Long Movie Weekend

We watched Les Miserables on Friday night (finally). It was really good and even Jake, who hates musicals, enjoyed it. Of course he kept picturing Jean Valjean as Wolverine. Heh. Yesterday afternoon, on a whim, while Declan napped, we watched the first half of Fellowship of the Ring. It's great that the extended versions of those films are split onto two disks. It gave us a natural break point. Then in the evening we watched the rest. Sometimes it's nice to just relax with something you know well. On Saturday we visited my folks and grandmother in the morning and shared some pizza for lunch. After Declan's nap we headed over to our friends' place for their adorable daughter's first birthday party. I seriously can't believe it's been a year since she was born! Time has flown by so quickly. Trying to snap photos of multiple kiddos is challenging. As I was going through the pictures I took with my phone at the party this one jumped out at me. Obviously I will need to have a chat with my son about being too hands-y, ha ha!

The little guy was beat when we got home so he went off to bed and I spent some time making some more food for him. Now that he's eating solids three times a day he is sleeping longer but going through the containers I make much faster. My first experiment with meat went well. I cooked two chicken breasts, cut up in small pieces, in olive oil. I boiled a sweet potato and added the chunks to the pan when it was soft. I pureed the entire contents of the pan and some extra olive oil and it made a pretty nice paste with just some very tiny strings of chicken meat. It tasted bland. I will need to seek out some guidance on flavoring eventually but for now I know it's safer to just make it bland. Declan tried some yesterday and seemed to enjoy it. It also seemed to fill him up more than some of the just veggie or just fruit purees have made. I also made a batch of spinach pureed with brown rice and a big vat of mango/peach puree. He hasn't tried either of those yet. The mangos were super-ripe so the puree is pretty liquidy and I might add some cereal to thicken it up. We are also letting him try to feed himself some yogurt puffs but he doesn't quite have the pincer grasp down yet. He gets them in his hands but then has a hard time getting them in his mouth. In time he will figure it out.

We went to the pool again yesterday. The water was warmer than last time so we both got in with him for a longer period of time. He still seemed wary of the whole experience but the good news is that Jake dunked him and he didn't freak out. Hopefully this bodes well for future swim lessons.

For the first time in months the little guy was still very much out cold when I went in to get him up this morning. I felt so bad having to wake him up but he didn't fuss too much about it. I guess we did a good job of tiring him out this weekend.

Ugh and photos... they are coming. I promise.