Halloween, Sunday Cooking, Fall Festivals, and Toddler Meals

Wow. This is going to be a long recap blog! I know I call them “weekly,” and they used to be. But lately, they’ve been more like recaps of two weeks’ worth of content. I used to have the time to put them together on Mondays, but that’s not the case anymore as a mom. So, my “weekly” recaps are just extra long now!

This blog will be filled with fun fall activities, meals I made, toddler-friendly food, and a few health updates.One of the best parts about late October here is the perfect weather—it stays around 70 degrees. In the mornings, it’s in the upper 50s, which is perfect for walking! We love spending most of our day outside, playing with trucks, rocks, and getting messy in the dirt. I’ve even heard that Santa is bringing this boy a new sandbox for Christmas.

Did I mention I’m over the 40-day mark of drinking only one cup of coffee and switching the rest to decaf? Pretty proud of myself over here! Next up is moving to half-caf, and then completely cutting it out altogether. I’ve felt such an intense sense of relief in my nervous system. I’m so much calmer, less anxious, and excited to see how my body responds when I’m completely off it.

One thing we’ve been loving (I mentioned it in my last recap blog) is our mall dates. My son has this adorable obsession with going to the mall—not just for the Lego store, but also for the fountain, the display cars, and the SouthPark Mall playground.

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This time, my mom joined us. We grabbed some decaf cappuccinos, had lunch at Suffolk Punch, and spent the entire day just walking around. I even did some fall shopping for the family. I can’t wait for Zara to open next year! I’ll be visiting everyday. After picking up my son from school the next day, we had a lunch date at Poppyseed Kitchen. They have the most delicious seasonal dishes, and I love how they always change them up. I usually order breakfast when I’m there, but I can never turn down butternut squash soup and a salad with all the fall fixings. This salad had candied pecans, cranberries, roasted butternut squash (which I’m making tonight!), and goat cheese, which I ordered on the side. I don’t know what happened, but I used to love goat cheese. Now, I can only handle it in small doses and only when I’m really craving it. I enjoy it occasionally with a super fruity salad or on kale.

A few Saturdays ago, we stopped by the Pineville Fall Festival. A good friend of mine was there, selling her macarons, so we wanted to go support her. Plus, my son was so excited for his first carnival rides! Our other good friends joined us with their daughter, and watching them enjoy the rides together was so cute. He rode them over and over again, and most likely would have spent all day there if we let him. 

For lunch, we had BBQ pulled pork from a food truck. I’ve been trying to get my son to try new foods, but he is so picky. If it’s not French fries or Ilios chicken and rice, he’ll spit it out. However, I did have some wins this week that I’ll be sharing in the blog!
He finally showed us that we can take him to amusement parks, given how much he loved the thrill of the rides. I had so much fun watching him. It’s really special as a parent to see your kids grow and develop their unique little personalities, and to watch them enjoy life without stress or worry. I love witnessing his childhood unfold.
After the carnival, we did some yard work and then headed to a friend’s birthday party to celebrate. It was so cute watching him play at the little gym and enjoy pizza and cake with his friends.
We had my parents over for dinner on Sunday. The Giants (my dad’s team) were playing the Eagles (my husband’s team), so we thought it would be the perfect excuse to get together and enjoy some delicious food. We had homemade butternut squash soup and toasted baguettes. The soup was amazing! This is seriously my favorite go-to butternut squash soup recipe, and it’s so easy to make, too. You roast all the veggies, mix it in a blender with some more ingredients, garnish it, and done! 
My little baker and I got to work on a delicious pumpkin spice sourdough bread recipe. We planned to have it for dinner the next day. Recently, I had a win with my toddler with these air-fried breaded chicken breasts. He spit the roasted carrots out (as expected), but he really enjoyed the chicken and raspberries. I dipped the chicken breasts in olive oil, coated them with Italian breadcrumbs, and air-fried them at 400 degrees for 13 minutes. I made a bunch, froze them, and now I just take them out of the freezer and put them directly into the air fryer. If he doesn’t eat them all, I give him some BBQ sauce to dip them in, and he likes them even more! If he eats three-quarters of his meal, I usually give him applesauce or some yogurt afterward. If I give it to him first, he’ll only eat that. It’s all a strategy with these toddlers!

A no-school day meant a park date with his little friends, and that meant mom had a park date with her friend, too! The new Waxhaw park is adorable—so clean and fully fenced in—and my son LOVES it. It’s a bit of a drive, but I’ve always loved Waxhaw, so I make a fun day out of it. After the park, we walked down to Virtuoso Coffee for some baked goods and a decaf cappuccino.
For dinner on Tuesday night, I baked up the pumpkin spice sourdough loaf to go with our cranberry chicken dinner! This is one of our favorite fall meals! It was so delicious with the pumpkin spice sourdough bread, burrata cheese, and a drizzle of balsamic glaze on top.

I’m more of a Poppi fan, but this Crisp Apple OliPop was so good! On Saturday morning, while my husband did the meal prep (yes, he still does it after 15 years!), I took my son and Leo for a walk! Kyle walks Tux in the morning since he’s afraid of cars and people, so I always take Leo. I often get asked why I don’t take Tux on walks, but the answer is simple: Tux will not budge. He’ll sit on the porch and refuse to move. He gets very spooked, so we make it easier for him by walking when it’s still dark out in the morning and no one else is around.
We couldn’t help but have an impromptu photoshoot with all the leaves during the golden morning hour. My son is now just as obsessed with fall as his mama! He gets excited to crunch through the leaves, sees pumpkins, and I think he’s also a fan of this weather. Leo was loving catching the leaves, too! I can’t believe my boy is 8 and a half now. Does anyone still remember the day we picked him up? He still acts like a puppy, and has only calmed down a tiny bit.

My husband surprised my son with these race car tracks and electric cars (check out my video in the post to see it in action!), and you couldn’t have made this toddler any happier! He is obsessed. Last Saturday night, we had our good friend (my husband’s old roommate) over for dinner. Some of you might remember the old blog days when I was always hanging out with them in Uptown Charlotte!

I made our favorite go-to Pad Thai recipe! It’s always a great dish to make when guests come over.
The rest of the night was filled with pumpkin crinkle cookies and jam sessions in the music room (well, now his playroom.)

Sunday was spent watching the Eagles play football, and dinner and a park date at Ilios! I was so excited for Monday because it was my son’s Halloween carnival at his school. I volunteered to help, so I got to see him and join in on some fun Halloween games.

For Halloween, we dressed him up as Ace Ventura, The Pet Detective! I grew up watching this movie, mostly because my brother always had it on TV, and my husband did too. It’s pretty iconic! I showed my son some (appropriate) clips from the movie, and he thought they were hilarious. He actually LOVED wearing this costume. I’d struggled with getting him into other costumes because he wanted nothing to do with them, but surprisingly, he didn’t want to take this one off!

I pieced his outfit together by finding items on Amazon and Etsy, and I printed some things out on the computer to glue on! I even let his hair grow out for an entire month so he could have the true Ace Ventura hairstyle—putting a wig on a toddler would be impossible. He was obsessed with the parrot and kept it on all day at school and even during Halloween.
His school set up the cutest carnival for the kids, and they had so much fun playing games and winning prizes. I’m so proud of how much he’s progressed in school compared to those first few weeks of drop-offs—wow, were those rough! Now, he just runs right in to be with his friends.After the carnival, we headed out to Grandma and Grandpas house to play for the afternoon! I brought some Tega Cay Deli Bagel sandwiches, and we sat outside enjoying the weather. After my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up foods for a new diet plan I’m going to be testing—the FODMAP diet, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with. I’ve been battling stomach pain and bloating for the past few years. The first time I was hospitalized, my CT scan showed acute appendicitis, and they were planning to remove my appendix. After 24 hours of observation, they realized that while my appendix was enlarged, it wasn’t appendicitis. The pain continued, and even stranger, my stomach developed a pronounced pulse that looked like a baby kicking. My doctor referred me for tests to check for an aortic aneurysm, but nothing showed up, suggesting the issue could be food-related.

As the months went on, my stomach pain intensified. The pulsing was so severe I couldn’t focus on anything else. I get tight, debilitating stomach tightness that made it difficult to pick up my son, and every joint in my body feels so stiff and achy that even walking has started to become unbearable. Life started to feel overwhelmingly painful, and I felt gaslit and exhausted from complaining about something no one else could see or feel all the time.

On Monday, I had a spell where I felt like I was going to faint, which has happened to me over the past year but never this badly. I was mid-conversation, struggling just to stay conscious. My heart raced all day, even when I was sitting, and I kept feeling flushed. My doctor decided to run as many tests as possible to help figure out what’s going on.

So Tuesday, I went home after the doctors appointment, and went about my day. 

On Tuesday afternoon, we went on a long walk around the neighborhood, played in the leaves, and then spent the rest of the day playing in the dirt and garden until Dad got home. 
For my dinner, I had my turkey burger with lettuce, cucumbers, and quinoa, and I’ve been trying to give my son the same meals I’m eating. I made him a turkey burger, roasted potatoes, cucumber, and applesauce.

Right before I was getting ready to drop my son off at school on Wednesday morning, the doctor’s office called and told me to get to the ER as soon as I could. My D-Dimer levels were elevated, which, along with some of the symptoms I had been experiencing, meant there could possibly be a blood clot in my chest or body. Of course, no one wants to hear that! My mom came over to help with my son, and I headed to the hospital to get checked out. After ultrasounds, CT scans, and more blood tests, I was cleared to go home. I didn’t think I had a blood clot, but with escalated levels, it’s safe to have it checked.

However, I did find out that I had severe anemia, which required an iron infusion, and several tests showed positive results with high levels of inflammation in my body. If you’re experienced in this and want to know which tests, you can send me an email or message on Instagram. My doctor has referred me to a rheumatologist for further testing for an autoimmune disease, as well as a gastroenterologist to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy to examine my intestines, appendix, and stomach. It really sucks not to have answers to all of this pain, but the good news is that I’m finally getting somewhere after the past two years of just suffering in silence. I had a small lesion and mild liver disease show up on an ultrasound, and it’s time to figure out what is causing my liver get affected.

I do everything I can to walk every day and eat clean, but when I feel horrible, my skin is always pale, I battle insomnia, experience muscle and joint pain, my hair is falling out, and my entire body hurts. I just feel miserable and not like my full happy self. This is also another reason I had to take a step back from the bakery business because I’ve been sick all the time.

I know so many people who have gone through something similar, so if you want to share your story with me, I’d love to hear it. Since I’m still battling pain but trying to help my digestion, I’m glad to cut out foods that are hurting my stomach on top of whatever else I’m dealing with. For breakfast lately, I’ve been having a serving of Elizabeth brand oats with blueberries, almond milk with golden milk, and maple syrup to sweeten it. I do believe you can heal many things by eating certain foods and cutting out bad ones, and I plan to continue to eat for my health, because my life at this point depends on it. I have a little boy I need to stay healthy for. 

I have started a new iron and b12 supplement to help me with anemia.

No matter what kind of pain I’m feeling, I always lace up my shoes, stretch a little, and get out for my daily walk. It’s tough when my joints and muscles are hurting, especially my mid-back, but I always feel like I’m getting stronger each time. And once you stop doing something, that’s when the trouble starts. 
The weather was perfect, and we could not get enough of the amazing playtime in the leaves on Halloween morning.

Another successful meal that my toddler ate completely! He had the breaded chicken from the air fryer, homemade French fries, cucumber, and applesauce. Every meal I’ve been having has been a turkey burger, cucumbers, and quinoa or homemade potato French fries.My son has turned the corner of our lot into his sandbox, so I sit out there with my book, and he literally will dig for hours!

Funny how a picky eater loves BBQ pumpkin seeds!

I cut all my dahlias down in August, and they grew back since we’ve had amazing temperatures. Now, they’re blooming all over again, and I have fall dahlias everywhere in the garden.
I tried everything I could to get this wild boy to nap on Halloween night, but he did not, so we knew it would be a short trick-or-treat route for us. I made his FAVORITE: banana-egg pancakes (the recipe is in my last recap blog!), chicken sausage, and raspberries. He ate three pancakes and kept asking for more! I think trying to get him to eat better foods and no-so-processed has help him a little bit with his tastebuds. After dinner, I dressed him back up in his Ace costume, and we headed out for a fun night of trick-or-treating! He was so excited and ran around the house saying “trick or treat” all day long. Last year, he was fighting a cold, and it was freezing outside. We had the best weather this year.
Behind me, are the Keeping up with the Bonezes! This family changes their skeleton scenery every single night, and it was always such a blast to walk by each day and see what they did next! Halloween was the ultimate with alien ships! Our neighborhood does not play around when it comes to Halloween. Each house was even more haunted than before, and as it got darker, it became even scarier! I can’t wait to see what next year will be like. We made it back, bathed, and had this tired kid in bed before 8 PM. Making him fill up on dinner before trick-or-treating helped prevent a lot of candy begging! I highly recommend it.

The next morning, we had a school day. We made our smoothie (he always has to help!), which included milk, avocado, blueberries, banana, and elderberry syrup. He also had an organic blueberry waffle, chicken sausage, and maple syrup on top. He’s a pretty faithful breakfast eater. I turn on storybooks on YouTube, and he loves his little quiet time. While he eats, I enjoy my oatmeal and drink my golden milk latte.

After school, I took him to the park to play on the playground and run around the soccer field. He LOVES the soccer field! It’s great during the weekdays because no one is ever there, so we have the whole area to ourselves.
For lunch, I made him his favorite: chicken, grapes, cucumber (I can’t believe he loves cucumber!), and homemade potato fries.

Last night, we took my son to get his haircut, which was way overdue. For dinner, I had quinoa, sweet potatoes, avocado, and an egg! The boys had their Ilios, but I’m still playing it safe for a while.

Questions for you!

1. Who is the pickiest eater in your house?
2. Does your neighborhood go all out for holidays?
3. What is something positive going on in your life right now?