I love Fall

What's not to love about Fall? Temperature cooling, leaves changing colors...not that any of that happens here, but hey. That's not what excites me about Fall (though maybe it would if I lived somewhere where it happened). What excites me about Fall is the new television season. Wahoo! Something good to watch every night! And yes, I do watch too much TV when the Fall season starts....I can't help it! Heroes, Pushing Daisies, ANTM, Ugly Betty, The Office, Fringe. Fringe! Has anyone else seen that show? So good. And I've finally seen Chuck, which was also very good. Oooh, and Samantha Who starts soon...yikes, so much TV. I just love it though. Let's have no more strikes this year!

Grant Hates Showers

Grant protesting my shower.

Silly child. Grant seriously hates it when I take showers. It doesn't matter how good a mood he's in when I get in the shower, he freaks out as soon as the water is on and the curtain is shut. I'm not exaggerating when I say he cries every single time I get in the shower, unless John is home. He'll be napping and he get in the shower and he'll start to cry. What gives? Today he was in the happiest, smiliest mood, but not even sixty seconds into my shower he started to wail. This kid doesn't just cry when I shower, he SCREAMS. Screams bloody murder. It's ridiculous. I don't know if it's that he doesn't like the sound of the water or he just doesn't like for me to have five minutes to myself to get clean, but he just doesn't like it. If it weren't so dang frustrating it might be comical.

The problem is, dealing with a fussy Grant makes me want to go bake some of these:



Not a good temptation...if I go make myself cookies every time I get frustrated, I'll not just never lose this baby weight, I'll end up the size of a whale. Sigh. I love love love cookies.

Go Cubbies!

The Nelsen household is very excited today....the Chicago Cubs clinched the NL Central division. Woo hoo! Our new blogger template is in honor of them, hopefully we will be able to leave it up until October when the Cubs win the World Series! Sorry Dodgers (gag, no offense Liz), sorry Angels, sorry even to Tampa Bay (I'd actually like to see them win if the Cubs don't), but it's gonna be the Cubbies this year! 2008 marks the 100 year anniversary of the Cubs last World Series title, so it's a perfect year for them to finally do it.

What's been going on...

Things have not been terribly exciting around here lately, but here's the latest. About three weeks ago, we all got colds...not a big deal for me, John, or Andrew, but poor little Grant is another story. His cold turned into bronchiolitis and he's still trying to get better. He has a horrible cough and is so congested...it's just sad! And he has such a hard time eating because he can barely breath. Poor little guy. We've been to the doctor a few times, and yesterday the doc said he's gotten to the point where we need to breathing treatments (I guess it's a good thing we already have a nebulizer...). Grant does NOT enjoy these breathing treatments, to say the least. He hates having that mask over his face and screams the whole time we do it. So sad.

This is the only time he didn't freak out during a breathing treatment--good job Grant!

In more sad news, Grant had quite the spill today. I took the boys out to the playground (nice weather today, only 70 degrees!) and as we were walking back, I let Andrew push Grant in the stroller. It's a small, light stroller, and I was walking next to Andrew the whole time to make sure he didn't go too fast or anything. Before I could react, however, Andrew tried to drive the stroller over the side of a little hill, and it tipped over. Grant face planted it into the dirt and was SO upset. The poor little guy had dirt all over his face, and in his mouth and nose. Yes, I feel like the worst mother ever (and sadly, that is not the worst bad mom experience I've had in the past few months, but the other incidents are too embarrassing to share).

Andrew is as hilarious as ever. When my parents were here a couple of weeks ago, they told Andrew that he gets to go see them for Christmas, and that we'll open presents and go see the train. Now every day (at least once) Andrew will say "Go see grandma, grandpa, open presents, see train, yay!" It's quite adorable. Sometimes his talking is just so cute that I can't help but laugh, and he'll crinkle his nose and say "What's so funny?" It's hilarious.

We also made an amazing discovery the other night at dinner. We were having these delicious wraps (with, by the way, the best homemade guacamole ever) and we discovered that Andrew LOVES fresh spinach. Whoulda thought? He was devouring it like Popeye does, it was crazy. We kept having to tell him he had to eat some of the other things before he could have more.

In happy Grant news, we are excited that he has started to roll over...it's so cute, though I can't believe he's getting that old already. What's funniest is when he tries to roll over while in his swing or something. He gets so mad when he can't! I'm hoping he'll sit up soon, because it will make things so much easier. We also started him on solids yesterday (happy 4 months baby Grant!) and he wasn't the biggest fan. I didn't think I was going to start him so early, because it was pretty pointless with Andrew when we started that early. But since my milk supply is so low, I figured if he were getting a little nutrition from solids, maybe we would be able to keep exclusively breastfeeding.

And that's the past couple of weeks in a nutshell. I adore my boys. :)

Grant's first experience eating solids:

First bite...

He's not sure what he thinks...

Ewwww, carrots!

And so he spits it all out.

Please don't make me eat any more!

My First Tart

For my birthday, John got me an incredible book called The Professional Pastry Chef, and I love it. It's over 1000 pages long and has a recipe for every pastry you can imagine. While my parents were here I made my first pastry from the book, Raspberry Lemon Tart. I of course did not eat any, but it was still really fun to make for John and my parents. Tarts are fun and the tart dough is so delicious!



Now what to make next....

Texarkana: It's Twice as Nice! Or something...

This past weekend John and I (sans kiddos! Thank you for staying with the boys Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Chris!) stayed in the thriving metropolis of Texarkana, Texas/Arkansas (though our hotel was in Texas). Originally, John was supposed to have a softball tournament there on Saturday, but it got cancelled. We had already paid for our hotel room and my parents had already come to watch the boys, so we went anyway. Now, we knew there wouldn't be a whole lot to see/do in Texarkana, but there was even less than we had imagined (we laughed when we drove into town and saw that the water tower said "Texarkana: It's twice as nice!"). So, since we had all Saturday to explore, we drove to Shreveport, Louisiana, which was a little over an hour away. The drive there was neat, mostly because we had never been to Arkasnsas or Louisiana before. Both states were pretty much how I had always pictured them....and now I know for sure that I want to add both places to my list of states I don't want to live in (no offense). Everything was nice and green, but it was kind of....hillbilly-ville. I know, I'm mean. Anyway, when we got to Shreveport we explored the Red River district, walked around the boardwalk (hooray for funnel cake) and had just a nice, relaxing time. We decided to check out the Mardi Gras museum (which was closed, sadly) and then just drove around the city for awhile. We found a really cool cemetery, the kind you expect to see in the South. The higlight of the cemetery visit was when I walked through a gigantic fire ant hill and got stung several times on my right foot, because I was smart enough to wear flip flops (and also smart enough to not pay attention to the fact that I was about to walk through a fire ant hill). Go me! We also found several old Victorian houses and some great churches, but because it was a Saturday afternoon, everything was closed. We found the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, where the likes of Elvis and Hank Williams performed, but it too was closed.

After seeing pretty much all we could find in the downtown Shreveport area, we decided to go see a movie and have dinner. We had no clue where to eat (not knowing anyone who had ever been to Shreveport before), so we just picked something that came up in our GPS. The name of the restaurant was Ernest's Orleans Restaurant, and when we drove up, it didn't look particularly spectacular. Once we walked in, however, we felt really stupid because it was a fairly nice restaurant and we were incredibly underdressed. We were trying to decide whether or not to leave when the maitre'd came back to seat us. He kind of gave us a look, and then walked us back through two dining rooms to a patio and said "Now you can see the lights of Shreveport while you eat." We knew what he was really saying was "This is where we seat the riffraff." because the lights of Shreveport ain't too spectacular. Anyway, we were still really embarrassed about being so underdressed, and debated about trying to sneak out without anyone noticing us. When our waiter asked us if it was our first time there, we told him it was our first time in Louisiana and he replied "I can tell, you have it written all over your faces." Huh. Anyway, I'm really glad we decided to stay and eat there because the food was phenomenal. John had trout (he says it's the best fish he's ever had) and I had some of the most amazing steak I've ever tasted. Everything was good, the potatoes, the bread, and the chocolate caramel cake we had for dessert. YUM! It's really too bad that we found such an amazing restaurant in a city we won't likely be back to...

On Sunday we slept until 10am again (SOOOOO nice! Two days in a row I got ten straight hours of sleep....no offense to darling little Grant, but it was so nice to have that break) and checked out a few Texarkana sights on our way out of town. I of course got my requisite picture of me standing in two different states at the same time. We got to see the only Post Office that is in two states, pretty cool. And that was about it for Texarkana. We had a good time, getting to relax and sleep in, not having to worry about the kids. I don't so much feel the need to ever return to Texarkana, but I'm glad we went. Now I see why these central Texans say "Ohhh, East Texas", like it's a whole other country or something. And we adore our boys, but this little break was much needed.

Now for some pictures...

Tag!

So Morgan tagged me, and this particular tag is a photo tag. Here goes...

The rules: The rules are you have to take ten pictures of the following things. And you have to do it right away. No straightening, cleaning or wiping your child's nose. Then you tag five others.

1. The kitchen sink

Of course, by now there are tons of dishes in the sink....I should be doing them instead of blogging, but that's no fun.

2. The toilet(s)

Andrew and Grant's bathroom...

Our bathroom...

3. The laundry room
4. The fridge

Wow, that's pretty full....can you see the various batches of cookie dough in there? Yikes.

5. Your spouse/children RIGHT NOW

This WAS "right now" a few hours ago...but I'm only now getting around to posting it. :)

John is out of town on a business trip (oooh, sounds so official and grown-up, doesn't it? Hehe.), so here's the most recent picture of him.

6. Favorite shoes

Favorite shoes that I never really get to wear...

Favorite shoes that I wear every day. Exciting, I know.

7. Favorite room

We don't exactly have a lot of options for this one (though this room would probably be my favorite no matter...who doesn't love the family room? Unless you have an awesome master bedroom...one day... )

8. Dream vacation

So yes, I copied Maren's picture idea...but it sums it up well. I want to go everywhere. Really.

9. Self portrait

Yikes. Let's just say it had already been a long day by the time I took this picture around 5:30. Yeah, that's the problem.

So now I tag....Liz, Emily, Robyn, Laurel, and Lindsey. Ya'll better do it!!