scott's party input

scott got home around 10pm last night from class, and as i was telling him that i had started brainstorming time for matsy's party, he very helpfully said, "i was kind of thinking a south pole theme.  bring in a couple dozen penguins.  some artic icecaps."

to which i replied, "oh that's good.  except that arctic means north.  antarctic would be south."

"it's ice, the penguins won't know the difference.  maybe some polar bears, too.  hmm, except that polar bear eat penguins."

me, "also north, so no they don't."

scott, "what, really?  you always see polar bears and penguins together.  they don't eat penguins?"

quick google break in which i confirm that i am correct - polar bears only live in the north, penguins only in the south, and that polar bears eat seals, not penguins.

scott, "well then, we won't have to worry about the penguins being eaten!"

so helpful, this husband of mine.

party planning

matson turns one (can you believe it??) in a mere two and a half month!  being a planner, i've already started brainstorming what kind of first birthday party i want for him.  philosophically, though, i'm not into crazy huge extravagant themed events.  okay really, i'm not into themes in any facet of life - even with his nursery i really just wanted a cozy, cheery space and decorated it accordingly.  nor do i have any intention of doing a big birthday party every year for him (or any kid) - i think a big celebration for the milestone birthday like 1, 5, 10, 13, etc sounds good, with the in-between years just being fun, special days.

but i digress.  what do i want in a first birthday party?  i want it to celebrate matson making it to a year and all of the firsts that we got to enjoy with him this year.  i want it to be fun, festive, cheerful, but not stressful, over-the-top, or expensive.  i want it to be a celebration of his life, not a venue to get more toys.  i want it to be personal and colorful and exciting and to be a way to show our friends and family all of the things we love about our little man.  he's curious, and active, and sweet, and charges head-first at life.  he's our little dinosaur!  (he actually responds to dino as much as he does to his own name - haha.)

so ... how do we get from here to there?  we have friends over all the time, and while that's fun and all, i want to make this somehow separate from that.  some pinteresting, some googling, and then i discovered young house love's post about their girls' first birthday party.  perfect!  it's festive, it's personal, it's cheery and fun, and it's theme-free.

my takeaway ideas from yhl:

• post our matson-by-the-month pictures for viewing pleasure
• balloons!  colorful balloons!  (okay, i had this one down without them.)
• finish his first year video before the party to share with everyone
• share foods that are special to us - like pizza since that was my major first trimester craving, or steamed peas since that's matson's favorite food.  (hmm, might need to figure out a more fun food for him!)
• work the dino thing in there somewhere fun but subtle ... maybe little plastic dinos as a party favor for the kiddos?
• start a simple tradition that we can carry forward even in non-party years

so much brain food!  now to go get my real dino some real food.

food waste friday #1

my friend kelly and i decided to take the frugal girl up on her invitation to join her on food waste fridays, wherein you clean out your fridge/pantry each week and take a picture of the food that has gone bad that you have to toss.  the idea is that by taking a picture and sharing it, you'll be motivated to waste less food - and also that you'll be going through your fridge regularly enough that you'll find food to use before you waste it.  perfect in keeping with my #7 resolution to finally get my grocery budget under control!
anyone else care to join us on this endeavor??

without further ado:

in sum: a few random black olives from a looooong time ago, half a container of homemade pesto from one of my sisters-in-law (it was so good, too!  darn me), a bit of vanilla yogurt still lingering from my friend alison's visit when mats was 6 weeks old, some gravy from thanksgiving, half of a lime, a bunch of cilantro (let's be honest, who can ever finish one of these bunches??), one crunchy taco shell that i was going to save but that got cracked when i was wedging it back into the pantry, and the saddest part: most of a container of goat cheese.  (i got two containers from whole foods as a topping option for grilled pizza bar for tapestry lunch a few weekends ago, we used one, and while i tried mightily to use this one on subsequent dinners, it was blue and just smelled off this evening when i went to use it for salad.)

really, not nearly as bad as it could have been!  i did discover a few lurkers in the back corners of my fridge, though, so hopefully i can stay on top of it and have a good showing next week!

(this is also a good motivator to get my kitchen cleaned up!)

quinoa would insist you call it dude

it should be no surprise that my personal favorite resolution is always one to do with cooking.  i made a chicken stew with butternut squash and quinoa (via pinterest) last night that was yummy, but oh so time consuming!  (i nixed the kalamata olives in the recipe because i'm a midwestern girl who only likes generic canned black olives.  it was still good.)
in case you were curious about how to best prepare butternut squash, a handy tutorial can be found here.  (i think part of why my stew was so time consuming was that i steamed my squash on the stovetop and it took forever - plus i needed the same pot to cook my chicken.  steaming it in the microwave and simultaneously poaching my chicken on the stovetop would speed things up mightily.  plus, not having to look up a tutorial on prepping squash.)

also, in case you are curious about quinoa, i found this little gem.  personal favorite quote, "if it were a movie, quinoa would star a flip-flop wearing jeff bridges and insist you call it dude."  the page does have some handy tips on cooking and recipes in addition to a few funny paragraphs about how awesome quinoa is.

in addition to last night's stew, i also set aside some nice steamed squash cubes for the dino.  he needed an early bedtime last night and thus didn't get to try any, but lunch today for sure.  he's been doing an awesome job of feeding himself lately.  mum mums, puffs, fried banana slices, oatmeal from a spoon, bits of dirt off of the floor ...

___

unrelatedly, i went with a friend yesterday to a local cloth diaper store that's having a big 1/2 off sale, and while i didn't get any diapers, i did have some good finds!  my personal favorite was a dino piggy bank in blue for $10 - so cute and so perfect.

biggest kind of splurgey purchase was a super duper baby/kid carrier for hiking (the deuter kid comfort iii) for $140 ... originally $280 there (or $288 on amazon or $299 at rei).  a lot of money that i hadn't necessarily planned on spending at this point, but such a smokin' deal on a great product!  it's apparently one of the lightest carriers on the market, but really nice and padded with good storage space, and mats loved the vantage point on our test walk last night!  snowshoeing and hiking, here we come!

i also got him a pair of babybanz for $7, a new swim diaper for $6, and christmas and birthday gifts for kinley for $15.  whew!

matson's resolutions

matson confided his resolutions to me, by the way.

1. to be more active.  he'd really like to work on walking and running this year.
2. to communicate better.  he'd like to start by saying real words and maybe even work up to short sentences!

in the meantime, i just want the little man to get better - he started running a fever on saturday afternoon.  it started while we were at nu's gamewatch, but has been 102-103* first thing in the morning both yesterday and today.  we've been keeping him dosed up on tylenol and advil and it's helping - he's a little more fussy than normal, but hasn't been lethargic at all since that first afternoon (when he spent a good half hour just laying on my leg, which if you've ever met him is wildly and completely and totally unusual), no other symptoms, and with meds his temp is staying around 99*.  since it is responding to meds and it's a long weekend, i haven't taken him to a doctor yet, but i think i'll give them a call tomorrow if he still wakes up with a fever in the morning.

of course our health insurance changed yesterday so that preventive appointments are 100% covered, but sick visits we pay in full (up to our annual max of $4500 or something like that - it's a high deductible health savings plan, which has a super low monthly cost and should work well for us since we're rarely sick).  i might see if his doctor's office would be willing to make the visit his 9 month appointment, since he has that scheduled for next friday anyway.  or even better, that he would heal up today!