WIC

First, WTH is up with the weather. Considering the mountain of scientific evidence and the fact that it's cold and raining on May 31st, I do not understand how some people can deny climate change.

Anyway, today the boy child and I went shopping for our WIC goods. The process is frustrating at times, especially since WIC seems to be stuck in the 90s (paper checks? Soooooooooo last century). Also because their nutrition guidelines are just shitty. They need to seriously reevaluate what they give families. Here are some examples.

Juice: we get 128oz of juice a month... per child. That's a outrageous amount of juice. No child needs that much juice in a month. It's like sugar water. All the sweetness of fruit without all of the other healthy bits. The "meat" of fruit is what is best for you. Not the juice. Kids need to be drinking more water and less juice. They should take the juice allotment and up the fruits & veggies you get.

Speaking of fruits & veggies, you get $6 a month. That is stupid-low. Kids need more whole fruits and veggies. Six dollars is barely enough to buy a container of strawberries and a bag of lettuce. It is ridiculous how little the allotment is for actual food.

This brings me to milk. We get two gallons per month. Again, per child. That's FOUR gallons of milk. That's a crazy amount of milk. Why? Because you don't need to drink that much milk. Maybe a glass a day. If you're getting plenty of fruits and veggies, you get plenty of calcium. Leafy greens people, leafy greens. Put down the cow juice and drink some damn water.

"Whole grains": ugh. You get 16oz, which is less than most loafs of bread. We end up with a ton of oatmeal. Which is fine since Penny loves oatmeal, but it's just silly. The way they set it up, most WIC parents I see buy cheap white bread (ew) when they should be encouraging parents to buy whole grain bread for their kids. It's just back-ass wards.

Eggs: maybe some people go through 24 eggs a month. We certainly do not. That's a lot of eggs.

There's more than annoys me, but I'll save it for another post. Time to go make dinner, baked chicken, brown rice, and salad. With water to drink (ok, I will have a glass of wine).

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home...and wet

Cousins and more pictures

Last year, just a few months after Griffin was born, Bryan's brother, sister in law, and their three kids came out to visit from Wyoming. We had a lot of fun. We went to Fairytale town, the beach, Second Saturday, and the pool. Penelope had a blast with her cousins and we were really excited to see how she and Griffin would interact with them this time around. The twins are 4 and Gadge is 7 so there's a bit of an age difference, but it's not too bad.

We were not disappointed. Penelope adores her cousins and so does Griffin. They had a really great time together. I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked, but I did get a few.




Griffin (13 months), Jesse (4 years), Kaylen (10 months), Gadge (7 years...going on 13), Penelope (2.5 years), and Arianna (4 years)




Bryan with Gadge and Griffin

Tree (our Sister in Law) was nice enough to keep the kids out of school for two days so we could spend as much time together as possible. It was really nice to spend so much time with our Rodgers cousins :)




Poe, Tree, and Ari

And now for some random pics of the kids.




Griffin and Penelope sharing an apple




Griffin at the Rodgers ranch. We didn't spike his hair, the infamous Wyoming wind did that.

Also? Penelope kept telling me "oh mommy, it's so windy!" or "oh no! The wind!" to which I replied "welcome to Wyoming".




This is her throwing a fit because I wouldn't let her play with the iPad.

And I think that is all for my Wyoming related blogging! I probably missed at least a few things, but that's at least the basics. It was a good, but exhausting trip.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home, peacefully

One more Wyoming post

The kids are in bed and I am completely unmotivated to finish laundry. I really should...or I should break out an exercise video, but I won't. Instead I'll post this blog and inundate you all with Wyoming blog posts.

Oh. And I'm now up to 25lbs of weight loss. 15 left!

So let's see...I posted about the Science Zone, the mammoth, cows in road, and the gentleman's club, right? What's left?

Horses! What is a post about Wyoming without a mention of horses?

Dave and Debb have what I consider to be a lot of horses. One is Jill's horse, one is a boarder, and the rest are Debb's (if memory serves that means 3. I'm pretty sure there are 5 total). They also have donkey, George. We went out to the barn everyday to see the horses and George. If the weather had been nicer we may have attempted a ride, but Poe wasn't quite brave enough to pet any of them so I don't know how riding would have gone. I haven't ridden a horse since I was in Girl Scouts. I was pretty decent though, meaning I didn't fall of.

Here are some pics.




This is Debb's show horse whose name I can never remember. I want to call her Sensation, but I think that's the name of Jill's horse. I am terrible with names anyway, but seriously bad with horse names.

This next one is of George. The only reason I remember his name is because he's the only donkey.




He really wanted to see Penelope. She really didn't want to get close.

Here she is in the barn.




She really enjoyed looking at the animals even if she wasn't too keen on hands on interaction. I got to pet the horses though. It was fun to be so close. I do love them even though my biggest equestrian accomplishment is not falling off one.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home

Cows!

Saturday (back in Wyoming) we left Casper and headed to Douglas to have dinner at B's grandparent's ranch. Although first we had lunch with Bryan's step brother, his 10 month old son, and Bryan's step sister. It was nice to spend some time with them, and the baby is adorable :) Jill, B's step sister, was nice enough to give up her room while we were in town so Penelope could have a bed to herself. Poe loved sleeping in Aunty Jill's room and constantly commented about how pretty Jill's ribbons are (Jill is an accomplished equestrian).

So lunch was nice. We got to catch up and I know Bryan really enjoyed the one on one time with his siblings.

I had hoped the kids would sleep on the way to the ranch, but alas they I'd not. That's ok, they would have missed this if they had:





Yup, that's right. A road entirely blocked by a herd of cattle. There were three real, live cowboys herding the bunch. Here's a cow close up:




I was driving, so I got to drive through my very first herd.

Oh! That day was the day for animals in the road, as we were leaving Bryan's dads house, some antelope decided it would be an excellent idea to run zig zags across the road.




So we got our fair share of wildlife.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:The couch, at home

I was THAT mom

Traveling means a disruption of schedules. A disruption of schedules means little or no naps and short sleep at night. This translates into one ridiculously fussy toddler. Griffin had his issues as well, but since he's clingy anyway they weren't nearly as pronounced as the problems we encountered with Penelope.

She's ordinarily a crazy-good kid. As in, we get maybe one tantrum a day and it's usually pretty mild with more nuclear tantrums occurring once a week, sometimes more often, but never really frequent. She just has a pretty mellow personality and is easy to redirect. There's no magic parenting involved, we just got lucky.

She's also a creature of habit and needs sleep. She didn't get her normal amount this trip and so was much more difficult to handle. Still, it wasn't too horrible until we got to the airport this morning. I swear to you, it was like my child was possessed. She would.not.stop.screaming. We finally strapped her into a stroller because she refused to go anywhere unless carried and I had Griffin and Bryan was tackling the luggage. So I pushed my screaming, writing toddler through the Denver airport. For over 10 minutes I kid you not. She was thrashing around in the stroller, so much so that I had to push it solely on the back wheels because she would try and stop the stroller by kicking the wheels or putting her feet on the ground. Mind you, she was screaming the entire time and I am not exaggerating in the slightest.

It was awful. People stared, I ignored them (would have liked to see them try to make her stop), and Bryan shot them all dirty looks as he followed behind us with the luggage cart and our 4 carry ons.

Did I mention how terrible it was? She finally calmed down when we got to the check in and Bryan released her from the torture devise and picked her up. She stayed in his arms until security and was then back in his arms until we boarded the plane.

She's in desperate need of a return to our normal schedule. I'm going to put her to bed early tonight and hope that she wakes up mostly back to normal.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home, thankfully

The Spray and Wash challenge

So before I post about the ordeal that was the Denver airport (and finish posts about the remainder of the Wyoming trip) I wanted to post the following picture.





I have started trip laundry and, as you can see, there are a few... messy pieces that are in need of washing. I've already sprayed them with Spray and Wash so we'll see how well it works. I'll take after-pictures. Guess I need to start carrying travel sized Spray and Wash with me. Maybe they should send me some.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home!!!

Monday morning

So I'm going to work backwards here since we all fell asleep shortly after 8 last night and I didn't have the time to blog about the rest of our stay in Wyoming. Perhaps I'll get time to do that on the plane and post them once we land.

Actually, i'll link to a video in a second, but only because I had the opportunity to upload it to YouTube last night.

But first? It's Monday morning and in a few short hours we will be back home. This vacation has been fun, but it's also been incredibly exhausting. Griffins sleep has been atrocious and we've spent quite a bit of time in the car. So while I'm glad we came out, I'm very glad were going home. I actually downloaded a book on toddler sleep yesterday and started reading it in the car so I'm hoping that a return to our normal schedule, with help from the book, will equal some truly good nights.

All we have left to do this morning is get dressed, pack up, eat, and turn on the rental car (which is covered in mud and animal feces... I'll talk more about that later). Then we'll just hope for no delays and be back in sunny CA by lunch.

Anyway, here's the video I promised. Griffins first attempt at eating spaghetti with a fork.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJHirAaV5qM&sns=em


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Doubletree Hotel, Denver