9/19/12 Say Cheese!

Is anyone else shocked that we're already halfway through September?  This year is going so so fast! We're already thinking of Halloween outfits and Christmas presents and Thanksgiving travel schedules and all of that.  But before we get all hung up on that major year-endy stuff, here's more of a micro look at what we've been up to this week:

We had ZB's 18 month check-up with the doctor yesterday.  I am just shocked, SHOCKED I SAY that she's already 18 months old. That's a year and a half!  She's such a big girl now!  It just blows my mind.  

(And makes me feel old.  And like I should be sniffling over her baby booties and singing Sunrise, Sunset.)

Anyway, how it went depends on your point of view.  ZB has come to recognize it as the place where the bad people in white coats give her shots, so she screamed bloody murder whenever anyone walked into the examination room with us.  Poor Nurse Lisa has been attending her since she was 10 days old and only wanted to get her temperature (under the arm no less!), but ZB would have none of it.  The doctor even took his coat off so she wouldn't associate it with getting a shot (which she didn't even get this time), but she was not fooled.  She screamed The. Entire. Time.  The good news is that ZB is as healthy as an extremely loud screaming horse, although her weight is only at the 8th percentile (19.8lbs), so the doctor wants us back in 3 months just to check to make sure that it doesn't drop any lower.  (This has been a thing for us since she was born.  She just has a really high metabolism and has trouble adding weight no matter how much she eats).  But her height is pretty average for her age (2' 8"!), and the rest of her development is normal, so I'm not really worried.  She's just skinny like her mama was when she was her age (although sadly, not so much now).

Speaking of skinny, I ordered the cutest little toddler "belt" off of esty.  I don't know if you know about these (or if you're even in a position to care), but if you ever find that you have a need to hold little tiny pants on a little tiny body without interfering with diaper changes, may I highly recommend this: 

 It's an elastic "belt" that goes only around the back of the pants so that you don't have to mess with unbuckling it for diapers or potty training.  You snap it around the three back belt loops on the pants and you're good to go.  Since ZB has size 18 month legs and size 12 month waist, this is going to be a HUGE help in getting her pants to fit.  

In completely unrelated news that has nothing whatsoever to do with toddlers and the trials and tribulations of keeping their pants up around their little waists, I've recently discovered pic-a-pix puzzles and I'm totally addicted.  (I know, it's quite a jump.  Stay with me here).  The pic-a-pix.  Does anyone else play?  They're little logic puzzles that make pictures when you solve them.  Last night I was solving puzzles until after midnight.  Right now I'm doing the 20x20 puzzles, but I'm hoping that I can work my way up to the 100x60.  They're harder, but the pictures are better. (Like way better.  The 20x20 ones look like the pixilated mess you saw on the original Nintendo games.  You know, the ones where you were the colorful boxy blob trying to defeat the other colorful boxy blob while it hurled colorful boxy blobs at you?  It's a lot like that.  But still fun). If you haven't played, I totally recommend.  

In another completely unrelated stream-of-consciousness jump, I'm cooking a new slow cooker recipe tonight.  It's called pernil pork and it's supposed to be a Puerto Rican dish.  I can't tell you how it tastes yet, but I've been sitting here smelling it cook all day and it smells DIVINE.  It has cumin and oregano and chili powder and garlic in it, and the whole place smells like garlic and spices.  (Garlic and spices in a good way, not in a "whoa! Your breath smells like you ate a lot of garlic and spices!" way).  I'm pairing it with some decidedly un-Pueto Rican parmesan mashed red potatoes, but I don't care because I like parmesan red potatoes, and we're all about mixing international flavors anyway.  (And if you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you, because our idea of international cuisine around here is frozen french fries and pizza rolls).  BUT! Tonight we shall be dining on real international dinner, and I shall let you know how it turns out tomorrow.

Oh by the way, and speaking of recipes, if anyone has recipes for cheesy stuff, I'm in need of some.  See, Tony's work had a some cheese samples in the test kitchen, but they had to get rid of it because they are doing some construction and they were all, "We have to get rid of this perfectly good cheese to make more space" and Tony was all, "I like cheese" and they were like, "Great! Here you go!"  Only their definition of cheese samples and my definition of cheese sample vary slightly in scale, which is how I ended up with a fridge full of 11lbs of various fromage.  Yes, 11lbs.  Maybe 12.  I'm not totally sure.  I do know that we have a couple pounds each of pepperjack, Parmesan, smoked Gouda and feta.  So now I'm looking for dishes that call for cheese.  Preferably the more cheese the better.  (And also maybe some people to volunteer to eat all these cheese dishes, because if we try to eat all of this ourselves, we are going to explode.)

And then ZB won't have any need to wear her pretty new toddler belt, will she?