Friday, October 28, 2011

nutter butter ghosts

Here is a cute, EASY treat you can make this weekend for Halloween! Just buy a package of Nutter Butter cookies, vanilla flavored Almond Bark, and chocolate chips and you are in business. Melt the Almond Bark according to the package directions, drop in a cookie, roll to coat, and lift out with a fork to let the excess drip.

Let them cool on wax paper. (If your house is as chilly as ours, you don't even need to refrigerate!) I melt a half cup or so of chocolate chips too, and pipe them out of a ziploc baggie to make eyes and a scary ghost mouth! These are super cute tied up in little cellophane treat sacks with Halloween ribbon. Oh yeah, and they taste good too :)

(P.S. I tried this same thing with white chocolate chips instead of the Almond Bark coating, but couldn't ever get it to melt as well and ended up having to spread it on the cookies- let me know if you get it to work!)

show off

Palmer was quite the ham at the doctor's office today! With a med student observing, he had a larger audience than usual. He blabbed on and on, then showed off his toy shaking abilities and stethoscope grabbing prowess. He is between the 75th & 90th percentile in height, but only 10th percentile in weight! Tyler thinks he'll make a good runner. We went ahead and got him a flu shot since with no health insurance it would be financially disastrous if he got really sick. (Also, I would hate for my baby to get the flu.) Here are some pics of his happy, 9 month old self!



Wednesday, October 26, 2011

9 months old

Here we are, October 26th, and Palmer is 9 months old! I don't have any pictures to share right now, but I guarantee with Halloween coming up Monday there will be plenty to look at soon :) Palmer is loving life lately and has a great time eating and playing. He has recently started eating Cheerios and it is so much fun to watch him do such a big boy thing! I put a few on his Bumbo tray and Palmer attacks them immediately, sometimes shoving his whole hand in his mouth to make sure the Cheerios make it in too. He has learned those sneaky little O's can stick to you, so he is careful to check both sides of his hand for any snacks that are hiding.

Finally tummy time isn't torture! Now when I lay Palmer on the floor to play, he is a little roly poly, rolling his way around to different toys. When he's on his belly he can't figure out how to move forward, but he rotates around in a circle pretty efficiently to get pointed in the right direction. Usually he gets the toy he wants, then rolls to his back to rest and play with whatever he found. I love watching him play on his own to see what he'll do or choose next. Last night the activity of choice was clacking two plastic blocks together.

Palmer goes to the doctor on Friday for his check-up and luckily the next round of shots isn't til his 12 mo visit- woohoo! I'll share his height and weight stats then. We are looking forward to Halloween next week and trying on the much anticipated elephant costume being sewed by my mom. I'm betting it will be pretty cute :)

Sunday, October 16, 2011

couch to 5K

My mom and I decided to run the Believe! McKinney 5K the Saturday after Thanksgiving as a motivator to start exercising more, and so far it's working! Some of you may have heard of the training program Couch-to-5K- it's meant to get you from lazy couch potato to running a 5K in two months. Since we didn't make this decision until 7 weeks before race day, and the Couch program is 9 weeks, we're on a bit of an accelerated calendar, but I think it will work out just fine!


I haven't run in a long time, but I think I remember something about it from off-season training in HS swimming. . . oh yeah. . .it's HARD. Luckily, this running plan starts you out slowly. Last week assigned us to alternate 90 seconds of jogging with 2 minutes of walking for 20 minutes. Every week has three workouts and you are supposed to do a brisk 5 minute warm up walk before each. As you might have guessed, each week has less walking and more running
involved! This week is jog 90 sec, walk 90 sec, jog 3 min, walk 3 min. How sad is it that I'm daunted by the 3 minute jogs?? Haha, I hope the designers of this knew what sort of serious couch potatoes they would be dealing with.



Tyler will be showing us up/meeting his potential and running the 10K the same morning. There is also a 1 mile Holiday Walk. (Maybe my mom and I will sneak onto that course if things get rocky ;) I'm looking forward to continuing the process and getting a little more fit. Hopefully my knees can take it!