This Was Our February

Even with the extra day this year, the month of February flew by. Since I have a few pictures but not the time or desire to create a bunch of blog posts for all of them, I'll catch you up with our February events with one long one.

Probably the most 'exciting' thing that happened during the month of February, was that Ezra learned to crawl, and cut his first 2 teeth. On Valentines Day I felt his first tooth AND on that same day I saw him crawl for the first time. I was excited to tell Armando later that evening about him crawling, and his casual response was "Yeah, he did that the other day too".

Esperanza's preschool is moving locations. Still close to home, just not as close. Currently, it is within walking distance of our house, but still a good trek. We've never actually walked to school before though until the other day. It was a beautiful, sunny day so we loaded up and took off, making it there with a few minutes to spare and no hiccups along the way. I want to try to do this a few more times before the school moves and we'll have no choice but to drive.

We made Valentines for each of Esperanza's preschool classmates for Valentines Day. She has become a pro with scissors. I traced where to cut, and she cut out the hearts. She sprinkled sparkles on some, colored on others, and added a couple heart candies to each.

Our niece Anycia and nephew Antonio stayed with their dad for a couple of months recently. Being so close to us, we were able to have them over to visit often. One of the times, we took a little stroll to the neighborhood park/river.

Ezra has discovered Esperanza's kitchen!

We visited our friends Jessica, Nicholas and Ella recently. We hadn't seen them all winter. Nicholas is a few months older than Esperanza and has SMA (you can read his story here). He's such a sweet boy...so sweet in fact that when he heard that Esperanza did not get the 'Big Woody' from Toy Story she so desperately wanted for Christmas, he offered to giver her the one he received since he doesn't like it. Esperanza loves her Woody, he's a "great addition to the round-up gang" as her Jessie says between yodels. Thank you Nicholas!

Esperanza loves walking around in my shoes. Mostly my old high heel shoes that she dug out from the back on my closet. She also likes my rain boots.

We've had an exceptionally warm and dry winter this year. With the exception of a few days here and there, we've had very few opportunities to go puddle stompin'. We need to get some puddle pants to keep Esperanza dry...she really does stomp!

The kitchen sink is usually full of dirty dishes. For a brief moment though, it was clean at a time that was ideal for a baby bath. Ezra loved it.

Two Front Teeth

After months and months and months of teething, Ezra finally has a couple of teeth. The first showed up on Valentines Day and the second just a few days later.

First tooth

Second tooth

Juice

We've had a juicer for many years, but I pretty much forgot about it until Armando said he was thinking of doing a juicing cleanse several weeks ago. I loved the idea, not just for him, but to add some delicious raw juices to the kids' and my daily intake as well. Armando went a little over 3 weeks with juice as his only meals and is just now getting back into eating 'solid foods'. I think he's even lost like 30 pounds or something (wow, that's like the size of Esperanza). The rest of us are of course not cleansing, but we drink it like it's part of our meals each day. Fresh juice is amazing! AMAZING!!

We don't always have everything I want to juice but we typically have most of it. i end up making a few different combinations since Ezra doesn't get citrus fruits yet and Armando gets things like cucumber which I don't like. Esperanza and I drink the same. So, for Ezra, I add beets, carrots, apple and some greens (kale or spinach usually). Esperanza always asks for orange, pineapple, grapefruit and apple, not wanting any veggies. We rarely if ever have all of those fruits. What she doesn't know though is the flavor of what she thinks is her original requested juice, really has some combination of greens, beets and carrots, some citrus and apple. On rare occasions we'll do some tropical fruits like pineapple and maybe even some berries if I feel like giving up some of my frozen stash. Whatever I end up making, Esperanza loves it but would die if she knew the true ingredients. I add a ton of other things to Armando's since it truly was the only thing he was 'eating'. Cucumbers, celery, collards, spinach, beets, cabbage, beet leaves, carrots, dandelion leaves, bell peppers, apples, oranges, grapefruit, lemon, lime, etc. There was a time or two I even added a hot pepper, broccoli and green beans to his juice.

We juice every single day, with a few exceptions. That juicer has not left the counter top and will never collect dust again, unless ~ heaven forbid ~ it dies. It's such a tastier and healthier alternative to the grocery store juices recently found to be tainted with poisons and toxins anyways.

Ezra's, Esperanza's and Mama's (Daddy's gets a large mason jar - his 'meal' for the day)

My sister keeps encouraging me to use the 'pulp/fiber' the juicer spits out as a filler in muffins or breads. I haven't yet, but hope to and will share a recipe if and when I do. Until then, it all gets added to my worm and compost bins. I'm gonna have some amazing compost and vermicompost this Spring/Summer!

Ezra Is 8 Months Old

At 8 months old, Ezra...

...loves to feed himself and will not let me spoon feed him anything. Ever. I still steam fruits and veggies for him but instead of pureeing them, I just dice them up for him. Still, I've had to get a little creative with how and what I feed him since, 1.) he still does not have teeth and can choke on things that aren't soft enough and 2.) when things are too soft, they are clearly not the ideal finger foods. This means rice cereal is not even an option. Feeding him pureed foods only lasted all of maybe two weeks before he decided he didn't want me to feed him. I had expected to be pureeing for at least a couple of months. Nope. Good thing I didn't invest in any new baby food pureeing kitchen products! Some of his favorite finger foods are broccoli, cooked egg yolk (He loves an egg or two in the morning - LOVES!), cauliflower, prunes, avocado, kiwi, banana and kale (steamed then chopped and rolled up into little balls so he can gum it and swallow - if it's 'leafy' it just gets stuck to the roof of his mouth). He also loves to snack on Cheerios (Apparently Otios are no longer around like they were when Esperanza was a baby - so Ezra gets all that added sugar, salt and starch that Cheerios has to offer).

...poops in the middle of the night. Wakes up to poop. And then wakes up even more when I have to turn on some kind of light to take clothes off and change his diaper in the middle of the night. He does this every single night! At least once, sometimes twice. And no, he's not eating prunes before bed.

...is SO close to crawling. He can get around still a few different ways: the army crawl, a worm crawl (wiggling his butt up and down while legs push him), backwards scoot while on hands and knees and when he's in a sitting position he'll get into a crawl position then back into a sitting position and back to crawl position - before you know it, he's on the other side of the room!

...has finally settled into a fairly consistent and predictable routine for naps and night time sleep. He wakes in the morning about 7 or 7:30, naps from 11-1 (this creates a problem on days I take Esperanza to school at noon), naps again from 3:30 or 4 to about 5 then goes to sleep for the night around 8 or 8:30. He wake several times in the middle of the night to nurse, but drifts back into dreamland easily, most of the time. Of course this will all change now that I've put it in writing.

...enjoys swinging in the outdoor swing, shaking rattles, playing with balls of any size or texture, taking his socks off to chew on, taking baths with his sister, drooling all over himself, laughing and crying in harmony with his sister, nursing in the rocking chair with his super soft white blanket on him and sitting with his sister in the middle of a pile of toys and being entertained by her while chewing on all kinds of tasty things.

Hide & Seek

I tried to encourage her to hide under the table, behind the curtains or in the closet. She had her own idea though. She really does believe that if she can't see you, you can't see her.

Ready or not, here I come!