Ethan at 9 Months

I can't believe I let Ethan's 9-month birthday (and my birthday) on July 25th go by without posting his photo!  In the past month he has become much more mobile, making it more difficult to get these blog posts up.  Anyway, here are some tidbits about 9-month old Ethan:

• He has 2 new teeth -- the bottom middle teeth.
• He learned to crawl...first forward crawl was on July 22nd and he has been getting progressively better and faster every day.
• He had his 9-month check-up on July 26th.  He had his vision checked (perfect) and iron levels checked (also perfect).  Because they pricked his foot to test his iron, they gave him half of an orange-flavored Icy Pop to distract him....so, he's had his first official lolli too.
• He weighs 19.0 lbs.
• He is 28.25 inches long.
• He is getting too tall for his infant carseat now...and almost too heavy (ours only goes to 22 lbs).  Unfortunately, our Safety First Convertible Car Seat doesn't fit rear-facing in our Saturn (it's too tall and we can't get the angle right because of the seat-slope), so I'm trying to find a new convertible car seat that will fit and keep Ethan rear-facing for as long as possible.  

And more exciting news is that for my birthday present, we are going to take a trip to Disney World in September!  Cayne has never been and of course, neither has Ethan so I will get to have fun experiencing it with them.  

Sprouting Teeth

Ethan is slowly losing his cute gummy smile in favor of a cute toothy smile.  Two teeth are on the way!

CSA, Week 10

This week's CSA share included:

• 2 eggplants
• 2 tomatoes
• purple carrots
• 4 ears of corn
• 2 patty pan squash
• purple bell pepper
• 4 potatoes
• 2 cantaloupe (1 with fruitlovers share)
• quart blueberries (with fruitlovers share)

Here's how we used our veggies in the past week:

• Zucchini Pie (trust me, this was delicious...much better than it sounds...like a frittata):  zucchini, onion, tomatoes
• Grilled Pork Chops and braised cabbage with apples:  pork chops from our meat CSA, cabbage
• sandwiches and salads:  tomatoes, lettuce
• Blackberry Cobbler:  blackberries and blueberries
• Squash casserole:  yellow squash, onion, zucchini (from our garden)
• Boiled potatoes:  red potatoes
• fried green tomatoes:  green tomatoes
• Tomato/basil/mozzarella appetizer:  tomatoes
• Rolled Stuffed Eggplants
• Yakinasu (Japanese Grilled Eggplant)

Yakinasu
with soy-sauce/lemon juice

All those delicious meals and we still have lots leftover:  purple cabbage, green beans, bell pepper, blueberries and blackberries, lettuce, and cucumbers!  Add to that the squash, tomatoes, purple ("green") beans, and corn we got in our DWI box.  It seemed like we've been eating lots of veggies in the past week (and lots of meatless dinners too) but we definitely have room for improvement and need to get these leftover fruits and veggies used up asap!

Garden: Harvest Time

It's time to start finding some new things to plant in our little garden.  Yesterday, Cayne "harvested" all of our potatoes (they look great and we fried one to taste and it was tender and delicious) and we've been enjoying the lettuce and zucchini for a while now.  The carrots are still growing good and the zucchini plants are still producing but I think we picked the last of our lettuce the other day.


So far the tally is:

• 20 red baby potatoes
• 2 zucchini (and 3-4+ more on the way)
• a few bunches of lettuce/mesclun (enough for about 6 salads, and some sandwiches/hamburgers)
• carrots (TBD) 

Our bibb lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cabbage, herbs, and cantaloupe didn't grow.  One little tomatoes plant is finally starting to grow.  It might be too late for it to actually produce anything this summer but we'll see. Was it worth it?  Well, maybe not monetarily because of the expense to get it started (the soil, container, etc) but it has been a fun experience and what we did get tasted great.  If we keep it up, it will definitely start being more cost-effective, since the seeds (or plants, which is probably what we will use next time) are cheap in comparison to buying at the store.

CSA, Week 8 and Week 9

I didn't get last week's CSA details posted so this week I'll show what we've received and what we've been cooking the past couple weeks.

Week 8 CSA Share

Week 8: 

• cucumber
• eggplant
• purple bell pepper
• purple cabbage
• 3 tomatoes
• 3 yellow squash
• 4 ears sweet corn
• onion
• 1 pint blackberries
• 2 pints blueberries (fruitlovers)

Week 9 CSA Share

Week 9:  

• cucumber
• 3 red potatoes
• 3 tomatoes
• 4 yellow squash
• eggplant
• green bell pepper
• lettuce
• onion
• green beans
• purple cabbage
• pint blueberries
• 2 pints blackberries (fruitlovers)

Here's how we used the Week 7 and Week 8 shares:

• oven "fried" chicken (Cayne had to cut our whole chicken into pieces for this one):  chicken from our meat CSA, corn on the cob (on the side) 

• fried green tomatoes:  green tomatoes (these were delicious...neither Cayne nor I had ever had them before!)

• Rolled Stuffed Eggplant (we made this twice because it was so good) -- from The Joy of Cooking:  eggplant
• Pasta Primavera:  tomato, squash, zucchini, onion, carrots, kohlrabi, green bell pepper, purple bell pepper
• Cabbage salad (From Asparagus to Zucchini Cookbook):  cabbage
• hamburgers:  ground beef from the meat CSA, tomatoes, lettuce from our garden, onion, corn on the cob (on the side)
• sandwiches:  tomatoes, lettuce from our garden
• mozzarella stuffed sausage meatballs:  ground hot sausage from our meat CSA
• tacos:  ground beef from our meat CSA, onion, tomato (BTW, Trader Joe's taco seasoning is the absolute best taco seasoning you can buy...and their taco shells are great too)
• lasagna:  ground hot sausage from our meat CSA, ground beef from our meat CSA, (squash and zucchini in one of the lasagna pans I froze)

• Coffee/Crumb cake:  blueberries
• vanilla almond fruit tart:  blueberries and blackberries
• babyfood:  yellow squash, zucchini, and pattypan squash
• I also froze some chard and kale using my Foodsaver

We still need to use the potatoes, onion, cucumber, and a few of the berries from last week but we did a pretty good job making a dent in that box.  We also have 2 heads of green cabbage and lots of tomatoes from our DWI box to use up.  Time for some BLTs and some tomato/basil/mozzarella salads!  I also need to make a new batch of pickles using the cucumbers from the past couple weeks.

8 Month Old Ethan

Ethan turned 8 months old on June 25th and we celebrated by having our photos taken during a break in the rain that day.  Our little man has changed so much in the past month and he's even on the last legs of using his infant carrier seat because he is getting too long for it.  Here are some milestones from the past month:

• He can roll just about anywhere he wants to get.  He has also started "moonwalking" a funny half-crawl/half-scoot backwards.
• He loves laughing at all of his stuffed animals.
• He is getting better at eating food from a spoon (not just frozen veggie and fruit "popscicles") and likes oatmeal, banana-flavored oatmeal, bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, pears, and squash.
• He likes to try drinking water out of our water glasses -- he really lets us know that he wants a drink of them.  We've started putting a little bit of water in a sippy cup for him to get used to a new way to drink.
• He usually has 3 naps a day that can last anywhere from 30 minutes to 1hr45 min -- at around 9:00, 12:30, and 4:00.
• He wakes up around 7:00 each morning but some mornings he sleeps in until 8:00 or so (I love those mornings!). 
• His hair has really started to grow -- he looks like he has a little buzz cut instead of just fuzz.
• The only word he consistantly uses is "Dadadaaa" but he doesn't use it only for Cayne -- everything is "da".  He also has said words that sound like "baybay", "mah", "bah", and "hah" so he is getting some new consonants in there.
• His favorite book is Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? (when Daddy reads it and makes the sounds).
• Still no teeth!
• He went swimming for the first time and loves it.  
• He gives the best cuddles and has learned to wrap his arms around us for a hug. 
• He gets a real kick out of kicking the side panels of his crib.  He is a little karate master when lying down.  The sound spreads through the whole house to let us know he has woken up.  
• He gets contagious giggles watching balls bounce.  

I LOVE MY BALL!