Hello friends! How were your Halloweens?
Matt, Riese, and I had fun – our street did a socially distanced Halloween situation where anyone who wanted to participate put out tables of candy in front of their houses, or got creative and set up chutes to throw candy down, or clotheslines to fly candy down!
It was a lot of fun and nice to do something that felt more “normal.”
Riese’s favorite show is Doc McStuffins, so that was her costume this year! She has been wearing it all month – she loves it so much. Matt and I get lots and lots of “checkups” from Doctor Riese. 😉
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Matt and I put out a table with mini bags of Halloween-themed toys + a little candy – here was our assembly line getting it all bagged up and ready to go (minus the candy).
We ended up having dinner in 2 parts that night – part 1 was at 5 before we went out to walk around with Riese – I didn’t want to go out walking with her getting tons of candy while starving. We ate the rest of dinner when we got back!
We had a simple pasta with zucchini, mushrooms, and some ground turkey we found in the freezer.
Other Riese-related fun from the weekend included her soccer practice on Saturday morning. It was chilly out so having a mask on felt quite nice!
Our Marine Corps 10k packets this year included face masks – fun! It just has the full marathon noted on the face mask but I figure I’ve run the full in the past so I can justify wearing it around. 😉
Post-soccer routine: ordered ahead Swings Coffee lattes + a scone – we tried the savory ham, cheddar, and chive one this time which was tasty.
And then we ended up at EveningStar Cafe’s back outdoor area as usual for brunch. It’s always nice to get a break from our own kitchen + a thousand dishes since we are almost entirely eating at home these days!
Speaking of – other food from the weekend included seared beef stuffed into pitas with tzatziki + pickles with a side salad:
And on Sunday we did a little meal prep and made a bacon, egg, bell pepper, and basil frittata to eat on this week. I love having some sort of egg dish prepped for the week, it makes weekdays so much easier!
We made this one in the skillet as you can see (we sautéed the veggies briefly first, then added the eggs, already cooked bacon chopped into small pieces, and basil and let it cook for another couple minutes before putting it in the oven to cook fully), but here’s a similar recipe for the oven: Veggie Egg Casserole (Frittata) Recipe.
We also made some pumpkin bread with walnuts and dried cranberries!
I will leave you with an update on our toddler sleep situation! As I mentioned previously in my post a couple weeks ago asking for toddler sleep advice, we were having issues with Riese fighting bedtime HARD and wanting to stay up until 9 or 10 many nights, which was rough for all of us.
Many of you said that since she’s almost 3 it might be time for her to drop her nap, and we tried that one day but it was honestly a complete fail with Riese an exhausted hot mess and both of us very frazzled. The crescendo was me dragging Riese kicking and screaming out of Matt’s office in the background of the Zoom meeting he was attempting to start leading. It was definitely a low point for all of us…
Anyway. We ended up putting the toddler rail on her crib, because I was looking into getting her a big girl bed (she said she wanted one) and it was going to take a couple months for most of them to arrive. So, we figure this can be phase 1 and we’ll get her a real big girl bed later this year or early next whenever we find one we like and order it!
Riese has been really into her “new” big girl bed, and one thing that has been hugely helpful is that she can get out and get her own books now – she used to call us back in a thousand times for books. Please note the ridiculous pile in her bed in the pic below – she often has so many books in there with her there’s barely any space for her, but whatever works…
To help the late night situation, we decided that rather than cut out her naps entirely (since she seems to really need them still, plus it would be tough right now given her naps are my work time), we have started waking her up from her naps a bit early. We’ve always been on team “let the child sleep if possible”, so it honestly pains me to wake her up, especially if she’s out cold and I’m in the middle of something for work, but it has seemed to help with the late night situation to not let her sleep past 3:30. (I know, I’m sure some of you are reading that horrified that we ever let her sleep past 3:30… it wasn’t an issue until recently)!
The other big game changer has been that we got a Hatch light at a number of friend’s recommendations. It’s basically an expensive nightlight that you can set to change colors at certain times of day, and it has honestly been 100% worth the money because once we got it, Riese started actually staying in her room. (We can’t close her door or lock her in because she HATES having her door closed at night and would lose her mind. One night we had a baby gate in the open door, but she didn’t want it there, so she agreed if we removed it she’d stay in her room when her nightlight told her to, and so far it has worked.) We have the nightlight set for red (aka “stay in your room”) from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., when it turns blue (aka “okay to wake up/leave your room”). It’s also red from 1:15 – 3:15 (for nap). Anyway, I didn’t think I’d be recommending a $60 nightlight, but here we are – it works, I see why people pay that price. We don’t use the white noise setting on it since we already have a white noise machine she’s used to, but that is another function to make it a little more worth the price!
Anyway! That’s all I have for you today. This week is probably going to be pretty intense here in the U.S. given the election tomorrow, so I’m going to take Wednesday off from posting and will be back on Friday with some recipe inspiration. I’m planning to be back to my normal Mon-Wed-Fri posting schedule next week.
Take care of yourselves this week, my friends. <3
