This morning we got up and got ready for a visiting teaching appointment at 10:30. Since Amanda lives near here, we decided to walk. As soon as we went into the garage and I opened the garage door, Alegria sat on her bike...and began pedaling her bike on her own! She didn't go very far, but it was nice to know that she got the concept! However, since we were on a time constraint, I pushed her the whole way there.
On our way to Amanda's, Cameron called! So I slowed down our pace and we talked for a few minutes. We arrived late, but with good reason! :)
Our visit went well...though the kids got into a few little arguments about who would play with which toys! I had to separate Alegria from Josh once because she was trying to take away a toy truck he was playing with, and Andrea had to put Josh in time out once, too! While Josh was in time out, though, Alegria felt sorry for him and kept bringing him toys to play with, so the time out wasn't quite working as planned!
Finally, we all parted ways.
Once home, Odette was exhausted and went right down for a nap.
Alegria wanted to keep playing on her bike, though, but it was gray outside, so I took the car out of the garage and let her run around in there.
Alegria finally went down for a nap...as Odette was waking up. Once Alegria was in bed, I tried nursing Odette to get her to go back to sleep...to no avail.
So I brought Odette with me to the office to upload pictures.
When Alegria woke up, we played, watched some TV, relaxed...
Then at 4, I started making some meatballs for dinner. I'd never made meatballs before, but I'm trying to get Alegria to eat more meat and I thought that if I were to make tiny bite-sized meatballs (cute!), that Alegria would be into them and want to eat them!
I even let her help me so that she would want to eat a product of her own making!
The recipe I was using for basic meatballs out of the book How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman called for bread crumbs. I was originally going to try to make the "leaner" recipe which omitted the bread crumbs, milk, and egg, but at the last minute I decided that for my first try, I would make the traditional meatball and see how we liked it...but I hadn't bought bread crumbs because that wasn't my original plan. So...I crushed up Quaker Oatmeal Squares (iron-packed goodness, yum!) and used that as a substitute for the bread crumbs.
The gravy was just as easy to make...I had no idea!!! :)
The meatballs turned out DELICIOUS! The Quaker Oatmeal Squares gave the meatballs the tiniest sweet taste to them...YUMMY!!! And the gravy was nice and thick and creamy...oh, the goodness!!! Unfortunately, Alegria did NOT agree with my final assessment of the finished product:
She picked at the meatballs with her fork and when she wouldn't go near them, I tried another tactic...smothering them in Ragu sauce (which has a full serving of vegetables in every 1/2 cup!), but all she did was lick the sauce a little...and still leave the meatballs. *sigh* What's a mother to do to get her child to eat healthy when her child won't even eat meatballs and sauce...which I thought any kid would love?! And look at those tiny meatballs...perfect for little fingers to even just grab and eat as a finger food if desired...so cute!!!
I told Alegria she had to eat her dinner and that she wouldn't have anything else if she didn't eat that (she was asking for yogurt)...and while she sat at the table, NOT eating her dinner, I attempted to feed Odette sweet potatoes for the first time:
She didn't like them all that much, but at least I got a few cute pictures! Haha!
Once I was done trying to get Odette to eat the sweet potatoes, and I saw that Alegria was clearly not going to eat the meatballs, I decided that I would get her to eat something healthy tonight, one way or the other.
So I made my usual nightly smoothie consisting of milk, ice, bananas, peanut butter, and nutella...only tonight, I added a new ingredient...spinach! I must admit, the added green twinge to the smoothie kind of made my stomach turn, but when I tried it, I actually could not taste the spinach at all! I had put a full handful in...I think that's a good start!
Alegria LOVES my smoothies, so when she asked to have some, I gladly obliged...and she downed it!
I felt quite accomplished as I had gotten her to eat ONE thing with a healthy edge to it tonight! Yay!!!
And then for some reason, she started signing "owl!" I have no idea why!
Our night wasn't over after dinner, though. Usually it would be bath night tonight, but I had a Stake Primary Presidency meeting tonight at 6:30, so after dinner, I got the girls ready to leave...but as SOON as I had Odette strapped into her carseat...she had a blowout!!! So I had to get her out, clean her up, and get her back into her carseat all over again.
We ended up showing up to my meeting late and I felt bad because we were originally planning on meeting at 7, but I was the one who requested we meet a little earlier so that I would be home not too late after the girls' bed times...and here I was being late. How embarassing!
The girls did well at the meeting and it lasted about an hour, so we left the church building at about 8.
Odette had fallen asleep in the car, so when we got home and I got her ready for bed and nursed her for her to go to sleep...she was instead wide awake!
So we came out to the living room and watched some Tom and Jerry cartoons with Alegria and played. During commercials, I got Alegria ready for bed.
At about 10:30, Alegria and Odette both looked tired enough to finally go to bed, so we went to our bedroom and I nursed Odette and sang to both girls so that they could fall asleep. Alegria played around a little on the bed, but finally at about 11, both girls were asleep.
I don't know why I didn't leave the bedroom at that point. I was conscious of the fact that it was 11 and that both girls were asleep...yet I was so exhausted that I fell asleep, too!
It was finally 3 am when I finally woke up...and now here I am, in the office. I wanted to make sure I emailed Cameron or else I would have gone straight to bed.
But now it's time to go...
Good night!!!
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