Fertility, Pregnancy, Baby stuff

Don’t Make Me

~ Girlmom ~ 1 Comment

I was the last in the family to get hit with the cold and every.single.ounce of my energy has been sucked out of me. Four days and I don’t feel any better, when will it end?!

Kaili has been asking to go to the park everyday and everyday that sounds like the absolute worst idea, insert terrible mom here. Feeling guilty, I somehow gathered all my energy and worked on some crafts with the girls to make up for it.

Kaili worked on a marshmallow bunny, eating more than she glued. I had to refill the bowl a few times.

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Averi would sneak up, take one off the paper and pop it into her mouth before anything could be done.

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We also made Easter bunny headbands. My preschool teacher talents are wasting away so I figured I should put them to work. Kaili said she would help me but really she watched cartoons while demanding more food.

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I got a letter from her school stating that Thursday was their big Dr. Seuss party. They want us to make something “Suessical” for lunch. Wait, I just made 25 Red Fish, Blue Fish cupcakes for Dr. Suess’ birthday, and I don’t feel good, wah-waaa can I get a pass?

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In the midst of searching Pinterest for Suess like foods and creative outfits, it dawned on my that Sunday is Easter…What the holy hell?  While boiling eggs I decided to test run a hair-style on Kaili. Kicking and screaming aside, I think I can get this to work.

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It’s a Minnie mouse bow, not Dr. Suess but seriously it’s cute!

Now I have to spend the afternoon making some sort of silly snack that the kids probably won’t even eat because it looks funny. But on the plus side, soccer is canceled which means I can stay home in my sweats with snot dripping down my nose and nobody is going to care, there is a Jesus.

Changing with the Time

~ Girlmom ~ 1 Comment

My sweet little Aves is turning into a grumpy toddler. She has a cold, that might count for some of it but she uses the word “no” quite frequently. She is also having some sleep regression. She went from going down with a wave goodnight and then not a peep til morning, to crying as soon as I close the door. Nothing makes me want to throw myself in front of a bus more than hearing her cry for hours. She knows what she is doing, and it’s been working. Mom needs to toughen up.

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We went ahead and changed all our clocks on Saturday and just went with it. Besides Averi’s hours of fighting bed time, it went decently.  Kaili’s daily routine involves a lot of clocks and timers. She gets a fair warning before every transition from getting dressed for school to brushing her teeth at night. It helps avoid power struggles and gives her time to process what comes next without the meltdowns. I can’t wait to start with Averi, it might make bedtime a bit easier. The other night when I was reading to K she said, “mommy, I hear my clock ticking!” She meant her heart beating, how cute is that? It made me smile, the pureness of childhood.

We are starting to get some goodies from the garden. Kaili gets to water and pick the red ripe strawberries. She usually gets too eat them too, but from what I have tasted they are perfect!

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Spaghetti Squash Greek Salad

~ Girlmom ~ 1 Comment

Do you ever buy a spaghetti squash and then it sits on the counter for days before you use it? I do, all.the.time. I hem and haw about what to do with it and then I always end up making this, but in a casserole dish.

Finally I went back to a recipe I used to make, seems like years ago. Spaghetti squash Greek salad. The nice part about this recipe is I can make it in the afternoon and then cover and chill it while we run to soccer or swimming and then it’s ready without any fuss for dinner. And no, my kids don’t eat it….”don’t make me laugh, ha, ha, ha.”

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Ingredients

For the dressing:

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons EV olive oil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced

For the Salad:

2 cups cooked spaghetti squash ( cut in half, roast at 400 degrees for 45 minutes, let cool. Scoop out and squeeze as much water out with a cheese cloth)
1 /2 cups chopped tomato
1 cup diced cucumber
1/2 cup  crumbled feta cheese * I add a tad more right before serving.
1/4 cup diced red onion
2 tablespoons chopped pitted kalamata olives

Combine first 6 ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together.
Combine spaghetti squash and remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Add vinegar mixture; toss well. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

*recipe adapted from My Recipes

Marching On

~ Girlmom ~ 1 Comment

The Avester is getting pretty good at walking. She enjoys putting on her shoes and heading out. She’s got to work on getting up and down steps but soon she should be able to wander around without much help.

California has been in the oven the past month and we have been held up in our nice air conditioned house. I think Aves gets stir crazy sometimes but then I think of the book The Room and I’m like, girl, you’re good. In all seriousness,  it’s been too hot to be outside for long, plain miserable. If we were outside, water was involved.

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She is now 14 months. I have started her on some sign language, just a few basic signs. She is catching on fast but I’m not so sure she quite understands what she is saying, but she will. We don’t have much language, she can say dada and growls for “doggy” but that’s about it. She does babble and laughs a lot, she melts my heart. Not everything is getting put in her mouth anymore, she is good about stopping if I tell her “Averi, not in your mouth.” I was doing  a bunch of art activities with Kaili at her age because K never had any sort of oral fixation. I am still hesitant to do much with A, hopefully soon. I know she will love it.

IMG_6013We stopped bottles completely, no problem. I tried everything I could to get her to drink milk but she doesn’t want it. Without the milk, her constipation stopped. She get’s her dairy through yogurt and cheese and that doesn’t seem to bother her…luckily.

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I have to admit, I am looking forward to the holidays with the girls, fun times ahead.

 8 months

~ Girlmom ~ 3 Comments

Things are good! Minus that hour of sleep we lost. I can say month  eight is great!. 

She can sit up, she is knocking out a bottle of baby food a day, sometimes two. But just recently she mastered the art of sucking through a straw, hopefully this will alleviate the pain of finding the perfect sippy cup.

With Kaili we swapped sippy cup to sippy cup, in other words I didn’t know what I was doing. Whenenver I offered Averi a sippy cup she just got pissed off.  I saw a glimmer of hope when I gave her the cup with a straw and now boom, she’s nailed it!



She isn’t crawling yet, which is a blessing. We will see what happens in the next month.  Sleep is good, we have canceled all of our middle of the night meetings.  She is a happy baby who is wildly fond of her big sister, watching the two of them together makes my heart swell!

Happy 8 months Averi,

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A Good Pad Thai?

~ Girlmom ~ 1 Comment

Pad Thai, it’s like the Orange chicken of Thai food. It’s always ordered because it’s not spicy for that one person, I’m pretty sure it was Kailis first introduction to Thai food. I am not one to order it because let be honest Pad See Ew is SO much better.  But one day I really wanted some so I did the easy thing and bought Amy’s that was sitting the freezer section of Sprouts and you know what, it wasn’t half bad. Then I decided I would try making it because I had nothing else better to do.  

Now I had to find a recipe and it took me days, I am so serious. The Internet is dangerous place, hundreds of recipes for this stupid dish and every one was different.  I found myself on All Recipes ( you know how much I love that site) and saw ” the best traditional Pad Thai recipe EVER” or something like that. I thought ok, maybe this site will come through for me. I read the recipe and it looked fine until the part where they left out tamarind. I mean come on, tamarind is the whole basis behind Pad Thai, how can this be traditional? The reviews made me want to throw my iPad across the room. Why was this so hard? I almost threw in the towel and went to by some stupid premade sauce but I went ahead and slaved in the kitchen combining 3 different recipes.  In the end, after all that work I didn’t even like the stupid dish. I was left with enough Pad Thai noodles for a year and I couldn’t even pawn them off on Kaili. It wasn’t that it tasted bad I think I just realized I don’t really like Pad Thai and that was the hardest way to find that out. Moral of this story? I have no fucking clue but stay away from All Recipes!





I’m How Old?

~ Girlmom ~ 2 Comments

Well I turned another year older, it’s fun while you’re celebrating and then kind of depressing when you’re not, for me anyway.

Our good friend drove out from Arizona to celebrate the weekend with us. I am impressed with all that we managed to squeeze into 2 days, especially with kids.

  We took her to Blue Door Winery, San Diego Cellars, And San Pasqual winery….got to drink local.  We tried a new pizza place that was just okay and drank coffee at our favorite roaster.  





We strolled downtown by the waterfront and ended up devouring the best tacos at Puesto! Kaili loves their salsa, she practically drinks the stuff. Speaking of drinking, their spicy Margaritas are lovely!





After lunch these  two found themselves behind bars .



We ended the day at a new local cheese store. It was like walking into a Paris fromagerie. We spent a good amount of time there because they were offering us samples of every cheese we were curious about, it was heaven. The weekend ended with a pedicure and for the first time in years I watched the entire Academy Awards live, and what a snooze it was. Not a bad way to spend a day getting older.

7 Months

~ Girlmom ~ 3 Comments

Last week Averi turned 7 months old. A few days later things starting falling back into place. She has been sleeping through the night, she has showed a bit more interest in solids and she is back to her happy self. I don’t know if it’s because she is 100% healthy now or if we went through some sort of regression and I don’t really care because things are easier on me….happy mama, no more drama! what? That’s a thing, people say that!

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For Valentine’s Day we got away for a very overpriced dinner with some friends, it was worth every penny. Oh and remember I said I was trying a new recipe last week, ya well that didn’t turn out so good. Let’s just say the recipe called for a bit too much fish sauce and it overpowered the dish and the kitchen.

A Half a Year

~ Girlmom ~ 4 Comments

It’s been 6 1/2 whole months since Miss Averi has come into the world. This is when time starts to speed up, at least that is when it happened with K.

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At 6 months Averi is is having a bit of sleep regression and I blame it on her last cold. She wakes up around 3 a.m and wants to eat, I have to wean her off of this…sigh. She takes 2 naps a day and  has her two bottom teeth. I don’t even know how much she eats a day but it’s a lot, the girl has an appetite. I started her on oatmeal and some pureed veggies but she’s not sold on them yet. For now it’s just for fun anyhow. I showed her a sippy cup the other day but I think that’s a ways in our future, girls gotta get a tad more motor control first.

She is super sweet natured and just a happy baby. The moms at Kaili’s gymnastics are always commenting how they can’t believe Averi will just chill in her carseat the entire time, I guess we one of the lucky ones because she is just fine in her carseat and stroller.

She is becoming a little football fan. If that sport is on the television she watches. She will even arch her neck to get a better look, it’s funny and a little scary at the same time. I put her on our bed to put clothes away and turned the TV to the NFL network, that gave me almost 1/2 hour.

She is the noisiest baby. She gabs, yells, growls and laughs, all.the.time. I’m pretty sure Kaili didn’t make any noise until 6 months. It’s cute and annoying, the screeching is ear piercing.

We had our first bout of constipation and I will associate that to the squash she was eating. She was getting uncomfortable so I picked up some prune juice. 4 oz and a day later the problem was, lets say unplugged and we have been good since.

She is on the low end of the spectrum in weight at 14 lbs and at the higher end for height. I look forward to watching her change each month, she’s just the cutest. Happy 6 months Monkey butt.

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Seeing Red

~ Girlmom ~ 3 Comments

We’ve been home a week and I finally caught the cold! Of course it came on a Sunday, knowing I would be alone with the kids all week, well played cold. Kaili woke up with a slight cough and a runny nose so….

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I wanted to catch you up in a Trolley incident we witnessed. Friday morning  we hopped on the trolley and headed to the convention center to see the car show. After a few hours of drooling over cars we most likely will never own we hopped over to Little Italy for lunch. After a decent meal at Davanti (Food is always good, service wasn’t the best.) we waited for the trolley to go back home. When it pulled up and the doors opened a woman hollered for us to get on another car, something about blood. We realized we didn’t process her request as we hopped in the next door down. Once on the train chaos ensued, there was shouting and as I looked down the aisle there were small pools of blood. A woman came walking our way holding her forearm, she was noticeably bleeding and went to push the button to open the doors but we were already moving. She just stood there holding her wound and everyone else just stood there minding there own business. This is the part I can’t wrap my head around, maybe it was shock or fear but I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed a diaper from my bag and told her to wrap it tight around her arm. Then I told the people comfortably sitting down with their heads in their iPhones to get up so she could sit down. I pushed the emergency button and the conductor informed me that authorities were waiting  in Old Town. Meanwhile Kaili was very concerned and wanted to have a front row seat, so Shane took over and I took Kaili to a further seat until we reached our stop.

This lady was bleeding and it was bad, like a slow pour onto the ground. Shane and I both would have done more had we had gloves, he did his best to keep her arm elevated without getting blood on him but she was fading fast. When we stopped the police came aboard and immediately arrested two people. We hollered for them to come get her, they weren’t in a terrible hurry and the ambulance wasn’t even there yet. They took her off and that was that in a nutshell.

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Once we were home we found out that the woman who was stabbed was apparently the aggressor and threw a punch at another older woman, whom in return stabbed her on the arm. It said she was at the hospital in critical condition.

Kaili had some questions that evening but I think we did a good job explaining and reassuring her, she hasn’t really brought it up since and no nightmares, which I was a tad worried about.

What I want to know is if you were a witness to that situation and a woman was bleeding really badly in front of you, would you help or mind your own business. What would you do? Primetime’s John Quiñones and I want to know.