Reston Mom

updates on Ami

Just to catch up family and friends on how our little Amelia is growing:

She turned 8 mo. at the end of November - but she wears about 12 mo in clothing size.  This is a little funny on two counts - one, my family is generally short so to have a baby who is kind of tall/long for her age is surprising.  Also, the 12 mo. clothes fit her great in length, but she is also pretty slender so they tend to be a little too "fat" or "wide" for her which looks a little silly.

 

She has three teeth now, two front bottom and one front top.  She eats like a champ! She can put away some food, that girl! and she loves those little baby puffs.

  

She can pull herself up to standing if she wants to and stands just great while holding onto something - but no attempts at cruising yet.  

She gets soooooo mad if you take away something that she wants to keep, she has already thrown a true-blue honest-to-goodness temper tantrum.  She also still searches out every little speck on the ground to eat.

 

She's a smiley happy girl and she loves her daddy - always smiling her coy smile at him and getting so excited when he comes in.  

  

Family fun and Holidays

Here's the catch-you-up on a few of our family happenings:

First, Matt's sister and her husband (who has been his best friend since middle school) and their son, West, came for a good visit.  It was fun to have the little cousins together!

  

Thanksgiving was so nice! Matt's parents (Nana and Boompa to the girls) came and we feasted and enjoyed each other's company! 
 

  

Then on Friday, we ignored the black Friday sales and headed over to the town center to watch the annual parade for the first time - which we ditched early due to being so cold and the RIDICULOUS gaps between parade features which left us waiting and watching nothing in the cold for too long especially for little kids.  

  

So, we headed west instead to Snicker's Gap farm to cut down our Christmas tree.  The weather, though cold, was a far cry from the crazyness of last year and we all had a good time and scored a bea-u-ti-ful tree! I love the picture of our family together with Boompa filming next to us!

  
 
 
 

Santa is at the Reston Town Center

 I don't have all the details, I'll post them when I get them - in the meantime, perhaps one of you will be able to fill the rest of us in.  While I was at the town center, I noticed that down past Williams Sonoma - heading towards Nine West, there is a currently vacated space which is being used this season to host Santa Claus for pictures and such with the kiddos.  So, if you haven't already hit up the mall Santa - you might want to head over to the town center (like I said, I'll try to get hold of times and post them) and take your pictures with Santa there, then watch the ice skaters (or join in!) Marvelous Market now actually has hot apple cider (after forever having it on their sign without actually having it for sale) and the big gingerbread house and train display is up inside the foyer of the Hyatt.  Tons of new shops down there too - like Lou Lou.  You'd think this was an advertisement for RTC, but really, I just love spending time with my family there.  

Tuesday's Tip - serving perfect pie slices

   I can't remember where I learned this, but it works great!  This holiday season, if you find yourself trying to serve pieces of pie from one of those disposable pie tins - try this first:  Cut your slices as desired and then, with a pair of kitchen shears, snip right through the edge of the pie tin in line with your slices.  You can then gently put out/down the edge a little bit and easily slip in your serving utensil.  Sometimes you can even cut the tin right down to the bottom crust.  This makes getting a perfect slice with back and bottom crusts totally in tact a cinch every time.  In fact, it might make you want to bake all of your pies in a disposable tin instead of that cute fluted-edge ceramic deep dish that looks so pretty but makes it difficult to deliver a perfect slice. 

Tuesday's Tip - Turkey

 Since I'll be hosting and cooking on Thanksgiving this year, I've been thinking about the turkey! Usually, we grill (yes, you can grill an entire Turkey and yes, it is amazingly good!) but since our gas grill has some issues, it looks like a good old-fashioned in-the-oven bird this year.  No prob - I've done this before.  But, I heard that rubbing the bird with salt the day before helps the skin to get nice and crispy.  Has anyone done this before?  I've definitely heard of doing an herbed salt-rub instead of brine, though my refrigerator doesn't allow space for submerging the turkey in brine overnight and I'm too timid of parts of the bird being too dry to try burying it in salt - but if a nice poultry massage with salt will draw out some of the moisture and leave a perfectly crispy, brown skin it may be worth a try.  We all know though that it's the butter that works magic on the outside of Turkey, right?  Butter and basting (basting every 30 min or so) - that's the way to go if you want a nice golden bird.  Tent your foil until towards the end of baking and then take it off and watch the bird tan nicely.  If it browns too quickly, just put the foil on again.  

what do you have bookmarked?

It has been too long since I've posted.  It has been even longer since I've had any time to actually look through the things that I've bookmarked and hoped to return to.  I've got a separate folder for recipes and home schooling and also bunch of blogs but here is the random list of other things currently on my bookmarks bar. Surprisingly, there isn't as much there as I thought. What do you have bookmarked? I'd love to know.

 Hapa Culture

diy project: toilet paper roll wall art - Design Sponge

set: Egg Collective

Choffy

Spoon Flower

a bunch of images of warblers (birds) for an art project I'm working on

fast pencil

mamapedia

reuseablebags.com

gizmodiva.com

Dr. Hauschka skin care

mbt shoes

1154 Lill Studio

anonymous postcard

raising safe kids one stage at a time

eat better america

make your own handwriting fonts

wholesomebabyfood.com

Never too old to learn

This is why I love having kids in the age of information when everything is at your fingertips - science lesson on camouflage? Just pull up YouTube and watch a chameleon change through several different colors right then with your very own eyes - or an octopus swimming through the depths of the ocean for that matter!

Yesterday, Hope and I were reading a story book from the library "Mousekin's Mystery" - in which several animals take on a glow due to some luminescent mushrooms.  Hmmm...I thought....are there really mushrooms that glow in the dark?  Pulled out the computer and learned something new with my daughter! So fun, I had no idea!

 

Pictures from this article

Tuesday's Tip - organizing kid's paperback books

We've got a bunch of those floppy square picture books - the kind on the racks at B&N that you can buy for under $5.  The thing is, they don't stand up very well on a bookshelf - they just slide all over and because they are floppy, it is more difficult for the young 'uns to get them back in the bookshelf too.  Similarly, we also have a bunch of those early reader books - taller and thinner, but just as floppy.  So, I've found that a great remedy is to use magazine holders to keep them all neatly in one place. The kids will always know where to put them away and it makes it easy to take them and go as well if you just pull out the whole holder. 

You can spend a little bit to buy sturdy ones that will look cute and last a long time - otherwise you can do as I did and pick up a package of 5 white cardboard fold-it-yourself holders at IKEA for under $3 and tape the bottoms with packaging tape to keep them from unfolding then decorate them yourself if you like.

help me with my shy girl

Were any of you shy as a child? Or do any of you have a shy child?  It is becoming more and more apparent to me that my Maddie is genuinely shy.  She is not socially awkward or anything - just truly shy.  For example, if we arrive at the playground and there is even one other child there, she might say to me "Mommy, there's someone here. I don't want to play."  After a little while she'll warm up though and play - especially if Hope or I go with her.  She's a funny girl with a really great personality - not a bit withdrawn around us, but it takes her a long while to warm up to other people.  Also, she does not like attention drawn to herself at all.  If you try to compliment her by saying something like "that was very nice of you" or "you look nice today" or "thanks so much for doing that"  she will tell you not to say anything, not to talk to her.  "Don't say it" she'll tell me.  

I just don't have any experience with this.  Any advice?  I'm wondering in what ways I should encourage her and in what ways not to press too hard.  If you were shy or have a shy child, do you have any advice on how to be helpful to her or what to be careful of?  Thanks.

our fish lives...again

In the archives of this blog you can find posts which testify to the crazy experiences we've had with our little starter fish tank.  Here's the latest.  We have been down to one fish for a while now - Twitchy, by name.  The tank was turning green and gross again so I needed to clean it and proceeded to do so with care.  I was very gentle with the fish and careful about timing and the water, following the directions of pet-store guy, but nonetheless about 10 minutes after returning Twitchy to his cleaner home, I found him motionless and floating belly up at the top of the water.

I relayed the bad news to the girls who took it pretty well.  They decided that they really wanted to bury the fish in the yard and I gave in.  So we headed upstairs with some tissue paper to wrap the little fish in. But, when I placed Twitchy on the paper he began to..well...twitch.  So, I put the flapping little fish back into the tank (after a little effort to unstick his body from the tissue paper) - where he sank to the bottom. A short while later we decided to check on him again and found him laying completely on his side on the bottom of the tank.  But, as Maddie so kindly pointed out, his mouth was moving ever so slightly.  So, we decided to wait a little longer until he would finally and irreversibly kick the bucket.  

Another short while later I hear Maddie calling from the top of the stairs "He's swimming around mom! Twitchy is swimming around!"  Sure enough, like nothing ever happened.  Wha?????

When I told Matt, he said to me - "don't you remember? don't you remember how Twitchy got his name?" Actually this is the second resurrection of Twitchy.  This all happened the same once before, only that time he came back to us with a slight tilt to his swim and a tiny twitchiness - hence name.  

My guess is that I've got the temperature in the tank still off or something and have now sent this poor creature into total shock twice - from which he has twice revived and survived to swim on among his glow-in-the-dark plastic plants.  

Unfortunately, I have to say I was kind of looking forward to that fishy funeral.  But he's a fighter, that Twitchy!

(by the way, if you are interested, I think Twitchy is some kind of Gourami fish)