High heeled shoes, stuffed bears and Organic groceries

Well, another weekend has come and gone. Like Steve Miller says, "Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future...". I'm on a little bit of borrowed time here because Thomas has already been up once this morning and will probably be up again very soon.

Three days to recap...but not overly eventfuly days, so that should be okay. Friday I got called in early to work, so instead of working 4p-12a, I ended up working 1pm-11pm. I spent some time in the morning with Thomas, trying to make the best of what was going to be a very short day. But it was good, it's so entertaining to watch him learning so much right now. I'm still working on the name thing, he's still not quite there yet. He'll repeat after me when I say that his name is "Tommy" or "TJ", but he doesn't yet seem to make the connection to the word 'name'. We are, however, making some progress on other fronts. He finally has stopped calling stuffed bears, 'doggie's. He surprised Emmett this weekend by pointing and saying, 'bear'. So he's learning fast these days. It's so much fun, but kind of scary too. Before you know it this whole phase will be over and he'll be a walking, talking little boy. It just goes by too fast!

I was upstairs getting dressed on Friday and Thomas put on my heels and starting walking around everywhere in them. It was quite impressive! He was having a hard time not keeling over, but he actually did it. He walked all over the bedroo and then into the bathroom, all the while tottering around in my shoes. I wish I'd gotten a picture!

Another thing we've been working on is colors. He has a book on colors and I've been reading it to him and pointing out the colors of things. I think he's starting to understand the color red. Last night we had spaghetti with smoked sausage for dinner. Of course, Tommy didn't eat any of the sausage, but he LOVES spaghetti with tomato sauce. Anyway, I was trying to feed him some pasta after he had finished his [when he held out his bowl and yelled, "More!" "More!"], and the pasta I had on the fork was plain. He pointed to the pasta on my plate and said 'red' as if to tell me he wanted some of the pasta with the sauce on it.

Speaking of last night's dinner, Emmett and I had another conversation about Thomas's weight. Emmett had come to the conclusion that if we feed Thomas healthy food and make sure he gets plenty of exercise, the rest is best left to nature. If, after those things are in place, Thomas ends up still being a little bit chunky, it's okay because it would just be his natural state. Some people are just not built to be slender. I know that there are some people who would jump all over this, but I was so relieved that Emmett said that because I think that acceptence is so important. It will help Thomas's self-esteem to NEVER feel that he is less of a person because he's not as slender as his father. Of course we *hope* that with proper eating and plenty of exercise he will be a healthy weight, there certainly is a family predisposition for obesity and I don't want to get insane about it to the point where his self esteem suffers.

Now to get back to the recap...Friday ended up with a lot of rushing around. I had to go to the store to get the stuff for Emmett's Olympic party - he was inviting some people over to watch the opening ceremonies. I rushed home and dropped off the groceries and ran to Olga's since she wanted us to be there by 12:30pm so that we wouldn't wake up the other children when we came in. I got to work a few minutes after 1pm. It was a long, boring day. Not too much exciting. I couple of people with bad cases of metastatic cancer, so sad. One of them was only 33!! It makes me so grateful that I at least have my health.

We also got two calls on Friday regarding housing. The first was our landlord calling to tell us he's decided to refinance rather than sell. The second was about the other house - we didn't get it. All's well that ends well. Now is really not the time to move if we don't have to. We need to work more on saving some money and paying off some bills before we worry about the expense of moving. Still, I was a little bit sad and disappointed - I really loved that house in Woodside. Perhaps next year we'll be more prepared and something will come available. We can revisit the idea then.

Emmett's Olympic party was a total flop. He'd only invited our neighbors, his sister and her husband and his father. Well, his sister wasn't feeling up to it since she's due to give birth any day now, the neighbors cancelled because they had plans to go visit family, and his father never called and never showed. So Emmett had an Olympic party for one. I felt bad for him, but I felt worse about the fact that we had spent $50 on groceries for it. Right now we are being so incredibly careful with our money and trying so hard to save that $50 is a lot of money to just go "poof". The stuff we bought wasn't even stuff that we could use elsewhere - chips, beer, general snack type stuff and none of us eat snacks. So pretty much entirely wasted. Ah, well. Life goes on.

Saturday morning I went to the farmers market. God, that place is so amazing. I literally was weighted down with as much as I could possibly carry. I bought a TON of apples, pears, grapes, nectarines, a huge melon, peaches, fresh basil, potatoes, onions, leeks, two loaves of boutique bread, eggs, peppers, tomatoes, and I'm sure more that I can't think of - all ORGANIC - for $28. When I compare that the puny box of food I was getting for $25 from that delivery service - ug, it's sick. This was just an incredible amount of food. Plus, it definitely helps us to eat healthier when we have all these fresh fruits and veggies in the house. After that I went to Trader Joe's to get cheese and few other misc. items. Next up was Rainbow market for the bulk food items, sugar, organic oatmeal, organic Cheerios, and Emmett's crackers. Last stop was Whole Foods, I went there to get the things that I absolutely couldn't find anywhere else. Whole Foods is just such an incredible rip off [in my opinion]. I did manage to get 6 cans of tuna fish and a whole Rosie's chicken [not organic, but still much higher quality and safer than your average Safeway chicken] and spent about $12. All in all, I was happy with what I'd accomplished. Emmett eats enough for two adults these days, and I still managed to get food for the three of us for $72 for the week. AND mostly all organic. I know I probably sound a little snotty about the 'all organic, all the time' philosophy, but I feel really good about making sure our family gets high quality food, that's a very high priority for me.

The rest of Saturday was dedicated to just hanging out and watching the Olympics. It was pretty boring, but I guess not every weekend can be packed with activity. It was an exercise for Thomas in learning boundaries. He was definitely testing his and we were both working with him to learn them. He got lots of corrections, time-outs, and even a few swats on the hand. He IS starting to listen, though. He's learning that when I say "come here" and start counting, that he'd better get his little buns over there. Which is a very good thing, I think. Emmett's friend Desmond came over in the evening, had dinner with us (I made burritos), watched the Olympics and spent the night. It was good to see him, it's been a while, and we all had fun cringing while we were watching the gymnastics - afraid the gymnasts would blow their routine.

Finally, we all went to bed, we had a bigger day planned for Sunday....

...to be continued...

Love,
Melissa