Micah is 2 Months Old

Our little boy is two months old!  He is just the best little boy and we are so in love with him.  I'm not doing a really great job of documenting what he's been up too and when, but at two months old it's still not a whole heck of a lot. However, everything he does do is so exciting.  Haha.

Micah is 2 months old!

I posted the video of him rolling over, which was awesome.  He hasn't done it again and I know he just rolled over because he was so upset.  He didn't know he did that and I'm sure he didn't know how he did that.  Haha.  I still put him on his tummy and he either just lays there and cries or falls right asleep.

 This is how daddy puts baby boy to sleep.  :)

He's also started to stay awake more.  I feed him every 3 - 3.5 hours and he'll stay awake for about an hour afterwards, then he gets fussy and falls asleep.  He's sleeping through the night mostly although it's getting harder to get him to sleep for the night.  He is like his momma and wants to stay up late.  He's usually in bed around 10ish or maybe a little earlier and he'll get me up sometime between 5 - 7am.  Not too bad!!!

 He fell asleep on his play mat

He's really started to smile alot lately.  We have a nice chat every morning and he smiles and 'talks' to me.  It's so cute!  He's also doing better at making eye contact.

1st time in the bumbo - he's not so sure about this.
In fact he started crying right after this 

 

It's so exciting to see how he's developing and changing.  We keep commenting on how much bigger he's already gotten.  We haven't been back to the Dr. since he was 2 weeks old so we're curious to see how much weight he's gained. 

 Daddy's favorite shirt.  It swallows him now but
we had to wear it for watching the game.
It says "Pint sized Cowboys fan"

I take tons of videos and pictures of him and even bought a portable hard drive to store them all on.  The problem comes when it's time to sort through them all.  That can be a huge task but I definitely want to document everything this sweet boy does. 

Well that's it for now.  We'll update again soon!

Love ya,
Stef

Great Nanny's Dirty Rice

My great grandmother "Great Nanny" was born in Louisiana and passed along all of her Cajun recipes to our family such as gumbo, etouffee, and dirty rice.  Her dirty rice is my absolute FAVORITE side dish that was served at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I was discussing recipes with some friends over the weekend and they wanted to try this awesome dirty rice I was describing. So here's the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 lb sausage or hamburger meat
2 cans beef broth
2 beef bullion cubes
2 cups water
2 cups rice
Kitchen bouquet (to taste) (I will explain this later)
Onion, celery and bell pepper (to taste)


Directions:
Cut up or dice as much onion, celery and bell pepper as you'd like.  I always have these cut up in bags in my freezer.  That way I can just throw some in the pan and saute them until defrosted and cooked.  I cut larger pieces (instead of dice) because I prefer not to actually eat the onion and bell pepper but you need the flavor!

Then brown your hamburger meat in the same pot.  Once this is done, add all the other ingredients.  It will be very watery but it will cook into something like a rice casserole.  Bring all these ingredients to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover the pot and cook for 15 minutes or until the liquid is soaked into the rice.

So Kitchen Bouquet is a seasoning / coloring.  It's a little hard to find in the store, you may have to ask but it is worth it.  I use it in my gumbo, roast, or anything beef based.  It's meant to add coloring but it has a flavor that is definitely missed if you don't have it.  I recommend getting it. 

I'll also add some Tony Chachere or cayenne pepper to add some spice to it.

I love this recipe because it takes one pot, takes about 30 minutes or less and it includes meat, starch and vegetables all in the same dish.  We always had it as a side dish in our family but I use it as a main dish around my house.  If I was cooking this today I'd post a pic but I think we're having lasagna tonight.  :)

Happy eating.  Let me know if you try it and what you think!

Photo Card

Storytime Blue Baby Announcements

Birth announcements, Valentine's cards, & invitations by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

This Soooo Just Happened!

OMG - I can't believe this!



He was upset and usually if he's that upset I can lay him on his stomach and he'll give up and go to sleep.  Well not today, he was too upset!

He actually rolled over twice.  The first time I sort of saw out of the corner of my eye.  Then I made him do it again.  :)

So proud of my genius baby!  :)


P.S.  Not sure what's up with the size of the video - I'm still trying to figure out how the camera works.

More Pictures of Micah

At 7 weeks old, I already have a ton of pictures of Micah.  We take a picture almost every day.  We take a picture on my cell phone (when it's working) and send it to Curtis every day.  At this point, most of the pictures are of Micah sleeping, but it's still so cute!

Shutterfly allows you to create your own free website and post picture so I did just that.

You can see more of Micah's newborn photos here:
http://stallingsfamilyphoto.shutterfly.com/

I'll continue to post more pictures here as I get them downloaded from the camera, so check back again!

 Daddy likes this picture!  GOOOO Cowboys!

Yay Me

I got a Kindle!  It was my birthday recently so I decided to ask for money and put it towards a Kindle.  I had been thinking about getting one.  My mom recently bought one and had good things to say about it so because my momma knows best, I decided a Kindle is a good idea.

I must say that I'm enjoying it so far.  You do need some sort of light in order to read it, but its really simple to use and it's really lightweight.  There are cool features like highlighting or bookmarking and even a dictionary.  Although, one word I tried to have it look up it wouldn't ever define for me.  Speaking of. . . I never did look up that word. . . I don't even remember what it was now. . . but it was a word I'd never heard / read before.

Anywhoo!  I'm going to give the Kindle an A+ so far.  The books are cheaper on Amazon than the paperback version and they download immediately.  I just finished reading The Help which was a good book. . . now I need to decide what to read next.  Any suggestions?  I'm thinking about Water for Elephants but I'm not sure if I want to read about circus life.

Actually, I have several paperback books that I'm in the process of reading so maybe I'll finish off those first before buying another book on the Kindle.  Then again, I'm bad about reading mulitple books at once so maybe I won't hold off.  ;)
 
Ta ta for now!

What's Up on Wednesday

I have several things I want to talk about but none of them are really worthy of a whole post so I thought I'd make a list of these items - however random it may be.

1.  Infertility Sucks! - Seriously.  I know I just had a baby but infertility is still affecting me.  It seems that infertility is being brought up in my life a lot lately.  Everything/everyone from friends to TV and the dental hygienist is talking to me about infertility.  This past weekend was my birthday and I couldn't help but remember that on my birthday last year I was undergoing fertility treatment and actually ended up having to give myself a shot on my birthday for a treatment that ended up not working.  What a blessing to this year be able to hold my new baby on my birthday.  For anyone going through fertility issues, I'm thinking about you and praying for you.

2.  Photo Sharing - I'm trying to find a way to share photos with my friends and family online that also allows them to download/print the photos.  I've had a shutterfly account for years and they actually let you create a photo sharing site.  So, this should be my solution but the problem is that I can't get my photos to actually upload.  What's up with that?!

3.  Regis - Ok, so I watched Regis and Kelly this morning and as much they have a great dynamic, I think it's time for Regis to retire.  Poor guy called Snooki "Snoozi" and then he thought Elijah Wood was from New Zealand because he shot a movie there.  Hahaha. Maybe he just needs glasses to read the teleprompter.

4.  Baby Blogs - I read a lot of baby blogs.  Most of them weren't baby blogs when I started reading them but have become a baby blog.  I just had a baby and he's pretty much consuming my whole life right now but I don't want my blog to soley focus on him.  I want to still post about other things going on in life and the world. I'm not sure you care either way.  :)

5.  The Response - On my birthday, Rick Perry called Christians to gather in Houston and pray for our nation, there were over 30,000 people there!  I would have loved to join this event but I have a little one who needs his mommy every 3 hours right now.  You can check it out at theresponseusa.com.  How amazing that this is happening in our city.  Praise God.

Well I guess that's all on my mind for now.  :)


Love ya,
Stef

Micah's Newborn Photos

When Micah was two weeks old we had Ashley from Painted Peacock Photography come to our house and take photos of Micah.  She's posted a sneak peak on her blog and I'm loving the photos.  Please visit her blog to check out the photos.  I'll be getting the photos from her soon and will post more. 

I'm loving them so far!