Currently…

May 30, 2014 by hmshoberg

I’ve seen other bloggers do a variation of what they are currently up to, so I thought I’d do the same thing since often it doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Because baby butts are cute… plus, those eyes!

Reading

I’ve just recently started reading ‘Divergent.’ So far I’m a little on the fence, and I kind of hope the movie will be better than the book because I’m not quite understanding why it’s gotten so much hype as of yet. The plot is a little silly so far, and while I do know to take YA fiction with a grain of salt… the premise is more than a teensy bit ridiculous. Still… I’m going to finish it and see what happens because so far I’m waiting for what I hope is the real story, to begin. The whole “Divergence” thing is a little weak as of yet and not making sense. I won’t get into details, though, because I don’t know who has read the books/seen the movie.

Watching

Well, ‘Call the Midwife’ is done for the season… sadness, as are most shows. I find myself watching ‘Once Upon A Time’ for some reason now and then even if just to just roll my eyes a lot and marvel at the way they’ve ruined characters and stories. Drunk History is also something we recently started watching occasionally on Amazon Prime.

As far as movies go, we watched ‘Philomena’ not that long ago, and we both thought it was well done. Josh wasn’t that keen on watching it because it’s just not typically something he’d choose, but he agreed to watch it. I think we were both affected by the movie in different ways, but I think we both found it to be an emotional film, and there were times when my blood boiled and my heart broke for Philomena. Becoming a mom has definitely made me more emotional and so many movies hit harder than they ever would have before.

Eating

I kind of love peanut butter right now… so much so that I keep a jar at my desk at work and sometimes just eat it with a spoon. The Earth Balance coconut & peanut spread is kind of awesome. I’m also really addicted to the Everything Sesame Sticks from Nature Box. It’s a good thing we only get one bag of these a month, and that I can’t just go buy more at Target… or I would.

Loving

Our family photos, and the pictures the kids got at day care. I didn’t think we’d end up with so many great pictures to choose from! I’ll have to share some later.

Thinking About

Where to even begin? There are so many different thoughts swirling around in my head that it’s often hard to know which one to go with. Once again we’ve been talking about where we see ourselves in the next few years, and what our moving goals should be, but it’s still very much up in the air. Sometimes I don’t mind Minnesota all that much and think I can stick it out a while longer, and then I try to go outside and actually work on my garden and get swarmed by mosquitoes and wonder if we couldn’t just somehow move this year. :p I also never look forward to the long winters or the summer humidity, so while we definitely won’t be moving this year, it makes me wonder if we could make it happen next year… and then where? There are a lot of things I miss about Colorado, but at the same time we’re kind of thinking the Northwest might be nice, and then out of the blue we’ll talk about going somewhere completely random and different. So… we have a lot to consider and think about.

Listening To

Sigh… Frozen. So much Frozen. It’s either listen to the Frozen soundtrack or the yelling/crying that follows if I say “No.” Considering I now know almost all the songs by heart… I’m not sure which is actually worse anymore.

Photo… Dump? Deposit?

May 29, 2014 by hmshoberg

Photo dump just sounds so… blech, even though that’s kind of what this post is. I take so many photos of the kids and random things and end up editing them and uploading them, but don’t always use them in posts. So, I thought I’d just do a random mish mash post of things that happened and sort of fell through the cracks in the last few months.

I love making cookies, but when I do I never hear the end of it and Enzo won’t stop talking about them, and he’d sit down and go through the entire batch in one sitting if we let him.

It’s hard not to take about a million photos of this little girl… especially since her brother doesn’t like to sit still anymore and is more interested in what’s going on behind the camera than being in front of it.

She’s not quite as serious as she was a few months ago. Now she seems to be constantly smiling moving – not that that’s a bad thing!

Sigh… soon she won’t be using the Bumbo. She’s been doing so good with sitting up on her own. I still tend to stay really close, but even when she falls over she does it in such a graceful way… not like Enzo who would suddenly just tip and BAM. I guess he got that from me.

Mmm… cake. I should make more of this. However, the caramel sauce that day did NOT cooperate. Why do I have such trouble with caramel??

This guy can be so serious as well… his determination lives on, however now that he’s a 2 year old he makes it known when he gets frustrated. Sometimes he’ll just stay silent for a minute and huff, but other times he yells – more like roars – and throws whatever has made him mad.

In this case, he happened to be mad at Elmo for some reason. Or me… and he was taking it out on Elmo. That happens sometimes. So far we haven’t had to deal with much grumpiness from Phoebe (though I’m sure that will come), so let’s just end this post with another ray of sunshine, shall we?

Starting Solids

May 28, 2014 by hmshoberg

It’s been a fun few weeks introducing Phoebe to the world of solids… well, sort of. Can you call pureed food a solid? As with Enzo, we’re kind of doing our own version of baby led weaning by doing what is easiest for day care (as well as ourselves), but without limiting Phoebe too much. Much like Enzo, she’s the one who made it clear to all of us that she was ready to move beyond just bottles – she wasn’t finishing them and seemed bored and started reaching for our food. So, we thought we’d see how she did with some oatmeal, and she loved it!

We’ve since tried carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, avocado, bananas, pears, apples… the list goes on. Most of them have been pureed, but we’ve also offered some whole foods as well. We were actually surprised at just how quickly she started grabbing the spoon and from the get-go she was able to navigate it to her mouth.

While she’s at daycare, they typically feed her themselves – she’s one of many infants, but when she’s at home with us we generally load the spoon for her, and then bring it within her reach and she grabs it and puts it in her mouth. She’s been eager to try larger chunks of food as well, and we’ve let her experience several of them, but I’ll save that for another post.

The most suprising thing is that we haven’t really run into anything yet that she has no interest in. With Enzo there were a few foods he just had no interest in (like avocado) and sometimes peas, but this little girl has been willing to eat them all. I really hope that’s a great sign of things to come.

In the meantime, maybe she can show her big brother that trying new foods is totally cool and he should do the same. 😉

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

May 27, 2014 by hmshoberg

With the weather so nice, we started officially gardening a couple of weeks ago and doing general outside tidying up. We have a lot to do still, but at the very least, our deck has some color, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have some yummy veggies this summer as well. Time will tell. 😉

Thankfully I had an excellent helper when it was time to run to Home Depot for some supplies. Enzo couldn’t be happier to run around and jump in puddles and chase birds while I grabbed some flowers and such.

Since I knew Enzo would be helping me, I opted for a potting soil that was chemical and poo-free because I knew at some point something would end up in his mouth (like his shovel, and it did).

At one point, Phoebe also joined us and relaxed in her bouncy chair while we surrounded her with flowers to look at.

The raised beds in the yard were quite a mess and took several hours to rip up the weeds and who knows what else that had taken up residence, and add some better soil to the mix. The picture above was during the beginning of Spring, when we probably should have ripped everything up.

I’ve gotten so used to minimal gardening in pots that I’m not sure everything will take, but we’ll see. It also didn’t help that we had a massive storm the day after I planted and my pumpkin and rhubarb are still rather sad… also they are both firsts for me.

The strawberries seem to be doing well, though, and our lettuce is coming in as well as onions, so I’ve been pointing these out to Enzo whenever we go outside.

There is nothing better than watching things grow, though, and I wish I had more of a green thumb, and more time to really get into gardening. Perhaps when the kids are just a bit older it will be easier.

Also, when we move to a place with fewer bugs. They were swarming around little Phoebe and got into her little tent, and we’re having issues with wasps as well. I did find a pet/child friendly bug spray that I sprayed around the foundation of the house that does seem to have cut down on the spiders, but that won’t help with wasps/mosquitos/gnats.

We (Josh really) ripped up two huge shrubs that were a breeding ground for spiders, so that also helped. I replaced one with lavender, and we plan on tearing up more shrubs to replace with more lavender and lemon grass and things that should hopefully deter bugs. I did plant some bee balm and butterfly flowers, though, in the hopes that those will make themselves at home.