Bath Time

By popular demand, here's more BABY!! Here's Will after his bath. Don't let the face fool you. He hates baths. Probably because I just can't find the right bath tub thing for him and he's always freezing! The foam thing soaks up water that soon goes cold. The plastic one seems uncomfortable and also leaves him high and wet and cold. The bathroom sink is too small, and the kitchen sink is too gross. Maybe I can make some kind of foam/plastic combo.
Will is doing great! Eating lots and lots and lots. He has wonderful fat wrinkles on his arms, legs, and neck. His eyes are still a dark blue with a lighter color forming in the middle. His newborn hair is slowly rubbing off and he was starting to look like an old, balding man but new hair is growing in now. He has a good complexion as far as new babies go. I wish he was sleeping five or more hours at a time during the night but... he's still only going about two to three hours a night. But...it's ok I guess. He seems super healthy and is growing!! Some of his newborn onesies are too tight. I was holding him during Sunday school and everyone kept looking at him and snickering because he was grunting and snorting so much. It's his favorite thing to do. Let me know if there are any more questions...any more brain busters?

A Food Post!

I think this is a first for my blog. Britton and I are supposedly helping each other lose weight so I found this low-fat pasta dish. The only thing I did differently was use soy sauce instead of Tamarri, and skip the kalamata olives. (We had a bad experience with them.) In the picture it's served with crusty bread and asparagus. In reality, I was too tired to cook the asparagus. Here's the recipe!

Spinach and Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta Sauce

8 servings
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
12 ounces pasta, your choice
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 teaspoons olive oil
1 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons tamari
Ground black pepper to taste
1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained & chopped
1/4 cup Kalamata olive, chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 bunch fresh spinach, stems removed
3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

Soak sun-dried tomatoes in hot water 30 min.; drain. Slice into thin strips. Cook pasta according to package directions. Saute onions and garlic in oil over medium-low heat 2 to 3 min. Add mushrooms, tamari and black pepper; saute' another 3 min. until vegetables are tender. Add tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives and pine nuts; toss. Add spinach; toss and heat through. Toss with pasta; garnish with feta cheese.

Might as well make some dessert to go with that right? We needed to make a dessert for a church dessert.appetizer night where people are known to go fancy schmancy with their cooking. We just happened to have a ripe mango sitting on our microwave. So we came up with the idea to make sorbet. The ingredients are super simple, and the directions aren't too complicated either.

Mango Sorbet

Ingredients
4 ripe mangoes (about 3 1/2 pounds total)
1 cup Simple Syrup
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice, or to taste

Preparation
Cut the flesh off the mangoes. Put the mango flesh into the blender. Add syrup and lime juice to blender and purée until smooth. Pour into a medium bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until completely chilled. (at least six hours)

That's it! If you want to get fancy you can serve the sorbet in frozen mango shells, but I think it's usually pretty hard to keep those intact when you're slicing up the slippery mango.

1 Month and First Sunburn

I already feel like a bad mom... Our church had the annual ferry ride across the bay activity. What can I say, Will is just a popular boy and at the park on the other side of the bay he was held by baby enthusiasts the entire time! I thought everyone was careful to keep him in the shade, but by the time we got home he had bright red cheeks, and a cherry nose, looking somewhat like a mini-Santa. I guess I'm a bad wife also because Britton got his 500th sunburn from playing Frisbee and flying his airplane for hours. Where's that SPF 75 when you need it!?
Regardless, the activity was incredibly fun. It was the first activity we attended with our church last year, and we got to know so many people both last year and this one. Hopefully we'll keep getting to know people the rest of the year without requiring a boat ride to do this:) Britton's family was even able to join us at the park for a picnic. It is so great to have family so close!

The Fruits of Our Labors

We have succeeded! Monster plants have gone to that compost in the sky, and new, green, energetic plants have replaced them.
After we cleared all the nasties out, Britton actually convinced two of his young men from church to help us plant seeds. I guess it will make some great lesson on faith sometime in the future as well as some healthy treats! In the meantime, they get brownies and donuts every week.
Britton has been really good about watering it on his way to school, and we are just starting to enjoy the fruits of our labors. We used our Asian cucumber in a cucumber melon sorbet. (Take that Bath and Body Works!) And we enjoyed some yellow squash yesterday.
Siamese twin squash!

Thank Heaven for Mother In-laws!

Not very many people would say something like this, but I have the best mother in-law in the world! So this last weekend we decided to visit the ol' Olson homestead again. We were pretty excited because Britton's mom offered to take care of Will all night so we could get a full nights sleep. That's right, EIGHT consecutive hours of sanity producing sleep! We got everything prepped, and then...just left him to her care. It felt so weird. I managed to sleep through the night with little interruption, but I could hardly wait to go get my baby again in the morning. I tiptoed upstairs and found two angels sleeping. Turns out they both had a pretty good night. And we have a third witness that our boy is the loudest snort-periodically-in-the-sleep baby ever! Well, we sure appreciated this gift!
And since I'm talking about mother in-laws I better not neglect my own mother! A big THANKS is also due to my own mom for all her help directly after Will was born. We hadn't gotten our monster sized washer and dryer yet, so my mom lugged our laundry to the basement of another building almost everyday in the heat...uphill both ways. She also planned some great meals reminding me that I can actually plan ahead for food. And last but not least, she was my support during those randomly emotional post-partum days. We love you mom/Grandma S! Sorry the text went weird--not sure how to fix it.

Banana Boy!

He'll thank us later when we show his girlfriends this picture and they think he's so cute.

Good Catch

Pirate Booty

I think Olivia picked out this outfit for our little guy. Thanks Olivia (and Nana)

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

In case you were wondering what I'm doing with all my time indoors now... http://www.myheritage.com/collage

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Free pedigree charts - Descendants

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

Depending on the picture you use, you can get vastly different people that the program thinks you look like. I apparently look like a man sometimes. I went with this picture because I've actually heard on different occasions that I look like Carrie Underwood and Reese Witherspoon. Ok, I've only heard it once for each celebrity and the guy who said I looked like Reese Witherspoon seemed slightly crazy. http://www.myheritage.com/collage

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celeb

Ikea Day

The other day was an Ikea day. We spent enough time at Ikea to have both lunch, dinner, and dessert there. We ended up having the same cashier for lunch and dinner, but she didn't seem to think it was weird to see us for both meals. Everyone who saw Will in his stroller made comments about how brave I was for getting out of the house so soon. I'm not that brave...my mom was still in town and we don't have any air conditioning. So out of all the airconditioned places to choose from we decided on Ikea because they have these baby care rooms where you can just lock the door and have a little room to yourself to feed and diaper your babe. They even have free diapers and wipes! Does anyone else do this?
I feel like a hypocrite spending so much time at Ikea because about a year ago I was writing a blog about how Ikea has such horrible service and how I would never shop there again. Time has healed that rift I guess.
We had a good time, Britton plugged in his laptop at one of the displays and pretended to model the desk's utility. After almost an hour someone finally noticed him and asked him to stop using their power to do his homework. My mom brought her book, I got lost around the store a couple times, and Will slept.
So if you don't have airconditioning, I recommend spending some time at Ikea to cool off. They also have excellent meatballs, refreshing frozen yogurt, and unique lingonberry and elderflower flavored items. mmm, lingonberry.