Life Lately

My coffee is super strong and good this morning so I decided I had enough energy to write a post. It's been a while (I say that every single time), but I'm here!

My last post was Easter so I'll kind of recap what's been going on since then.

Elliot.

Elliot is almost two and a half! Finally and slowly coming out of the terrible twos. Thank God. He still has the occasional tantrum and the strong mindedness will never go away I don't think, but Jack and I think that the worst has passed. Since he is talking more now, so much more, he can tell us what he wants, what he doesn't want (and makes it very clear), what he needs, etc. It's the best to finally be able to fully understand your child! It makes life probably a million times easier. Don't you agree? Before it was a contest between Jack and I to see who could figure out what Elliot was trying to say and it seemed like it was Elliot's challenge to make it more difficult for us. :)

It's amazing how now I can tell him why he can't have something like "Elliot you can't have hot sauce in your food, that's mama's and it's really hot" and he will answer, "Mama's? Elliot no?" The sweetest thing. Or he will say "mama I want candy" (M&M's are his absolute favorite and the only candy he's allowed to eat) at seven thirty in the morning and I'll say "You have to eat food first" and all he says now is "okay" in the sweetest little voice. Like I said, of course there's still the occasional tantrum that will have Jack and I wanting to pull our hair out but it has definitely been so much better.

The messes are still the same and his name is still Elliot "The Tornado" but he now cleans up while singing the clean up song. Most of the time.

We haven't potty trained yet. I really wanted to do this when Elliot was a few months younger but it didn't happen and I'm not going to be hard on myself about it. Such is life and it's not the end of the world. We had it planned for this past weekend but Elliot had what seemed like a mild stomach bug and that would've been a shit fest. Not pretty on carpet. We know he is definitely ready though! He has his own potty and his potty seat, we still don't know which one he prefers but I hope it's the seat because who wants to have to dump the contents of his potty in the toilet?

Jack and I.

If you follow me in Instagram, you know that I have been doing Crossfit for about three months now. I'm going to tell you right now, it is LIFE CHANGING. I wish I would have discovered it sooner. I invited my friend (and mama of Elliot's daycare friend) and her husband over to our house for Elliot's second birthday party and they were talking about their gym. She told me I should try it and let me attend a few classes to see if I liked it. I almost puked on the first class and the first thing her and her husband told me was that it doesn't get any easier, you just get better. I was hooked. I love it. I truly do. Out of everything I have ever done (and said I loved) this is the first time I feel stronger, healthier, better. I love the workouts and although I'm always the last one to finish, I get so much encouragement from the rest of the team to get me to finish. It is the best. I get a little better everyday! I did hurt my knee and I'm taking this week off to let it heal but there's no way I'm giving up. My friend is also always texting me to make sure I'm not going to miss a class and will ask me why I missed it if I do. I need that!

Jack has been so awesome with me on all of this. I usually get home at almost five and he gets home at about four thirty. My class is at five thirty. By the time I get home he already has dinner underway and all I have to do is change into my workout clothes and be on my way. He takes care of the cooking, cleaning AND Elliot. I feel so guilty but he's doing this for me because he knows I need this. I love that he's willing to take on that role while I get in that hour to work out. He doesn't get to work out until late and he doesn't mind and is usually exhausted by the time he's in bed. He's a great man!

We are eating a lot healthier. We always eat healthy but we started a round of Whole30. He is doing this with me in support and I love him for that! It's so incredible to see how even if you think you're eating healthy, all the sugars and carbs that we consume are ridiculous. It's something we are changing even without doing Whole30. It's teaching us to cut unnecessary foods from our diets.

That's what we've been up to so far along with work and a thousand other things. Life is good right now. So good.

I'll leave you with this silly boy.

Have a great Thursday!

Easter Fun

Eek! It's been two months since my last post. Hey, what can I say, life is happening and it's hectic!

First of all, I never got the chance to thank all of you on Facebook and Instagram. I posted that my uncle needed prayers as he was very sick. He was diagnosed with a form of Guillain-Barré syndrome, couldn't move at all and was in unbearable pain. Today he is making a very slow recovery but a recovery nonetheless. He has four small children and I was so afraid and worried! Thank God he is alive and is able to be with his children and wife. He lives Georgia and not knowing what was going on right away was nerve wracking. Thank you all for the prayers!

Our Easter was so nice and relaxing. On Saturday we had our family over and we all made spring rolls. So darn good! If you're interested in knowing more about them, here's a post on them. I gave Easter baskets to my niece and Elliot and saved another one for my brother to take to my other niece. I'm so glad Elliot is able to grow up with our beautiful family. My niece loves him so much and treats him as her little brother, that melts my heart!

The baskets were super simple with cute little toys and things that they would enjoy. Nothing expensive or out of the ordinary. I heard on the radio this morning that parents were gifting their kids passes to Disney and hundreds of dollars and I thought, that's not what this is about! For me it was fun putting them together with stuff I knew they would enjoy.



Sunday was spent in jammies being lazy and it was so nice. I cannot believe this is the third Easter we get to spend with Elliot. Before we had him, Easters were just another day but holidays with kids are so much fun!

I'll leave you with a little throwback up until now. This kid is something else.

I'm working on a "Life Lately" post because so much has been going on! I really want to get back to blogging regularly and hope to do so!

Have a great week!

Elliot is TWO!

Gosh I'm so embarrassed to admit that this year's birthday party was so poorly planned! I did the invitations and never got them printed, I told Jack I would start buying party supplies way in advance and there I was last minute ha!

I was happy with the way it turned out regardless! Elliot loved it! We had originally planned to invite a lot of friends but since I never sent out invitations, I texted it to a few friends last minute. It ended up being family and a couple of friends only which was actually really nice. We had a really good time.

I can't believe my boy is a toddler and going into his twos in full force. He is one strong minded boy but he is so loving. He tells us "I lah you mama" "I lah you dada" and our hearts are in puddles instantly.

He can count from one to ten in English and Spanish and knows all of the ABC's. Books are definitely his thing over anything else. He loves for us to read to him and learns what the pages say and recites some of the words back. His favorite characters are Mickey and Goofy but he loves watching Sofia the First and Doc McStuffins too. ;)

He sings Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider and the Hot Dog song and it's the sweetest thing I've ever seen. He also talks in some sentences and says words I didn't know he knew! I spilled water on his sock a couple of days ago and he tells me "mama, sock wet". Or he tells me "mama, I don't want that", "mama, I wanna play". I love it.

He plays "chucky" with us and chases us around and bites us ha! Thanks to Jack for that one! I love that he plays with his cars and planes and makes the sounds and motions they make. He loves to play "gotchu" and wants us to chase him around while he hides behind the curtains then calls his own name for us to find him. It's so funny.

He still loves bananas and milk, bread and peanut butter, chicken and he can eat edamame like no one's business. He's become a bit of a picky eater but he still eats.

On his actual birthday we gave him a slice of cake and candle. That could have been his party and he would have been happy. He also got calls from family and a video from his cousins singing to him that he still goes back and watches several times a day and now he sings Happy Birthday to himself, including "Happy Birthday dear Elliot". ;)

Let the picture flood begin. Of course, Mickey Mouse was the theme! ;)

His cake was made by my sister in law just like his first birthday cake and it turned out exactly as planned! It tasted so good!

We had burgers and hot dogs of course because hot dog!

Girlfriend needed a manicure but there was no time for that! I got some Mickey Mouse tape at Hobby Lobby and wrapped little flags around the straws.

I made these super simple number twos with a chocolate mold and some free printables I got from Pinterest. I had originally planned on having mickey mouse cookies but that didn't work out so this was plan B!

He was exhausted and fell asleep super early. He had a great time. 

The most important thing for me was that Elliot had fun and he did. He loved having all of his cousins and his friend from daycare there. I'm excited for this year and what's to come!

The Ugly Side of Parenting

I thought I'd give the good ol' blog a dust and share a story with you.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that Jack was out of town for an entire week last week. It was Sunday morning when he left and I thought to myself "I got this" and started the day with a good breakfast for Elliot and I, we played and read and watched cartoons, you know, the normal activities of a weekend.

That night I gave him a bath and he went to sleep only to wake up a million times at night crying. Okay, we've dealt with this a few times now and I blamed night terrors. Monday morning I woke up, set up the monitor and went upstairs to shower. I was done, went back downstairs to finish getting ready then Elliot woke up. He was okay, his normal self on weekday mornings. A sippy full of milk and Mickey Mouse on the TV. When it came time to get him dressed he gave me the hardest time which isn't entirely unusual but we got it done then out the door we went. It wasn't so bad.

Fast forward to a couple of days later, the morning didn't go as usual. I got him dressed after a million attempts and when we went out the door, it took me a good ten minutes to get him in his car seat. He's never been like that before and I couldn't figure out why! "Elliot please sit down we have to go" "No! I want to walk!" "No Elliot, mama needs to go to work, you need to go to daycare" "No! No Luisa!" (Luisa is the girl that greets him in the morning, whom I drop him off with). "Elliot please? Look at the sky, wow it's so pretty!" "Mama look!" "Yes Elliot look! So pretty!" "Can we get in the car seat now?" "No! No! No!" Okay, so again after a good ten minutes I finally was able to strap him in his car seat while he kicked and screamed and cried the entire way there.

We made it and he greeted Luisa, "Hi Luisa!" You win kid. How in the hell was he okay just like that after the shit fest we had a minute earlier? I thought okay cool he's okay and went to work. After work I went to pick him up and to my big surprise he didn't want to come home with me. Awesome! It took me another five minutes to get him out the door, into the car and another five to get him in his seat again. What's happening! Another cry fest ensued. What a great way to be greeted by your two year old when you were stuck in traffic for an hour after an accident on the highway, race to daycare to get him late and he doesn't want to see you!

We got home and it got even better. I made him dinner and he refused to eat. I took his dinner away and he wanted to eat. I gave him his dinner and he didn't want to eat. Rinse and repeat a thousand times after that. After the morning we had, work, traffic, and not being missed, frustration started building up inside of me. I kept texting Jack telling him I was ready to throw his food away. He told me I needed to take a deep breath. You see, Jack and I have had this conversation a few times before, "we can't yell at Elliot (spanking is out of the question for us), it's only our frustration and we need to take a deep breath then deal with it" well that only works sometimes right? Proof of that right here.

I started yelling at him. Ugly. "What do you want then!" at the top of my lungs. "Tell me! Do you want to eat? Do you not want to eat?!" Ugh. I then got down on my knees and before I knew it I was ugly crying in front of my son. He stopped and stared at me. I let it out then realized what I was doing. I took a deep long breath, gathered myself and after a couple of minutes knelt down again. I hugged him and told him he needed to eat his dinner and he sat down like nothing ever happened and ate and chit chatted with me. What happened?!

It was me. He felt my tension as soon as I picked him up. He felt it in the morning when I was rushing to try to get us out of the door because Jack wasn't home to help me. He felt all of that. It was my frustration to deal with, not his. He also missed his daddy, a lot, and probably couldn't understand why he wasn't there after I explained he had left on a plane. The week went a bit better and he slept better too. I also realized that's not the kind of parent I want to be. I know we all have those moments, but I want to try my hardest to be the best parent I can be and to deal with what I am feeling before I deal with my son. I felt horrible for yelling at him like that. He's going through a phase too. I won't let him get away with bad behavior either but I will be firm, not ugly.

After Jack was back (and all was right in the world again) that Saturday morning we were getting ready to run errands. Elliot was playing in our closet while I was getting ready. He had Goofy and Mickey with him and I heard him yelling at them saying "You're going to time out!" then he sat them both down and yelled at them again "You're in time out!" Wow. He got that from us. From me. That's not the kind of ideas I want to him to have! I get it, he's a kid, but his brain is like a little sponge and everything he learns is coming from his environment, from his parents. Jack and I had the conversation again and just last night I confessed what had happened while he was gone. I hadn't told him about my ugly crying or the ugly yelling. I didn't want him to think I couldn't deal with it while he was gone, but I know that we are parents and we are learning everyday and I know he will never judge me. We needed to talk about it. We want to be the best parents we can be, just like everyone else, and we will make mistakes, just like everyone else. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders and we even slept much better, including Elliot! :)

Moral of the story: Parenting is hard. Really hard. And this is only the beginning for us; the tip of the iceberg if you will. We are barely scraping off the top of the cap of parenthood. We learn every single day as his little life is taking place right before our eyes and it's beautiful, and frustrating, and scary and amazing. All at the same time, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Sexting │ Just Kidding!

When I met Jack I remember he hated texting. One of the reasons why we even talked on the phone was because he texted me asking if he could call instead ha!

Now when we are both at work that's pretty much what we do all day! When time permits of course but it is fun! He finds the funniest ways to tell me things and I thought it would be fun to show them to you guys! I've been saving them for a long time now so here are some of them. I hope you find them as funny as we do (or did when we sent them) ha! We have a very simple sense of humor as you'll see. :)

When we forgot that we were having a Crockpot dinner and I cuss in Spanish.

Chick-Fil-A if you hadn't figured it out yet. ;)

Then there are the sappy ones. This one was when we switched daycares for Elliot and I was a complete mess. Right along with him.

How Jack told me he's ready for another baby. And how badly he wants a dog and how badly I don't. :)

I wonder if he came out of the bathroom dancing?

He understands my love for Jennifer Lopez.

Cheesy sweetness.

I think we could talk in Emoji all day if there were emojis for everything, they need to get on that asap.

Then there are the times when we are a little bored at work.

Auto correct really does sock. ;)

And our talk about boobs and food. 

He seriously always makes my day with stuff like this. I hope you at least chuckled? Or smiled? Have a great day!

Holiday Survival Kit

The holidays can be stressful sometimes, or always. Ranging from what gifts do we get to what do we cook, you know what I'm talking about. Then the fact that Thanksgiving is over and here we are with Christmas and New Year's right around the corner doesn't help! Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays but I definitely think we need a little help to keep us going during these times.

So why not put together a Holiday Survival Kit? I included a his and hers with the help of Jack! We brainstormed and came up with a few things that we think are necessary to get through the holidays!

Hers-

First of all, a good sangria is a must, or any beverage of your preference for that matter. It doesn't hurt to sip on it while cooking, baking or having a house full of guests. ;)

Cute shoes to do any last minute errands and to dress up for the day. These booties are perfect with a pair of skinnies and your favorite sweater!

After running around in those shoes, cozy socks are a must. I have at least three pairs and wear them around the house 24/7 during the Winter since Jack and I (and Elliot) never wear shoes inside the house.

A cute nail polish color. Red is timeless and perfect for Christmas and New Years. Elegant and festive! Plus having it on hand for last minute touch ups is a must. You know that washing all those dishes (and dealing with a toddler) tends to chip nails! Maybe paper plates this year? ;)

A few extra Target gift cards as last minute gifts. If you know me you know I love Target as pretty much everyone does and you just can't go wrong with a gift card.

Mistletoe because you cannot forget to kiss your hubs, or your kids and family every time you're under it. I see it as a little reminder of how much you love them, precious family time and I'll take any excuse to kiss my hubby. :)

His-

Onto Jack's list. I think he has the perfect little list for men. As I, drinks for him are necessary, and right now his favorite beer is Heineken so a six pack or two are perfect. Hey, a beer or two never hurt anyone. 

You need something to open them with right? This bullet bottle opener couldn't be more perfect for him. He's guy's guy and loves to go shooting, this is a cool little gadget to keep handy.

He also said Target gift cards as a last minute gift. He knows that anyone and everyone loves Target! Who doesn't?

A comfy pair of slippers. As I mentioned, we don't wear shoes in the house and although he wears socks, the floor can get cold. These are nice to walk around in.

A stress ball is a nice little stocking stuffer if you ask me. Or you could even have a bowl with a couple for everyone! Kidding, but using it if you're stressed out will help!

Last but not least, an extra set of lights. Jack is the type of guy who keeps all the extra light bulbs in case one goes out. We decorated like the Griswald's this year and having the lights go out is unacceptable. ;)

I will be honest though, I always have such a hard time finding things I know Jack will like. Not that he's picky (well kind of) but I'm always on the lookout for stuff I know he will love and wear or use. If this is you, then you need to head over to Man Crates. It is such a cool website where you can find really awesome gifts for your dad, brother, son, husband or friend! You can even personalize them! The coolest part is that they come in a crate that the guy has to open with a crowbar, it doesn't get any manlier than that. I would love to give this as a gift but it can also be a nice little survival kit for any occasion. And they have zombie survival crates! Go check it out!

Have a great weekend!

Crockpot Lasagna

I've said a few times before that Crockpot recipes are our thing right now. It is so easy for me to prepare everything the night before and throw it in the Crockpot to cook all day and dinner is ready when we get home. It's the best feeling when I don't have to cook after working all day. Plus one pot and a couple of dishes to clean isn't a big deal! We can then sit down and watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Such oldies that we are over here. I also get to spend more time with my little family and that's always a win.

I got this recipe off of my handy dandy phone app and wanted to try it! I still have the ingredients for a Crockpot Jambalaya that I plan to make on Friday. I'll let you know how that one goes! I will say that since the cooking time for this is 5 hours, I made this one on Sunday and not during the week. Any Crockpot recipe I make during the week has a cook time of 7-8 hours otherwise it will burn by the time we get home!

For the lasagna you'll need-

8 whole wheat lasagna noodles
1 pack of ground turkey- I use 85/15 (if you like it meaty use the whole pack otherwise use half)
1 tsp Italian seasoning
A jar of pasta sauce sauce- I use Wild Oats organic marinara pasta sauce.
1/3 cup of water
Mushrooms- this recipe calls for canned mushrooms but I used fresh and sauteed them in a little Olive oil.
15oz fat free ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded skim milk mozzarella cheese- I didn't use the entire amount, probably 1 cup.

Brown the turkey meat and stir in the Italian seasoning, set aside. I sprayed the inside of the pot with olive oil and layered 4 noodles. You can break them to make them fit. Add the ground turkey, a layer of sauce, mushrooms, water and cheeses. Repeat. 

Set on low and cook for 5 hours. Voila! Dinner is ready. It's not the healthiest but it is warm, rich and comforting! I think anything having to do with pasta is comforting. ;)





Hope you enjoy it!