Hi everyone! Can you believe Wes is already 7 and a half months old?!
The big excitement over here is that he is THIS CLOSE to crawling… time to get those baby gates back up again.
Gotta get going on baby proofing, too… I feel like we have amnesia about this phase with Riese, it seems so long ago! Need to remember how all this works once they are on the go. 🙂
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The other big excitement is that Wes now has two teeth!
His bottom middle two teeth popped out right around the start of the new year. Riese didn’t get teeth until later (10 months – and her top teeth came in first!), so I was surprised!
He’s a very busy guy these days and he really loves food. It has been a big ole mess but a lot of fun to see him get to explore and taste real food.
I’m also happy because he seems to be over the bottle refusal stage he was in for a few months – once he started eating real food we began offering him a bottle of a little bit of breastmilk with his meals, just to have something to help wash it down, and that seems to have done the trick because now he is all about bottles.
Good news because I have a lot of breastmilk in the freezer from the early days that needs to get used, and I also think my supply is going down a bit lately which was stressing me out before he’d take a bottle.
He also loves playing piano with daddy. 😉 How cute is this??
(Disregard that yard sign that we need to put back outside… the metal posts for it broke and now it has been traveling around our house thanks to Riese – see if you can also spot it in the messy Wes eating photo above, lol.)
Anyway! On the food front, the theme lately has been EASY and FAST.
Between Wes eating and getting more mobile and active, and Riese not having preschool for 3 whole weeks (2 weeks for the holidays, then a whole week off for snow…), things have been really busy over here.
We’ve been doing a lot of easy stuff like egg wraps and avocado toast…
Lots of grain salad bowls (this is an old photo from the summer because the one I took this week came out blurry) – my favorites always have chickpeas on them, plus veggies, a grain (usually rice) or leftover roasted potatoes, avocado and/or feta cheese, and some sort of a vinaigrette. So good.
We’ve also been enjoying some “everything but the kitchen sink” soups to use up random veggies in the fridge and freezer!
The creation pictured below used homemade turkey broth we made at some point and stuck in the freezer, freezer meatballs, frozen peas, kidney beans, celery, carrots, barley, and also a few pieces of leftover chicken from the fridge.
So random – Matt was like “WHAT IS HAPPENING” watching me throw all the things into the pot together but it actually came out quite tasty. 😉
And we’ve also, as always, been very grateful for Blue Apron!
They are an ongoing sponsor of mine but we’d be ordering their meals even if they weren’t because it ends up saving us so much time and stress to not have to meal plan and grocery shop for a billion dinners a week.
I love having “What’s for dinner?” checked off my to-do list, and exploring their weekly menu to decide what to order is always fun.
Speaking of their menu, Blue Apron just launched Wellness-specific “Heat & Eat” offerings, which are super convenient for those lunches or dinners where you just don’t have time to cook. I’m excited to try them soon – they have a few options, but the Romesco Chicken Bowl with Quinoa and Kale sounds especially good!
Anyway – we have really been loving their sheet pan meals lately in particular. They usually have a sheet pan meal kit option on the menu each week.
So easy and love that they don’t create almost any dishes!
Riese is also still enjoying helping us cook.
Matt got her a new real/not plastic prep knife for Christmas, plus a peeler, and she uses it (supervised obviously) to help us prep vegetables for dinners! You can see it on the kitchen island in the photo below.
She also likes helping Matt consult the Blue Apron recipe cards thanks to the fact that they have pictures of every step!
The Oregano Pork Chops with Fresh Tomato Pan Sauce, Farro, and Zucchini she helped Matt make earlier this week were super good.
Give yourself a break this new year – sign up for Blue Apron (<- affiliate link) and enjoy $110 off across 5 boxes – plus, your first box ships free!
