Oct. 31- Nov. 7

Sorry I'm so behind--it was a crazy busy weekend with work!  Here's a quick collage from our week; it's lighter on the pictures since I spent most of my weekend in the office or on retreat with students.

21 Weeks

Dear Oliver,

What a week this was!  We were incredibly busy this week with work and fun social commitments and you got to experience several "firsts."  You learned to roll several weeks ago, but now whenever we lay you down, you immediately roll around onto your sides and back.  And you almost always roll from your belly to your back when we try to have some tummy time.  Those hands find your mouth constantly and it's pretty impressive that, at less than five months old, you can already fit your entire fist into your mouth.  Way to go, guy!

You've started noticing Guthrie this week and watching her around the room--even smiling and laughing at her.  She doesn't seem to have an especially increased interest in you, but she still licks your head or feet every now and then.

The weather finally turned fall-like here in Rhode Island, and so we've had to learn to dress you in layers to keep you warm.  You especially like your Jets hat that Aunt Maureen in Ireland knitted for you!  You reach up and grab it and pull it over your eyes constantly.  It's pretty funny to watch.

Now that those little hands are grabbing everything, you've also decided that the corners of your play mat are more fun than the toys themselves.  This was your favorite game:

Happy first Halloween to you!  It's so much fun to celebrate the holidays now that you're here.  You already know that you were an integral part to our pumpkin carving this year, but you simultaneously got to experience your first snow!  Happily, it all melted by the following afternoon.

I know that I say it every week, but you just get more and more interactive and fun and your personality is so whimsical and joyful--we feel incredibly blessed to be your parents.  Rather than raising you, I sometimes feel like we're just watching you become yourself and standing back in awe.  You are such a beautiful child of God, sweet Oliver, and you are so wonderful at being who you are.  Keep it up and never let anyone convince you otherwise.  The world needs the light you're shining!

We love you,
Your Mommy

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Oliver and his friend John!

Oct. 23-30, 2011

Weekly photo collage coming atcha!

Halloween Prep!

Lots of treat-making and pumpkin decorating was happening at our house this weekend!  I've been cooking up a storm: beef stew, bacon-cheese grits, apple & maple pork chops, creamy chicken chili, pistachio chai muffins, turkey burgers w/ sweet potato fries, polenta with gorgonzola and tomato sauce, and homemade peanut butter cups!  

And that doesn't include my plans for tomorrow night.  As you might suspect, we're not exactly dieting chez McParland right now, but it certainly has been fun eating everything in sight lately.  That might be one of the best parts about breastfeeding, actually.  That should be a selling point for women who aren't sure they want to nurse their babies: eat everything in sight and still lose the baby weight!

All of this cooking might also explain why the only two things I want for Christmas are a jogging stroller and a deep chest freezer.  Between the milk bags and leftovers, our side-by-side fridge/freezer is busting at the seams.

side note: who am I?  I'm cooking and talking about freezers.  When did I become so domestic?  And OLD?

Betwixt and between all of that cooking, we also decorated our pumpkins for Halloween.  Now that Oliver is around, I'm determined to actually celebrate holidays.  We've often been guilty of letting them pass us by with no plans, but even if we only have our own small, cheesy celebrations, I love starting family traditions that can stick for years to come...when he can actually remember!

One of my favorite blogs featured some pumpkin decor ideas from years past and despite the fact that they were all adorable and fun, this was the only one I thought I might be able to handle.  So I set to work and ta-da!

Between all of the rain and letting coats of paint dry (and diaper changing and working and well, life), it basically took all week to finally get them finished and on the front stoop, but I was pleased with how they turned out!  

Basically, I just used red puffy paint to create the monogram and the design, let it dry, and then gave them a few coats of glossy yellow spray paint.  Easy and I think they're cute even if Matt's reaction was less than enthused.

We also used YHL's idea to incorporate Oliver into our jack-o-lantern this year.  It involved a bit of baby-wrangling.

I did my best to trace O's hand prints on a piece of paper and then cut them out and taped them to our pumpkin from last week's trip to the orchard.  Matt then had to take over as it was way past baby's bedtime.

(That's our friend, Patrick, who successfully carved a much more elaborate pumpkin in the time it took us to do ours)

And the end result:

While we doing all of this craftiness, I should mention that THIS was happening outside:



Yep.  Snow.  In October.  Yippee.

More Halloween goodness coming tomorrow!

Just because...

Seriously, how cute is he?

20 Weeks!

Dear Oliver,

I LOVE this photo of you!  It really captures who are you are becoming and how much you keep changing, even week to week.  You discovered your legs a few days ago and shortly thereafter those little hands found your feet as well.  You're constantly in this position now: knees bent and hands grabbing for your legs and feet.  We have to keep your nails constantly trimmed because you're not only scratching up my chest and arms, now your claws attack your own legs!  

You love to roll back and forth on any given surface and although you can't quite get from your back to your belly yet, you have certainly mastered flipping over when you're propped up on your elbows, belly down. 

It's so much fun for us when you babble and coo, which you do more and more.  This afternoon I even caught you on video blowing raspberries--another first!

You wouldn't even believe how much you make me smile and how lucky I feel to hold you, snuggle you, laugh with you, comfort you, and feed you on a daily basis.  You've taught me more about unconditional love in your short twenty weeks of life than I've learned in my thirty (!) years of life and I'm grateful every single day to be your mommy.

We have yet to figure out what you will be for Halloween--or at least, what costume you will wear for twenty minutes during a photo session--so stay tuned for that.  And please, please be patient with your daddy and think about not screaming when you're with him?  He can only circle the house in the stroller so many times, dear little one.

Love,
Your Mama

Our Week in Pictures: Oct. 15-22, 2011

Apple Picking!

Our New England fall fun continues!

I dragged poor Matt and Oliver to an orchard in rural RI this afternoon for pick-your-own apples and pumpkins.  We packed a picnic lunch, a diaper bag, and a sweet baby in a wrap and bear cub hat and drove north through hills of changing leaves and trees quickly becoming bare.  We took deep breaths of fresh fall air and shrugged off the house cleaning we had planned to do today.

We filled our bag and our bellies with red & yellow delicious apples in the orchard and picked out our perfect pumpkins for the front stoop.

Oliver got a million comments, of course.  Just look at this face.

I know that he won't remember these moments in his first year of life, but I will.  And we'll have the photos and memories that we've made to share with him to catch up to the time when he will remember.
  

 

We're certainly doing our best to milk fall for all it's worth this year.  Knowing that it's a matter of time before leaves of orange and gold turn to bare branches and cool evenings shift into snowy days, we've chosen to seize autumn and enjoy it.  And so far, we're definitely doing just that.

19 Weeks!

Dear Oliver,

You keep growing and changing before our very eyes!  At almost 4.5 months, you are 13 lbs and almost 26 inches long: right in the 25th and 50th percentiles, respectively.  Perfect!  I love this picture of you because you're sucking on your lower lip: something you do often and it makes you look pensive or deep in thought or maybe like you're about to announce something profound to all of us.  I want your weekly pictures to reflect who you are in this moment and this one does that perfectly.

Lately, you are incredibly interested in the world around you.  You crane your neck and arch your back to look around when Mommy tries to feed you and love being wrapped up and worn so that you can observe everything while we walk or work around the house.  You love chewing on pretty much anything and toys that make that crinkly cellophane sound remain your favorite.  Oh, it's so much fun to tell you about your world and see you touching things to explore!

So many nights when I'm rocking or nursing you to sleep, I just stare at your sweet face and cannot believe that you are mine.  How in the world did I happen to be so blessed to be your Mama?  When we go out to the office or on errands, I beam with pride as people wave goodbye to you because I get to be the lucky winner taking you home.  I pinch myself daily with my beautiful prize of a son and couldn't imagine anyone more beautiful if I tried.  Your tiny fingers and pudgy wrists wrap around my index finger or reach for my chest just to make sure I'm still by your side as you fall asleep: it absolutely melts me every time.   Your eyelashes have darkened a bit and frame those wide blue eyes that just slay Daddy and me.  First thing in the morning especially, you smile and coo and babble like crazy to both of us--you have singlehandedly transformed this household into one that loves the mornings!  

We love you more and more--I never thought it possible!  

Love, Mommy

Cooking Class

Believe it or not, I've done a bit of cooking the last few days (well, okay: yesterday and today) and I wanted to share the recipes since they've all been a hit!  I've never been much of a cook, although I do enjoy making a meal for friends when I have time and energy to do it.  I love baking for special occasions and bringing something homemade to a gathering; I just dread the day-to-day-scrape-something-together-for-dinner weekday routine.  And I'm terrible at it.  I will open the fridge or pantry and declare we have nothing to eat, while Matt is excellent at making something out of nothing.  But, here's what I've successfully made recently!

(Source)

Pioneer Woman Herb-Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Preserves
It's hard to go wrong with a PW recipe in my experience, and this was a super simple and quick pork tenderloin recipe that was delicious!  We both love pork tenderloin and I had some Trader Joe's Fig Butter that I wasn't sure what to do with (other than pair it with cheese--yum!) so this was perfect!  I made it on Saturday night and served mashed potatoes with it rather than the root veggies pictured above, although those are on my list to make this winter!

 

 (Source)

Another PW recipe (told you you can't go wrong--unless you want to still fit into your pants): Pasta with Pesto Cream Sauce.  I had leftover basil that I wanted to use and we have a truckload of pasta in our pantry from our pre-baby BJ's run, so this was perfect to use up some of those ingredients.  It was simple and delicious for a Monday night--and the sauce was remarkably light considering I used--ahem--heavy cream.  Easy and delicious!

 (Source)

Veganomicon Pineapple Cashew Quinoa

This is probably my all-time favorite non-dessert vegan recipe.  I've made it lots of times for special occasions or large groups that need a delicious one-pot (wok) meal and it is always a hit!  All fresh ingredients: pineapple, basil, peas, peppers, ginger, garlic, scallions--plus quinoa and raw cashews.  Yum, yum!  Although Matt rolls his eyes when I say this, I definitely think quinoa is the cutest grain--it's so tiny and unique. :)  Veganomicon is also one of the few cookbooks I actually own.  Every single thing I've made from it has been delicious!

And I've saved the best for last...

 

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

These are, hands down, the very best muffins I have EVER made.  Oh man, are they good.  Dangerously, dangerously good.  I made 24, proceeded to immediately eat three, and quickly froze a dozen and took the extras to Bible Study before I made quick work of them all.  Let's just pretend I haven't already defrosted at least four for breakfasts this week.  

Just look at that cream cheese center:

Did I mention they're delicious?

St. Teresa of Avila

October 15 is the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, who also happens to be my patron saint and the confirmation name I chose at the Easter Vigil in 2001 when I was baptized & confirmed.  The latter is a story for another day, but I continue to be inspired by the story of Teresa, one of the early rebels of the Church.


Living in 16th-century Spain, Teresa was a Carmelite nun who enacted radical reforms within the Carmelite movement and opened numerous new convents and monasteries under a law of absolute poverty when she thought the monastics had become too lax in their practices.  She was often plagued by illness during her life, which she in turn used to commune further with God through deeper and deeper levels of meditation to the point of ecstatic experiences with God and visions from Jesus himself.  As you might imagine, her speaking out of these visions was suppressed by superiors as too radical and even diabolical rather than divine.  Posthumously however, she was declared one of the few female Doctors of the Church, and canonized as a saint.


One of the gifts of participating in RCIA as a young adult was the ability to choose a saint whom I was especially inspired by or identified with as my patron and name.  Teresa's unwillingness to stand down simply because of her gender or the unpopularity of her visions spoke to me as one who often disagrees with Church dogma, even in the 21st rather than 16th centuries.  I'm continually motivated by her deep faith and courage to speak out to the establishment despite her role.  May we all be so motivated!

Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.

-Prayer of St. Teresa

Week in Pictures

Catching up: 16-18 Weeks!

Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular!