Spring Break, 2 Months Postpartum, & Life Updates

Once again, these weekly recap blogs have turned into monthly ones. With spring break and all the holidays this past month, finding a moment to hop on my computer has felt impossible. It took me a week’s worth of mornings just to get these photos uploaded and onto the blog.

I usually do it early in the morning after feeding the baby and have about an hour to spare before my toddler comes sprinting into my room. I used to blog when he was at preschool, but now I am tending to the newborn as well as the piles of laundry that accumulate in one day.

I know it is all temporary, but for now, the recaps will be longer and possibly a monthly thing for a bit. So let’s get started on this very long recap!

Meals Lately – We started a new thing where we sit at the table as a family five days a week. Even if we are all just grabbing leftovers or eating our own thing, we stopped sitting around the counter, and I think it is helping my picky toddler focus on actually eating instead of goofing around or refusing to eat. This has also had me making a lot more dinners lately.

One of my favorite meals is these stuffed peppers. They have ground turkey with Siete taco seasoning, sautéed onions, green chiles, cheese on top, and then a side of rice and avocado. It is an easy 30 minute meal!

We have also added in evening block walks. After cleaning up dinner, we go on a one mile walk around the flat loop as a way to get outside and grab the last bit of fresh air before getting ready for bed. We’re trying to do as many of these as we can before it’s 100 degrees at 6 pm.

One thing I have been doing is waking up early when I can to have my coffee and then getting in a three mile walk. Sometimes I will do it after school drop off, or if we are all up early, I will go after breakfast before school.

We had a lot of days off this month for holidays.

We made plans with our good friends to do some activities with the toddlers to keep them busy. One amazing spot in Fort Mill is the Anne Springs Close Greenway children’s petting zoo. After having breakfast together at Poppyseed Kitchen, we headed over there to let the kids get their animal fix. I love the horses!

Anne Springs is one of the best spots in Fort Mill, with all of the trails, parks, creeks to splash in, events, and now their new petting zoo for kids.

I am officially a soccer mom!

We started soccer last month, and my son loves it. He has played a lot of soccer with my husband over the past year, but now he is officially in a little league. He cannot wait to go on Saturday mornings. I love watching him!

After soccer practice, we headed to Metro Diner before making our weekly Costco trip. This spot had amazing coffee and great food. I had their house salad with fried chicken and ranch.

For dinner, we did homemade french fries, Dutch oven cooked steak bites, and fresh guacamole. And then our nightly walk!

One thing that helps me on a Sunday is when my husband takes my son out for park dates or errands while I get a few hours to power clean the house. This is when I get the floors mopped, laundry folded, and things organized for the week.

My baby is a stomach sleeper for his naps, so I keep him in a bassinet close by in the living room to monitor him. He will sleep for two hours like that. In any other position, when he is not laying on me, he will not sleep longer than twenty minutes.

One thing I have been loving lately is these crispy cabbage flats. I add avocado oil, salt, pepper, and fresh parmesan cheese and bake them for fifteen minutes at 400. They are so good, especially with leftover taco meat!

The weather has been wonky lately. We get cold days in the upper 50s and then super hot days, like today, which is going to be almost 90. So we kind of just play it by ear with activities.

We finally brought out the bounce house for the first time this year, and it felt like summertime. While my son bounced, I pinned up the roses. It is crazy how much the garden and grass have changed in a month. From the photos above, you will see at the bottom of this blog all the flowers and greenery!

I have an easy dinner recipe coming to the blog soon. A few Sundays ago, I made a Tuscan chicken bake, and it was so good. So easy too!

Lots of Sundays spent hanging around the house dressed up as Batman, going on long walks, and folding laundry from the week. It is crazy how much laundry has accumulated after adding another kid, and I do not even do my husband’s laundry. I have three full baskets at the end of every week!

As you all know, one of our favorite activities is sidewalk chalk. And I keep getting targeted with new chalk colors on my Amazon. I think I will be writing a blog just for chalk content to share what chalk I buy, how I do my drawings, and fun chalk ideas for summer with the littles!

Right now, we have a superhero lover. He is kind of moving away from things like Paw Patrol, Blippi, and other little shows and absolutely loves superheroes, Ninja Turtles, and other things I know nothing about. He is still obsessed with Danny Go, though.

I asked on Instagram the other day which chalk art we should do next, and we got so many amazing ideas. So stay tuned for the chalk art to come!

Remember in my last recap blog I mentioned that my Mockingbird broke in half and we found out there was a recall? Well, we reached out to the recall center, and they sent us a brand new Mockingbird stroller, even after using it daily for four years straight. I cannot believe it.

We are so relieved because we use this stroller for all of our walks, and it is where my son always took his afternoon naps while I walked. They are an amazing company with great customer service!

I’ve been able to get up early to go on walks. My newborn is starting to tolerate them when he’s awake a little more each time.

Afternoons are always filled with jeep rides, Legos, Magna-Tiles, chalk, and gardening!

I did manage a trip to Trader Joe’s during one of the school days while my husband was on his last week of paternity leave. I still wish we had one closer!

I have been making a lot of my favorite orange salmon lately, and hmm, maybe I will make that for dinner tonight. It sounds so good. We enjoy it with steamed green beans, rice, and a crunchy cucumber salad.

It is that time of year again… Carowinds is back open! We renewed our passes this year because of how much we went last year. I think we went over twenty times. This year, my son is big enough for even more roller coasters and rides, and he is so excited.

My mom was so sweet and watched the baby so we could spend the entire day with just our older son. It is so important to do one on one time after a big life change like adding a new sibling. He had the best day, and luckily it was not too busy in the early morning, so we were able to ride some of his favorite roller coasters several times without any lines.

And of course, I packed snacks and lunch, but he convinced us to get chicken fingers and french fries. When you have a son who hardly eats, you let him have it, lol.

After Carowinds, we headed home to get ready and then went out to his preschool’s 20th birthday bash. It was so fun with games and pizza. He had a big day!

I love when my little neighbors come over and ask me to draw something for them to color on the sidewalks. I need to start a weekly chalk social for the kids, lol.

I picked up a bunch of pizza ingredients at Trader Joe’s and had my son make homemade pizzas on a Saturday night. He called his pizzeria the Ninja Turtle Pizza Place, and his little restaurant game worked out well because he actually ate the pizza.

So far, our newborn has been an angel in church on Sundays. I make sure to keep him up as much as possible before our 8:30 service and then give him a bottle when we get there so he will fall asleep, and it has worked. He attended his very first Palm Sunday.

After church, we had swim lessons, Ilios for lunch, donuts for dessert, and a family walk before heading back to church for the Easter egg hunt!

On Monday, I went on my walk and then immediately got to power cleaning the house after a crazy weekend of messes and laundry. See why the blog has been slacking? Between having another baby and the cleaning, I will never catch a break. I am currently sitting on the porch using my foot to rock the baby chair while I write this. I have been attempting to write this for weeks now and keep having to add onto the end of it because new things are happening, and I do not want to wait a whole month to include them in the next one.

After cleaning the house, it felt so good to have it all done. I love when it is sparkling and everything is in its place. But I had mom brain so bad I always walked out of the garage for school pickup in my house slippers, Christmas ones too.

After school, I always have some kind of activity planned with my son, and baking cookies with me is one of his favorites. I think it is because he gets to steal candy pieces and eat cookie dough. We made some delicious almond frosted sugar cookies and lemon crinkle cookies for my husband to take into work on his first day back from paternity leave.

We have had another picky eater win this month. My son now likes tacos! And for moms with severely picky eaters, adding a new healthy food item is a serious win. I use ground turkey and ground beef with Siete seasoning for the taco meat, and then add a little cheese and beans. He’s also a big fan of cucumbers with restaurant ranch. I make homemade ranch and stick it in the to-go cups to make him think I got it at a restaurant.

Hot or cold, we make sure to head out for our nightly walk around the block after dinner.

After school drop off, I have been going on a three mile walk with the baby and our dog Leo. It has been so nice feeling like myself again and being able to get back to long walks.

My mother in law bought my son a book called What Should Danny Do? from the Power to Choose series, and he loves it. It is an interactive book that teaches kids how to make good choices with consequences. It gives you a scenario and then asks what Danny should do, and it shows the consequence from each decision. I have been using that a lot when we have little hiccups. I will tell him he has the power to choose, and it has actually worked. He is very aware of good and bad consequences, especially with our behavior chart. Let me know if you would like a PDF link to print it.

Anyway, the point of this was to tell you that he saw ants on a log in the book and begged for days to try it. So after school, I took him to the grocery store to get the ingredients. Of course, he wanted nothing to do with the celery after insisting that I buy it. I knew it would happen, so I bought giant pretzel sticks as a backup for the peanut butter and raisins. So now his ants on a log are the pretzel stick version.

And just like that, spring has arrived. I love azalea season in South Carolina.

With perfect weather, we just have to make it to the parks. I love when we get to meet our friends there and let the toddlers play for hours in the afternoon. We have a favorite little hidden park in a neighborhood that is shaded and fenced, which toddler moms know is the goldmine.

This was one of my first weeks solo parenting during the day, and even though I was intimidated at first, it ended up going pretty smoothly!

One afternoon, I took the two boys to Rock Hill Coffee to meet up with my mom after school. I am always so excited when they have their orange coffee drinks on the menu. I love orange in my lattes. I had their orange blossom with traces of ginger, and my gosh, it is so good! The orange flavor is so fresh, and I wish I could figure out a way to make it at home.

On Good Friday, we started the day with homemade chocolate chip pancakes and a long walk with the family since everyone had the day off. I was excited because my husband was taking my son to Carowinds for the day so I could clean the house, and when I am in the mood to clean, nothing is safe!

It definitely took so much more time to put laundry away, clean, and organize with a newborn, but I just tried to fit everything in between naps and feedings. Since my husband and son were gone all day, I managed to do it successfully. I love when the house is clean, even if it only lasts about 48 hours before getting toddlerized again.

Chalk time with our friends on Saturday morning!

Saturday night before Easter, we had dinner at one of my son’s favorites, The Improper Pig in downtown Fort Mill. I tried their fried rice, which was amazing, and mixed it with their Asian green beans. I have been craving this meal since I had it. So yummy!

’Twas the night before Easter…

One of our friends told us to plant jelly beans, and they might grow lollipops on Easter morning, and it works!

How cute are these Easter baskets? My son and I took a HomeGoods trip to find a cute Easter basket for his little brother for the Easter Bunny to fill, and when I saw this one, I was so excited. But I could tell my older son wanted it too just by the look on his face, and when I looked on the bottom shelf, I saw another, so I had to get it!

After dumping out all the Easter baskets and going through everything, we wrangled him up to get ready for Easter service at church.

Even though it was raining, Easter Sunday was perfect.

After church, we headed out to my parents’ house for brunch, an Easter egg hunt, and spent the day playing games around the house.

Spring break started the Monday after Easter.

We were not traveling anywhere, so I wanted to do some fun things locally just to make sure to get him out of the house at least once a day.

Luckily, he loves helping me with tasks around the house, especially gardening. We made a trip together to Wilson’s to pick up some flowers for the pots and the garden beds.

After the garden center excursion, we headed down the road to Flora, one of my favorite coffee shops. I love how cute it is in there, but especially their coffee. They also have amazing pastries and quiche.

I ordered myself an orange creamsicle latte, and it tasted just like a melted creamsicle. It was crazy. I also ordered one of their amazing potato and spinach quiches and banana bread for my son. Such a delicious treat!

We spent the afternoon planting everything into the beds and my front pots, and also planting the zinnia seeds I harvested last year. I am excited to see them come up.

For dinner Monday night, I made fried rice with andouille sausage, clearly inspired by the one we had at the restaurant a few weekends ago. It was really good!

Monday through Friday, our new family rule is to eat dinner together and go on a mile walk. I am hoping we can continue when it gets super hot in a few months.

We always watch 20 minutes of a show at the end of the night since we do not let him watch shows during the day, and it is a great way for us all to wind down a little bit. But each night, he wants his brother to sit on his lap to watch Magic School Bus with him. It is so cute!

Look at these gorgeous azaleas!

For day two of spring break, we headed out to Bush N Vine Farm with our good friends for a few hours of play. Even though it has been so warm here, we got a pretty chilly spring break!

For lunch, we headed to our favorite, Southern Touch Bakery in downtown York. I go for the best drip coffee, and my son clearly goes for the chicken wings and ranch. This spot is so good, and we love going there and sitting outside.

We did a day at home on Wednesday.

That meant we could play with chalk, bake a little, and just play lots of Legos and Magna-Tiles on the patio.

One of the next chalk drawings my son requested was Charlie Brown and friends. Ever since going to Carowinds, he has become obsessed with the Charlie Brown characters. We always get the cute H&M collection for him, too!

This was one of the most fun ones to do!

On spring break Thursday, I packed up the boys after our walk and headed to the botanical gardens for the castle park. It was so cool, but we did not stay long because of how crowded it was, so we will have to get back there soon!

We headed to downtown Belmont for lunch at The String Bean, and then after, we headed home to enjoy the weather and play around in the backyard.

I was so excited for the good weather on Friday. Finally, a day in the 70s with a little breeze. After our morning of playing around the house, I packed up the car and we headed to our favorite park to meet up with a friend.

The boys played together for a few hours. It is so nice being able to sit in the shade and have your toddler play with a friend for hours while hanging out with one of your friends. Sweet baby slept almost the entire park date.

I surprised my son by ordering his favorite, Domino’s pizza, for lunch right to the park. He had Domino’s at a birthday party one time and now he is obsessed, so he was so excited to see the car with the Domino’s sign pull up. Every time he sees those cars, he thinks it is like an ice cream truck where it will stop and give you pizza. It is so funny.

Friday night, we had a friend stop by who was in the area for dinner. I made their favorite, my turkey meatloaf recipe. I paired it with roasted vegetables and baked potatoes, and ended the evening with chocolate chip cookies.

Saturday, I was lucky enough to make some deviled eggs for dinner at a friend’s house. For some reason, we hit some kind of sleep bump, and the baby napped maybe thirty minutes the entire day, and only with contact naps. Kyle and my older son worked on mowing and putting new topsoil on the grass all day.

We headed to our good friends’ house with their favorite deviled eggs in hand. We had the best meal. They made amazing smoked wings, lemon ricotta pasta, and broccoli salad. My friend also made a delicious blueberry cobbler for dessert.

Guess what? You know how I said we had a weird sleep day for the baby on Saturday? Well, it turned out to be a very lucky night for this tired mom. He slept through the night! I kept waking up every hour checking on him. I was like, what?!

Now that I keep him up from 4 until bedtime, he does sleep 5 to 6 hours, but all 8 was amazing!

Now that garden season has started, I am so happy. All of my climbing roses are in full bloom, and they are making me feel alive again. I go out with my coffee and the baby in the other hand and just walk around looking at everything blooming.

After church, I went on a walk with the baby and Leo, and my husband took our oldest son to swim lessons.

It was a big day for us. My mom came over to watch the baby, and we took my son to his very first baseball game. On Sunday, the Charlotte Knights let the kids run around the bases after the game. It was such a hit!

We seriously had the best day ever. We had great seats down by the field, but it was so hot, so we made our way up to the shaded area.

My son had his very first bag of Cracker Jack, got a ball, ate some nachos, and even after all that, downed a big bowl of Dippin’ Dots. His first baseball game was such a success. We are hoping to make it to a Phillies game next year with him!

His favorite part was running the bases!

I have so much more to blog, but I am going to stop it here and add the newest things we have been up to in the next blog. 🙂 I had my doctor’s appointment today for my postpartum checkup, and everything went great. I snuck off to the grocery store to pick up dinner stuff for tonight, so stay tuned for a new recipe!