70 degrees and 70 mph winds

Here we are playing at the park and enjoying the spring like 70 degree weather…about 6 hours before 70 mph winds and the tornado sirens started. 

Gotta enjoy that unpredictable Missouri weather!

Got Milk?

We do.   I wanted to know how much milk Tyler drinks in a week so I decided to keep track this past week.  We bought 2 gallons of milk after breakfast last Saturday and we have enough to last him tonight until tomorrow morning. So, Tyler drinks 2 gallons of whole milk by himself in a week! I knew he drank alot, but am still blown away at the amount. He loves his milk!

Culinary Exploration: February

Month: February

Food: Pomegranate

History: The pomegranate is a very ancient fruit and even mentioned in the Book of Exodus. The name "pomegranate" derives from Latin pōmum "apple" and grānātus "seeded" (from grānum "grain"). This has influenced the common name for pomegranate in many languages. It is native to the region of  Persia and was introduced into Latin America and California by Spanish settlers in 1769.

Description: The pomegranate is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing between five and eight meters tall. It is between a lemon and a grapefruit in size, 5–12 cm in diameter with a rounded hexagonal shape, with thick reddish skin and around 600 seeds. Each seed has a surrounding water-laden pulp  — the aril  — ranging in color from white to deep red or purple. This is the edible part of the fruit.

Taste Test: It is quite a process to get into the fruit and get the seeds out to eat.  We all enjoyed this fruit. It was sweet, with a little tang.  They do have a small seed inside that you eat, they kept getting stuck in my teeth, but the flavor of the fruit was good.  I would definitely buy the Pom juice I’ve seen at the store now and understand why it’s so expensive.  It’s alot of work to get the juice out and would take quite a few pomegranates to get a full glass.

Before

After

We did a little research and found the best way to get the seeds out is to cut the pom in half and then bang out the seeds with a spoon over a bowl of water so you don’t squish the delicate seeds.

Tyler really liked the pomegranate.  He probably ate half of it himself – which is alot of little seeds.

Favorites

We’ve been quite busy the last couple weeks.  Below are some of our favorite shots.

Jeremy and Tyler got me a fancy cake for my birthday.

We have some old sun glasses that he loves to play with.  I had to be quick to catch this shot of them on his face.  Cool dude!

Last week it was almost 70 degrees so we were able to take a wagon ride to the park 3 days in a row!  He loves riding in the wagon and he can go down all the slides by himself now.

  

He’s finally big enough to wear his Cardinals hat.  He kept it on for a couple minutes, but of course when I got the camera out he didn’t want to wear it anymore.

Sick baby update

Last Saturday was a scary day.  Tyler woke up with a fever and a wheezing cough.  So, we called the doctor and was able to get in right away.  After receiving one breathing treatment the doctor said his lungs sounded better.  Before the treatment he said he couldn’t hear any air moving in the right lung.  We did one more treatment in the office and also discovered he had a double ear infection.  So, they sent us home with 4 prescriptions!  He’s been taking albuterol every 4 hours, prednisolone twice a day, cefdinir (antibiotic for the ear infection) once a day and budesonide once a day.  The albuterol and budesonide have to be given through a nebulizer, which he’s not a big fan of, but I think he’s finally getting used to it now and doesn’t cry as much. 

Our follow up appointment was good this morning.  Tiny ear infection left and his breathing is sounding much better.  So now we are working on a step down treatment of the albuterol to see if we still need it and the budesonide once a day for about a week.  Hopefully he will get better in the next week and we won’t have to do the treatments anymore at all.

He’s returning to normal, eating better and not so grumpy as he was earlier in the week.  Hopefully his sleeping in increase as well and he’ll stop waking up at 6:30am (normally he’ll sleep till 8).  Momma doesn’t like getting up that early.

Bubbles

Poor Guy

Let me do it!

We are working on letting Tyler feed himself.  More and more he wants to do it, which means, we’ve been doing a lot of cleaning.  Today, he actually did pretty good, here he is in action.

Video Chat

So the last two days, Tyler and I have been video chatting with our good friends Amanda and Ethan, who live in Florida.  The boys have fun looking at each other and showing each other where their heads are. 

Ethan’s close up.  There we are in the upper right corner.

Eventful Morning

Jeremy woke up this morning and couldn’t take a deep breath without pain so we woke up Tyler and made a trip to urgent care.  Two hours, an x-ray, and two prescriptions later it is determined that Jeremy luckily did not crack a rib, just bruised it pretty bad. The doctor prescribed him a muscle relaxer, hydrocodine, and told him to take that long with a ton of Advil.    He said there’s really nothing you can do if your ribs are bruised or even cracked but rest.

So, now both of my boys are sleeping and all is quiet.

Dr. visit and new tricks!

We had our follow up appointment today and the doctor said Tyler's lungs sounds perfect and his ears look clear. Yay! No more infections. We'll see if we can make it through the winter without anymore (fingers crossed).

Over the past couple weeks, Tyler is learning to do more things on his own. Right now he's really into feeding himself with the spoon or fork, even though he hasn't quite figured out that if he turns the spoon over, all the food falls out. We've all been sick in January too, so he now knows how to blow his nose and throw the kleenex in the trash.
He just learned this trick yesterday.
We are working on getting him to sit down on the couch and not stand, but he can get down from the couch by himself without falling. Today, everything that you saw on the back of the couch is gone...we're hoping that will deter him from wanting to stand.

Cruisin’

The last week Jeremy and I went on a cruise to escape the cold Missouri weather. Obviously our plan didn't work too well because we came back to today's blizzard warning and a possible 20 inch snowfall. 

Our five day cruise had two stops, Calica and Cozumel, Mexico.  The weather was perfect and actually could’ve been warmer.  Here is our boat, the Carnival Elation.  It was a little smaller than the last boat we were on, but everything else was pretty similar. 

Here’s a picture we took in our room on formal night.

Our first stop was Calica.  Here we went and saw the ruins at Tulum, went snorkeling in a cave, ate at a delicious Mexican restaurant on a private beach and snorkeled again at a private lagoon.  We went through a company called Edventures instead of Carnival for this excursion and that turned out to be a great idea.  We were able to get to each location about an hour before the big crowds arrived and we only had 6 people in our group.

Here’s some pictures from the Mayan ruins at Tulum.

Beautiful bluffs and beach at Tulum.

This huge iguanas were everywhere!

This is the view from the private beach restaurant we ate at.

Here’s a picture of the Dos Ojos cave we went snorkeling in.  The water was unbelievable clear.  It was amazing and Jeremy could’ve stayed there all day exploring.

We also some some scuba divers swimming around way below us.

At Cozumel we boarded a catamaran and went snorkeling again at the local reef. Here’s an underwater shot we thought turned out really cool.

Tyler stayed with Jeremy's parents and got to play with his cousins almost everyday.  We had a great time on the cruise, but unfortunately Tyler got sick with an ear infection and bronchiolitis (which is similar to bronchiolitis, but only occurs in children under 2).  He’s taking antibiotics twice a day and using a nebulizer every 4-6 hours as needed.  He’s doing better now and we’re down to using the nebulizer only 3 times/day.  I don’t think he minds the mask, but he’s not a fan of having to sit still for 10 minutes.