Our Disneyland Adventure!

I am very late in posting about our Disneyland trip, but it's a bit intimidating to actually try to summarize it and I keep putting it off! But I realize if I don't write something now, I will forget a ton!

Bottom line: we had an AMAZING time. Amanda loved it just as much as we thought she would. We have a great video of her seeing Sleeping Beauty's castle for the first time...will have to try to pull it off as a short clip and post it. Everyone who sees it says it should be a Disneyland commercial! That first sighting of the castle is so magical.

Our flight down was pretty uneventful...we had a pretty short layover in San Francisco, but the second leg was taking off one gate over from where our first leg arrived, so there wasn't any stress involved. The luggage all made it (a big relief, since I was worried about all the Sam paraphernalia that we'd have to go out and buy if it didn't!) . We caught the shuttle bus from LAX without any problems. It was actually kind of funny...it was after 9:30 pm by the time we got on the bus, and I guess that isn't prime arrival time for Disneyland tourists! So we got on the bus and we were literally the only people on it aside from the driver. The four of us in a bus that holds around 100! Amanda thought it was quite funny. The kids were both exhausted and fell asleep on the bus ride so it was quite peaceful. I admit to getting a little teary-eyed when we actually arrived; it felt quite magical having two sleeping babes in our arms and arriving at Disneyland at last!



Hotel was OK...nothing special but it was very close to the main gate and we got a deluxe room for free with our Visa points, so no complaints. It had a nice pool, and we had planned to try to swim every day as a break in the middle of the day, but we only made it once – just too many things to try to fit in at the parks!

The trip back home was a lot more stressful. We were flying through SeaTac on two different airlines. At LAX, the Alaska rep told us he could tag our luggage through to Vancouver, but he couldn't give us boarding passes for the second leg of our flight - we would have to go back out to the main check-in counter in Seattle and go back through security. This had us a little bit worried as we only had 1.5 hours in Seattle, but we figured it would be OK. That was until our first flight was delayed by well over an hour. Ack! I spent some time on the phone to Air Canada trying to figure out what to do, and they confirmed that we – all four of us – needed to exit and go back through security. Also, they told us that the flight was the last one of the evening so if we missed it we would have to stay in Seattle overnight or pay for a flight on another airline. We figured it was a lost cause, but decided to give it our best try to make the second flight, even though by the time we got off the plane in SeaTac it was 15 minutes until departure in a different terminal! Jeff ran ahead to the gate (which required a trip on a subway to get to the terminal) to see if they could help us, and I followed behind with both kids and the rest of our carry-on luggage...no small feat! I was amazed to get to the gate and find out that Jeff had gotten us on the plane! The gate staff acted like it was no issue at all, which meant if we had been on time and gone out and back through security it would have been a total waste of time. Oh well, lesson learned for next time – always go to the gate first! The bad news was our luggage didn't make it on the flight, but it was delivered the next afternoon so it all turned out OK in the end. Phew!

I will summarize our actual Disney adventures in a few separate posts...going to try to recap what we managed to see in our three days at the parks!

Sam At 7 Months

A snapshot of Sam at 7 months (well, plus a bit)...


Oh come on, how cute is that?!?

• In the last month he has become much more pleasant! I suspect that he just plain wasn't getting enough to eat before, and now he is (a post for another time, perhaps). It's like night and day. He is much more smiley and laughs more often, and the long crying jags in the middle of the day are pretty much over.

Smiley Sam! He really does exist!

• He is also finally starting to gain some weight! At 6 months he had barely doubled his weight, making him borderline failure-to-thrive (see "not getting enough to eat", above). But now he is happily packing on the pounds and getting chubbier by the day! He is finally graduating out of his 3-6 month clothes.
  
• This kid sooo wants to be moving! He loves to be on his feet, and will "walk" if you hold him upright (I don't remember Amanda doing this until quite a bit later, but I could be mistaken). He will also pull himself upright if we put him somewhere he can do it, like in his crib next to the bars. He isn't yet crawling, but he sits totally unassisted for long periods of time and has learned that he can "bounce" himself forward. He can make pretty good tracks this way! In the last couple of days he has also figured out how to do continuous rolls and has been rolling around the living room floor. Oh oh!!
  

Sitting up in his favourite spot in the living room, with his toys.

• He loves food! He has already graduated to eating 3 times each day, and at every meal he eats about 3 tbsp of cereal, give or take, plus at least one frozen cube of something else. So far he's tried cereal (rice, barley, and oatmeal), fruit (banana, peach, and avocado), veggies (carrots, butternut squash, yams, broccoli), and meat (roast beef, tilapia, and turkey). He's not a huge fan of anything the first several tries, and has a lovely classic "yuck" face that he makes, but after awhile he'll eat most things on their own. Still not a fan of any kind of meat, though.
• He adores books. I remember Amanda always liking books, and she's even an early reader, but I'd say Sam loves them even more at this age. He has already figured out how to turn pages...not every time, but if he persists he manages to do it. He babbles away to the book and makes all kinds of interesting noises!
• Speaking of speaking, he started out babbling several months ago, but now seems to have moved onto strange guttural noises like hard g's and weird little huffs. I don't remember Amanda doing this...will be interesting to see what comes of it!
  

Chattering away, as usual.

• His sleeping is pretty terrible. Considering he started out so promisingly in the sleep department, we thought he'd continue in the same way, but no. Around the time he started solids he also started waking up consistently in the middle of the night (usually around 1–2 am, but anywhere from 11:30 pm to 4:30 am) and flat-out refusing to go back to sleep on his own. He will quite happily sleep if someone stands next to his crib touching him, or if he's held in a chair or on the couch, or if he comes to bed with us. But otherwise, no way, no how. For various reasons we decided not to deal with this over the past month, and since we'll be in Disneyland next week, there didn't seem to be a point in doing anything until we get back. Hopefully we'll be able to get him back into some kind of regular sleep pattern soon. On the plus side, he's dropped his nighttime feedings, so it's just a matter of dealing with the clinginess issue!
  
• He surprisingly looks quite a bit like me as a baby. I wouldn't have noticed it, but my mom pulled out an old photo of me at 3 months and the resemblance is pretty striking. I will have to borrow that photo and scan it in next time I'm over at their house!
• We have been signing with him for a few months – just simple signs like "diaper change", and now that he's eating, "more" and "all done" He already seems to be trying to sign! In the past couple of days he brings his hands together in front of him in a rough approximation of "more" while he's eating. It will be fun to see if he picks it up in the next while!
  
• Still nothing on the tooth front, although he is sooo drooly and his teeth obviously bother him quite a bit.

Lovely drooly baby.

• Things Sam loves: having his back scratched (he crunches up his shoulders and just melts); being tickled; This Little Piggy; the bath (he really, really loves the bath and gets super-excited every time we put him in it!!); spending time with Amanda (his face literally lights up when she is around, and she continues to be amazing with him); looking at pictures of babies (we found a great book called Baby! Baby! that he is crazy about); a lovely pink plastic comb that he seeks out above all other toys.

Of all the toys he has to play with, he picks the plastic comb??

• Hmm, what else? He has a very funny little giggle – almost more like a chuckle. He's still a little shy around anyone other than me, Jeff, or Amanda, but he's getting better at being with other people and has been successfully babysat (i.e., little or no crying) for a few hours at a time. We are loving getting to know him and discovering his personality as it emerges!

Our beautiful boy!

What's For Dinner: Speedy Snapper Soup

Mmm...this was delicious! There's something about a big pot of super-healthy soup with lots of fresh colourful veggies that makes me happy! We had a nice 60% whole wheat baguette to go with it and it was perfect.

This recipe is from one of my very favourite cookbooks – More Six O'Clock Solutions: Fast and Easy Dinner for Family and Friends by Ruth Phelan and Brenda Thompson (the first book, Six O'Clock Solutions, is also excellent but doesn't have any nutritional information). The books are from local authors, so I always know I will be able to find the ingredients, and they're interesting and fresh-tasting without being too "weird" or time-consuming.

I've been trying to find ways to sneak more fish into our diets, because I know it's good for us, but I find it tough. First, fish is expensive!! There's no way we can eat it twice a week as recommended and still stay within our food budget. On top of that, neither Jeff nor Amanda is a huge fan...they'll eat it but they never seem all that thrilled with it. Soup is turning out to be a good way to fit it in, and there's no stinky fishy smell afterwards either!

I actually made this with frozen tilapia fillets, because the snapper that was in this week's Save-On-Foods flyer (which I plan my meals around) was not available...something that always makes me very angry! I hate it when I try to plan my budget around the flyer and then they don't bring in enough of the sale items!

Speedy Snapper Soup
From More Six O'Clock Solutions: Fast and Easy Dinner for Family and Friends by Ruth Phelan and Brenda Thompson

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 carrots, diced (I used big carrots and peeled them)
2 stalks celery, sliced
3 cups chicken stock (I used low-salt)
2 cans (398 mL each) Italian-style stewed tomatoes
1 large potato, cut into 1" pieces
1 lb snapper fillets, cut into 1" pieces (I used tilapia)
2 cups coarsely chopped fresh spinach
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper

In large heavy saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrots, and celery; saute for 4 minutes or until onion is tender. Add stock, tomatoes, and potato. Bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes or until potatoes are almost tender. Add snapper and simmer, uncovered, for 3 minutes. Stir in spinach and parsley; cook for 2 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste.

4 large servings; each 306 calories, 6.8 g fat; excellent source of iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and vitamins A, B6, B12, C, niacin, and folate; high in fibre

(I will have to start taking photos of the especially yummy meals...this one was very pretty!).

Food Fun

One of the biggest struggles I've had since becoming a mom is getting dinner on the table every night. This didn't use to be a problem for me at all - when Jeff and I were first married and for several years afterwards, I was an avid reader of Bon Appetit and other cooking magazines and used to try interesting new recipes and cooking techniques almost every night. Of course, I also had a lot more time for cooking...something that seems to be mysteriously lacking in my life these days!

One thing I have learned about myself is that for dinner to happen, there must be a plan. I adopted my mom's system of doing meal planning and grocery lists, and as long as I can manage to make a plan for the week and then actually get to the grocery store, things work out OK. But planning is very time consuming, and many weeks it just doesn't happen. Then we are forced to scrounge for dinner, which I hate! I find it so tedious to have to think every night about what we're going to eat, and try to put something together out of what's in the house. We are pretty good about keeping the freezer stocked with meat staples, but I'm not great at replacing what I use out of the pantry, and of course fresh vegetables are difficult when you haven't been to the store in awhile!

I was speaking last night with another mom from Amanda's preschool and we were laughing about this – it seems we have very similar "desperation meals" for when groceries are running low – some kind of meat (often Shake 'n' Bake Chicken) with a pot of rice and vegetables from the freezer or a can. At least I know I'm not the only one! No, technically there isn't anything wrong with a meal like this, but I sure get tired of having it any more often than once in awhile.

Since Sam arrived, we've struggled to get on a regular schedule of meal planning and grocery shopping, and our energy, waistlines, and budget (from far too much eating out and picking up) have been evidence of this! In the last couple of weeks I've been slowly getting back on track and we've been eating pretty healthily for the most part. We all do feel much better when we're eating at home most of the time, and with fresh ingredients rather than the "pop in the oven" pre-made foods that were a staple for those first few months.

As a kind of motivation to keep going with it, I thought I would post once in awhile about what we've been eating. Definitely not every night, but as a reminder to ourselves of the kinds of meals we all enjoy! Plus, maybe it will serve as inspiration when I'm in the midst of meal planning and nothing sounds interesting...

Reason #214 That Amanda is Kind of Strange

Amanda loves fruit of all kinds - so much that her Grandpa (who is also a big fruit lover) always brings her little treats of different kinds of fruit. Recently he's been bringing over the little honey mandarin oranges and she loves them! But for some bizarre reason, whenever she eats one, she has a very strange ritual.

She peels the whole thing, then sticks her ring finger through the middle and wears it like a ring. Then she dances around the room singing/chanting "Mexican ring, Mexican ring" in a very odd voice, kind of like some preschooler thrash metal singer.

We have absolutely no idea where this little tradition came from, but she does it every single time.

Weird, yes, but man do we love that kid!