Lazy Vegetarian: Day 14

Breakfast. Today with a twist! Toast, latte and leftover banana nut bread from yesterday! I know, how adventurous!

Today's mug is also from Las Vegas when we went there to get married. We stayed (and got married) in the Monte Carlo and there we found matching mugs with our names on them. This is the only place in this country that I have ever found a mug with my name on it, but I think it's possible they also have them in Florida because that's where they have the most old people.

Midmorning snack: I had a meeting at work this morning so I brought some doughnuts. And they were good.

Lunch: After the meeting I had lunch at Punch Pizza with my friend Emily. We shared a pizza and salad and both were yummy.

For dinner, since it was Friday, and to avoid breaking the trend of all the super healthy eating I did already today, we had Chinese food. Vegetable moo shu, sesame tofu and cream cheese wontons. The vegetable moo shu was really tasty but the wontons were cold (maybe because I was putting Adele to bed when it was delivered) and the sesame sauce was a bit too sweet. Still, it was nice to not have to break my streak and actually cook something!

Tomorrow's Saturday... and who knows what lazy, unhealthy food choices it will bring! In addition to toast, of course.

4/25. Back to work.

Today we had big event on at work, and I spent the day running around with the girls making final preparations. We had to get some flowers, and when we walked into Bachman's Fiona looked around and said "Oh, how lovely!". The ladies behind us were very entertained, and it was really cute.

We got the flowers and stuck around to have some lunch. Fiona wanted soup, but there was only chicken noodle and chili (how hard is it to have one be vegetarian?! seriously?) so she settled for cheese quiche. I really thought she would like it because she likes eggs and she likes cheese, but even with ketchup it was like I was force feeding her poison. She ate a few bites because she had a cookie waiting for her, and Adele ate an enormous amount - she loved it. Fiona was mostly delighted that we got to eat lunch right next to a fountain, even if it did rain on us a little...

(Here's Fiona, who now looks anywhere except the camera when you take her picture)

Adele, entertaining as always...

Fiona, not to be outdone. But still not looking at the camera!

My ingenious solution for keeping the flowers upright in the car.

The event went really well, and the food was all eaten, which was my biggest concern. However, I totally over-ordered on the cake and have THIS MUCH left over...

This is cake 2 of 2... at least 1 of 2 was polished off. I'll take some to daycare, and Ben will take some to work and hopefully that will take care of it. I'd finish it myself, but the post-vacation diet began today ;-)

Busy Monday

I work for a group at the University of Minnesota, and this week we're doing a bunch of events for graduate student appreciation week, so it's going to be a very busy week for me. This morning the girls accompanied me on a couple of trips up to St. Paul to deliver goodies to give out to the students, and in between those we had a trip to the park...

Fiona is funny sometimes. She wanted to climb a ladder that started out vertical, but then twisted to be sideways and horizontal. She began climbing and insisted she could do it because: "I'm a toddler Mummy, I'm so big!". Once the ladder began to twist she changed her mind and said "it's just too scary, I'm only a little girl". She makes me laugh.

On our way back from our 2nd St. Paul trip we stopped to have some lunch. Fiona loves to eat soup at the co-op, but Adele is quickly overtaking her in the amount that each girl eats at meal times.

After lunch we headed home for about 45 minutes, during which Fiona amazingly fell asleep on the couch. I think it's possible she is getting sick because she NEVER does this.

Sadly we were off for our next adventure - the car dealership. My car was in just last week for repairs but since then developed a weird squeak in the back. They have a playroom so the girls were entertained, but it was still a pretty boring 2 hours. Luckily they fixed it, and it's still under warranty so it was free!

Fiona loved rocking this bear in a cradle... she kept telling us to "shh" and that we'd get time outs for being noisy while her baby was sleeping. And this meant any noise whatsoever. So after 2 hours of that I was ready to be done!

Adele entertained herself by trying to chew on the metal windowsill. After 2 hours I was ready to be done with that too.

Then it was home time. Dinner. Then we went back to the park for a little play ebfore bed. Fiona played with Daddy while I pulled pieces of playground rubbery stuff out of Adele's mouth.

Then it was home to bed for the girls, and then I worked until 11 which explains the dullness of this post! And now I am off to bed.

Regularly scheduled programming

This week was the first week when we all went and did what we'll usually be going and doing. Ben went to work, I took the girls to playdates and worked, Fiona did some daycare. It was a long, tiring week, but we managed to fit everything in. Here's the three of us ready to face the week...

Fiona managed to catch yet another cold, and this one's a doozy. Luckily she seems to be in a pretty good mood despite it, but unfortunately she also gave it to Adele. Adele's really congested and can't breathe well lying on her back which causes problems when it comes to bedtime. After getting almost no sleep on Thursday night we finally gave in on Friday night and let her sleep on her tummy. Every healthcare professional that has even seen Fiona or Adele has stressed the importance of babies sleeping on their back to reduce the risk of SIDS, so I kept expecting a team of flying monkeys to burst in the window and carry me off to live in eternal shame on bad parent island. Luckily that didn't happen, and we all slept a little better. She's still on the heartrate and breathing monitor too, so that gave us a little more peace of mind.

Adele has also been working on her pushups. She's getting bigger and stronger every day, and when doing some tummy time managed to push herself up a little with her arms and reposition her head. Her neck is much stronger, and she has so much more head control. She's really doing well!

Fiona is still in love with Elmo, and is growing up right before our eyes. She will lie him on the changing mat, lift his legs up and say 'butt, butt' as she wipes his bottom with a baby wipe. I think it mush have been Daddy she learned that word from! Her biggest achievement this week was learning how to change the DVD's in the player. We watch part of either Elmo or Finding Nemo while I'm stuck sitting on the couch and need to distract her, and she will choose the one she wants, open the drawer, put the disc in, close the drawer, and bring me the remote control. It's a very useful skill!

My new job is going fine. One of the funny things about it is that I occasionally send out emails to a list of thousands of recipients, and part of my job is to act as a human spam filter and approve emails sent to this list by other people before they're sent. This way we can avoid random companies who happened to get hold of the group email address sending their spam to thousands of people. Usually they are just boring adverts, but the one I filtered out today made me laugh... there are some excerpts below...

"To be slim is something very important nowadays. In order to play with your child, to go with pleasure at work, or just to take care of your garden, you need to spend a lot of energy. But this energy can take all your health sometimes.

I have some experience with this problem. I was a fat guy and it was hard for me to work or just to go around the shops. My girlfriend advised me to go to the gym. I tried this, but every time I went home I was exhausted. So, this was not for me. Then, I tried running. It was successful, but I was as exhausted as the first thing (the gym). Then, I tried to forget everything and to be fat, I was exhausted without any result.

However, I have tried more than 5 ways to burn fats. Finally, I found one very great way to lose weight. I was very sceptic how it works. Then, I phoned a friend, who had just tried this way to be slim, and he recommended this product for me. I tried it and in no more than 4 weeks, I was slim. LIKE A MAGIC".

Like a magic. I'm sold. Where do I sign up?

There isn't really much more news. I'll try to do something more exciting next week!