Slingshot,

(you know his real name, but this is his blog “handle” from now on! )

I can’t believe you are 2 weeks old already!  We’re still adjusting to having you at home with us and to being a family of four.  At 2 weeks old:

• You weigh 6 pounds 1 ounce (3%).  You still haven’t reached your birth weight of 6 pounds 5 ounces again, but we’re getting close!
• You are 20 inches long (27%).
• You look EXACTLY like your big brother (see photo below).  We hear that from just about everyone, and it’s absolutely true!  I can’t wait to see how your personality develops.

The Little Apple, about 10 days old.  Doesn’t Slingshot look just like him?!

• You’ve finally figured out how to latch on properly and enjoy nursing (particularly those all night marathons!).  I am so thankful that I don’t have to pump anymore and that we don’t have to feed you with a syringe.
• You sleep ALL the time during the day!  Your big brother was on the other end of the sleeping spectrum, so we don’t quite know what to do with you (answer: embrace it!  take a nap!  be productive! ).
• You still keep me up quite a bit at night.  When you’re awake, you want to be nursing.  So we’ve had quite a few nights with 2 or 3 hour long nursing marathons.  Not very fun for mommy, but I’m hoping this will pass soon.  You’re a growing boy!
• You still see me exclusively as The Milk Lady.  If I’m holding you, you are rooting around trying to eat (even if you just ate).  I can only really cuddle with you when you’re asleep.  Daddy is much better at calming you down than I am.
• We think you may have a bit of reflux.  Hopefully not as severe as big brother’s, but we’ll see.  At least we know what to do about it.
• You make the cutest faces!  You’ve mastered the confused look (see photo above), the angry look, the pouty face, and the excited face.  We can’t wait to see you smile!
• You are already holding your head up really well when we put you on your tummy, and you look SO close to rolling from front to back.  You hate tummy time though.

Love,

Mommy

Even though I’m still going strong with my Primal/Paleo lifestyle, we have pizza night fairly regularly around here.  I make homemade crust for the guys, and they add their own toppings.  There are quite a few Paleo pizza crust recipes out there, but I’ve discovered that portabello mushrooms make a great base for my own pizza.  I buy a pack of 4 portabello mushrooms and top with a tablespoon or two of sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni slices and black olives.  This is such a great substitute for anyone who is gluten-free or looking for a healthier pizza alternative.

When we were deciding how to decorate Slingshot’s nursery, I didn’t have a clear vision for the curtains.  After we got the board and batten up and the walls painted, I knew we needed something to break up all that blue and white.  I wasn’t too pleased with any ready-made curtain options, so i decided to make my own.  I immediately thought of the dropcloth curtains we have in our bedroom, but I also wanted to incorporate some color!  Since several of the accessories (sheets, rug, etc) have red, I decided to try my hand at painting some red stripes on the dropcloth curtains.

The dropcloths I purchased were exactly the right size for the room…no hemming necessary!  Woo hoo!  Note: Don’t forget to wash and dry your curtains before you get started.  They WILL shrink.

I set up my painting station in the front entryway (it was too cold to be in the garage).  I put down cardboard, then 2 layers of old dropcloths underneath my curtain-drop cloths to absorb any paint that might soak through.

To paint dropcloth curtains, I mixed acrylic paint with textile medium.  I think you could probably just skip this step and use the acrylic paint straight, but using textile medium makes them more color safe for washing.

Next, I taped off the stripe pattern with painter’s tape.  We just wanted a few bold stripes up near the top.  Taping off stripes are always tricky because your eyes play tricks on you with the thickness of the tape lines.  Make sure you press down the edges of the tape as firmly as possible to keep the paint from bleeding.

Then it was time to paint!  I used a foam roller brush.  The dropcloth fabric soaks up paint big time, so it took way more paint than I was expecting.  Also, because of the nubby, irregular nature of the dropcloth fabric, there will be places that just won’t absorb the paint at all.  We actually liked this more “weathered” appearance to the stripes, but if you don’t want that, you may need to pick a different fabric!

This photo was taken at night, so the color is a little off, but we were certainly panicking at this point, thinking that the stripes looked hot pink, and not the deep, tomato red we were hoping for….I actually went to bed after this, thinking that I would need to go buy a different color of paint the following morning.

But, when we woke up the next day and removed the blue tape (which also made it hard to see the “true” color), we were pleased with the way the curtains looked, and left them as is!  No second coat of paint, no different color needed!

At some point, I may add blackout fabric to line the curtains, but they work for now!

Have you ever painted curtains or other fabric before?

I’m sharing this post with…

I’ve been making these potatoes for YEARS now, and I can’t believe I’ve never shared the recipe with you!  My favorite two potato recipes are this one and the Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes.  These are clearly the lighter, healthier option of the two.  The recipe calls for new potatoes, but you can also use regular old Russets.  These are a staple side dish at our house for holidays as well as easy weeknight meals.

Roasted Rosemary Potatoes

recipe adapted from epicurious.com

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces red-skinned new potatoes (about 3), each cut into 6 wedges
• 1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt or other coarse salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 3 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Toss potatoes with oil, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl to coat.  Transfer potatoes to small baking sheet; roast 20 minutes, stirring once.  Add garlic and rosemary to potatoes; toss.  Roast until potatoes are just tender, about 10 minutes.  Transfer to plate, serve.

Makes 2 servings.

Shepherd Asher Apple
(nn Shep, Slingshot)
Born Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 1:59pm
6 pounds, 5 ounces.  18 1/2 inches

Home at last!

Thoughts on Shepherd’s birth, his name, and our first few days….

• Shepherd: We wanted another slightly unusual name.  One that was distinctly masculine, one with a good nickname (in this case, “Shep”).  Shepherd is not a family name, just one we like.
• Asher:   As for the middle name, we didn’t pick that until the night before he was born!  Asher means: “fortunate, blessed, happy one” and we certainly feel blessed to have Shepherd after all we’ve been through the last few years.  We wanted something he could fall back on that was a bit more common, and Asher was #139 in 2010.  We love that it’s got the “sh” like Shepherd and the  “a” like Apple, uniting the first and last name.
• It was SUCH a different c-section experience this time around walking in to the operating room and being fully aware of what was happening the entire time.  And having my husband there with me this time too!  I think my recovery this time is going a little quicker as well.
• Breastfeeding is not going particularly well, but I’m determined to stick with it.  The first two nights (at the hospital) were rough, and by the end of the second day, Shepherd was down to 5 pounds 8 ounces.  Most babies lose weight at birth, but he lost over 10% of his birth weight.  After several meetings with a lactation consultant, I started pumping and feeding him via syringe (all this after I attempt to nurse him for 20-30 mins).  Doing that over and over again every 2-3 hours has been draining, but our third night at the hospital was much better, and when we left the hospital he was up to 5 pounds 10 ounces. (Thank goodness I saved some of Finn’s preemie clothes!)
• Coming home was/is a HUGE adjustment.  Last night was rough all over again, and I feel like we took 10 steps backwards in the breastfeeding department.  I’m feeling more pain at the site of my incision because I’ve got a 2 story house to move around instead of a tiny hospital room, and I’ve been moving around MUCH more.  We’ve also got a VERY energetic and noisy 4 year old who is a little too excited to “play” with his baby brother.  We’re a little overwhelmed at the moment, but I know we’ll get used to our new family of four!
• I’m amazed at how much Shepherd resembles Finley when he was a baby.  They’ve got the same lips, nose, hairline, tiny little bodies.  They make the same faces, and they have similar fussiness!

Things may be a little quiet around here for the next few days as we settle in at home, but rest assured, I’ll be back with some new posts soon!  Thanks for all of your well wishes on Facebook!

This delicious Spinach Berry Cucumber Salad is my “Salad of the Week” (I could probably make this a regular blog feature, if I wanted to…hmmm).  I actually had this salad last week too.  And I made it to bring to a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve.  And I’m making more of it to bring to the hospital with me. (More on my attempt to eat healthy at the hospital after it actually happens!)  This salad is wonderful!  I think the dressing is what brings it all together.  I’ve been adding grilled chicken or leftover chicken kebabs to mine for a filling lunch.  The recipe calls for sugared pecans, but I just throw in a handful of plain pecans.  I’m sure sugared pecans would be delicious if you want to make them (and if you want the extra sugar).  Toasted pecans would be great too…I’m going to try that next time!

Spinach Berry Cucumber Salad

recipe from Trainer Momma

Ingredients:

• 10 oz of fresh baby spinach
• 1 cucumber, peeled and sliced
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 1 pint fresh blueberries
• 1 fresh peach, sliced
• handful of dried cranberries
• handful of Asiago cheese, shredded
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup sugared pecans
• White Balsamic Vinaigrette Salad Dressing (see recipe below)

Mix all the ingredients. Dress the salad to taste with the most of the dressing (I typically have a little left over) and serve immediately.

White Balsamic Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

recipe from Trainer Momma

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar  (Picky Apple Note: I just used regular balsamic)
• 1 Tb pure maple syrup
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 ground black pepper

Just mix all the ingredients in a jar and shake well.

Today The Picky Apple and I celebrate 8 years of marriage.  We’ve been together for 14 years total, and I couldn’t have asked for a better husband.  Our anniversary celebration is being overshadowed by Baby Slingshot’s imminent arrival, so we’re not really doing much to celebrate today.  We may watch our wedding video with The Littlest Apple this evening, but that’s about it!

HOWEVER, since I was already planning on putting together some goodies for The Picky Apple to have at the hospital (after seeing this on Pinterest), I thought I’d make it a two-fer and give it as an anniversary gift.

I included several things he asked to have for snacks (almonds, peanut butter, apples, Goldfish) and several things I know he likes (Reeses Pieces, Snickers, string cheese, Diet Dr. Pepper, peanut butter and cheese crackers).  The Picky Apple has already seen the snacks because he unloaded my groceries from the car after I got home from the grocery store yesterday.  (See what I mean?!  He’s great!)  I spent about 5 minutes throwing this basket together.  Since my focus the last couple days has been on deep cleaning the house, I decided my time was better spent cleaning than making the “perfect” little tags for the gift basket with scrapbook paper and fun scissors.  I’m sure The Picky Apple understands.  In fact, I think he’d much rather have a gunk-free, science-experiment-free refrigerator than adorable gift tags on his hospital snacks.  So he got random, but oh-so-colorful paint chips instead.

I tried to incorporate the snack title in as many of the labels as possible: for the nuts, “I’m NUTS for you!”, for the goldfish, “There are lots of FISH in the sea, but you’re the only one for me!”.  You get the idea.  But for several, I just wrote a sweet note.  The Diet Dr. Pepper note says “You’ve been such a great dad to Finley and I can’t wait to see you hold our new baby boy!”

Happy Anniversary, Nathan!  I love you!

Since Slingshot’s arrival is only days away, I figured it was time to share his nursery with you.  And even though I hate it when bloggers start off their posts with disclaimers, I do have a few disclaimers: The nursery is mostly finished  (the important stuff is done), but I know if I don’t share photos now, it could be a while before I get around to it.  We haven’t made up our minds about the wall art and a few other decorative touches, so the walls are still a little bare.  And in need of some paint touchups.  We’re also still waiting on the rug I ordered, which is backordered until the end of January).  We “borrowed” a rug from The Littlest Apple’s room in the meantime, just to get a feel for the size of the new rug.

So all that being said, here’s Slingshot’s room….

We LOVE that giant window and all the light it lets in, but it sure does make it hard to photograph this room!  The photo below shows the little attic door on the left (there is another door on the opposite wall).  We used those as a guide for how tall to make the board and batten, and I’m so glad that we did.  I feel like those little doors are much less of an eyesore and really blend in now.  I am SO pleased with how the board and batten turned out.  The Picky Apple did a fantastic job, don’t you think?

Here’s the other side of the room, that is definitely in need of some wall art….

We bought that train table for The Littlest Apple’s second birthday.  He never really enjoyed playing with it.  His favorite part of playing with it is taking it apart and throwing the tracks on the ground.  We love it too much to get rid of it, but don’t have another place to store it at the moment.  So we’re hoping that Slingshot enjoys it a little more than his big brother!  Luckily, this bedroom is second in size only to our master bedroom, so there is plenty of space for a ginormous train table.

The curtains are my personal favorite, because I made them.  I’ll share more on that in another post!

And here’s the rug I ordered….

The wall art is a big sticking point right now.  We can’t make up our minds, so we decided not to rush it just so we have something up before Slingshot’s arrival (though it IS driving me a little crazy to not have room “finished”).  We want a series of 5 or 6 framed somethings on one wall (prints?  fun fabrics?  art that my husband and I create?), framed in IKEA Ribba frames like these:

I like these Alphabet Prints from Finny & Zook (and I’m keen on these letters later in the alphabet, which might be weird):

We could also use these Pattern Pieces (in lots of different colors) available for free from Sprik Space.

But for now we’re happy with the nursery, and it’s time to move on to cleaning the rest of the house like a crazy woman.  I have SO much to do in the next few days!!

A few weeks before Christmas, The Littlest Apple and I decorated a gingerbread house.  To keep it simple, we used a kit from Target, and it was unbelievably easy to throw together.  All the decorations we needed were included, and there was plenty of frosting. BUT the most exciting part was what I told The Littlest Apple as we were decorating:  we were going to blow up the gingerbread house with firecrackers on New Year’s Eve.  And my crazy four year old thought that was about the coolest thing ever. He’s been asking every single day since we built that gingerbread house if it was time to “explode” it yet. So yesterday was the big day!  The Littlest Apple was SO excited to go with The Picky Apple to buy fireworks. But then they got home.  And he remembered that he doesn’t like fireworks.  Not at all. So he said he would watch through the window, hands over his ears, while my husband blew up the gingerbread house. The first firecracker, placed in the corner of the house, merely blew off a corner of the gingerbread roof. But that was enough to send The Littlest Apple running for cover upstairs.  He REALLY doesn’t like fireworks. The second, more strategically placed firecracker flattened the house.  It was neat to see.  I think The Littlest Apple MIGHT have been watching from an upstairs window, but we’re not sure. When came back downstairs and verified that we were done with the fireworks, we let him bash the rest of the gingerbread house to pieces with a hammer. Fun stuff!  I think this could be a new yearly tradition at The Picky Apple house…. Happy 2012 Everyone!

The Littlest Apple and I discovered some new favorite activities this year, several of which I haven’t even shared with you yet (including marshmallow guns, water beads, glow in the dark fun, and more…coming soon in 2012!  One of my goals for 2012 is to be more intentional about planning fun activities, crafts, and science experiments for The Littlest Apple.  I found the Activity Advent Calendar to be really helpful for the month of December, and we did more fun stuff in December than we did all year long.  When I was prepping for each week, I looked over that week’s Advent Activities and purchased supplies and prepared each activity accordingly.  The rest of the year, I may have thought about a particular activity or craft, but didn’t have supplies on hand.  Or I just never planned it in the first place.  With Baby Slingshot arriving soon, I know this will be a challenge, but I also think this will be a great way to spend some quality time with The Littlest Apple.  We probably won’t do something like this every single day, but I may aim for 2-3 crafts/activities a week.  (Blogging about them all is a whole different story!)

So, here are some things The Littlest Apple and I did in 2011….

1.  Mardi Gras Sensory Bin–  This was a new sensory bin for us this year, and The Littlest Apple and I BOTH loved it!  The colored rice, the beads, the feathers, and the masks made this one really special.  Can’t wait to break it out again in a few months!

2.  Does It Dissolve? Anything that involves pouring and stirring is usually a hit with The Littlest Apple, and he’s asked for this activity over and over again.  We also used the index card labels to incorporate some letter and word recognition into this activity.

3.  Easter Cross Suncatcher– My favorite of all the suncatchers we’ve made over the last few years.  The black outline on this one really makes the colors pop, and the colors are bright and lovely for spring.

4.  Fizzy Fun– This was probably the biggest hit of the entire year.  We’ve done this many, many times, and since it just requires a few household ingredients (that I usually have on hand), we do this one as a default activity when we’re looking for something to do.

5.  Milk Magic– This experiment is so mesmerizing to watch.  The swirly, bright colors look beautiful on the backdrop of white milk.  We definitely need to revist this one!

6.  Cup Stacking–  The surprise hit of the year.  Who knew that kids liked to play with plastic cups so much?  Note to self: Always have a stack of cups on hand for The Littlest Apple when I need a minute to get something done.

7.  Slime-There are so many neat-o recipes like this floating around on the internet for slime, gak, oobleck, etc.  I plan to try more of these in the future, because it’s a really great sensory experience for The Littlest Apple (as well as a good lesson in following the recipe!).  This slime had a neat texture that was lots of fun to play with.

8.  Autumn Cork Painting–  I LOVED this art project!  I thought it turned out beautifully, and The Littlest Apple even joined in despite his initial rejection.  This was one of YOUR favorite Picky Apple post this year too, judging by all the Pinterest interest it received.

9.  Gumdrop Sculptures– This was another activity that I came up with spur of the moment using things we had on hand (including the several-years-old-yucky-gumdrops).  The Littlest Apple is in a building phase, so this one kept him busy for quite a while.

10.  Gingerbread Playdough– This was a new playdough for us this year, and we played with it all through the month of December.  It smells fantastic, and the rollers and cookie cutters made this extra festive.

11. Salt Dough Ornaments–  The Littlest Apple and I had a blast making these and painting them, then using them as ornaments and gift tags.  Definitely a new annual Christmas tradition for The Picky Apple house.