Our Organic Garden

Bethany and I are attempting to grow our own organic garden this year. I am still a little skeptical on our (or should I say MY) ability to grow ANYTHING!!! But nonetheless today was a beginning of a new adventure.

We drove out to her father's land outside of somerville. I had never seen his land out there before and man it was beautiful to say the least. I cant wait to go back and take Kaylee and get some really nice outdoor pictures.

back to my story....
We have already purchased the seeds and Bethany had planted them in small potters in her backyard. She has been nurturing them for the past few weeks now. There were minor set backs.....dogs running through them, kids stepping on them, and toys knocking them over. After all that, they survived and we planted them in the ground today. FINALLY after weeks of waiting on the rain to stop and the land to dry enough to plant. We planted all the broccoli, cauliflower, watermelon, butternut squash, zucchini squash, yellow squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, corn, and peppers. I think that was all we planted.

So wish us luck and prosperity in our new quest to eat healthier!

WATER BABY

Today FINALLY arrived! I have been waiting for today for months now. And I thought that it would never get here!

Today is the 1st day the water park was open! I just knew that Kaylee was going to LOVE the water park this summer, but I could have never imagined that she would love it this much on her first trip there. We were there about 2 hours, and for about 1 1/2 hours of that she was playing, splashing, drinking, and running through the water. She had an absolute blast! She loved all the other kids; she was talking to them and chasing them. It was just so cute to see.

apparently the videos I tried to post havent been working. I am trying to find another way to load them. So hopefully they will be coming soon

Girls vs Boys (continued)

Back in like February or March I posted about the difference between girls and boys. I have a little something to add to that thought......
I, as you already know, am in the "potty training" phase with Kaylee. When we are home she does not wear a diaper, except for naps, and she has done really well the past 2-3 weeks with out any real accidents. There are a few here and there where I just "wasn't paying attention" but nothing to really complain about. I mean she is only 16 months old for gosh sakes. Anyways, so in addition to taking advantage of her not wearing diapers we have also been taking advantage of the lovely May weather we have been experiencing. We take walks every morning, play outside as much as possible, and we even eat outside whenever possible. Back to my point of how all of this is related. So the other day we were playing outside and Kaylee has no diaper on, just her shirt, shoes, and shorts. She tells me that she has to go to the bathroom. Me being lazy again decided to pull her pants down right there in the yard and let her go in the grass. we do live in the country! anyways i have heard NUMEROUS stories of kids going to the bathroom outside. I have done it plenty of times myself. So I pull off her shorts and put her in a squatting position, with me holding her of course, and I tell her it is ok to go. She looked at me like i was a COMPLETE IDIOT!!! She was fussing and telling me over and over that she had to go, but she just wouldnt. -side note: let me just say that i have noticed that she seems to have tremendous control, she has held it for more than 15 minutes before when I just wasnt able to take her--
So she is giving me this "help me, mommy" look and i pick her up and run her inside to go to the bathroom. I put her on the potty and she immediately went, and she looked so relieved afterwards. So off we went back outside to put her shorts back on and play some more. i would not have thought anything about that little event except that last night Mary (my little sis) came out to hang out with us. We were outside playing and the same thing happened, Kaylee said she had to go to the bathroom. So i tried to let her go in the grass again, and again she had stage fright or something so i had to take her in to go. So today i tried again when we were outside and the same thing happened she refused to go outside in the grass and as soon as she was on a potty she would go. so now i am thinking......is she such a girly girl that she wont even pee outside. I mean i know a lot of boys that when learning to potty train (and even after potty training) they just whip it out and go outside. So why wont/ cant she go outside? Hopefully this is not a sign of what is to come. Any ideas or suggestions?

Friendly Laughing Ghost

So i dont post for weeks and then i post like 4 things in 2 days.....i just could not resist sharing this one with everyone!

I took this video of Kaylee tonight. She was playing with Marcus while I prepared dinner. Then next thing I know i see a green monster come around the corner laughing. She had gone into her bedroom all by herself, got her blanket out of her crib, put it on her head, and was walking around the house laughing and running into things. So she came into the kitchen ran into the oven, then the door frame, and fell down laughing. I was laughing so hard! I grabbed my phone and took this video of her. It was absolutely hilarious to watch. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

14 months is long enough

Do you know what you were doing about 14 months ago? Most people probably don’t remember what particularly was happening in their lives. I mean you might remember some big things but nothing really specific. Well, I remember specifically what we were doing in the Martinez house 14 months ago… preparing to paint nearly the entire 1st floor of our house after the remodel of our kitchen. Why do I remember this so clearly you might wonder? Well I remember this event so vividly because I have been reminded of it EVERYDAY for the past 14 months.

As almost everyone does before they paint, we had to take down everything off the walls. I said “almost everyone” because I know someone who painted around their pictures because they were too lazy to take them down, sounds like more work to leave them up if you ask me. Anyways, 14 months ago, the painters came while Kaylee and I were out of town and it was such a nice treat to come home to a freshly painted house. I was so happy with the new colors we chose and the walls had no more stains or marks on them. But the pictures and everything we took off the walls sat in piles on the floor in various rooms of our house for days and weeks and months. Finally my mom and I decided to hang the only picture we could manage, which was a wedding picture. And until now that was the ONLY THING on our living room walls. I begged, bugged, and bribed Marcus for 14 months to hang the ginormous pictures back onto our bare wall. He managed to avoid this task for 14 LONG MONTHS! And each day I had to look at that huge bare wall! Finally I was fed up with it so I decided to hang them myself. I enlisted the help of a dear friend of mine, Bethany. God Bless Her! She came over yesterday and helped with the daunting task of hanging 2 - 21 pound pictures on the wall. As if that were not enough, they were to be hung on wire hangers, which if you know anything about picture hanging no two wires are the same length. That was the problem the last time we hung those 2 stupid pictures, we had 42 holes in the wall to find the studs then when we finally hit the stud and stepped back to look at the pictures we realized that they were about ¼ inch off. And man was it ever noticeable. I cant count the number of people who walked into our house and actually said “you know your pictures are crooked?” I almost put a sign on them that said “I know these are crooked, but I am not fixing them!” So back to yesterday, I had measured the difference in the 2 wire hangers and Bethany helped decide how far off the ground and how far apart they needed to be to be visually pleasing. We measured, leveled (which isn’t easy when the wall isn’t straight), and hammered. BAM!!! I hit the stud the 1st time on both pictures! I was so proud of our work. And when we stepped back to look they were hung PERFECTLY STRAIGHT!!! Then we had to adjust the couch, move the floor lamp, remove the fake tree that had been bugging the crap out of Marcus, turn the end table, and add a table lamp that had been in a closet for years. It looks like a brand new room! It still has that “something missing” feeling, but I am working on that. I have an idea of what I want it is just finding it now. I was so proud of our work that I decided to take some pictures to show you.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention I hung the 3 pictures of Kaylee (her 1 year portraits) too. I hung the big one by myself last week, but then asked Bethany to help me with the placement of the 2 smaller ones. So at least it only took me 4 months to get those on the walls. I will add that I picked the frames and mats out all by myself. Marcus and I had gone looking for frames for those pictures at least 3 times and never found anything that we well in love with so we just never put them up. I wanted to get them up before too much time had past, so I took matters into my own hands.

I really feel like we transformed our house by adding those pictures to the walls!

I can’t wait for you all to come and see our

NEW LIVING ROOM!

Katie you think you can get your "Bob Vila" to come give my husband a few tips?

Thank you Bethany for helping me!!!

Outside playing with bubbles

Here are a few pictures i took the other day

my favorite is the one at the bottom in the middle..... that is SO Kaylee!

All this talk about pottying....

(This post is really old, i thought i posted but apparently i never did, so here it is)

After all these posts about diapers and pottying i thought i would tell you a little story that will make you laugh.....at least it should make you laugh cause you were not the one involved

The day my parents and I took Kaylee to the park (last week i think) i decided to bring Kaylee's small potty along with us. Partly because when she tells me she has to go and it is too difficult or inconvenient to take her i feel horrible. Like she is saying "mommy help me, i need to go potty." In these situations i try to console her and tell her that i can not take her to the bathroom, but i still feel bad about it. And the other reason is the bathroom at the park is REALLY far away so even if i were to try to take her she would probably not be able to hold it that long. So anyways sure enough she told me she had to go to 3 times while we were at the park, and each time she had already gone in her diaper. But each time we went to the car, stripped the clothes and sat on the potty. so when it came time to go back to Grandma and Grandpa's house, oh i mean Oomma and Oomba, it was no surprise to me that she said she had to go again. Off we went to the bathroom and nothing AGAIN! I decided to leave her diaper off, like i have done many many times at home. So there she is running around with her little bare bottom, she was loving it. After about 5 minutes of playing she stands there and pees all over the place. I mean i dont know where all of it came from, and she didnt even tell me she had to go! Thank goodness mom has tile floor. So i cleaned it right up while mom distracted her. Then mom says "are you going to put a diaper on her now?" To which i replied, "she already peed, she wont have to go again for awhile." I swear childrens sole purpose in life is to prove their parents wrong! About 3-4 minutes pass after she peed on the floor, she stops playing looks me straingt in the eye and cues that she has to pee. I looked at her and said, "Kaylee you just went you dont need to go again!" Just as i am saying that she begins to go again.....ON THE FLOOR! I could not believe it. At this point my mom and i were about to laugh, and all mom was saying was "she told you she had to go." So here i am, cleaning the floor again . And i think mom said to me again, "so are you going to put a diaper on her NOW???" To which i replied "there is NO way she has anymore left!" So i did not put a diaper on her. about 4-5 minutes later the same thing happened she looked right at me and cued that she needed to go, so i jumped up, scooped her up, and we flew into the bathroom. Where she proceeded to go like she hasnt been to the bathroom in days. I was shocked, i could not believe she had that much in her!

what is that saying??? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! Does that apply here?

I guess she just wanted an apple

Today Kaylee decided to suprise me with yet another example of her "getting bigger." I was in the other room when I heard the obviously guilty laugh that she has when she has done something she knows she shouldn't. I come in to the the kitchen and find her taking a bite out of an apple, and smiling a really big "i am so proud of myself" smile. I look up to find the bowl that i just put the newly bought apples in at the very edge of the counter. All i could do was smile. She had stepped on Tahoe's mat (which makes her just tall enough to reach the apples), and helped herself to one. Keep in mind we just ate lunch. I guess she is protesting the fact that i have not had fruit in the house for going on 3 days now. And she is a fruit-a-holic! She has been deprived of her beloved apples, oranges, watermelon, pineapple, kiwi, strawberries, grapes, mangos, and clementines (i think that is all her favorites) for the past couple of days and she was desperate to have a taste. So I watch as she struts around the house eating her apple, which is NOT usually allowed, thinking that she is all big and bad. She sat with Tahoe on his mat to eat, she climbed on the couch for a few bites (yes marcus i cleaned it after she got down), and she sat on the edge of the steps all while talking and babbling to herself as if to say "this apple is really good, why didnt i think of helping myself to one sooner." I will say that at least she ate the whole thing, well actually she demolished it. She even ate most of the core and seeds. I had to practically tackle her to get it away from her. So you think that she will grow apples inside her after eating the seeds?
Hahaha That is what my dad used to tell us as kids.

I had to make a slideshow of the pictures because there were just too many to add to the post, so see the pictures above