(Ok, and captions…)

Hi! I’m Micah. Did you know that today is Pi Day (3/14)? Let me tell you how I celebrated today.

The day started out with lots of yummy whole wheat Pi-pancakes.

Oh yeah, and one HUGE pi-pancake.

Nom nom nom… I ate a lot!

After breakfast, we all got dressed in our special Pi Day shirts and took a family picture before Daddy had to go to work.

After Daddy left, Mommy sat me down with a calculator to show me about the special number pi.

It was kind of confusing. I don’t have any idea what a ratio is… let alone a circumference!

We decided to try a different approach (after I started testing to see if the calculator would make a good hammer) so my mommy put away the calculator. I was NOT happy about that.

But I got over it really fast because we went on a quest around the house to collect circles (and spheres)!  We spent some time exploring what a circle looks like and feels like.  (Maybe next year we’ll move on to measurements and calculations.)

We did some coloring, but decided to be done with that after I tried to write out the digits of pi on the wall with a crayon.

Before I knew it, it was snack time! Circle-y crackers and cheese!

After my nap (which I spent pondering shapes with no corners), it was time for lunch! Circle sandwiches, oranges, and vegetables! So many great geometric solids to explore!

I thought Mommy’s sandwich looked funny… so I shared one of my circles with her.

In the afternoon, we decided to take a break from all that tough math stuff and go on a walk in the beautiful weather. The puddles were really deep, so Mommy brought me along in the carrier. It was a nice walk in the bright sun.

We got home just in time to jump up and down and say “Happy Pi Day” at 3:14 in the afternoon.

Then, I set out to find the perfect pie recipe in a cookbook while Mommy started making dinner.

Daddy got home just in time for dinner: Shepherd’s PIE and circle biscuits. They might look kind of funny, but they tasted yummy!!

After dinner, all three of us made a special trip to McDonald’s and ate mini cherry pies.  Then, it was time to go home and go to bed.  I was tired out from a super fun day.

Thanks for letting me share with you about my day.  Pi Day really is one of the best days of the year… and, the excitement isn’t even over yet! We are having a Pi Party at our house tomorrow evening! I’m so excited!

I hope that you had a great Pi Day!

Sick kids are no fun.

Shortly before Valentine’s Day, Micah caught a cold.  It was one of those stuffy/runny nose, unhappy-all-the-time kinds of colds.  Poor kid. We dutifully stayed home most of that week to try and get better (and so as not to give sickness to anyone else).  It was a long week.

We pushed the liquids…

read tons of books…

played on the iPad…

and hung out in our jammies a lot.

The following week, things got worse.  Micah generously shared his cold with Mama, and then he started sleeping less, and eating almost nothing.  We started to get concerned when he developed a bad cough, and a low-grade fever.

By Thursday, we decided that it was time to bring him into the doctor and get him checked out.  They found that he had a type of pneumonia.  He started receiving antibiotics, and by that weekend, he seemed to be doing a LOT better.

In fact, Micah had his first over-night away from us!  Matt and I were involved with a 125th Anniversary celebration weekend at our church, so Micah had a fun sleepover at Grandpa and Grandma’s.  Apparently, he slept great for them, and even ate some good food.  We were so happy that he was getting better!

Monday night at small group, things started to get worse again. Cue third week of sitting around the house. His cough was pretty much gone (thankfully), but Micah was sleeping even less at night, and barely eating again.  Poor little guy.

He would sleep for a while…

… and then wake up crying inconsolably. Day and night.

I’m telling you, this kid was miserable.

The one slight bright spot in all of this was that my normally busy and UN-cuddly little boy all of a sudden would lay his head down on my shoulder, or just let me hold him as we watched TV or read a book quietly. It was nice, because I was feeling pretty terrible, too.

We ended up bringing him back to the doctor a week later when he was still running a fever and waking up screaming.

The doctor checked him head to toe, and the best answer she could give us was that he was teething and still had a cold.  I felt silly, but at least it was nice to know that he wasn’t getting worse.  At her recommendation, we have him some Ibuprofen, and kept on doing what we had been doing.

Miraculously, (just when I thought I couldn’t take it any more) that night he started sleeping better again.

Things have been getting better since then.  Micah has started sleeping longer, eating better, and even acting happier.  I know that dealing with sick kids is just a part of being a parent, and we are so thankful that Micah hasn’t been sick very often, (and I know it can be a LOT worse)… but it was just a LONG 3+ weeks.

And, I must mentioned that Matt was a total HERO during this time.  Not only did he stay stay healthy himself, he would get up early with Micah to let me sleep, go to work during the day, take on a bunch of chores around the house, make meals, and just generally support and love two sick and crabby people.

I really did marry a winner.  Micah has a SuperDad.  Thanks, Matt!

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In (completely unrelated) other news, Micah has learned how to shut and lock the bathroom door from the inside.  Better keep the screwdriver handy!!

The other day I had a GREAT idea.  One of those it-could-make-me-a-millionaire ideas.  One week later I found out that someone already had the idea. (A lot of someones, actually.) Oh well.  I don’t want to be a millionaire, anyways.

Micah loves those little “squeezie pouches” (as we call them) of pureed fruit/vegetables.

There are a ton of companies that make them and you can get them just about anywhere these days.  When we are out and about, they make a great snack for Micah.  They are wonderfully neat (don’t need to worry about dirty hands), and he can suck one of them down in less than a minute.  Fast, nutritious, non-messy… what’s not to love, right?

They’re expensive!  You can pay over $2 for one of those little things.  The cheapest ones that I’ve found aren’t very big (3.5oz), and they still cost almost a dollar each.  Micah can EASILY eat two in one sitting.

And yet, we still buy them.  They are just so convenient. They don’t need to be refrigerated, so we always keep an emergency stash in the bottom of the diaper bag.  Micah knows they’re there, so when we’re at home he likes to dig them out and hand them to me when he’s hungry.  In these cases, sometimes we go find a different snack, and sometimes I just let him have one.  I mean, they’re fruits and vegetables. I shouldn’t be depriving my child of fruits and vegetables, right?

Besides the fact that Micah’s “snack” costs more than my dinner, it just seems like there is a lot of waste.  Why don’t they make reusable food pouches that can be refilled? I thought.

Actually, I’d had this idea about a year ago when we were starting into the “baby food” stage.  At the time, the best I could find online was a silicone canteen-looking thing  that looked like it would be impossible to wash.

Someone should make a pouch just like a squeezie fruit but that has a ziploc thing on the bottom so it can be refilled.

It was my idea.  I even told a bunch of people about it.  I really didn’t think they existed, but I wanted to have one!

One week later, I found this at Walmart:

Whaaat?  Apparently, I wasn’t the only (or even the first) one to have this great idea.

I texted Matt that someone stole my idea (I guess we won’t be millionaires), and then I got over it and we bought the two-pouch pack to give them a try.  Let’s just say that I think we got our money’s worth out of those pouches within the next two days.

I really think that Micah would eat just about anything out of one of those pouches.  I’ve mixed up some pretty strange concoctions – different combinations of fruits, vegetables, oatmeal, yogurt, juices… and he seems to love them all.  Our Magic Bullet has been super convenient for this purpose.

The one annoying thing about these pouches is the lid.  The hard plastic opening is nice for filling, but is hard to close and makes it impossible to get out the last of the food.  Even when Micah sucks with all his might (and I help squish it up), we always end up with some waste.

A quick Amazon search revealed that many other people have had the same problems with this pouch.  Several of the reviewers mentioned other brands of reusable pouches that they liked better.

Other people had the same idea, too??

There are a bunch of other kinds, actually.  They all seem to have come out fairly recently, though.  I read some reviews and decided to try out the Little Green Pouch.

They hold more food (6oz) than the other pouches we have, and have a zipper along the top for filling.  So awesome.

Micah tried out the Little Green Pouch for the first time this morning, and I’d say he liked it.

I’m excited to try out a bunch of new food combinations in smoothies for Micah.  The pouches come in a 4-pack, so maybe I’ll whip up one for myself, too! 🙂

Don’t worry, I still think it’s important for Micah to eat non-smoothie foods to work on chewing, hand coordination, eating with a spoon/fork, etc.  It’ll just be really nice if we’re going out somewhere, or if his toddler picky-ness ramps up and he refuses vegetables or something.

Too bad my great idea was already taken.  But, this way I get to USE the awesome product instead of just wishing it existed.  I guess I’ll just have to come up with another great idea to make me rich.

Or not. 🙂

*edit 2/2*  I just found another pair of my old glasses in our linen closet as I was cleaning!  I added them to the progression, and went back to look at some old pictures to better estimate the year of each pair.  Enjoy!

1992

1994

1996

1999

2002

2006

2011

Finally, 2013!

One week ago, my life changed.  After over 20 years of wearing glasses and/or contacts, I’m finally free.  After years of seriously considering it, I finally I had LASIK surgery last week, and I am no longer in need of glasses!

I thought there would be this big “moment” when I would wake up the morning after and be able to SEE the clock for the first time in as long as I can remember.  Well, turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic because I had to wear these super stylish “shields” to bed for the first week (so I didn’t accidentally rub my eyes in my sleep).  The cheap plastic  somewhat blurred my view of the clock, but it was still awesome not to have to put in my contacts in the morning!

My eyes are still healing and they say that things should continue to improve for several weeks (or even months).  I still notice some differences while driving at night and looking at screens, but hopefully that will go away eventually.  Bottom line is… I can SEE, and I no longer need these…

I think it’s funny how (other than the first and last ones) they are all very similar, and get smaller and smaller as time goes on.

You know, I still really like my most recent pair, but I also really DON’T miss wearing them.  I hoping to be done with them forever! (…or at least until I’m 40 and will probably need reading glasses… but let’s not think about that yet…)

It has been very cold around here the last couple weeks, so Micah and I have been forced to stay inside a lot.  He’s at a stage where his attention span is extremely short, and he gets bored of things (like every single toy or book we own!) very quickly.  This makes some days get very long so I’ve been trying to come up with some new activities that Micah and I can do together.  Thanks to Pinterest and friends, I have a few things up my sleeve.  Some things are just fun, and some are hopefully helping Micah develop some skills.

Today is another cold day (current wind chill is -20) so we pulled out some pom-poms, added a few toilet paper tubes and a bucket, and had a little fun.

We sat there and played with them for a good 15 minutes, which is SUPER long for him.  Honestly, he spent most of the time putting the pom poms in the bucket one by one and then dumping them out, but the tube was fun, too.  He couldn’t quite figure out how they kept on ending up in the bucket when he would stick them in the hole at the top.

Then, he noticed how they would fall out the bottom of the tube, so he kept on trying to stuff them back in the bottom.

Even though it was a super simple little activity, it kept him occupied for a while, AND I feel like it was working on fine motor skills, cause/effect, and even simple concepts of gravity (the pom-pom only falls DOWN the tube, not up).

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Last week, I pulled out part of a leftover bag of white rice that I’d bought to make some microwaveable hot packs for Christmas.  We dumped that in a bucket with some noodles and had a sensory experience.

At first, he just tentatively touched the rice/noodles, but soon he started separating out the noodles and sticking them in the cup. He became very interested in the way that the rice would fall between his fingers, and started picking it up by the handful and letting it s-l-o-w-l-y fall back into the bucket.

It didn’t take long before he decided that it was much more fun to dump the rice onto his lap than back into the bucket.  Luckily, I had anticipated this and had put down a sheet on the floor which helped greatly with he cleanup.

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Neither of these activities was very expensive or took much time to set up or put away (which I loved), and it was fun to have a break from the toys that he plays with everyday.  Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I like things that have some educational value to them, too.  I have a few more things that I’m going to try out in the near future, but if anyone has ideas of great indoor activities to do with a 16-month-old, feel free to leave a comment!

My phone takes terrible pictures (sorry)… I should really just go get the nice camera, but it seems like by the time I come back, the cute moment has passed… (remember how I missed the first time he rolled over??)