Sure!

Amelie's new saying…

This is her and Reagan playing in a hotel room in Orlando a few weeks ago. She adores her "Rea Rea" and thinks she's hilarious. I just love it when she responds to us with a loud and clear "SURE!" She gets that from her daddy cause I don't think I use that word too much.

Productivity

I am going to go to sleep tonight feeling very accomplished!

Amelie recently decided to turn almost every vegetable down. She used to gobble up anything we gave her, but now it's a constant battle to get her to eat most veggies. I recently purchased the cookbook Deceptively Delicious. I've heard about it for a while, but never felt I really needed it. I heard a few friends talking about it and liking some of the recipes so I decided to go ahead and give it a try. Yesterday I went to the store and bought lots of produce. I spent most of last night and all day today cleaning, prepping, steaming, baking, pureeing (is that even a word?), bagging, labeling and freezing everything I bought. PHEW! Here is the outcome:

So, now we have stocked the freezer with butternut squash, yellow squash, spinach, cauliflower, sweet potato, carrot and beet purees. Now I'm ready to try some of these recipes out so our baby girl can eat some healthy food!

I tried my first recipe today as well and it was actually a hit! I made the rice balls recipe from the book. It consisted of chicken (I used leftover rotisserie from the other night), cheddar cheese, sr cream & sw pot puree. You mix all that together in a food processor, stir in brown rice, roll into balls, then roll in egg and spinach puree mixture, roll in panko (I like it better than breadcrumbs) and cook in a little olive oil in a skillet. They were VERY yummy! Amelie ate 2 or 3 and Ant, his friend Joe and I ate quite a bit, too. AND I had a lot of the mixture leftover that I froze so we can make more another day… yippee!! 

I just hope I can keep this up so we can all get more veggies in our diet :)

My DISCLAIMER: Just because I am adding veggies to her food doesn't mean I'm going to stop offering her veggies on her plate along with these recipes. I think it's really important for her to know that she needs to eat veggies, but this is just my way of getting MORE nutrition in her meals.

18 month talkin' fool

Amelie turned 18 months old yesterday… crazy how time flies. I know I say that all the time, but it's true. And you really don't understand it until you have kids. It goes by SO fast. I'm trying to soak in every second, but it's difficult to stop and bask in every second. This blog is a way we will be able to look back years later and enjoy the big moments and some small ones, too. Even though I haven't been that great at blogging consistently like I wanted to, at least I have the major events documented. 

Amelie is a HAM! She has the funniest personality. We are constantly laughing at the things she does and says. She's so sweet and cuddly and smiley and giggly and wiggly and dancey and many, many more things. She LOVES to eat (you can tell by the size of her belly!), play in the water, take baths, play with clothes (random, but true), play with her cousins, climb all over mama and daddy, DANCE!, read books, etc… She is a TALKING FOOL. She will talk your ear off. No clue what she's saying most of the time, but her vocab is starting to flourish BIG time! She says so many words, ah-like so:

And there are many more things that video didn't cover. Personally, I think she's a genius to be talking at such a young age, but I'm her mama, so I'm kinda biased.