In the ghetto, where his mama cried

So we live In The Ghetto.

We went grocery shopping on Sunday and saw a man and his 3 boys go behind a grocery store, he dropped the little boys pants and the little boy proceeded to urinate and by the time we were getting out of the car, the little boy had squatted on the floor. Nice huh?

We went to look at a couple of houses this Saturday. The first was half a block away from our realtor's house. Words cannot describe this place. Seriously. It was a teeny tiny little dump of a house with a massive yard containing heaps of garbage. Why oh why didn't anyone think to remove the rotting "shacks" in the backyard? Who knows. The second one was a foreclosure for way under our budget. The place was oddly spaced, because the seller was trying to maximize their return, making it a 3 bedroom by enclosing the living room and adding a closet does not a bedroom make. They hid the fireplace behind lots of stupid spackle. The house was workable and had decent rooms. It had 2 bathrooms, which was nice and a big kitchen with a laundry room behind it which naturally lead to the back yard. The yard was a good size with a HUGE tree in it that if I was interested in buying the property, I would probably chop the darn tree down as it was buckling the concrete in the backyard. I would tear out the garage, tear up the concrete and plant fruit trees. Unfortunately, this was next to a family that had barbed wire for fencing and across the street from the most ghetto apartment complex in the hippie city we were looking in. The road was in horrible condition and I just didn't think it would make much sense for us to pour a ton of cash into this place. I also didn't see my little Ollie growing up there. Too far away from my conveniences, and just not a good fit.

Oliver hating my food

Makes a mama proud to see her son HATE her food.

I marinated some organic Rosie chickens in buttermilk overnight...then fried it to delicious crispiness, crispy, but moist. I gave him some moist breast pieces and some organic spinach sauteed with garlic....and guess what? He refused to eat the spinach (the dogs hated it also) and refused to eat the chicken. My fried chicken is good (the barefoot contessa can attest to that!).

A few shocking tidbits from last week. One night it was unbearably hot in the ghetto, and so Crazy and I picked up some McDonalds. Something we don't do very often but decided in our hot lazy state that it was the best idea. So chicken nuggets, filet-o-fish, and fries came home with us. My dear sweet little Ollie took one look and that was it. He reached for and ate everything within his reach. What is so wrong with mama's cooking that McDonalds is better?! I just don't get it.

Pots and Pans

Gee Ollie, thanks for banging Mama's very expensive pots and pans.

He was fussy and refused to let me make dinner. So I let him in the kitchen while I prepped in the dining room. He opened the cabinet and took EVERYTHING out.

Oh no She DINT!

Oh yes I did. I done gone and given him another faux hawk. This time I had to fight him, cause he wasn't in the mood for me to be messing with him, so it was a bit of a fight. But ahhhhh, sweet rewards lie ahead of him. He got a splashy bath afterwards, where he was able to make air bubbles with his cheeks, and splash water when he was able to put aside one of his bath toys. More to follow.

Grandma.....I gotta bowl

Mr. Oliver hates our food

I can't believe that he hates home food. The daycare director told us that we shouldn't bring any home food to the daycare any longer because Oliver HATES our food. The past 2 days has been a little tough for us to get him a home cooked meal. We had people over to bake on Sunday, so I didn't have it in me to make him a fresh meal. So that night when we were discussing Oliver's lack of a lunch, Crazy suggested he go to our favorite Chinese take out and grab some house fried rice. So....Mr. Oliver got that for lunch the next day. When we showed up at the end of the day Monday, the daycare lady gave me the container and said he doesn't want to eat it, so I gave him school food. I apologized profusely and promised to cook for Oliver that night. Unfortunately what we had planned was a stew (which I am not a fan of), so we packed it for Oliver on Tuesday. Soooooo we showed up in the evening on Tuesday, and the Director there had a talk with us. She said, quit bringing food in, he doesn't like it, I don't want to hear my staff complain. I said that if Oliver didn't like the food we brought in, then they should hate Yung Kee himself! Yung Kee is our take out place.

Anyhow, when we came home that day, Crazy bitterly complained about how much he hated the idea that Oliver would have chicken nuggets, and frozen pizza for lunch. But I assured him that I had plenty of that in school and I am fine. He sighed and remembered the food from his childhood....and agreed that school food wasn't too bad. He's upset that its not as healthy as we can give him, but with the heat wave, a lot of our favorite summer time veggies just aren't available. So I promised we would go to one of our favorite green markets in hippie land this weekend so that we would make sure that Ollie had plenty of veggies out of school, in case he didn't get any in school.

Okay, I am going to say this once and never again, but Ollie has gone to sleep at 7-8 pm since Monday. I am praying this will continue...pretty please?

Week in Review

So we got a call on Tuesday to come pick up Oliver from daycare. He had a fever of 102 and was refusing to eat and really cranky. So, Crazy picked him up. All Oliver did was this moan, over and over and over again. So Crazy gave him some baby tylenol. In an act of desperation that night, we brought out Oliver's mama. For those of you not in the *know*, we bought this swing when Oliver was a couple of months old and this was the only thing for a long time that could comfort him. No one was ever good enough, so this swing was thus named "mama". We put this swing away when Oliver was 6 months old, because we figured that Oliver's girth would break this machine, we decided to be kind to it. Anyhow, *mama* still works and this photo is proof. All I gotta say is that it doesn't swing as high as it once did. Crazy and I both held our breaths that night as we tried it out.


We dropped him off to daycare Wednesday morning, and sure enough by noon, he was again at 102. So Crazy picked him up. I just knew something was wrong. So I called and got him an appointment. Turned out something was wrong. Oliver had an ear infection, and so they prescribed amoxicillin. There were a lot of stuff he had to take twice a day. Crazy took the day off on Thursday (yeah I know I suck, but if I were to ask my manager, she'd flip, and also I wouldn't be able to do it because I'm still really new in this company). By Saturday, we noticed that Oliver had a rash on his face and body. Poor baby, it didn't really surprise me that he had a reaction to penicillin like I do. I am crossing my fingers that he will no longer be allergic to it when he gets older.

This was in response to Oliver's Grandmother in Kansas who suggested we get this kid a bowl. He refused to eat anything in the past week due to his ear infection. The only thing he actually ate was these cheese puffs that we got from Trader Joe's. Here he spilled it all.




On other Oliver news, I've now decided to put him down myself at night. Crazy used to put him down and it was just an episode in itself. I just didn't want to see Crazy be in his room for over an hour trying to put him down while Oliver grabbed onto the rail of his crib jumping up and down to keep himself awake. It was just not something I cared to hear about or wait around for. So I decided to put him down myself. The first night, I stood next to his crib, turned on his LeapFrog frog who sings a 10 minute sleeping melody, turned on his white noise machine, put him down and put the blanket over him. He would get up and get really fussy, it was obvious he was tired, but he did not to be left alone. I would make a move to leave, he would get up and start to cry. I was on to this kid. Just on to him. I noticed that he would get up every so often to stare at my direction. If he didn't see me a foot away from him, he would start to cry. So I just got tired of him playing around with me and left. He cried for a minute before he wore himself out. I sat outside listening to him cry, while Crazy asked if he should go in. Well, I didn't let him go in, and guess what? Oliver went to sleep. I did the same the rest of the week. One night I let Crazy put him down, so he put the kid down and Oliver started to play with the blanket his great grandma Clara made him. Crazy walked out and closed the door. No crying, Oliver just went to sleep. On Thursday, Oliver went to sleep at 8 pm, and you would not believe how much time I had on my hands. Jeeeez! Why didn't anyone tell me that if he went to bed at 8 pm, I'd be able to do Paco Collar's books for 2 hours, then groom the dogs and get their nails? Geez, then I took a shower, did the dishes, and folded laundry before going to bed at 11 pm.

So more news. Are you guys ready? Besides Oliver now clearly saying "DA DA DA DA", he now says "MA MA." The reason I know is because when Crazy picked him up on Tuesday from daycare, poor Mr. Oliver kept saying "mam mama mama" over and over and over again. But enough about me.

The best news this week? We saw Oliver take his first steps in daycare. He was going towards his favorite teacher at daycare. Yup, he walked to her, took about 6 steps. I was JELUS! But oh well, I know I'm not his favorite person. He was hiding out on us. Apparently that wasn't the first time, so now we've been trying to get him to walk, but he insists on crawling, much to our displeasure and disbelief.

On other news, Oliver is still under 24 lbs. When we took him on on Wednesday to see the pediatrician, we found out that he had lost weight. He's at 23 lbs and 5 ounces. I must say that I LOVE the Ergo carrier. I LOVE it. Oliver is just too heavy for me to hold comfortably, and it helps me carry him around when he gets to fussy in the stroller. I LOVE the ergo carrier. Anyhow, back to the scheduled program. At the waiting room at the clinic, Oliver vomited. Immense amounts, I mean it. My jacket was full of baby vomit. Thankfully I brought the ergo carrier which I tucked in his stroller. I put him in the ergo, and was able to comfort him enough through the entire examination.

Fast food eating

On Saturday after the farmers market, we went to run some errands.

Long story short, the residents upstairs had a toilet overflow as one of them showered. We noticed when yellow water came pouring out of the fan in the ceiling. Needless to say, we threw everything away, and Crazy bleached the entire bathroom. We had to get Mr. Oliver new bath toys. So we decided to run that errand on Saturday. We went to the farmers market, and then to run that errand, so Crazy moaned and cried about hunger. Anyhow, we then we to Panda Express, Crazy's favorite place on earth. I ordered the broccoli and beef with the spicy tofu and eggplant. Mr. Oliver ate like an animal. Here are pre food photos.

Oliver eating a peach

Oliver saw me eating a peach today and got really mad that I wasn't sharing. Seriously mad. So he kept pawing at me and demanding to be given access to the peach. So I did. He got really mad when we were filming him. I don't know why, he usually loves to ham it up. But he was agitated that we weren't taking him seriously.

Week in Review

Sorry there hasn't been a post this week. Its been busy with me working on the books of the person who makes my dogs' collars. So I haven't had time to blog. This won't end until maybe the end of June. Its been slow as heck.

Anyhow this is what was made on Saturday....don't drool too much Auntie A. Oliver ate this up like a crazy.Since we felt bad about Oliver not getting a decent birthday cake, we finally got our act together and bought him a cupcake. Here's a picture.


One of Oliver's favorite foods on the planet....We've got a funny story about this one. I normally pack some things for Oliver at the beginning of the week and on Wednesday so that he has fresh foods to eat at daycare. I never thought to pack watermelon because I always thought it was too messy and they would never take the time to bring it out to feed him. So one day at daycare, one of the ladies there began to eat watermelon in front of Oliver and guess what? He threw a fit and basically fought to get next to her to get his fair share of watermelon. The ladies asked me to bring him his very own watermelon so he wouldn't have to fight for it.



I got an itching to make some muffins and cookies....so I did. I don't bake because I suck at it. I made this whole wheat blueberry muffins. They taste pretty good, no butter was used.

Weekend brunch

So we decided to make Indian food this week. We woke up nice and early (thanks Mr. Oliver) today and went shopping for some ingredients. On our way to the Indian market, Mr. Oliver decided to take a nap. So I quickly went in and grabbed the few ingredients we needed, and upon returning, I noticed that Mr. Oliver was still asleep. So we decided to get a little breakfast, seeing that it was 10 am, we decided to head over to our favorite Chaat house, Vik's. However Vik was not so gracious, they didn't open until 11 am. So we headed home. We then tried to grab some breakfast at Luka's Taproom and lounge, however, they also did not open their doors until 11 am also. We went home so that Crazy could mix the stuff to make Naan, afterwards it was 11:30 am. I was feeding Oliver some snap pea crisps and secretly praying he wasn't eating too much. We've noticed that if he doesn't take a nap or isn't hungry, he becomes a pain in restaurants. We went to Luka's at 11:30 and thankfully Oliver was interested in eating. He had the cornbread with butter and honey...then he had biscuits, chicken and cheesy grits. Boy oh boy was the food there good today. Crazy and I ordered fried chicken with grits, and the blackened catfish sandwich. The fish was perfect, and the fried chicken was very good. I don't know what spices they used, but it was definitely better than the 11 hidden spices and herbs. Seriously. I couldn't get over how good the chicken was. Mr. Oliver ate and ate and ate until he couldn't eat any more. But he wasn't a pain. A nap and food really helps out a cranky kid.

Tonight, I made some chicken curry, eggplant and tomato curry, lentil curry with tomato, fried potatos with tons of spices, rice pudding with cardamom, and we are making naan. I hope it turns out well, because everything else tastes pretty good, if I can pat myself on the back. Mr. Oliver got some broccoli and beef with some herbed basmati rice for dinner, and he will have that for daycare for a couple of days. Pictures to follow.





He made a mess as usual. We had to hose him down after his meal.

Da Da

That's right. Much to my selfishness and hatred, Mr. Oliver has started to say "dada" instead of "mama". Tonight when he wanted a bottle, Crazy brought it to him, and just before Crazy gave him the bottle, Mr. Oliver said "dada". It just made me vomit a bit in my mouth. Yeah, I'm a hater. I just can't believe his first words weren't "mama". Right?!!

On other "word" news. Mr. Oliver one day said, "Ni Ni", which in Chinese is the equivalent of milk. He said it when he was thirsty, and his stupid parents just weren't understanding his sign language. Speaking of food....on Friday, Mr. Oliver's daycare was closed, and so Crazy had to take the day off, because if I asked for it, my manager would flip her lid. Anyhow Crazy had been complaining all morning about how grouchy Mr. Oliver was, and that he just didn't want to take a nap. Around 2 pm, Crazy showed up with lunch, and Mr. Oliver was asleep in the stroller. We proceeded to have lunch. I casually asked Crazy what he had fed Oliver that day, and to my surprise, Crazy had fed him NADA. Yes, you guessed it. He just assumed that Mr. Oliver just had milk all day long. I guess he neglected to see all the lunches and snacks I packed for Oliver to go to daycare...he even dropped off the meals himself a lot of the times. But sadly, he just couldn't understand that Oliver had to eat. So I woke up my poor hungry baby and fed him some broccoli and beef with rice leftovers. Mr. Oliver started to eat in his sleep, then woke up and gave me the biggest smile as he proceeded to eat. My poor baby. I can't believe how evil Crazy is for not understanding that Mr. Oliver is a growin kid and needs his meals.

Speaking of growing kid....we had to drop the crib. We dropped it to the last notch. After this, Mr. Oliver will have the toddler bed that the bed luckily converts to. I haven't exactly seen him in it yet...but have no fear, I probably will soon.

So our anniversary was the Sunday that just passed. Crazy let me sleep in, I had taken some cold medication the night before, and woke up at 10:30 am. I was pleased as punch to discover the extra sleep. I recall being awoken by a unruly Mr. Oliver however, I was so tired that I fell back to sleep and Crazy hauled him out. I then leisurely sipped my hot morning tea, while Oliver shockingly played with his toys. Crazy walked the dogs, and then we dropped Oliver off at my friend's house shortly after 12:30. We then headed to Berkeley and had some Indian food, can I say Keema Samosa (YUM!), its ground lamb with peas and spices wrapped in a fluffy dough and deep fat fried. It was seriously nice to sit and have a leisurely meal (as leisurely as one can at Vik's Chaat House) without having Oliver start crying because he's bored and doesn't understand that people need to relax while eating. We then headed off to our favorite bakery, Massey's Pastries and had delicious cappuccinos. Crazy ordered the flourless chocolate cake, while I had the chocolate and orange cake. Don't worry Auntie A, I ordered some pistachio french macaroons and some pecan sandies for later....they are sooooooo good. Too bad you can't have any. :-) It was such a beautiful day. We then headed to the ole Indian restaurant standby, Naan and Curry, and picked up some take out for later. We came back home and started to seriously attack the house. I prepped and packaged 40# of chicken backs for the dogs, while Crazy did a few loads of laundry and cleaned up a bit. We then went to pick up Oliver from my friend's house, and stayed for an hour. We came home and Oliver passed out. I mean it. We got home and I immediately started to make spaghetti for him and Crazy to take to daycare and work (respectively), and he started to fuss, then we looked over and his butt was high in the air. It was seriously funny. We got the dishes cleaned, pots washed, kitchen scrubbed down, laundry sorted out, and his crib lowered. All is good in the world.

Here's a couple of pictures from tonight.


I think the onesie is a 6-12 month onesie, and yes, he's still wearing the 6-9 month onesies.