in about 15 minutes...

...i will be experiencing a 1 hour full body massage. i'm so ready to feel like jelly! i got it as a gift from my friends sara and zandra at my baby shower before tristan was born and i'm FINALLY using it!

my toe is feeling much better, thank you very much.

its supposed to rain here on sun/mon and i am SO excited!!!

my mom just booked the tickets for me and tristan to fly to canada in october. my passport is in the middle of getting renewed, so HUGE prayers that i get it back in time.

best wishes to my cousin miranda who is getting married tomorrow!

tristan has been feeling a little under the weather lately. he blows snot bubbles out of his nose when he sneezes. we'll try to capture in on camera for you.

better go or i'll be late for my appointment!

owie

pictures of other people's wounded body parts seem to give me the shivers. so, just in case some of my readers have the same reaction, i'm posting this picture to be obnoxious. this is what happens when you're in a swimming pool, kicking your feet in close proximity to a beach umbrella in the water. i'm not sure if my poor toe is sprained or broken, but it really hurts and it's difficult to walk and i'm quite annoyed. that's my little complaint for the day.

so....josh's hair. well, he's not had short hair in 10 years. i've never seen him with short hair except for in pictures, and he was so young that i couldn't really tell what he'd look like with it short. he's been talking about cutting it for some time now. its been really really hot out lately(like in the 100's) and a lot of days he has to work in buildings without AC. the other thing that's been prompting him to go short is our sweet cherubic son's chubby fingers grabbing and pulling our hair whenever its within his grasp. so, josh came home from work last thursday and announced that he wanted to cut his hair. now. i called zandra up because she cuts hair, and she really wanted to do it, but was busy. so the 3 of us piled into the car and off we went to the cheap local hair salon and off came a great big mop of hair. and i can't believe it but i FORGOT MY CAMERA!!! you should have seen the pile of hair on the floor; it looked like it was going to up and walk away at any moment! i really didn't know how he'd look and we were both surprised by how brunette he is, probably because he was always wearing a hat outside, which shielded his hair from the sun. tristan didn't find anything strange about his made-over daddy and went to him without hesitation. we both just love it, though i still do double takes once in awhile.

***i just want to say right here that this is a new paragraph, but whenever i post a picture, the paragraphs all go wonky. just so you know.***

well, tristan's second tooth finally made an appearance a few days ago. he's been much happier since, though his night wakings haven't gotten any better. he has also suddenly decided to not like his veggies unless they are store bought. this is a royal pain because of all the time i put into cooking, pureeing and freezing my own baby food. i have no idea why he doesn't like mine (tastes fine to me!) so for now i'm buying the organic baby food and mixing it with my own. i tried giving him a bottle of formula yesterday just to see if he'd take it. josh and i would like to go on a date this weekend, but since he's been eating on such a regular schedule, i'm finding it impossible to pump any milk since my body seems to only produce milk when its time for him to eat. well, the formula did not go over well. he just looked up at me as if to say "you've GOT to be kidding me!" i don't blame him, to be honest, because that stuff smells pretty weird. josh tried to give him another bottle of it later and he had the same reaction. so, as long as our date falls within the timing of 2 of his feedings, we'll be okay.

***new paragraph***

we had a busy weekend last weekend, going up to temecula for johnny's 3rd birthday, and tomorrow we're celebrating my mom in law's birthday at our house. you would NEVER guess that she's 55. she doesn't seem to mind her age at all; in fact she's quite looking forward to getting the seniors discount on her drycleaning! will posts some cute pics of the boy on his blog soon. oh yes, and i wanted to mention that i've finally gotten around to updating my links list. the list should represent which blogs i am currently reading. one i would encourage you all to visit is lori's blog. she's a friend of mine from church with a son 6 months older than tristan. she's very gifted with words and tends to find humor in many situations...her posts always make me smile. hope you all have a great weekend!

...gone tomorrow!

i always knew my husband was hot, but now i'm just blown away!

hair today....

would you like to come on a walk with us?

while our landlords are away on vacation, we are in charge of feeding their animals. tristan and i incorporate it into our morning walk. today, i'm bringing you with me.

first stop is to visit the pig. there used to be 2 pigs, but one was just sold at the country fair. josh feeds the pig before work because i was too chicken to go into it's pen to give it food. apparently, he likes to nibble on toes. we always say hi and listen to him grunt and snort in reply. tristan is usually quite speechless in the presence of the pig, but once we start walking away from it, he sure begins jabbering away about what he thought.

from the stables, you can see our little green house. yesterday i picked some of the yellow wildflowers to brighten up my kitchen table.

tristan watches the horses and goats eat. today it seemed to make him hungry, so i gave him a plastic apple toy to munch on :)

the billy goat doesn't like to share, so he gets his own bathtub to eat out of.

many of our neighbors have left on vacation and one family has asked us to please pick whatever we want from their garden while they are away. today we chose some zucchini and squash and a few figs. later on we'll go back for some tomatoes and onions.

back at home, its time to go inside and feed tristan his breakfast. but before we go in, we always stop to admire our pretty flowerbed that is growing just beautifully.

tristan has had a few firsts lately. his first haircut occured last week. most of tristan's newborn hair fell out and was replaced by his new blonde hair. however, a few strands of longer, darker hair remained on the top of his head and just kept growing and growing! josh finally got sick of smoothing them down and used his clippers to trim them. we also took tristan for his first swim in our neighbor's pool. he wasn't too keen on the cooler water, but was happy dipping his feet in with me. his first tooth is starting to show a bit more and is super cute. i can see the one next to it appearing under his gums; his crabbiness level is getting a bit higher these days as well. still no signs of wanting to crawl, though he sits up well on his own. he loves watching his baby praise dvd while standing in his exersaucer. today he cried when i turned it off! we are enjoying him so much...its such fun seeing him discover new things.

i've fallen and i can't get up: a tale from tristan's bedroom floor.

the official word on the detox diet: i'm done. after only 2 days of subsiding on the least amount of food EVER, i've decided that, as a breastfeeding mom, i really need to be getting more calories into me than the diet was providing.

monday was the first day of the diet. i had my hot lemon water with cayenne pepper first thing in the morning while tristan giggled at the funny faces i was making. after our walk i had a piece of fruit. no matter that i still felt ravenous after eating my apple, i now had to wait until lunch for my first real meal. the stuffed green peppers tasted fine, though slightly bland. it was really the preparation that was a pain, what with a whiny boy on my hands. dinner was fine as well, but then the evening cravings hit HARD. i had an awful headache due to sugar withdrawal and every food commercial on tv was piercing my heart. i wasn't even allowed to eat more fruit in the evening to ease the pain. i think i ended up munching on some almonds. the headache lasted all night long.

tuesday morning i added a bit of honey to my hot lemon water, which really helped it go down easier. this time, the wait until lunch to eat nearly killed me, especially since it took so long to prepare that i didn't get to eat it until 2:00. feeling a little drowsy, i made up a big steaming bowl of kidney bean stew which was quite tasty and attempted to silence the after lunch munchies with carrot sticks. my mom in law invited us over for hamburgers and hotdogs. i told her we'd come, but that i'd have to bring my own meal. by the time we got there and sat down, i was ready to chew my hand off and eat it! while the rest of the family bit into juicy bbq'd burgers, i ate my tuna and asparagus meal as slowly as possible to make it last longer. seeing josh enjoy a bowl of ice cream after dinner nearly sent me over the edge, so i tried not to look. the headache was gone that evening, but i felt strangely exhausted. tristan was fussier than normal, due to staying up past his bedtime and also cutting his first tooth that day(!) he woke up several times and night just screaming in pain, so i used teething tablets and orajel to help him out, and mostly ended up nursing him just to calm him.

this morning i heard tristan wake up at 6:30. i got out of bed and felt kind of funny. picked tristan up from his crib and had to take a few steps backward to avoid falling over! i put him on his changing table to change his diaper, and as i was doing so the oddest feeling came over me. i was telling tristan "mommy doesn't feel very good" but i was slurring my words. i got one side of a clean diaper on him, then fell to my knees on the floor. i crawled to the bathroom, feeling quite nauseous, then realized i needed help, so i crawled to the office, where i grabbed the phone to call josh. i managed to reach up to the changing table on my knees, got tristan down and onto the floor, then i collapsed next to him and called josh. as soon as i dialed another wave of nausea came over me, so back to the bathroom i went. i tried to stand up holding onto the counter, but then my arms and legs felt all tingly, kind of like pins and needles, so i sat back down. josh told me he'd be over in a few and i went back next to tristan and just lay there, crying. tristan was so good, he just lay there, beside me, happy as ever. i closed my eyes for what seemed like a moment and the next second josh was saying "heidi? heidi?"

i was so weak at that point that he had to pull me into a sitting position and support me so i wouldn't fall backwards. he spoon fed me yogurt and very quickly, i felt the fog lift from my brain. i was able to talk a bit more coherantly, but it was difficult just standing up and walking, never mind picking up the baby. josh got us situated on the couch, where i nursed tristan, then josh went back to work while i called his mom. she came over as soon as she possibly could and i cannot even begin to say how grateful i am that i have a wonderful mom in law who loves me and treats me just like her own daughter. chris stayed with me for hours, cancelling her day at the wild animal park with jessica and the kids. she fed tristan his breakast and walked him around the house endlessly and changed his diaper and brought me cereal and toast and milk. it was wonderful and i don't know what i'd do without her. by the time tristan went down for his first nap, i felt so much better, but still very weak. jessica came over and chris took the kids back to her place. jessica fed tristan lunch and played with him as well. we had a great time just chatting and after a lunch of italian wedding soup, i felt pretty much like my old self.

so i'm not exactly sure, medically speaking, what happened this morning. my guess is that my body is used to consuming a lot more calories that what i was getting. that, combined with the frequent breastfeeding last night (which my body also wasn't used to) kind of drained me completely and left me without any energy whatsoever. i don't "blame" the diet i was on at all. in truth, i feel a little stupid for not realizing earlier that a nursing mom shouldn't be on such a drastic, strict diet. there are 3 phases to the diet, with phase 1 being the most strict. i should have started on phase 2 or 3 rather than phase 1. i have gained knowledge about whole grains and food combinations and digestion that will certainly influence the way i eat in the future. however, i think that its best if i eat "normally" for awhile now, just making a few healthier choices than the ones i was previously making.

so there's my report on the detox diet that lasted 2 days. anyone want to come over for some kidney bean stew? i've got TONS of leftovers!!