Just like Mommy

I don't know why Mat thinks I have too many shoes...

Those are just my heels.  My summer ones.  I rearrange the closet seasonally to get out my spring/summer then fall/winter shoes because they won't all fit.  That's also only one wall of the closet...tennis shoes, sandals, and flip flops are on another.  It's a good thing we have a very large closet.  It's also a very good thing I work at Payless!

Although Madeline isn't wearing shoes yet, we're still off to a good start on her shoe collection...

Little girl shoes are just ADORABLE!  Although a lot of those we got from a close friend whose little girls outgrew them, there are some that we just couldn't resist buying.  For all the KU fans in the family...

Those are from Payless.  They also  have really cute white ones with a Jayhawk on them that would be great for a little boy.  For the KSU fans with baby girls, they have ones similar to these except they're pink with a wildcat.  Aside from the ugly purple wildcat, they're one of the cutest things ever.

Aunt Abbey, you'll be happy to know that you and Maddie can be twins...

She likes to move it, move it!

For over a week now, Madeline has been sleeping from 10 PM until 4:30 AM or later.  That's over 6 consecutive hours, which I call a full night of sleep.  The only problem is I'm not used to her sleeping that long.  We've always had a 2:30 AM "date" at which time I change her, she eats, then we both go back to sleep.  Although she is now sleeping for longer periods, I have not trained myself to do so.  Therefore, I automatically wake up at 2:30, and about every half hour until she wakes up, to check on her.  Fortunately, checking on her doesn't require me getting out of bed thanks to one of my absolute favorite baby gadgets.  We have a baby monitor that has a pad you place under her mattress.  It is connected to a receiver has a blinking light that indicates movement (her breathing).  Therefore, I can simply roll over, see the light is blinking on the receiver, and go back to sleep.

The other night, I go up to get a drink of water around 4 AM.  Half asleep, I glanced in her bed and saw this...

Needless to say, I was instantly wide awake.  I always lay her in the middle of the bed, and she wasn't there.  I quickly glanced to our bed to see if I had laid her there after a midnight feeding that perhaps I didn't remember, but she wasn't there either.  I glanced at the monitor, which was still blinking to indicate movement in her bed.  Completely perplexed, I peered over the edge of the bed and saw this...

At first I thought she had rolled over, but then I decided she wouldn't have space to do a full roll from back to tummy and tummy to back again, not to mention, it would be incredibly impressive for a two month old to do a full roll like that.  After watching her for the past couple of days, I realized how she did it.  She figured out how to scoot!   When you lay her on her back, she bends her knees and pushes herself with those strong little legs.  Now that she's figured that out, every time I put her in her bed, she scoots herself to the side.  She also does it any where else you lay her (couch, changing table, bed, etc.) so we really have to watch her now!

Here's a few more pictures of bright blue-eyed beauty :)

 

Potato, Potato

In case you didn't know, my husband has a bit of an addiction...to growing vegetables.  Not just a few vegetables.  Mass quantities of wide variety of vegetables.  Remember all that salsa we made the other day?  Well, he went out last night to pick "a few" more tomatoes, and this is what our kitchen looked like when he came inside an hour later.

Those are what was left after he bagged up all the tubs of tomatoes he was taking to work.

Of course, we don't just plant tomatoes.  This year, he planted 5 rows that were each 75 feet long of red and yukon gold potatoes.  Needless to say, we ended up with a LOT of potatoes.  About 140 pounds of potatoes.  Of course, he didn't let any go to waste...

Do you see all the teeny, tiny potatoes in that bucket?  I can't believe he spent the time picking up every single one, but then again, this is my husband we're talking about.

Being Irish-Catholic, we certainly do enjoy potatoes, but two people can only get around so many.  We were planning on unloading quite a few of them to my poor college brother whose diet consists largely of potatoes prepared a variety of ways, but he decided to turn his two month internship in Indonesia into a 5 month gig, and I didn't want to keep bags of potatoes for him until the end of October.  Therefore, I decided we needed to get creative on ways to preserve potatoes.  Enter one of my favorite kitchen tools we ever purchased...

The food processor.  In thinking of ways that we eat potatoes throughout the year, hash browns immediately came to mind.  We love having people over for brunch and making breakfast casseroles, but we always buy the hash browns at the store.  However, my theory is always why buy something when you can make it?!?  I found the shredding attachment, washed the potatoes, ran them through the food processor, and made perfectly shredded hashbrowns!

I put them on cookie sheets to flash freeze them.  Once they're frozen, I put them in freezer bags and toss them in the deep freeze.  By flash freezing them, they shouldn't freeze together in one big clump in the freezer bags.  Notice how I ended up with my three biggest cookie sheets full?  Well, that only used 1 bag of potatoes, so I have a lot more to go.  I better get creative again!  I'm thinking next I will slice some in to steak fry size wedges and freeze them.

Big thanks to little Miss Madeline who took a nice nap in her swing which allowed me time to get those potatoes shredded and in the freezer :)

Big foot

As you can see, our little girl seems to have inherited the Overbaugh big foot genes.

This picture cracks me up as the focal point is her feet...

Those socks are size 0-3 months, and this picture was taken when she was 1 month old.  Poor girl.

Tonight, we had to break out the 3-6 month pj's since there is no way her feet are fitting in her 0-3 month ones anymore.  However, she is also too tall to squeeze her long legs in them, so at least she has long legs to go with her big feet :)  She has a lot of super cute pj's in size 0-3 that I absolutely love, and it's always a bit hard on me when she outgrows outfits.  I need to get used to though because it isn't going to stop anytime soon with this little girl that is growing like a weed (or as her Grandma Emma says, growing like a flower since she's far prettier than a weed!)  Fortunately, Kohl's has had some awesome deals on Carter's pj's, so I have her well stocked in a lot of cute ones in bigger sizes.

I think she was tired of her daddy taking pictures of her at this point as she is no longer smiling, and she has both hands in fists like she's going to punch him if he takes one more picture.

Too many tomatoes!

When you start your tomato and pepper plants from seeds, it's easy to end up with WAY more plants than you need.  Mathew and I have a problem with discarding any seedlings that look healthy, and we always have so many good ones.  Therefore, we end up planting over 30 tomato plants and well over 60 pepper plants.  The funniest part is neither of us really even like tomatoes.  They are just fun to grow and give away to friends, family, and anyone who will take them since we get to the point where we don't even want to look at another tomato.

However, we do love canning salsa, which allows us to enjoy our homegrown tomatoes all year long.  Over the past 4 years that we've been canning, we've never made the same salsa twice.  We experiment with different spice combinations, alter the ratio of hot to mild peppers, etc.  We made our first batch of 2011 salsa this weekend, and it is absolutely the best batch we've ever made.  I thought I'd share the recipe in case there is anyone else out there who enjoys making salsa as much as we do.  Of course, if you aren't one who cans food, you could always eat this fresh!

Indgredients:
12 cups tomatoes
4 cups bell peppers
2 cups hot peppers (we used a blend of jalapeno and Hungarian hot wax peppers)
4 cups onions
1 cup vinegar
3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 cloves garlic
1 T cumin
2 6 oz cans tomato paste

Core the tomatoes then blanch them to peel off the skins
Run the tomatoes, peppers, and onion through a food processor to chop them up
Mix all ingredients together in a large stock pot and bring to a boil
Simmer 15 minutes
Process in a hot water bath (20 minutes for pints and 45 for quarts)
We were able to get 6 quarts from this recipe.

NOTE: If you are canning, please remember that it is not safe to adjust the ratio of tomatoes, peppers, and onions to vinegar as this could cause spoilage.

Michael, if you're lucky, we might save a jar of this for you for when you get home :)

Madeline's 2 month doctor visit

Miss Maddie turned 2 months old yesterday, so that meant a visit to the doctor today.  We finally found a fantastic family practice doctor that we love, which makes it a much more pleasant experience.  They also have the best nurses there.  She had to get one oral vaccine and three shots today.  Needless to say, she did not enjoy the shots, but the nurses did it nice and fast.  When they poked her, her eyes got wide open, her face turned bright red, and she screamed at the top of her little lungs.  However, the nurses quickly put a few band-aids on her and handed her to me.  Within less than a minute, she had calmed down, and she's been fine ever since.  We were told that they can be fussy, but she's slept most of the day and hasn't been fussy at all.  What a fantastic baby girl :)

Since I never posted her 2 week stats, they were as follows:

height - 21.5" (75%)

weight - 8 lbs 3 oz (50%)

She grew a lot in those first two weeks as she was only 6 lbs 11 oz and 20 3/4 inches at birth.  They usually hope babies are back up to birth weight at 2 weeks, but she never lost any, which was fantastic.

Today, her 2 month stats were:

height - 23.5" (90%)

weight - 11 lbs 15 oz (75%)

No wonder most of her 3 month pjs don't fit.  She's a very long little girl!  Overall, the doctor said she was doing great, so we go back when she's 4 months for her next check-up and round of shots.

My first post

Mat told me that since I'm a mom now, I need to start a blog since all moms have blogs.  It took me a couple of months, but I finally got it up and running.  Considering all the friends and family we have all over the place (a brother in Jakarta, Indonesia, a sister in El Paso, some very close friends in NYC, and parents in Tonganoxie to name just a few), I decided this would be a good way to keep everyone updated on our lives and our beautiful little girl.  Stay tuned!