CRASH!

You might be wondering where I've been and what we've been up to. Maybe? No? Well, I'll tell you anyway! We've been up to plenty. I'll slowly reveal it all. But my excuse at the moment for why I haven't been keeping you all in the loop is because my hard drive crashed. It was a goner. A real goner. Fortunately for me I have a very good friend who is married to a computer guru. He hooked us up by telling me exactly what to purchase so he could replace my broken parts with something functional. HURRAY. And I'm back in business! Thank GOD for good friends! Thanks to them you can look forward to many more months of nail biting drama, stunning photos and deep, deep insight to the human experience. Or atleast you'll get more of my wise-cracking!

Picky Eaters

I'm not really sure how it started... Maybe I was a little too concerned about keeping him clean? Maybe I was a little too lazy for a bit? Maybe it has NOTHING to do with me! But somehow... over time... the kid who would once eat just about anything has turned into a picky eater. My current not-so-top-secret project is to break Mason of this. But Mason is NOTHING if not stubborn. (Don't know WHERE he could have possibly gotten THAT!) At one point he had backed himself down to eating about nothing but Cheerios, Goldfish, and Bananas. That was around Christmas.. when I drew the line. Since then we've worked on and off to get him to eat more. And he is eating more... but we're still not to the point where we put food in front of him and he'll eat just whatever. I think ALOT of his problem in this area has to do with new textures. The kid isn't a big fan of textures... ground beef... forget it. Yes, I have a 3 yr old who will NOT eat a hamburger or french fries! It's not that I really WANT him to want those things, but I'd like to expand his horizons and to be able to go out to eat and know he'll eat something besides crackers! Tonight we had a bit of a breakthrough with turkey meatloaf. I put it on his plate a couple of days ago and got nothing, but tonight he ate about half of it... not much, but it's a START! I also had a big breakthrough on apples. (I know - what kid won't eat an apple?!) He bit into pieces of it a few times and spent a great deal of time sucking on the apple pieces... so it's a start! I just have to fight, fight, FIGHT with this kid and starve him out! As one friend said, "My dr said my job is to provide my children with a good, nutritious meal - what they decide to do with it once it's in front of them is their call!". No more short order cook...

Give A Kid A Vegan Sausage...

And you've got LOADS of entertainment! Since we are still dealing with a sick Mason here there isn't much to report on our lives... I mean, aside from Mason's fever finally passing.... so I decided it was a good time to report on the most underappreciated toy of all time: the vegan sausage! While we were in Houston on our big Rodeo trip we ate dinner with my parents. My dad has given up meat (among a very laundry list of items!) this year for Lent, so we had spaghetti with vegan sausage. I have to admit that, while it does NOT taste like meat, it was far better than I expected. It had a pleasant texture and flavor. I quite enjoyed it. Mason enjoyed it more. Not to eat.. no... he'd rather use them like nunchucks! He had a verrrry good time swinging them around like mad. So now you all know what to do when you're at the end of your ropes with your kids...give 'em a vegan sausage!

The Neb: A MicoPreemie Mom's Best Friend

Since starting school Mason's spent ALOT of time like this... It's frustrating, but hasn't been overly problematic until now. Last weekend I decided to take a sort of impromptu trip to Houston. My very pregnant best friend, Tam, and I were talking and we decided it would be fun to take Mason to the fair at the Rodeo to get his first Rodeo experience. Well, with the time change and drive it was a looong day. We didn't get to the Rodeo until pretty late - and the lines made for a less than ideal situation. But - we did manage to have some fun. Toward the end of our Rodeo experience Mason was pretty cranky. It seems that he had chosen this weekend to decide he was completely OVER going potty in his pants... he had a fit b/c he couldn't get to a little potty! I thought alot of his crankiness was related to the long day and maybe the smoke from the concession stands. When we got to my parents house I gave Mason a breathing treatment b/c he had started coughing quite a bit. He went to bed VERY late for him and we slept together that night so I know he didn't sleep well. He would cough and move all night- then he got up at 5:30. The next morning we did more treatments and the long & short of it was that he got so sick and was coughing so hard that he threw up... and threw up until he was dry heaving. NO FUN. Thank GOODNESS I didn't let Joseph talk me into detailing my car before I left! We drove back that night - a full day early - and it was the drive from hell... complete with Houston rush hr traffic and about an hr of construction traffic in the middle of nowhere. Just what you need when you are exhausted & have a very sick child with breathing difficulties in your backseat! Today we called the pulmonologist to see if we could get in, but no... it's Spring Break. They are booked solid. The soonest we could get in was Thurs morning.... what to do? 5 breathing treatments.... 3 pulmicort/xopenex and 2 mucamist/xopenex. Of course! That's pretty much ALWAYS what I'm told to do when Mason's really sick. So that's what we're doing... he's running a fever as well.. so it seems this is likely something viral... probably another thing Mason picked up at school. It's a good thing he's also picking up vocabulary, pronounciation and his colors!

Rainy Day Blues

Rainy Day Blues
Originally uploaded by kellyaespinoza

I know.... I know that the rain is a good thing. It's just that we've had SO many rainy days... back to back this year! We had a GLORIOUS weekend here in Dallas and then come Monday......... rain. Again! (And what's worse, COLD ... AGAIN!) I understand that we are supposed to have some beautiful weather mid-week, but for now I'm contemplating relocated somewhere tropical!

BTW - yes, this is an ooooooooold picture (sometime mid-2008!), but it was cute and fitting, so I used it anyway. And really - what is a post without pictures?!

In other news... we have gotten a face-lift here... just in case you didn't notice! I'm not sure how often I'll be changing faces, but it may happen from time to time around here... especially if I'm feeling particularly festive!

This is the face...

This is the face that holds me down when I should be up doing laundry, the dishes, sweeping, mopping, cooking, scrubbing, working out and generally doing anything other than laying in bed. I came *this* close to falling asleep this morning after pleas of "SNUGGLE! SNUGGLE!" lulled me back into bed.... I would have fallen blissfully asleep to Mason's little quiet little chatter had it not been for the looming deadline of school ahead. And I really could have been convinced that on this cold, rainy day Mason didn't really *need* to go to school. He's had a little cough. This is pre-school, for cryin' out loud! But then I remembered how much he DOES truly love school. In spite of my desire to soak up every second of fleeting snuggliness it was really in both our best interests for me to break it off and blow dry my hair. After all, Mason loves going to school. It's a good routine and he learns alot. And, besides, I really wouldn't have made it to the gym today if I didn't have to drive half way there to drop Mase off at school!

Family Day 2010: Dallas Aquarium

I'm finally getting around to posting about our Family Day celebration on February 6th. This year we went downtown to the big Dallas World Aquarium. Mason is currently REALLY into fish so we thought he'd like that. We thought we might even end up buying a family annual pass, but, unlike many other venues around town that offer such passes, the Aquarium does not offer any reduced price/free guest passes or parking discounts. Even so I really considered doing it since our entry fee was nearly $60 and an annual family pass was $199... but after going through I was glad that we decided to wait. Mason isn't quuuuuuuite ready for going there too often. The entire top of it is composed of a huge rainforest and while you are walking through it there are LOADS of lines... lines + 3 yr olds = trouble. The day was still fun. Mason enjoyed looking at the huge wall aquarium. He could have hung out there for hrs... if we had goldfish on us! Mason made friends with turtles, giant catfish, manitees, and all sorts of other creatures. It was funny b/c they really did look like they were coming to say hi. One of the COOLEST parts of the trip was that there was a street musician outside the Aquarium playing the sax. We probably could have spent the afternoon watching him and Mason would have been happy as a clam!