks like someone's got a crush. Ha ha!



It didn't last long before they were both trying to take each other's toys, and Peter clamped on to a fistful of her hair. Poor dear!


Our sweet little boy isn't normally much of a cuddle-bug. He's too curious and interested in everything for that. But every once in awhile, when he's tuckered out, he'll lay his head on Luke's shoulder or just hang out quietly next to him.



One thing is certain, he loves his daddy so much! Here he is playing with him. It's hard to catch him smiling as big or laughing as hard as he does, because he hears the beep of the camera and immediately whips his head around to investigate.

Food!

1 part milk (2% or greater)
2 parts sliced frozen bananas

Blend until smooth.

Enjoy your banana treat

You're welcome.

(The above is from Luke. Please make banana treat. It will change your life. Andrea is now taking over.)

We celebrated Peter's new teeth by giving him his first taste of food: sweet potatoes! We decided to document the occasion with pictures. Here it is:

Here we have Peter all decked out in the bib I made him at the baby shower Amanda threw for me. Isn't he cute? Thank you, Amanda.


Clearly, he is extremely excited. Here comes the food!


Ugh! What? This is not what I was expecting...


Maybe it's ok?



No...NOPE! Definitely not! (As it all came spewing out with some throw-up.)

Contrary to popular belief, Peter does not want to eat our food. He merely wants to play with it! Ha ha! After trying to feed him with a spoon we decided to just let him play with it. He enjoyed himself immensely and ended up eating some anyway since he was sucking on his fists and such. It was so funny! I have heard that one thing you should do to keep your children from becoming picky eaters is to let them feed themselves, even from a very young age when they're just learning how to get whatever they pick up to their mouth. So it's all part of the plan, you see...




Along with this post's theme of food, we recently made Volkornbrot: whole rye sourdough bread. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have arrived.

Remember that post last fall where I showed the pictures of our sourdough bread and said I just needed to make rye sourdough before I would feel absolutely victorious in the bread-baking scene? Well, the day has come. And it is sweet, er, sour. :)

Here is a picture of the bread:


This is the real stuff. None of that fluffy white business here. Just dense, delectable goodness. Luke and I really like sourdough, and we really, really like this bread!

To finish off the post, here are some pictures of our wee one:



Can you see his curly Mohawk? He's just out of the bath.



Having fallen asleep in Daddy's arms.



Luke likes to capture these moments of me and Peter in the mornings. Peaceful, sleepy, bliss.
Oh! I almost forgot! I also caught some footage of Peter crawling today. Here it is:






And because I'm a proud parent, you get another one:

On the move!

Peter has started crawling! Army crawling, at least. He inches across the floor by pulling himself with his two arms. We've tried to get a video of it, but he wasn't cooperating. We'll try again soon and see if we can get it posted on here. We'll have to do it soon though, because just last night Luke got down on all fours to play doggie with him, and Peter was getting up on his knees too! It was so adorable.

Peter has also cut his first two teeth! The two bottom ones, of course. They're not really up far enough to get a picture with the camera, but that, too, should be coming soon. They decided to come in with a bang, giving Peter his first miserable cold into the bargain. Poor baby! There's nothing worse than hearing your baby cough. We went to see the doctor yesterday, and luckily he seems to be doing much better today, so hopefully he'll be over it by next week.

He managed to pass his sickness on to his mommy, and so my birthday was a quiet, stay-at-home affair. We ordered pizza, made no-bake cookies, and watched a movie. It was so nice! Luke and I need nothing more for a night of perfect bliss. :)

Now you may be wondering what the deal with the pizza was, after my last post saying Peter was sensitive to gluten. It appears I was mistaken! The weekend I took gluten out of my diet I also added several supplements and pills in, so his improvement could have been due to the pills. However, when I added gluten back in his rash flared up, so I assumed the gluten was the cause and took it out again. Over the next few weeks it kept improving, but would flare up once in a while even though I wasn't eating any gluten. So I decided to be extra-rigorous about making sure I took all the pills and gave him his vitamin D and probiotics as prescribed by the doctor. His rash started to look much better. Then I decided to test gluten again and see if it flared up again. I added it into my diet, and his rash didn't respond! I also added wheat, and nothing for that one either! Woo hoo! His rash is all but gone on his legs and it got much better on his cheek, only to flare up again with his sickness. So we're still working on it, but hopefully it will continue to go away as we keep up the pills.

Here are some pictures of our cutie-pie:



Playing with his new Valentine's Day toy from Grandma Ce Ce and Poppy:



Hanging out on the couch:

Life Changing

Luke and I have recently seen a film that has required us to take a stand and dramatically reform our lives. The film: Bag It. The reform: say no to disposable plastic. The result: an epiphanous feeling akin to the washed-clean relieving one of forgiveness. It feels so good!

But let me back up a little.

One of Luke's graphic design teachers showed Bag It to the class. Luke was so fired up that we bought it and watched it together the next Friday. And Saturday we set off on our first plastic-free grocery shopping endeavor. Not an easy thing in our world as we know it. But a necessary thing, all the same. Because animals are starting off like this:


And ending up like this:


With guts that look like this:


Because humans are fine with throwing away this:

And allowing it to end up like this:


And this:


And even if it seems overwhelming, we've got to start somewhere to start cleaning up our act. So Luke and I took the challenge and are now trying to eliminate disposable plastic from our lives. It isn't easy, and maybe wouldn't even be possible for us if we didn't have a Whole Foods Market in the vicinity. (Hooray for bulk bins!) But we're doing the best we can, and it's amazing how good it feels! Luke put it this way: "It's like I've been walking around with all this wasteful-consumerist guilt because I didn't know how to get rid of it, but now that I have, I feel great! It's like the feeling that comes after repentance!" Ha Ha Ha!

Taking the challenge has endowed us with a new gift of creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and if we don't use plastic, what will we use instead?

The laundry basket has shown its truly useful nature by doubling as a grocery transport. Here Peter is showing off its roomy interior, as he has taken to playing inside it recently while mom gets stuff done:



For produce bags we've switched over to hemp or cotton drawstring. Making some more from cheese cloth is going to be my first sewing project. Sewing intimidates the dickens out of me, but I really want to try.

We also made an interesting discovery. We've recently gathered several cleaning spray bottles that had less-than-safe chemical-laden cleaning liquids in them in an effort to begin baby-proofing the house. Peter's attempts at sitting on his own are getting better and better, which means crawling is just around the corner! Observe:





Anyway, Luke looked at the top of a glass bottle of vinegar we were throwing out (glass recycling center anyone?) and thought it looked about the same as the top of our old bottle of glass cleaner. Sure enough, when he screwed the spray-top onto the vinegar bottle it fit like a glove. Ta Da! Who knew?


And so it goes. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." So we're trying.

Other than that, not much is new. Except that our beautiful baby gets more wonderful every day! And it appears he has a gluten sensitivity. The eczema rash on his cheek and legs got better when I eliminated it from my diet, worse when I re-introduced it, and is getting better again now that it's back out. It's quite possible that he'll grow out of it, but for now at least anything with gluten is a no-go, for mom or baby. This includes such delights as wheat, rye, spelt, barley, and anything made with them. Which has been a very eye-opening thing for our family, as we realized just how much we relied on bread to keep us going. Bountiful Baskets, in addition to my exciting diet of late, has opened our eyes to the wonderful world of fruits and vegetables! And there ain't no goin' back! However, a bread-less life would by a joyless life, so I have been experimenting with rice, buckwheat, and millet flour to make pancakes, muffins, biscuits, and even some yeast bread. The pancakes, muffins, and biscuits have turned out all right, if a bit dense. The yeast bread was a gummy failure. I'll have to keep trying with that one.

It's a shame to say good-bye to glutinous products for awhile. But would you look at that baby?




Anything's possible for a boy like that. :)

Quick Update

Hello! Just had a few pictures to show everyone.

I thought I'd show what we've received in our bountiful baskets these past two weeks for those of you who are interested but agonizing over whether it would be worth it to you or not.

This picture is this week's basket:

1 pineapple

3 grapefruits

1 head of green leaf lettuce

2 crowns of broccoli

1 thing of savoy cabbage

8 roma tomatoes

12 red potatoes

6 pears

9 lemons

7 apples

1 bunch of asparagus

1 bunch of bananas

This one is last week's:

1 pineapple

2 bags of bosc pears

1 bunch of spinach

1 head of green leaf lettuce

6 peppers (dunno if they were serano or anaheim. some were hot, others were not)

3 butternut squashes

7 oranges

1 basket of cherry tomatoes

3 apples

5 kiwis

4 asian pears

1 bunch of asparagus

So as you can see, they change it up quite a bit. It's fun! We have to be creative about trying new meals, but we have eaten all of our basket both times, and we plan on conquering it this week too!

Here's just some recent photos of Peter:

He looks bored here.

ooooooohhhhhh! How sweet!

big smile!

That's all folks!