Davey – formerly known as “the very picky eater” + Pinterest Success

Davey has developed a reputation for being a very picky eater.  For a long time, he wanted nothing to do with vegetables or basically anything that was part of a “mixture”.  He did always eat a lot of fruit though, so he got some vitamins that way (plus some gummy vitamins sometimes). Besides fruit, he mostly enjoyed peanut butter and jelly, goldfish, vanilla yogurt, cheese, Life cinnamon cereal (known around here as “crunchies”), and sometimes chicken nuggets.

However, I never could envision him growing up to be too particular.  David and I definitely are not, we don’t come from families who include picky eaters, and I did not see how it could be part of his genetic makeup.

I worried a little though.  A friend from Colorado told me about her cousin who specifically requested that she have chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese at her own wedding as those were pretty much the only foods she liked.  I could see this as Davey’s future for a little while.  But, we never made a big deal about it and just kept encouraging him.

He is beginning to come around.  This is now a kid whose current favorite food is black-eyed peas and cornbread. He also loves spinach salad (he likes it with 1000 island dressing, but he will eat plain spinach leaves too).

This brings me to some pinterest successes I have had lately and which have also expanded his eating repertoire.

I made a great simple pepper salad the other day.  Basically just several types of chopped bell peppers, lime juice, cilantro and onions.  Davey loved it.  In an attempt to get him to try it, I first asked him to taste test each color of pepper to see what color he liked the most.  I think red and yellow beat orange and green.  He chowed on these peppers!  He even ate some of the cilantro and said he liked it (I could not hang with him on that one).

The same night I tried a new Mongolian beef recipe.  It was another great success, and Davey ate quite abit of the beef and enjoyed the sauce mixed with rice.

Davey still has his moments.  He doesn’t like any of his foods to touch each other on the plate.  He also wants to use a separate spoon or fork for each thing.  So a fork for the rice and a different one for the beef.  I think he was just picking out the peppers and eating them like finger food.

He’s getting there though!  There be some regression on the way, but I’m no longer too worried that we will need to make sure and have chicken nuggets and goldfish at his wedding.

012

Knitting and a Jedi

It is Spring Break and we are planning some serious relaxing.  I am looking forward to some serious knitting time as well.

I just finished a sweater for my sweet little one year old niece.

lila-cross-sweater

 

This is from an Ella Rae book that I bought at my LYS.  The yarn is Ella Rae also.  It’s called Cozy Soft and is an acrylic/wool blend.  It was really soft and nice to work with.  The pattern was great too.  It had a fun stitch pattern which kept it interesting to work on.  I hope little Lila likes it!

A couple of months ago, I made a chicken sweater for a friend.  I can now scratch that off my list of things that I had never made before.  (I don’t know why I took an upside down picture of the sweater.)

chicken-coat

 

I even crocheted a few little flowers for decoration for the little chicken.

I made this for a friend in Colorado who then gave it to a friend who has chickens.  Look what my friend sent me in return!

janice-paintings

 

She is a painter and she painted this for me!  I felt so lucky to receive them!  She does beautiful work.  I love that we traded our work although I think I need to make her something else now because I just love these.

This weekend we are going to go to Comic Con.  David and Davey are getting pretty excited.  Davey has already picked out his Comic Con attire.

comic-con-jedi

 

My serious determined Jedi (or the kid who really did not want his picture taken).

Spring is Coming!

We enjoyed some time outside yesterday.

davey-bubbles

 

Davey was having a great time with bubbles.

blowing-the-bubbles

 

We picked up a large bubble wand at the Dollar Tree.  Davey was really working at making big bubbles.

bubble-wand

 

This kept him busy for a long time.

bubble-wand-2

 

We went to our neighbors’ for a bit, and Davey was laughing and laughing at their dog who really wanted to catch a remote controlled helicopter.

laughing-davey

 

I love it when Davey gets really tickled.  🙂

Daddy Daughter Dance

Davey came home from school the other day with a flier.  He handed it to me and asked me to tell him what it said.

I told him that it was an announcement about a “Father Daughter Dance”.  It was a special time for dads to go have dinner and to dance with their daughters.

Davey did not like this at all.  “Where’s my dance?  Why can’t we go?  Why is it just daughters?  What if sons want to go with their moms or dads?”

He sputtered about this for several minutes.  Finally he said, “Mama, let me have that flier.”  I gave it to him, and he crumpled it up into a ball and took it to the trashcan.

He then said that he did not want to talk about it anymore.  It was as though he could not quite wrap his mind around this “injustice”.

I guess maybe I need to start lobbying for a mother/father/daughter/son dance. 🙂

This is one of those little Davey stories that I just had to write down and remember.

 

happy valentines.

I knitted some hearts for Valentines Day.  It had been such a busy week and I decided that on Thursday night I was just going to sit down for a little knitting time.  I stopped by my LYS and picked up some red yarn – Peace Fleece in Ukrainian Red.   It was a great red!  I found this free pattern from one of my old favorites – Mochimochiland.

hearts-in-a-bowl

I tried to get a good picture of Davey holding a heart, but the light was not cooperating with me.  Neither was Davey really for that matter, but that was ok.  I liked this picture.

little-valentine

Davey had such a big day at school.  They celebrated Valentines Day and it was also Clifford’s birthday!

923126_10203144503393891_46987906_n

He made us some beautiful Valentines gifts too.  He made a heart with his handprints.

little-hands-valentine

On the back was part of one of my most favorite ee cummings poems (he’s my favorite poet).

ee-cummings

I love how he wrote his name.  He insists on an upper case A.

Davey enjoyed showing David his Valentine treats.

looking-at-valentines

Today it’s snowing.  It’s really pretty and I wish I was capable of getting a good picture of it falling.  Instead I got a picture of Buster letting me know that he wanted to play.

buster-wants-to-play

Silly dog.

Happy Saturday!

Davey and Blogging

I started this blog when Davey was born.  I’ve posted really regularly at times, and more sporadically at others. (This is actually my 765th post! That seems crazy to me!)

I have always tried to catch special moments and write them down.  When each of these moments have happened, I have always thought that there was no way that I would ever forget them!  Yet when I go back to look at old posts from even just a couple of years ago, I will read about things he said and did, and it is like they just happened for the first time.  I am amazed by how much I forget.

These are simple stories.  For example, for the past month or so, Davey has been afraid to be in a room by himself.  He has followed us all over the house (and it is not a large house!).   I told him that I thought it was just a phase that he was going through. This made him feel much better, and for awhile he was saying, “But Mama, I am still going through my ‘phrase'”.  It is just in the last few days that he has really almost gotten over this. This morning he told me that, “I am so happy that my phase is over!  I am so happy that I don’t know if I feel like laughing or crying!”

I will enjoying coming back to my blog to read and remember someday.  But due in part to our rather nomadic life since Davey was born (we have lived in Tennessee, Arkansas, Colorado and now Washington), I really like to share my blog.  We have family and friends scattered all over the country, and I think they enjoy reading about him as well.  It’s a way to stay connected.

But you don’t have to share on a blog. You could write down your stories about your family, yourself, your pets, your interests, etc. in a journal or scrapbook, and you will enjoy reading them again someday.

Something else I’d like to remember. Today we went to an “Education, Environment and Economy Fair” here in Ellensburg.  Davey spent a fair amount of time pretending he was an archaeologist.  He “dug” up obsidian and petrified wood!

IMG_1979

Maybe I will read this post again someday and see this was the beginning of a career in science and exploration!

Ok that’s my pitch for writing it all down! (or at least some or even a little tiny bit of it!)  If you already do “write it down”, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Busy Times and an alien

We are getting back into the swing of things after Christmas break.  We had a great trip to California where we spent time with my entire family.  But now, we are all back at school and work.  The days just fly by.

When we got home from our trip, we didn’t have much time before school started again.  One of the things we had to do was to create an alien for Davey’s class.

This was so much fun.   We had a great time planning it.  Davey art directed all the way through and helped me build him.

photo

I decided to put my knitting skills to work.  I used the Rebecca Danger Monster Chunk pattern to make the body.  (I used a bulky cotton that I had.)  We used ping pong balls for the feet.  The pipe cleaners worked great for legs and antenna.  Then I glued together several buttons and painted them for his ears (I guess those are ears?!).  Davey helped me design his felt face.

We had a great time with him.

I’ve not been knitting much the past few days.  I have a “chicken coat” started which was requested from a friend.  I’m hoping for a picture of the chicken modeling the coat, so I need to get it finished!  I made some progress on “Hulda Holly” on our drive to and from California.  I have hopes of finishing it this year in time to enter it in the fair!  That’s my goal which I hope will drive me to finish.

Happy Weekend!

Happy Veteran’s Day!

I have great appreciation for our veterans, but there’s nothing like seeing it through the eyes of a 6-year old to make you extra aware of how special Veteran’s Day is.

He participated in a school assembly the other day.  He has spent weeks getting the Pledge of Allegiance memorized and learning to sing “The Star Spangled Banner”.  He was also very excited about the special march that the kindergarteners got to do when they came into the assembly.

603095_10202368703999391_1714467808_n

 

 

Today we walked downtown to watch the Veteran’s Day parade.

davey-daddy-vet-parade

 

It was great.  Davey was so excited and kept looking to see when they were coming.

davey-looking

 

He loved waving his flag and clapping for all the veterans who went by.

veteran-day-paradeWe are all off today and are enjoying a nice afternoon at home.  David and Davey have been building with Legos for awhile.  I just finished a couple of short papers.  I finished reading a book (Into the Wild – really good).  I think it’s time to knit.

Sponge

David caught a rare quiet Davey moment yesterday during his birthday party.

quiet-davey

 

We are just enjoying how he is absolutely loving school.  The progress he has made in just over 6 weeks is incredible.  When he brought home his first sight word list, things were not clicking yet.  It was a little difficult the first time through.  We played lots of games, and eventually he mastered those words.  I will always remember how much trouble “me” and “my” gave him.

The second list went much more quickly.  He got into the swing of learning them, and it came pretty quickly to him.  Now his third list?  He’s gotten to the point where he is sounding out many of the words to help him figure it out.  He knew the list of words almost as soon as he received it.

He loves numbers.  He loves to organize them.  Recognizing some of the digits between 11 and 20 is giving him a little trouble, but he knows what they represent.  It’s just remembering their names that is giving him a bit of a challenge.

He is starting to read signs everywhere he goes.  His handwriting has improved by leaps and bounds.  He was never really interested in coloring, drawing or writing before he started kindergarten, which was absolutely ok with me.  He was into other things like reading with us and expanding his imagination.  But he had a little work to do to get those fine motor skills going.  He’s quickly getting them, and now he wants to write and draw all the time.

I want to document all this so I can remember it more clearly when I think back to these days someday.  He is a kindergartener who loves learning, and he has the greatest kindergarten teacher to guide him.  There are such great teachers out there who are doing their absolute darndest despite big class sizes and having to adapt to changes like the Common Core Standards (I don’t know enough about it yet to say whether I think it’s going to be good or not – but they have to adapt either way!).   I always want to remember how committed and awesome his teacher was as well, although that’s pretty unforgettable already.

Birthdays

Davey turned 6 today.  Presents, playing with presents, more playing with presents – he had a great time.  This afternoon we had a little party with our great friends.  I made a bunch of cupcakes, and they decorated them.  David took a lovely picture.  Our guests were a little older than Davey and had more cupcake decorating stamina, so more of these cupcakes can be attributed to them (Davey’s is that lovely red blue and white one in the front though!).  They did beautiful work!cupcakes

 

They brought him an art kit, and so he wanted to try it out immediately!

mama-and-davey

 

David got a “calm moment” picture somehow out of this excited kid.

davey-painting

 

He had such a fun time though.  He loved loved playing Headbanz with us.  He laughed so much.

headbandz

 

It’s a busy time around here this time of year.  David had a birthday a few days ago too.

Davey also had a lot of fun celebrating Daddy’s birthday.

davey-at-david-bday

 

I realized that I needed to focus the camera on the birthday kid!

david-candles

 

We made him mini cupcakes.  Davey enjoyed decorating these as well.  We had some mini cupcakes, sang, and opened some gifts.

I like this picture.

birthday-kid

 

Happy Birthday David and Davey!