currently - Otto & Stitch - link up

The deal: Use our themes or use your own - just let us know what is 'currently' going on with you! Be sure to stop by and say hello to the other bloggers linking up - especially to my amazing co-host at Harvesting Kale.

This week's themes: appreciating, feeling, looking, regretting, playing

I have been Appreciating my children's strengths and weaknesses. Loretta is so resilient and such a force of nature. She face planted into rocks (of course she did) at school last week and got the worst nose scrape and lip cut combo I've ever seen, plus gauged her forehead so badly she needed a stitch. My heart hasn't stood so still since she spent her initial days on this planet in NICU (scariest days of my life). One of our parent friends from school posted this on my FB:

H- has told me (more than once I might add) that "Etta fell down on the sidewalk and landed on her face and she didn't even cry and she is a really tough girl even though she's a little kid."

Meanwhile fail to give this girl a pee pee treat after using the toilet and she falls to pieces.

Otto has been Feeling very cool lately, round-the-clock wearing nerd glasses his Nana and Papa brought him. You guys, I can't. Where did Otto come from? He's like bio-engineered or something. He asked us what a "nerd" was and we were like, "someone who's really smart and so into being smart that it makes them cool." I love that nerd chic is a thing and my five year old is its poster child.

I have been Looking at the calendar and being like what in the what? How is it freaking mid-October already? Is nuts.

I am stumped on Regretting this week. I'm a little bit regretting that I didn't spend all summer visiting the gym and working on my skincare routine. Not regretting those things enough to wash my face before bed most nights or do sit-ups, mind you.

Image via Busted Tees. So! This past weekend we started Playing Settlers of Catan with Otto. On Sunday, we actually taught Otto, my mom, and my dad how to play and Otto hung in there as a team with Rob. Hurray Settlers! Otto rolls so many sevens! I'm tardy to the Settlers party, it's been a favorite of Rob's for years and years. But dudes, this game! I should say that it's still pretty involved for Ot. It's recommended for ages 10+. But playing on Rob's team he did super awesome and I'm such a board game geek it's like actually thrilling to me that this is something we do now. Settlers, Yes We Catan!

We have an open "CALL FOR THEMES" going on so please submit theme suggestions.
Next week's themes were submitted by the wonderful Caz who blogs over at Water Under It:
anticipating, contributing, discussing, listening, deciding 

let's all get our sheet together

Well I was going to call this "let's all get our shit together" but that sounded crass... but then I was just thinking that no one would realize what I was doing there now, in the title, because sheet? What? And now I've over-explained it (or did I?) and also --> no one cares. But here's what really matters: LORETTA IS FEELING BETTER.

Dudes? I have a tropical storm of a daughter and I absolutely love every undelicate hair on her powerful, demanding head but for reals, when she feels like hell, so does every person in a fifty food radius. This week all I want to do is recover from last week. We are so boring around here and it feels incredibly amazing. We will do laundry! Cook the meals on our meal plan for the week (boring meals, hurray!). We will file, recycle,tidy, and generally clear the house of the 50,000 bookmarks and torn paper treasures of the artist formerly known as Otto.

I may even indulge in a little potato-ing of the couch and dive into Downton Abbey. I have it on pretty great authority that it is, in fact, that good. 

I'm also really excited to read all of the posts from everyone who participated in Currently last week! So many!

And lastly, if you have a second, I have a little plug. Please head over to Brandy's lovely lifestyle and kids fashion blog Heart and Habit. I adore Brandy and have for a very long time. She's probably one of the first moms I really connected with via this blog world. She's stunningly beautiful, has great, understated street style, she's fit but also drinks way too much coffee, she uses the foul language just often enough to make me smile, and she adores her babies and dresses them like mini look books and takes ahhhmazing photos! Anyways, I was pretty flattered when this dynamo(m) asked me to participate in her Mom Time Out series (yay!) and I had a lot of fun putting together the perfect clothes and trappings for a fantasy day to myself, which is posted here. What do you think of my fantasy day? Amazing yes? I was even thoughtful with a math bath for the hubs because I'm super nice like that. ps. I for reals for realzzzzz want that Pendleton blanket! If blanket drool were a thing that is what I would have for that blanket.

Ok, I hope your sheet is all together this week too. Because potato chip high five!

Loretta Eats...

this pretty little gal is just a few days shy of her 5 month birthday.

i can't even... it seems like just days ago that i realized i might be pregnant (during an epic tear-fest at Ikea over "which desk should i get? which one? which mother effing ooooooonnnnnneeeeee? kill me now because i will die deciding. kill yourself while you're at it because i hate you and desks and the smell of meatballs and. the. woooooorld!" <-- yeah, pregnant? just maybe?) and yet here we are today on a peaceful Sunday afternoon and we have a baby living in our house, eating our food. a baby who grub-crawls, cracks UP at Otto's moose impression, and is pretty determined to grow moss in between her second and third chins (hippie).

here we are and we've lived in this tiny, temporary sorta-house in Eugene for a year already. we move out in 3 short weeks and i can't wait to share pics of the new place which is just beautiful: wood floors, front and back porch, more space, a real kitchen, light! thank goodness for student housing finally coming through! i'm also really looking forward to finally setting up a bedroom for Loretta, to amping up the big-boy factor in Otto's room, and to creating a playroom for the kiddos so that their bedrooms can be sanctuaries of calm and unclutter.  

so back to the topic at hand, Loretta was given the green-light to start solids several weeks ago by her pediatrician. we were in no hurry, but as baby has been joining us in her bumbo at meals, she has become more and more interested in this putting-the-things-in-the-mouth that we are doing because putting-the-things-in-the-mouth is her FAVORITE THING. so a few days ago we tried our first solids: organic brown rice cereal mixed with breast milk and a teeny bit of pureed cantaloupe. now i don't cuss much but Loretta is downright crass and i'm pretty sure i heard her say, "FUCK YEAH," then she drove a little baby-sized motorcycle in circles around the table for a few minutes while screaming obscenities at the family and eating all our dinners. which she will do, i think, at every meal, from now on, forever.

see that look in her eye? she's saying, "I'll cut you."

here are the things Loretta eats so far (all organic and smooshed - just whatever thought i'd say)...
- brown rice cereal
- cantaloupe
- avocado
- squash
- sweet potatoes
- blueberries
- pears (canned by Katherine)
- apple and chicken compote (earth's best jar)

coming up on the menu we have peas, green beans, carrots, and zucchini.

eating!

jiminy crap it weirds me out that she's eating already.