Burritos, Boobs, and Bundling Up

Well, there are three things I thought of blogging about tonight. Usually I would pick one and save the others for later, but then I never get back to them, and I thought "why not?" just do a post about all three things? So, here it is.

Burritos. I crave burritos. Or really any Mexican-type food able to be wrapped in an 8-inch flour tortilla and served with sour cream and a taco-type sauce. I need help. My poor husband has eaten every variation on this food theme that I can think of. Taco Bell (I think I only sent him out for this once this pregnancy), regular burritos with ground venison I seasoned with my own special blend of spices (I think we've had this three or four times already, don't judge), chicken enchiladas, chicken fajitas (another three or four times??), breakfast burritos for dinner (this was an act of desperation to be creative), and tonight I made my old standby, baked chicken burritos, again made with my special seasoning. I feel bad, but this is what I am really wanting to eat. For several weeks in my first trimester, this was the only thing that sounded remotely appetizing. But how many times can a man be expected to eat such food during the course of a pregnancy? As it is, we're on track to have such culinary fare about 60 times before Baby arrives. So, I need some new recipe suggestions. Anyone have one? Or 10???

Boobs. Miss is in the process of weaning. I thought I was very ready for this. I am ready for this. Mostly. She's ready for this, as you'll see below. I know it's the right time to start this process. The reason I bring this up today, is that today was the first day that Miss did not nurse during the day at all. See, she has been down to four nursing sessions per day for many months, first thing when she wakes up, late morning after her nap, mid afternoon after her second nap, and bed time. We dropped the afternoon nursing right when we got back from Hawaii. Today we dropped the late morning nursing. I got her up from her morning nap, changed her, and brought her downstairs to give her milk out of a sippy cup. She also had a cup of yogurt, which I helped her to spoon into her own mouth, for pete's sake (where did my little baby go?). Man, it's making me teary again to type it. "Why?" you might ask, considering that I'm still nursing her in the morning and at bed time. We're only halfway done with the weaning. The daytime nursing sessions weren't even my favorite ones. But they were different from the morning and bedtime nursing in that she was awake and kind of silly during them. She'd play with her toes, put her foot on my shoulder or sometimes in my face, look up at me and give me a big grin. The morning and bed time nursing times are just different, and now I don't have the daytime anymore, so I'm a little sad. And you know what? While I'm getting all sad and teary about it, she didn't even seem to notice anything was different! Which is actually a good thing I know, and confirms for me that this is the right time to make this change. So it's all good. To try to celebrate this milestone, I made her a smoothie for the second snack of the day.

She tried it.

Seemed to like it.

But then I think she got "brain freeze" and she wouldn't drink anymore!

Bundling up. If I were to get a grade for how well I have embraced winter since we moved back to a cold climate, it would be an "F." I just don't really love winter. I don't love cold. There are things I do like about winter, like a roaring fire and drinking hot chocolate. Watching Duke basketball. Christmas. The first few days of fresh beautiful snow that sticks to the trees and makes everything gorgeous outside. As long as I get to look at it from inside. You know, with the roaring fire and hot chocolate. Last winter I was enormously pregnant, and then Miss was definitely too little to go out in the snow when she arrived, so I was off the hook. This winter, I did not buy her a snow suit. She wasn't walking yet, and I did not think it would be fun for her to go out in the snow and crawl. I thought she was still too little.

But now she's walking. And in the past few days I've been thinking, "This is the only year she'll be little like this in the winter." It just didn't seem right to not let her experience the snow at least a little. Miss has a winter coat that I intentionally bought too big so I could fit lots of layers of clothing under it if necessary. But we still didn't have a snow suit or snow pants. I debated going and buying her a pair, but that just seemed so wasteful, since they surely won't fit her next year, and she probably wouldn't wear them more than a handful of times this year. Yet I was determined to get her in the snow and keep her warm and dry. And today was a beautiful, sunny, relatively warm day and I just decided to do it. So here is what I came up with to solve the no-snow-pants problem. Watch as the layers go on:

This sweater is layer #3 on top already.

Yes, those are plastic Target bags on her legs.

And a garbage bag to top it all off and provide a double layer of protection.

This is her, "Mom, seriously??" look.

And the "pants" in action. She wasn't very steady standing in the snow.

And she quickly ended up on her rear (this made a super cute butt print in the snow!)

She did okay for a while, and the pants worked perfectly.

Then things started to go downhill.

Fast.

So we went back inside where she had tons of fun playing with all the stuff we had both been bundled up in.

And even though we had only been outside for about a minute and a half, I still made hot, hearty vegetable soup for us for lunch so we could "warm up." That's one of the other things I love about winter :)