Toothy grin

We have all four canine teeth starting to poke through at once. I tried to get pics yesterday and this was the best I could do. 

Nolan show me your teeth....

The pics were taken so close his little head looks all rounded!

Un-ketchup!

So Nolan is a ketchup lover! Truthfully he is a lover of all dips. Unfortunately though he licks the dip off and is a double....well usually quadruple dipper. That means he doesn't get much of the calories from the food he is dipping but ends up eating a lot of the condiment. He's also kind of sensitive to acidic foods so I decided to find something to substitute for acidic ketchup. I thought ranch might be nice especially since he is so tiny and needs calories anyways. He eats it sometime but it's not a love like with ketchup. The second I put the red sauce on his plate he gets happy!

I started googling non-tomato ketchup but didn't come up with much. Mainly a few yahoo questions where a some geniuses posted "You can't make ketchup without tomatoes. It's the main ingredient." Determined to do so, I searched on. Eventually, I found this recipe. I tweaked it a bit using a standard ketchup recipe for the spices so Nol would have something that tasted as true as possible. Here is how we started.

Yum veggies on the stove.

Carrots, beets, and yellow squash boiling on the stove were the start. Then my much neglected food processor did the rest. In went a little lemon juice as a preservative, a few spices, and a hint of brown sugar.

The food processor looked quite colorful but at least the end result is "red" enough to let Nolan think it's ketchup. So far my little monster hasn't figured out he is eating veggies. He even eats it by the spoonful like he would do with ketchup!! One word to anyone thinking of doing the same. If your child isn't too particular about the color use golden beets. The red ones stain everything!!

Sunday Snippets

Hmm... forgot to hit post so it's a day late!

I found a forgotten outfit in the closet today. It said 3-6mo in size but didn't look tiny. Here is my 21mo old wearing it. Now I know I have a tiny one but not THAT tiny.

It still takes mommy to get Nolan to sleep at night. Thanks for trying Tim I had a nice dinner with some good friends who we are sad to see leaving.

I made these cookies this week for a playdate. They were easy and actually turned out like the recipe said. I'd recommend them to anyone!

Nolan now helps me mow and sweep. He follows around with one of his push toys anytime I am pushing something around... vacuum, carpet cleaner, steam cleaner, mower. If only my mower made fun popping noises like his!

A certain toddler is officially in love with cars. I hear "vroom vroom" as they go driving across the floor and on my furniture. 

Bookworm!

As much as I may have wanted him to be, Nolan has never really been into books. That is until recently. Now he brings us books to read/let him flip through and is starting to enjoy them. His new favorite book is "Go Dog Go". Basically any book with dogs inside is a favorite.

I've been trying to foster his love of books and am excited he is finally able to sit still long enough to read a whole baby book... well at least half anyways! Today our mom's group met up at the downtown library for a book swap. We rode the monorail tram across the river and walked to the main library. Then we had a fun playroom reserved where the kiddos played! Afterwards everyone went home with a new book. It was a lot of fun and it's nice to get out to different parts of town!

More crafting!

I recently joined Pinterest and have become addicted. If you haven't checked it out yet you should. Basically it allows you to "pin" various pictures from the web (which link back to the website). You can classify them for later retrieval. You can also view what your friends have been pinning and get great ideas from them. This has helped me realize I need to be more crafty and more inspired with my meals.

Yesterday Nolan and I hit JoAnn's to start a new craft project for him. I love when I find boy crafts and this one was perfect.

I got the idea from here. It was pretty simple but I worked out the kinks making one for Nolan last night. This morning, I made a second one for a birthday present. Nolan will still love his even if it isn't perfect! Now we have to go find matchbox cars to fill them with!!

Inside View

Outside View

Moving on...

Last week was a difficult week and today an even more difficult day. It's over now and I'm recovering, moving on, and looking forward to what is to come next. I saw this quote the other day and am looking forward to my rainbow which I have to believe will be coming soon!

Getting back to blogging!

I'm been MIA for most of June. We've had a very trying month and hopefully the craziness will come to an end after this week. In the mean time, here are a few pics to get you through!