Real food? What is this?

We started cereal with Holden a few weeks ago, and while he was a little hesitant at first ("ummm, excuse me, but WHAT is this stuff??")...we now have quite the cereal expert on our hands. Definitely a learning curve for both of us in the best methods for successfully navigating food to his mouth and actually into his tummy, and sometimes I really think his favorite part of "mealtime" is banging on the highchair tray with his extra "play" spoon (strategically used for distraction and the "oh look, here's your spoon...fake out, here's Mommy's spoon with cereal, yum yum yum!").

Time to move on to fruits and veggies! We'll see if I'm motivated to whip up homemade batches of baby deliciousness on the weekends...hmmm...

Hey baby!

One month ago, this tiny little person came into our lives and changed things forever.  Infinitely for the better.  Those first few weeks were anything but easy, but worth every minute when I remind myself what an important job this is - raising, caring, loving this little man.  Welcome to the world, Holden Michael Pendarvis.  Born May 29, 2014 - 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and 21 inches of perfect.

And I'm really not sure how we went from that little guy up there to this one down here who is already ONE MONTH OLD!  It's a bit of a blurry haze, really.

I'll try to capture some parenthood adventures here on the blog...but my boss is a little demanding these days and I tend to run a little short on time.  Priorities!

Giant big deal #1 - we totally went and bought a house

Can you believe it?!?  Normally I'm a huge overanalyzer and delayer of doing and major procrastinator...but we just DID this thing.  We'd spent a few weekends with our realtor checking out houses in various areas to get a really good idea of what we really wanted in a house and where we wanted to be geographically...and did you know there are about a million things to consider when you're buying a house?  Things like square footage (Craig won this battle - his belief is bigger is better) and number of bedrooms and school districts and size of backyard and age of home and how much do you really want to spend and dear HEAVENS the commute time and so on and so on and so forth.  And imagine two people who both like to have their way making this decision together.  We made it through this - good pre-marital test, methinks.

And while I wasn't 100% really ready and totally on board with buying a house RIGHT NOW - it just worked out.  We both fell in love with this place, and it has absolutely everything we want, and I want to live in this house for the next fifty years.  I love it.  And Craig loves it, too.  And when that actually happens, you dang well better just buy the place.  Especially when the sellers are more than happy to do a sale-leaseback so the buyers (ummm...us) aren't stuck with rent+mortgage for a few months.  It just all came together.

So I crunched spreadsheet numbers and panicked while Craig told me it would all be ok...and it was.  I'm such a worrier.

Yay for our own little slice of Carrollton!!

That day we celebrated with lunch at Abuelo's (extremely close to our new home AND site of many fond A-town memories AND delicious Mexican food!!), and then we also had giant steaks and a bottle of bubbly for dinner.  Because food is really the best way to celebrate, you know.  A little anticlimactic since we don't actually live in the house (and won't be there until December/January, btw), but still really, really exciting.  And really, really real when we make that first mortgage payment here in about ten days.  Yowza.

I grabbed the pictures from the realtor website and tossed them into a Picasa album if you'd like a better look.  It's all perfect and wonderful in those pictures (except for the color of the dining room - I'm dying to paint, and other than that it's pefect...and maybe some more painting, because I'm demented and actually really love to paint walls), so it might look a little more sad when we move in and have less furniture (fact of new home ownership, right??  there is a dining set in our near future...), but it will be our home.  For a very long while.  And I'm so, so happy about that.

Oh?  What was that you said?  We're totally insane for adding "home purchase" to the list of life events occuring over the last month or so, especially with the wedding coming up?  I totally agree.  Hoping my stress levels at least burned some calories.

Busy much? Also, adventures in weight loss

The last three weeks had just a touch of whirlwind to them.  You know, moving back to Texas.  Into an actual house.  And starting a "new" job.  In the middle of busy season.  And having Craig here one weekend and my parents the next and then Craig again.  And I'm going to NYC this weekend for a very dear friend's wedding.  And did you know that I've spent more time in Home Depot in the last three weeks than I have in my entire life?

And I don't want the blog to die.  Poor neglected blog.  It's had a whole lot of zilch going on the last few weeks.  I'm back, little blog, I'm back.

Especially since I need to document the latest step in the healthy living plan...

I could stand to lose a few pounds.  For health's sake.  And vanity's sake, of course - I don't want to worry AS much about my arm flab in a wedding dress here in about eight months.  I've put on about 15-20 pounds in the last year or so (I totally blame Craig taking me on all these amazing dates and cooking for me...plus I'm also buying into the theory that falling in love makes you gain weight...it's possible!), and I'd like to take it off.  Plus another ten on top of that to get to a healthy, stable place.  And Trinity's kinda in the same boat.  Well, not the wedding dress thing, but the "could stand to lose a few" thing.  So he offered up a weight loss challenge, pitting us against each other, sparking the competitive spirit in both us.  Motivation!!

Plus it makes it more serious if you give it a logo with Harry Potter font.  How could that be anything but motivational and awesome?

We weighed in a week ago, set our goal weights, and are going to check our percentage lost every two weeks - the winner (who's really the "loser") gets some kind of prize from the other.  And the ultimate winner (whoever hits their goal weight first) gets something awesome.  We just haven't decided quite what yet.

So far...I'm not off to a stellar start.  I mean, I just got back to the land of Tex-Mex.  What am I supposed to do, say no to shrimp taquito day at Chuy's (Wednesday, of course) or fried chicken taco day (Thursday, if you're interested) at Taco Joint?  Maybe I should also think twice about making a triple batch of homemade oreos (I took them all to work, don't worry - not a single one left in the house.  But of course I still ate plenty during the baking process...).  And I should actually join a gym and actually go there.  Getting on a consistent workout schedule would really help.  Which is where a 9-to-5 schedule would come in handy.  But no excuses!  Time to do this thing!

It's good to be back in Texas, y'all, even if enchiladas tempt me at every turn.

Challenges to the "eating well" portion of the healthy living plan

When it comes to the "hey, perhaps choose a vegetable over mac n' cheese!" debate that goes on in my mind, trying to figure out what to put into my body on a daily basis, it really helps to limit the whole eating out extravaganza.  Much easier to control myself and make healthy choices when a crisper drawer full of veggies stares me down.  However, there's a ploy out there from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington known as Restaurant Week that kinda gets in the way.  It's hard for me to resist three course, relatively reasonably priced meals at some of DC's finer dining establishments.

• Masa 14 - Wednesday night helping of shrimp ceviche, pork buns, meatballs, and chocolatey goodness
• Cedar - Friday night helping of butternut squash soup, short ribs, and chocolatey goodness
• Oceanaire - Saturday night helping of clam chowder, pollock, and chocolatey goodness (I'm not predictable AT ALL when it comes to desserts)

Tack some wine onto all of those, of course.  Back on the wagon again shortly.  You know, after I finish this pizza for dinner.  And live without a kitchen for a week and a half or so as soon as this move commences, which is coming up remarkably soon.  Holy schmoly.

Sometimes twelve-ish days away from work aren't enough...

...and I'm wishing I had another week of vacation just waiting for me, but it looks like it's time to start 2011 with a bang!  If "bang" includes back-to-back hour-long meetings in the morning.  Shablammy.  But I do have a lot of things to look forward to this year that don't include morning meetings.  There's a whole bushel of life events coming up (you know, minor events like moving halfway across the country AGAIN and starting a new-ish yet kinda old-ish job and GETTING MARRIED and suddenly being WAY outnumbered by males in my household and all kinds of other silly things), and along with those life events, I'm going to go ahead and throw a few resolutions into the mix just to keep things interesting:

• Lose 25 pounds in the next ten months by actually kicking the healthy living plan into gear.  This isn't for vanity's sake, it's to be healthy.  And to actually fit into jeans that fit a year and a half ago.
• Hit 100 blog posts in 2011.  I did it in 2009, but not 2010.  And while I won't exactly have interesting DC things to blog about, I love writing and photography and find that this is great outlet for both.
• Read at least 30 books for pleasure.  I really enjoy reading, and with the insanity of life going on, I don't want to feel like I don't have time for one of my favorite escape mechanisms.
• Start volunteering on at least a monthly basis.  I signed up to be a leader for Habitat for Humanity about two and a half years ago and politely excused myself from actually doing anything since I was moving.  Oh, like the same organization doesn't exist here.  No excuses this time around.
• Maintain sanity during wedding planning and remember what's actually important about that day - you know, the whole getting married and committing to each other part.  Although I think good food is pretty important, too.  And I'm sure Craig would agree.

There you have it, kids.  Keep me honest throughout the year.

The angriest Santa Claus in the world and I hope you enjoyed your holidays and wish you and yours the best in 2011!

That health kick I mentioned?

Yes, it's time.  So I got things off to a good start by going to the grocery store and loading up my cart with a plethora of fruits and veggies.  I had a minor environmental guilt trip as I kept filling up those little plastic bags, so maybe it's also time to jump on the recycling bandwagon.  I'm an occasional recycler, but I could be a lot better about it....hmmm, add that to the life/planet improvement plan as well. 

Actually, the healthy eating will contribute to the financial improvement plan as well - if I actually take my lunch instead of eating out almost every day, that should help.  Man.  This is looking good so far. 

Lunch plan #1 - spicy quinoa salad.  I cut the recipe in half so I won't get sick of it and didn't put in nearly that much olive oil - just a drizzle.  Also a slightly higher ratio of quinoa to veggies.  And definitely an entire jalapeño for the half recipe, because this is me we're talking about.  To be accompanied by a random piece of fruit.  It's tasty.  This could work.



It's even kinda Christmas colored!  I'm totally and unintentionally in the holiday spirit!