Pretend Eating

Here are a few pics of Gabe "eating". His faux diet is pretty awesome!

Teeth, pumpkin butter and parks

Sorry for the delay in posts. Time just got away from me.

This past week, Gabe had a dental appointment that went well. His two bad teeth are remaining stable, meaning they are not getting worse. He got his usual treatment done, with some crying, but it wasn't too bad. Dr. Hsu wants to do a cleaning and filling on them when he is old enough, like around three. I still have reservations about it because they don't seem to bother him and the teeth in question can fall out as early as five years. So, I don't know yet.

Here is a pic of Gabe the day of his appointment. I think he has food in his mouth:



Last Saturday, we went to the Beaverton Farmer's Market. Craig and I got these really delicious pot pies: beef and mushroom, chicken thai green curry. We each got to taste both. Then we bought some pumpkin seed butter from a local place; they are not selling in any health food stores yet because of demand. But boy, is it good with crackers and has a high protein content.



Then Sunday, we went to Peninsula Park where Gabe had fun strolling all over the place. For some reason, Gabe has never been into climbing stuff, so he can take or leave playgrounds (except for the swings, he loves that). Even as a crawler, I'd always watch him near the stairs but he was never interested. So at parks, he is usually more into exploring things he can run on or just looking at trees, grass, dirt, etc.





For Father's Day, Craig wants to go back to Grandma Leeth's for dinner (we went there for Mother's Day). So we're going there tomorrow evening! Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

Gabe 2nd Birthday

Gabe turned 2 years old last Thursday, yay!

He got a lot of birthday wishes from my Facebook friends, family and a call from Uncle Will and Grandma Claire. Friday, we went to the Portland Children's Museum. It was very crowded, but I think Gabe had a lot of fun.









Then we went home for his nap. We picked up his banana cream cake from the Beaverton Bakery on the way home, and I got pizza from Pizza Shmizza (it was our first time trying them and it was pretty good) later on.


The cake looks kind of plain, but it was delicious.

We didn't have a big party. We had Grandma Deb and a family friend, David, over to share in opening presents and cake. Gabe got a lot of nice gifts, mostly books and educational toys. I took some videos of him opening gifts, which I will post shortly.

We also took a trip to Olympia, Wa to visit our friends, Brian and Eunice this past weekend. Olympia is a little over a 2 hour drive from Portland. We drove down there on Saturday and came back Monday. On the way there, Gabe slept the entire drive (yes!) and on the way back he slept for about half the time, but remained fine relaxing in his car seat for the rest of the drive.

Here is a pick of Gabe with Brian and Eunice's three children, Jaiden, Angel and Toby.

Much improved eating!

Gabe has really shocked me the last few days. Last week, he ate fish sticks for the first time and liked it. And he has always liked spaghetti, but he usually only ate the noodles. I made said dish with meat sauce last night and he ate ALL of it up, meat and veggies included (sauce was courtesy of 1 jar each of garden vegetable and garlic herb Prego, meat courtesy of me).

Then today, he eats pesto and walnut ravioli (walnuts are VERY small and easy to chew). I'm like, whaaaaat??






I am really happy he is starting to try and like things more. He has been getting better and better over the last six months or so. He favorite foods are now:

Bagels or toast w/ cream cheese
Chocolate Chip flax seed muffins
Peanut butter (by itself)
Spaghetti w/ meat sauce
Ravioli
Grapes (quartered)
Bananas
Pizza (plain cheese)
Cheddar cheese
Smoothies
French Fries
Fish sticks
Couscous
Lentils
Guacamole with chips

Dancing video

I promised a video or picture of Gabe dancing in his last dance class today, but I forgot the camera/video. So, I took this video of him getting down at home.

Successful green smoothie

For several weeks now, I've been drinking what I call my "iron-packed" smoothies for breakfast. This started after I found out my iron was rather low. Gabe drinks this for breakfast, too.

I've used mostly fruit (both frozen and dried) and nut milks, but lately I've realized that I need to incorporate some vegetables into it. So yesterday I bought some kale! This morning I added it to my smoothie and it was really good.


The color is a lovely, natural green.



And Gabe liked it too, despite the look on his face!

Here is what I put in it:

1 banana
1 tbs. molasses
3 prunes
handful of frozen mangoes
handful of kale
2 cups of hazelnut milk (or any nut milk of choice)

Blend until smooth and voila!

Dance, wrist update, and blogging news

Dance class is a hit! I am so glad I chose to take Gabe to Peninsula Park in North Portland; he's gotten used to it well and loves it. Plus, he gets to mingle with his buddies from our childbirth class that live across town. And the drive isn't bad at all, just 35-40 minutes; Gabe does get a little antsy during it, but that doesn't bother me and it's to be expected with him getting a bit earlier than usual. Once he is there, he is totally fine.

Now as far as pictures; it's a bit hard to take pics of Gabe dancing since the parents are expected to fully participate! LOL. Next week is the last class and I plan to get either some video footage or a pic somehow, someway. Some of us moms are also going to take the kiddos to this child-friendly cafe called Posies after the class next week.

Craig's wrist is doing much the same, unfortunately. While he has healed well from the actual surgery, he still has a bump and experiences pain while doing intense design at the computer. This leads us to think that his problem is not related to the ganglion, even though Dr. Layman removed one during surgery. Right now, we're trying to see if he can get an musculoskeletal ultrasound done on his wrist. The images are captured in real-time (looking at things while the joint is moving) and can be more detailed than an MRI.

The last bit of news is that I was featured as a guest blogger today on www.mixedandhappy.com. I wrote about how great it is for interracial couples living in the Pacific Northwest. They misspelled my name at the end (for which I emailed them so they can correct it), but I am still very grateful for the exposure. They are really trying to do some great things on that site, so check it out and if you're on Facebook, become a fan of them!