Hello my friends!
Share some random snaps from life in today’s post. First some very important news: We got new placemats for Christmas.
What do you think?
Love the color – our old ones were a solid navy blue and these brighten the room up a bit, plus they’re a lot easier to clean/wipe down than the old ones (our old ones had a lot of holes as part of the woven pattern). which was very annoying during spills).
Pictured on our plates was a variation of my Maple Glazed Salmon recipe – yum, yum.
Apparently the kids refused to eat any of it and ended up both randomly eating other stuff – sigh. I’ve been particularly frustrated lately with how picky they are, especially giant.
Please note in the picture above her plate: 1) a Reese’s (I just spelled it Riese’s and had to correct it!) peanut butter cup, a large buttered bun and some runner beans. I give up/whatever.
At the very least, she really likes a lot of veggies like green beans, raw carrots (NOT cooked), and raw peppers.
(And yes, we do serve dessert with dinner instead of waiting until after or doing some kind of “you have to eat xx to get xx” kind of situation that only leads to massive power struggles and teaches kids not to feed their own hunger -/Hearing satiety signs. Wes doesn’t know desserts exist yet, so he doesn’t get any. 🙂 )
Another night, Matt and I had some enchiladas (I forgot an after picture, but it’s this recipe I linked minus sweet potatoes and plus ground beef):
The kids had a deconstructed version of the mostly raw ingredients.
Wes had some guacamole (which he LOVES), cheese (which he never happened to like and didn’t eat), black beans (don’t like those either and didn’t eat them), some of the cooked ground beef filling (HUGE fan of that we gave him more ) and raw peppers (much better accepted than cooked ones).
And yes, he’s still bottle drinking at 20 months.
We’re working on it – we’ve switched his milk to open or straw cups at meal times for the past week and now only bottle before nap and before bed but not sure how to proceed from those two bottle opportunities.
He’s way more attached to it than Riese ever was! For her, we switched from a bottle to a straw cup for milk right at 12 months and she was basically like whatever.
Wes has been drinking water from a straw cup since he was 1 with no problem, but he just doesn’t drink much milk unless it’s from a bottle, and not much milk = wakes up in the middle of the night or crazy early. sooo yes tips?
Nevertheless! For giant on enchilada night, she had cashews, crackers, cheese, black beans, and peppers. All things I knew she would eat except the black beans which I thought I would try but as expected she didn’t eat.
I think I also gave her some rice afterwards because she was still hungry. How much food she wants for dinner varies, and simple meals do best.
One thing I discovered, however, is that Riese LOVES tuna salad sandwiches. I always make it according to this recipe: Tuna Salad without Mayo.
I love tuna salad so I always enjoy eating it! Sometimes when I’m making it for her in addition to me, I add a little mayo or plain Greek yogurt to tone down the spiciness of the Dijon mustard for her.
I’ve also been getting into chicken salad sandwiches lately—I whipped up a batch of my cranberry chicken salad with walnuts for lunch last week because we had a lot of leftover rotisserie chicken. Yummy!
Also, I’m slowly starting to build up my running base in anticipation of the DC Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon coming up in mid-March!
Earlier this week I had an amazing 5 mile run with my friend Katie – we did a loop from our neighborhood that included part of the Mt Vernon Trail which I always love.
Katie and I have been running 3 miles every Monday morning right after school for months, but starting this week we’re going to be doing 5+ miles.
She’s also making the race, so luckily she was down for a few extra miles!
My friend Kathleen and I will be doing our long runs together but she has been out of town for the last month. She will be back next week and we need to get going as soon as possible!
I’ve run a lot of half marathons (18 to be exact!) but the last one I did was in 2016 so it’s been a long time since I’ve done one and I’m a little nervous about it!
(I just took a trip up the blog memories trail to see when and where my last half was and apparently I burst into tears in 2016: I ran the Charleston half marathon with Matt in January, got a very fast Rock ‘n’ DC Half Marathon in March and unexpectedly ran the Middlebury Maple Run Half Marathon in May as part of a blog trip! Wow. A whole different lifetime for me!)
Kathleen and I were supposed to be doing the Rock ‘n’ Roll DC half in March 2020 and were mostly trained for it (we made it 10 miles) but then it got cancelled.
sooo yes This will be my first half marathon in 7 years since having kids (Giant in November 2017 and Wes in June 2021)! Crazy!
I will keep you updated on my training! My plan is to run 3 days a week – two of those will be right after school with Mom and friends from Riese’s school, and then Kathleen and I will be doing one long run a week starting next week.
The other days I’ll be doing yoga to try and stay limber amid the extra running 🙂
And that’s all I have for you today! Have a nice weekend and see you Tuesday again!