Muffin Tin Monday

Monday, Monday. So good to me. Monday, Monday. It was all I hoped it would be. La la, la la la.

Welcome to October! We had a pretty full weekend. Things didn't go exactly as planned, but when do they ever? Friday night Vince and I had an at-home date night. We waited until Max was in bed and then ordered from our favorite Italian place and then vegged out on the couch watching Castle on Netflix. I'm now obsessed with this show. We just finished the first season. For years I was avoiding the show thinking it was similar to those cheesy murder mystery shows in the 80's. Like Hardcastle & McCormick or Remington Steele. My friend Kim convinced me to give it a try. She loves the show (and the hot Mr. Fillion). I'm hooked. I can't wait for the next disc to get here...and WHY is it not available streaming?!

Saturday we were supposed to go to the Claude Moore annual craft fair and maybe hit up the Apple Festival at the Heritage Museum in the afternoon. Instead, we all slept in and didn't have time to get out to the craft fair. Then Max took an extra long nap in the afternoon so we didn't get out of the house until almost 3 o'clock! The festival ended at 4, so it wasn't worth it to trek out there. Instead, we packed ourselves up and headed out to Cox Farms in Chantilly for the opening day of their Fall Festival. This is our third year going to Cox Farms. The first year, I had just found out I was pregnant with Max. We went with a group of people to the haunted corn maze and hayride. It was a blast! Last year we took Max to the festival. He was only 6 months old, so he didn't really have any idea of what was going on. It was cold and windy and it had rained heavily the day before so the whole place was a huge mud pit. Not so much fun last year. But this year. Whoo boy! Max climbed on the giant hay stacks, went down the big pirate ship slide, played in the old west town, crawled through the hay tunnels, danced to a live band, picked fresh apples and pumpkins to take home, rode on a really cool hayride, and saw all kinds of baby animals. While we were looking at a big sow and her piglets, all of the babies ran over to mom to start suckling. A girl next to us, around 14, gasped and asked her mom what they were doing? Why were they fighting over the mother pig like that? Max looked at the girl and told her they were drinking milk! I can't tell you how proud I was of my little guy at that moment.

Saturday night was very quiet. We were all pretty exhausted and went to bed early. Sunday morning we ended up going out to the apple festival. It was much smaller than I thought it was going to be but it was still a lot of fun. We did an apple tasting of different heirloom varieties of apples. Then we went through the little apple museum and watched a girl peel apples using a 100 year old apple peeling machine. Max got to use an antique machine to bag apples, and he got to keep the apples that he bagged. Then we saw an apple cider making demonstration using a 150 year old apple press. Max got to be the helper that threw the apples in the top of the press. We missed story time but we got to do a cute little apple craft, giving an apple a personality. Then we went outside where Max won some prizes playing some games like bean bag toss, tic tac toe (using apples), and apple bobbing. They had face painting but Max freaks out with stuff being painted on him (he did the same thing with those temporary tattoos at the ice cream festival). The last activity was in the pasture where they had set up large wooden animal cutouts along with tons of finger paints and brushes. Max went to town painting animals and amazingly didn't get any paint on himself or me! He took a 3 hour long nap and then went to bed early again. I think the day was a success.

Unfortunately, we took all of the pictures this weekend using Vince's new iPhone. On the way out to the apple festival, Vince put his phone on the roof of the car and forgot about it. We drove off, never to see the phone again. We drove up and down the street for hours looking for any sign of debris but it was gone. I'm assuming someone found it and took it home. Frugal Vince keeps the GPS turned off on his phone to save the battery life. If it was on we could have located it using the Find My Phone app. Lesson learned but it sucks that we don't have any pictures of our awesome weekend.

To celebrate the apple festival, I made today's lunch have an apple theme. I thought it was pretty cute but Max actually didn't like everything. He didn't like the apple yogurt so I switched it out for coconut and he gobbled it up. He didn't want his muffin or the Apple Jacks at lunch but ate them later for a snack. Everything else was gone pretty quickly. And he loved his apple sippy cup, which was a prize he picked out for winning at bean bag toss!

Today's lunch:
Max's apple craft from the festival
Sweet Potato Pie mini muffin
Apple Jacks cereal
Fresh apple, cut into chunks
Cheeseburger, leftover from dinner
Oikos 0% fat apple cinnamon Greek yogurt
Ice water in his apple sippy cup

Muffin Tin Monday

Well, here we are again. Monday. The dreaded day of the week. We're all exhausted here. We've been running with out of town trips and company for the past couple of weeks and now Max seems to be having a growth spurt and isn't sleeping well. What I wouldn't give for a few quiet hours alone in my house right now.

The first weekend of September, Vince's step-mother, two sisters, cousin, and I all loaded up in my car for a road trip to rural PA for Liz's bridal shower. That's right, Vince's baby brother Tony is engaged! Squee! We are so happy for both of them and they have asked Vince to be a groomsman and Max to be the ringbearer. Yay! I met the little flower girl that Max will be riding in the wagon with and she is adorable. The wedding is set for the end of December in Nashville. I've started getting Max's attire together, starting with a new pair of flame Vans. :)

While the girls were having fun at the shower in PA, Vince's dad was staying at our house. So before we left on our trip, I had to get our guest room and bathroom ready, stock the house with food, do laundry, clean, and all of the other stuff you do when overnight guests are coming. They had a great time! I was a little anxious since this was the first time I had left Max overnight but the guys' weekend turned out just fine. Max sure does love his Grandpa.

We had a little bit of a break until my mom came for a visit. She has been seriously ill since have complications from gall bladder surgery. She finally got the okay from her doctor to fly so I immediately booked a flight for her. It had been 6 months since I had seen her and couldn't wait for her to get here. It was the first time she was visiting our new house so we were out exploring every day! We went to the cool play area at the mall and rode the train and the carousel and had ice cream afterwards, we went to the Reston Zoo, the Leesburg Outlet mall, to Max's art class, the farmer's market, and we explored downtown Herndon. In our limited time at the house we managed to bake zucchini bread and chocolate no-bake cookies. Max helped Grandma make spaghetti and meatballs with homemade tomato sauce.

Needless to say, I haven't had much time to blog but I have been making new recipes like crazy. The only problem is that they typically get eaten before I have time to take any pictures. Oh well, such is life.

Max had a pretty good lunch today. It consisted of:
Snap pea crisps
Raspberry Jello
Juicy Juice 100% grape juice, 4oz box
Peanut butter & blackberry jelly on whole wheat squares (it is really hard to tell in the picture but the sandwich was cut using an Elmo imprint)
Green grapes
Oikos 0% fat blueberry Greek yogurt

Muffin Tin Monday

I finally jumped on the bandwagon of Muffin Tin Mondays! Now that Max has fully reached the independent toddler eater phase, I find myself trying to get creative with his meals. I don't know if it's a common question posed to mom's of toddlers, or moms in general, but it seems that I get asked quite often if Max is a picky eater. The answer is never cut and dried.

In the grand scheme of things, he eats pretty well. He will try just about anything once. He might hate something one day and love it the next. So, I keep testing the waters when it comes to his food. Until very recently, like that last week or so, he still preferred most of his food to be in puree form. I think it's a texture thing. I still can't get him to eat regular oatmeal, but he will scarf down baby cereal oatmeal. He eats most fruits and proteins in their intended/natural form. He absolutely will not eat any vegetable unless it is pureed. But if you puree it, he'll eat any of them.

I take that back, there are some veggies that he'll eat whole. He loves eggplant and recently he started eating tomatoes and mushrooms. He will also sometimes eat peas whole.

Ok, so once I started getting creative with his meals I became obsessed with bento lunches. They are just so cute! However, Max doesn't go to daycare or any type of preschool/nanny so I really couldn't justify getting a lunch box set for him. That's when I found Muffin Tin Mondays! I can do all of the cute little bento stuff and put it all into muffin cups! What a genius idea! The muffin cups are the perfect size for Max's appetite and I can give him a variety of foods to choose from for his meal. He also gets to feel like a "big boy" and choose what he wants to eat. It's a win/win.

Off to Michael's, Target, and Walmart I went to get my supplies. I *may* have gone a little overboard with this stuff. I just couldn't help it! I tried a few over the weekend and they went over well with Max. So today is our first official Muffin Tin Monday.

Please excuse the poor picture. I didn't have much light and haven't had time to set up my new camera and photo studio since moving.

Max's lunch today consists of:
A glass of whole milk
A banana peanut butter mini muffin with chocolate chips
Cinnamon Teddy Grahams
Yogurt peanut butter dip
A cup of yogurt
Leftover Chicken Tikka Masala from dinner last night
Cut up strawberries