Rowanisms

Rowan Yesterday: I'm tired of old Christmas, let's pack it away! (apparently the Christmas tree dared to obscure his view from the window)

Rowan: C'mon mom let's get these bad guys or else our house will be flooded with bad guys.

Rowan: But how does baby "N" get out of Mommy's tummy?
Mommy: Go talk to your father.

Rowan: I'm off like a shot!

Rowan while in his "space ship" aka window seat
Rowan: Go away space daddy
Space Daddy: But I thought you wanted to play space guys in your space ship?
Rowan: Not right now, because I'm going space poo. (No- still no progress on the space toilet frontier. Spock would be very disappointed with us)

Carry On, Carry On, Carry On

Having a baby during the holiday season isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are the silver linings, such as having your husband home more often than usual and getting vacation time when it is needed most. However, as I discovered this Thanksgiving, holidays can be a lot of work when all you want to do is stay in bed.

After a few glorious days of lying around with Steve and Rowan, playing old school Mario thanks to some friends loaning us their Nintendo, I realized that Thanksgiving dinner wasn't going to cook itself. I admit, KFC looked really enticing the night before, especially since we had decided to go with doing a barbequed, rotisserie chicken because it was just going to be the three of us. I woke up the morning of Thanksgiving and proceeded to feel sorry for myself for a few hours. Ironic, considering I'm supposed to be celebrating things that I'm grateful for, but honestly all I could think about was how I immobilized I feel these days. The last thing I wanted to do was spend all day in the kitchen making a meal and then dealing with the clean-up afterwards. Thankfully, (see I really am grateful!) I have a wonderful, caring husband who let me cry and then proceeded to help me follow family tradition. All in all it turned out pretty well, the usual bird, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, salad, rolls and so forth. The only failure was my stuffing which was not up to standard this year- I think due to the fact that I added too much chicken broth, but it was still decent. We eat pumpkin pie pretty regularly, so this year we opted to do a banana cream pie (Steve's favorite) and I think it was the highlight of the meal. Steve's barbeque and brined chicken was also very good and I'm happy to utilize a few pounds of chicken in leftover recipes rather than 10 pounds of turkey.






You'll notice he has whipped cream on his face before the pie was even cut. Hmmmm, very suspicious.

This definitely was his favorite part of the meal too.

You'll notice I didn't include myself in any of these pictures. I managed to get the cooking done, but getting out of my pajamas and putting on makeup kind of fell on the back burner this year. I am grateful for my beautiful family though, and excited for our upcoming arrival of baby girl. Hopefully she'll come before or on Christmas so I won't have to deal with cooking that meal!

Just one more for today...

My friend just posted this picture and I wanted to put it on here too. Rowan finished his soccer class several weeks ago. He made huge strides in the few classes that we took him to and we are looking forward to signing him up for something else come January. His favorite game seemed to be knocking bowling pins over with the ball, although he still feels a bit intimidated by groups of kids running and screaming (yet he goes to nursery- go figure). All in all it was a great experience, especially that he was able to go with his best bud, Preston. These two have become quite the pair lately and we are so grateful for all the good times they are able to have together.

Grandpa's Visit

We were able to have Grandpa visit for a few days this weekend. Rowan was in heaven. Endless play and book reading made for a very happy boy (and mommy and daddy). It seems like we were pretty busy while Grandpa was here (baby shower, doctor's appointments, schoolwork and church stuff), so we were really grateful for all the babysitting he provided. I am especially grateful that Rowan has such a good relationship with his grandparents and for all the love and attention they give him. Rowan loved "boofing" Grandpa with pillows and playing in his pretend museum with him the best. We love our extended family and miss you all very much!

 

 

 

The Naming Game

After some belly aching, we think we've settled on a name.  Interestingly, Rowan was the deciding factor as he has chosen Nadia as the best of all our options we've been running through.  Whenever we suggest something other than Nadia, he stubbornly rejects it as a no go.  It was my personal favorite too luckily, so it all works out in the end.

While we we trying to still come up with a name #1 was pretty hilarious.  He was giving me all sorts of suggestions for his baby sister's "Russian" name. It amounted to a lot of weird noises that I mostly failed to capture in this video. At this point he had given himself a "Russian" name. Anyways, it's interesting to see how much he is picking up from our conversations about the baby.

See video #13 and #14

And just for fun, I found this video of Rowan from last August. I cannot believe how far his language skills have come. It definitely made me more baby hungry!

Just call me Master...

Steven successfully defended his thesis today! PhD here we come!

Peter Pumpkin Eater

It seems we have started a tradition around Halloween. We get 2 of the biggest pumpkins we can find and delegate one as the "pie" pumpkin and the other as our jack-o-lantern. Steve and Rowan get pumpkin gut and carving duty, while I boil, puree and freeze fresh pumpkin to last us throughout the year. I grew up with fresh pumpkin in pies and I just can't get a taste for canned pumpkin. If you've never tried fresh pumpkin in pies, cookies, or bread you should definitely give it a shot. It tastes SO much better! So anyways, here are some pictures of our Pumpkin Day. I was tempted to take a picture of my kitchen when I was done freezing my pumpkin, but it was pretty scary. Definitely worth it though- we made four pumpkin pies the next day!



Dad carved while Rowan drew on the pumpkin and himself (washable markers thank goodness).


Arrrrrrr... Rowan wanted a pirate pumpkin this year.


Hello eyelashes! I hope baby girl gets them too.