A year ago...

this splotchy red alien creature was born

I'll pen a more sentimental post later today, but we have a crazy busy day ahead of us. Just didn't want the morning to pass without a mention.
We love you baby Gus!

Have you ever.....

weaned a baby? If so, help!

So, the one year birthday is coming up, and my kid WON'T EAT! I am still nursing him 4-5 times a day, and I think my supply is dwindling because he stays totally restless during these nursing sessions. I have been trying to push the solids and it is just not taking. The only things he will eat consistently are yogurt, guacamole, and bananas. I try to give him everything that we are eating, and he just ends up playing with it and throwing it on the floor. If I try to spoon-feed him anything other than yogurt, he puckers his lips out and turns his head away.

Also, he resists the sippy cup. Won't drink juice. Will barely drink milk.

How am I supposed to wean him? I feel like he's not getting enough calories as it is. If I quit nursing altogether, will he just eventually get so hungry that he'll start experimenting and eating new things?

I really don't know what to do! Any advice is greatly appreciated. I need him weaned by November 21st.

Tang Pie

I can't really explain the role Tang Pie has had in the Wolfe family. It wasn't a featured item at every holiday or anything like that, but we had it enough that I felt like it was a pretty normal thing to eat. You know how you don't really question these things until it comes up in conversation one day in your twenties and your friend is like "Wha????? Tang Pie???"

Or, maybe you are 22 and at a company meeting in Ireland and one of the icebreaker conversations was to name the weirdest thing you've ever eaten. You lean over to your boss and whisper "Is squirrel a weird thing to eat?" and she looks back at you with horror, and then you are definitely the person in the room who has eaten the weirdest thing.

Anyway, the point is that sometimes it takes a 3rd party to point out the culinary oddities of your life. Now back to Tang Pie.

The recipe is just as easy and redneck as you might imagine: 1 can Sweetened Condensed milk, 1/2 c tang, 1/2 pint sour cream, 1 1/2 cups cool whip. Mix all together, spoon into prepared graham cracker crust, and chill or freeze.

Please please please, make this for your loved ones and report back.

R

.. is the most menacing sound. That's why they call it "murder" and not "muk-duk."

I love Dwight.

It's time again.....

....for the latest installment of the Lornitzo household Google search history.

pass performance
how to pick the right plantain
"one of these days alice"
bitch is back
insipid
I.com
stephen king beard
glycerin suppositories
does the eardrum stretch
roomba
mechanical pecan cracker

My favorite is "I.com." Why wouldn't we just have typed that into the URL space and gone straight to the site if we were so curious?

In case you were wondering, I.com is available for purchase. But the kind folks at Yahoo suggested that maybe I was really looking for "Withnail and I" or "I Ching." That makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

The Remains of the Day

The girl who was coming over on Mondays to watch Gus while I slept a few hours moved away. Far, far away. So the past few Mondays have been, shall we say, freckin' brutal. Usually I am extraordinarily chipper the first hour after I get home, like my brain is over-correcting for the fatigue in my bones, and for a brief moment, the trickery works and I think, "This ain't so bad. What." I make great plans to go to libraries, gyms, grocery stores. I anticipate afternoon crafting sessions, baking, cleaning. I'll get out a few packages in the mail, I'll think. Or, I'll power wash the side of the house later, for certain! Oh and I've been meaning for months to go out and clean/rearrange the shed. Isn't today a lovely day for such a massive project!?

Then 8:30 happens, and I am incapacitated. I hit the mother-lovin' wall. Sometimes literally - I run into walls. And I never accomplish anything, no matter how remotely trivial, for the remainder of the day.

Luckily, this is usually is the neighborhood of naptime for Gus, so it's not a big fight to get him to sleep. But oh how fleeting is that time. We wake up in what feels like 90 seconds. Or, in today's case, Gus wakes up and I put him in the floor in my sleep and continue on sleeping. Then LATER I wake up to him crying and have a flash of panic as I realize I didn't close the door to the nursery, so my curious 11-month old is wandering around a house that is not 100% baby-proofed while his mother sleeps on the futon.

Mother of the Year Award 2009? Why, I'm honored! I'd like to thank the little people. That means you Gus. Thanks for not crashing through any windows or eating any chemicals while I was dreaming about Jimmy Smits.

Songs you don't mind having stuck in your head

"After the Gold Rush" Neil Young

Speaking of Neil Young, on our anniversary about a week ago, Adam and I got in the car to go out and what song popped up immediately on our random shuffle but "Harvest Moon," the song we danced to at our wedding. We couldn't believe it. Such a sweet moment. Then and now.

I got robbed, by oats

This morning for breakfast, I totally rocked it. Had a bowl of oatmeal (not instant, people, the real deal) with just a pinch of brown sugar, to which I added raisins and walnuts. With a cup of milk on the side to wash down my multivitamin.

It was so healthy, I died. Then I came back to life, sat down, and tallied up how many Weight Watchers points I just consumed. Imagine my shock when I found that this breakfast amounted to HALF of what I should eat in a day. What??? Bogus.

Buckethead

She's baaaack!

Sincere apologies for leaving y'all hanging for more than 2 weeks with nothing but insipid Paula Cole lyrics staring at you. And by "you" I mean mom, Ashley and John, who are probably the only people out there still reading this blog.

FALL IS HERE!! I am so excited and so is everyone else in my universe. It's all anyone is talking about on Facebook. That, and football of course. It's my favorite time of year, the most invigorating. In fact, when I woke up this morning and felt the cool crisp air outside, I got busy!! I dressed myself and Gus, got the stroller out of the car, and started loading up the ipod for an epic morning walk. I was pumped! Well then I had to update Itunes, which took forever. Then I got hung up on investigating whether I could download old issues of the This American Life podcast for free (I couldn't). Then it was like 9:00 and Gus was sleepy. And you know what, I was starting to feel a little sleepy too with all that computer activity! So I figured we'd just take a little nap and do our epic morning walk after that. So we crawled in bed. By the time we woke up at 11:30, well it was just too late for an epic morning walk, and we couldn't do an epic afternoon walk because we were helping a friend move.

Oh well!

I DID make it to the gym tonight, however, so the adrenaline I got this morning from weather actually was not wasted, as it seemed it might be this morning. And now that I've got the ipod issues sorted out, maybe we'll go on a big walk tomorrow morning!

So, I had a really really long hiatus from the gym. We're talking, about 2 months. Totally shameful. I was in a groove. I was training for a 5K. I was losing weight. I was happy and feeling great! Then I went on vacation and it all went to hell. And I am just now taking baby steps back into a fitness routine. I had to start all the way back at the beginning with my running regimen, which is a bummer.

I have to find a way to avoid letting life's interruptions completely derail my efforts at healthier living. I tend to have an "all or nothing" attitude about eating right and exercising, which is not effective at all. I have a bad habit of using poor choices as a pass to keep making poor choices the rest of the day, week, month, whatever. As in, "well, I had a cheeseburger and fries for lunch, so it doesn't matter what I do for dinner, since the day is already shot. May as well totally pig out and do absolutely nothing to raise my heart rate." It's embarrassing to even admit that, but it's the truth. Anyway, if anyone out there has some advice or encouragement regarding this, I am all ears!

Most Annoying Lyric

"So open up your morning light
Say a little prayer for I"

Ugh. It's both bad grammar and bad poetry. Just awful.

Why am I blogging about an easy listening song from 1997? Because radio stations still play this crap!!

10 months

Deception

I thought we had a good night of sleep in the bag after seeing this sleepy face. Not so.

New Favorite Picture

We are back from our vacation to Colorado, and it was just awesome. This picture pretty much sums it up, taken on the drive to Colorado and capturing 3 of my favorite things on earth: Gus, Beth, and the open road.

Score!

It's a relatively new thing for me to have a decently stocked kitchen. So it's still a surprise when I am able to go whip up some cookies without a trip to the grocery store. Isn't this some sort of milestone of adulthood that I've reached? Anyone else pat yourself on the back when this happens?