Category: Weekends

About two years ago I attempted to make homemade mac and cheese.  It was a disaster.  I started cooking quite late the night before we were to head up north for Thanksgiving.   Maybe I panicked, maybe I just crumbled under the holiday pressure, but by the time I got done cooking I had two pounds of slimy semi-cheesy elbow macaroni.  No one ate it and I didn’t blame them.

Since that time Dave has been urging me to try again.  I’ve been putting it off because frankly I am not the best cook and the recipe I found (Mac and Cheese with caramelized onions and bacon) was a little intimidating.   Lately my meals have been simple one step things, yea crock pots!

It took me a while but for dinner tonight I actually made homemade mac and cheese and it didn’t turn out horrid!   Dave said it was great and Ajax kept sucking all the cheese off the noodles and then spitting them out.   The recipe made a ton and it was very heavy, so I’m not too sure what we’re going to do with it all.  We’ll figure something out!

Ajax has also started doing this silly crawl, he kind of looks like a little spider monkey because he’s crawling on his hands and toes.  We think it’s the precursor to walking.

Sorry for so many posts this weekend.  I had a lot to share!

Ajax has been a bit of a momma’s boy today.  Heaven forbid I wander out of sight!  I’m not getting much done, but am loving the fact that my little guy seems to need me today (more so than normal).

Ajax has been all about the dishwasher today and has tried several times to crawl into the darn thing.  He has also been about “hiding” items.  He’s been shoving his toys under the couch, under the TV stand, into the hole of the woofer speaker, and even behind the DVR.   After a while he will rediscover his lost items and act completely surprised, lol.

Today Ajax slept through the night and then didn’t get up till almost 8 am.  Beautiful.   My mom and sister are in Chicago this weekend for a convention and my dad was home alone, so we headed out to Brooklyn to visit him.   We mainly hung around the house and went out for lunch.  We then headed down to the barn and introduced Ajax to Frannie and Diamante.   Between the two, Fran is more social with a nicer personality, while Diamante has been labeled my horse because she is unpleasant and actually quite unfriendly.  I like her though, she has spunk.   Ajax wasn’t to sure what to make of the large animals and only shied away when Fran when she leaned in to sniff him.  I realize now that Fran’s head is almost as large as Ajax!

Hippos Go Berserk is Ajax’s favorite book.  He is such an active little guy that it’s almost impossible to actually read to him, but before bed as part of our routine, we still do story time.   He has so many books, but the only one he’ll listen to is Hippos, it’s pretty funny.   I’ll count all the hippos and he’ll turn the page, you would think that he would get tired of the same book night after night, but nope!

We had a quiet Saturday.  I was up early and went grocery shopping while the guys slept in.  We cleaned the house, did some laundry and ran to Sam’s Club.  All in all a pretty good day.  On a weather note, it was in the low 40s today and the snow is starting to melt.  It’s so hard not to think about spring and warm weather, however, mother nature is inevitably going to dump more snow on us before we see green.

I believe that Ajax feels that it is his duty to crush, smash and throw every object that is in his way.  Dave said that yes, that is exactly what Ajax believes as he is a boy.  The way Ajax currently expresses this macho attitude is to sit in the middle of a pile of toys grabbing them at random and tossing them over his shoulder, he will then spin around on his bum grab the toy he just discarded and throw it in the opposite direction.  This goes on for some time with increasing intensity.

He has also discovered the laundry basket and as soon as I bring up a fresh load to be folded he dives at the basket and throws everything onto the floor.  He’s helping, lol.   Ajax has also had a little breakthrough where he has learned to balance well enough to push objects around while crawling on his knees, again this is another step toward walking!

Ajax’s bedroom is right off our living room, so yesterday when I put him down for a nap I heard him stand up in his crib and protest loudly (along the lines of – mother I do not need to nap, I simply am not tired, I wish to play).  Than I heard him banging his little hands against the wall (the wall which our TV is on)!   I had to go in and lay him down again because he was just standing in his crib hitting the wall, lol.

Ajax also now has 4 little teeth!  His upper central just came through and I think he’s feeling much better, though his nose is still pretty runny and he seems a little more tired than usual.

For the first time in a long time, Dave and I both are healthy!  We even went ahead and joined a gym this weekend too, as we both want to get in better shape.   Ajax, however, is having a hard time with this new tooth coming in and needed quite a bit of babying this weekend.   I knew he had to be feeling pretty rough because he just wanted to be held and cuddled… and my son is not a cuddlier.   He also wasn’t really into his finger foods this weekend and primarily wanted purees, comfort food.

Even under the weather, Ajax still cracks us up.  He loves hide and seek, and gets so excited when you “chase” him.  That usually means I’m on all fours crawling after him and he’s spinning his wheels trying to get away, all the while laughing to the point where he loses his balance and topples over. lol.

Ajax has another tooth coming in and therefore has a very runny nose and has also developed a cough to go along with it.  Unfortunately, due to the congestion he hasn’t been sleeping very well.   We did some running today- Ikea and Toys R Us (sale on baby food).

Ajax did great at TRU and did wonderful throughout Ikea.  We wanted to get some ideas for our living room as we realize it’s probably time we think about getting matching furniture.   Ajax sat in his stroller throughout the store, looking at everything, smiling at everyone… it wasn’t until we were in line for 20 minutes that Ajax had a complete meltdown (I don’t blame him, Dave was ready to drop all our stuff and just bolt).   The fit was a whole new level.  We’re talking, strangers picking up socks and shoes following you tantrum, lol.   When we got home he took a good nap and then his aunt Emily came to visit, which is great because she walked him all over the house to his hearts content.

This was an odd weekend.  The plan had been for my parents to come into town around noon on Saturday to pick up Ajax, they had offered to take him overnight so that Dave and I could have a nice date night and celebrate our anniversary.   However, I got sick again and Dave ended up hurting his ankle.   We had to make him a Doctor’s appointment for Saturday morning, so my parents came in a littler earlier to get Ajax so that I could accompany Dave to the Doctors (side note- Dave’s doctor looks like a mad scientist… no joke).   The Doctor ended up taking x-rays and giving Dave a shot of Demerol for the pain.  Now, I’ve never had Demerol and neither has Dave, but by the time we got home (around 12:30), Dave was pretty loopy and just made it into bed before passing out for 4 hours.

While he was sleeping, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself… no nino, the house was clean…. so of course I watched TV and then went to the mall.  Now its been a while since I’ve been to the mall on a Saturday evening, but apparently that is still the primary hang out of moody punky teens.  Awesome.   I had planned on getting some new work clothes and shoes, but when a sales lady critically viewed my attire (ie. my jeans), I had a sudden, dizzy realization: I was wearing mom jeans.   Friends, family- Where have you been?  Why has no one alerted me to the fact that I’ve been wearing mom jeans!  I’m not even 30!  Needless to say, I purchased two new pairs of non-mom jeans.

When I got home, Dave was just getting up, still pretty groggy and in pain, so we ended up ordering in and watching a movie from On Demand and we were both in bed by 9:30 pm.  We are so wild.

On Sunday morning, we met my parents, Ajax, my grandpa Valentine, and aunt Liz and cousin Mike for breakfast.  My mom said that Ajax did wonderful overnight, he ate well, played, and slept great.  Apparently they had stopped to visit with friends and Ajax kept trying to catch the cats, which kept eluding him.   We are very happy to have him home and I realize that it may have been a little too soon to have him spend the night away from home (for me, not him).