Random Thoughts About Stuffing

I love Stove Top Stuffing. It has pretty much been my favorite part of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and all other "stuffing" holidays for as long as I can remember. As much as I love it, I've never made it myself. You think I would have made it for myself at some point. This thought crossed my mind as I was in the store last week so I bought a box.

Now how is it exactly that I'm 32 years old and never knew how easy it is to make Stove Top Stuffing? Boil water and butter. Stir in stuffing packet. Remove from heat and cover. Wait five minutes. Done! That's it?!? Tonight we had chicken, green beans, and Stove Top stuffing. (Andrew also had a side dish of Golden Grahams sans milk.) And is it wrong that I thought to myself that I could easily finish off the whole pan? Who needs chicken and green beans? I know that one box (maybe one serving) probably contains more sodium than I'm supposed to consume in two weeks, but I'm just sayin! I wonder if Sam's Club sells Stove Top. Hmmm...

Balls, Books, and Cars

Balls, books, and cars. That pretty much sums up the past week for us. To be exact, that really sums up Andrew's week. And it has been great!

Books: Andrew seems to be really starting to pick up language. He is babbling and chattering all the time. I think that is maybe why he has been so interested in books recently. He has spent a good amount of time pulling out books and bringing them to us to read. I think he pretty much went through every book we have! We used to ask him to point to the dog or show us Elmo. Now we are transitioning and asking him questions like Who is that? and What's that? He is definitely trying to say words. Dog. Cupcake. Cookie. Car. Ball. Bubble. Pizza. Yes. No. There. Now granted we might be the only ones that understand him.

Balls: Andrew has been all about balls lately. It seems like he's always got a ball (or two) in one arm as he's running around the house. He's gotten good at throwing and also pretty good at letting the ball bounce off of his body before he picks it up. That's as close as we are to catching for now. Maybe he'll be good goalie someday. He really enjoyed sitting up in a big chair we have in the living room and playing ball with Grandpa this weekend.

Cars: If he has a ball in one arm, then chances are he has a car in the other. He actually says "car car" as he rolls them back and forth over our floors. Santa brought him a couple of toy cars from the movie Cars. He's got a Lightning McQueen and a Doc Hudson. The other night we were in the kitchen, and Andrew was playing with his Doc Hudson. He said "car car". Susie then said to him "That's a Doc Car." Andrew responded by saying "Doc Car Car". We are still new to all of this talking stuff so it completely floored us.

Here is the aftermath of all of the book reading we did this weekend. It doesn't look too much different today actually.

Here is Andrew's new activity table with cars, trains, and tracks. Right now it's in the middle of our living room. We needed a coffee table. Haha!

The neat thing about the table is the roadway mat lifts right out. Underneath is a white playing surface. They also make inserts for Legos and other blocks.

Dancing Andrew

I'm still pretty new to this whole blogging thing. Most days I have the adding of pictures down. Except sometimes the order is all crazy. But I decided to up the degree of difficulty by trying to add a video. This is the one I found. It's from about a month ago. It's really not that exciting, but I thought it was pretty funny at the time. I think it was taken after a bath right before bed time. Andrew played music and danced for a good five minutes. So much for the theory that the bath helps them calm down and relax so they're ready to fall asleep, huh?

Already a Year Later

January 7, 2008. It was one year ago Wednesday that my grandma passed away. It's hard to believe a year has already gone by because its seems like it just happened last month. Sometimes it's hard to believe it happened at all. It was unexpected. The whole family was at my grandma's house for Christmas Eve and Christmas a year ago. She was so happy to have us there and seemed to be doing really well. She got sick and went into the hospital on December 30. As it would turn out, her body was attacking itself. Her spleen was producing antibodies that were attacking her red blood cells. The doctors tried all sorts of different treatments, but most of them were only temporary fixes. The one thing they felt would really help was to do surgery to remove her spleen. The difficult part was that they were never able to keep her red blood cell count up for her to be stable enough for surgery. She passed at the end of a long, emotional, and frustrating week.

I still think about her often. I was lucky to live very close to her (about an hour away) during the last several years so it meant lots of Saturday trips over to visit. And while none of us were ready to let her go just yet, one of the things that has helped me in the healing process is knowing that she was ready. At some point, she had purchased a small notebook and written very specific instructions in it about after she was gone. One of the things she had written has stuck with me. She wrote that she did not want us to be sad because she was ready to be with my grandfather and that she missed him so much. He had passed 5 years prior, and he was my grandmother's best friend for 50+ years.

As I think about my grandmother this week, here are some of the memories that stick with me:

• Learning to drive the old pickup truck on the country roads in southern Illinois when I was 11. We would go on two drives a day. She grabbed the steering wheel a lot back then. I think I even drove into the ditch once.
• Filling up a brown bag of candy after visiting them when we were young. They ran a small country "convenience" store and had an awesome selection of candy.
• Her infectious laugh. I can't describe it, but for those people who knew her you know about her laugh.
• That she put money in the Easter Eggs! And not just coins either.
• Scratching off instant lottery tickets on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember. Nobody ever won much money, and she was always so surprised by that.
• How she could play her 12 bingo cards and still see that I've missed a number on one of the four I'm trying to play. And this was when I was like 25! That was serious business cause we were playing for money at the Knights of Columbus. And also how she would be annoyed by having to split a $ 500 bingo pot with the other person who hit it on the same number.
• That she made the best apple pie I have ever eaten and ever will eat.
• How excited she was when I told her she was going to be a great-grandmother.
• How much she loved my grandfather. Especially in the last couple years of his life when she devoted herelf to taking care of him.
• How unselfish and giving she was. She never asked for anything, but gave everything.
• Christmas morning 2007 sitting around her kitchen table for a couple of hours just talking and playing with Andrew.
• That she was probably more faithful and devoted to her church and her God than anyone I have ever known

Celebrating the New Year with a little more Christmas

Happy New Year! We celebrated the new year last night and today by finishing up our Christmas with Andrew. You see, Andrew had so many gifts from his grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles to open this Christmas that we decided to hold off on giving him any of our gifts. He's still too young to realize that being the only grandchild on both sides means you get lots of presents!

Andrew has never really paid any attention to the presents under the tree. On Christmas he wasn't even all that interested in opening the presents people gave to him. He's still just a bit too young I think. (He has always been more interested in the ornaments on the tree. He especially likes pulling off the traditional round ones, rolling them across the floor and saying "Ball, ball!")

So we had to get him started and really help him open the first few. Then Andrew really started to get into it. It was so cute to watch him go back under the tree for another present as the initial excitement of each gift wore off. Some of the boxes were "big", and he really had to work to maneuver them out onto the floor. One thing we did find out is that Andrew is very meticulous. He did not want to move on to opening the box until he was sure all of the paper was off each present. He is also definitely a ripper as opposed to the neat unfolder.

Andrew loved his Lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson cars.

Here he is carrying his two new cars in one hand and a Jeep Christmas ornament from our tree in the other. He spent most of New Year's Day carrying Lightning and Doc around with one arm leaving the other one free for eating, playing and doing everything else.

Doc and Lightning race! He's actually lining them up. He does this with all of his cars.

It's a Mr. Potato Head!

Notice the set of cars neatly lined up in the background of this picture. It's like a parking lot.

Giving Mr. Potato Head a nose.

This is New Year's Day playing with his new train set.