Becoming an Accidental Almost-Vegan

Matthew was having some serious crank sessions in the evenings, and after a week of being unable to comfort him during these stretches, I figured it was probably something I was eating.  Typically, if a baby is colicky, Mommy is eating one of three things.  I wasn't sure I could eliminate any of them.    

Dairy?! 

Chocolate?!!  

Coffee??!?!?!?!??!

Call it love.  Call it desperation.  I cut all three at once.  I switched to green tea in the mornings.  I cut out all dairy and chocolate.  Easier said than done.  But it worked.  Then I tried to reintroduce them one at a time.  Coffee was fine, but I would now rather drink the tea.  Chocolate didn't seem to matter.  Dairy, oh how I will miss you!  I have been off it for awhile and tried twice to reintroduce it.  However, I don't think I have even paid attention to whether or not it bothers Matthew.  Here's the thing.  

_It_Bothers_Me_

We already buy rice milk for Charlie, due to the increasing research linking dairy consumption and asthma.  

We have been slowly working our way toward eating less meat, currently eating it less than once each week.  We're still working toward completely eliminating it from our diets.  This is by choice, and while some will agree and some won't, we are choosing this as a family.  It stems from health concerns, 

But now I have to eliminate dairy along with it?!  

Oh well, such is life.  

Anyway, because of this, I took some vegan cooking/baking books out of the library.  One of the first baking recipes I tried is for banana chocolate chip muffins.  The recipe was super easy!  These are by far the BEST banana muffins/bread I have EVER had.  They are super moist and they have chocolate chunks in them!  

Matthew

Our little man is getting so big already.  It is going way too fast!  I need to start snapping more pictures before we don't have any to look at later!

Birthday Party

 Charlie had a "Thomas" birthday this year.  He loves his trains so much, and was SO excited!  He is still telling us about the Thomas cake his Aunt Sissy got for him!

Charlie's friend Aaliyah came.  He was so excited to have his friend there.

 Uncle Chris and Gaga snuck in a few snuggles with Matthew while Charlie was busy!

Train Ride

 For Charlie's third birthday we decided to let him ride the train.  Charlie and I had Martin drop us off at the Albany Rail Station and pick us up in Schenectady.  We took a train ride to Nana's!

They gave Charlie a paper train and a coloring book with crayons.  He also got an apple juice!  He couldn't have been happier.  He just kept smiling and saying, "we're on the train!"

He told me that next time we will take the train to Nagymama's.  That would be a really long trip!

Christmas Morning

 Christmas morning we got up and Charlie opened his stocking first.  He was so excited (and still so sick) that we had to stop and do the nebulizer before we opened presents!  He didn't seem to mind.  He just played trains while he did it!

We decided to buy Charlie a set from Hearthsong that is wooden cars, roads, etc.  We were overall happy with the decision (and split the set up, so he received some of it for his birthday).

Christmas Eve

Charlie was very sick during Christmas.  His asthma causes small colds to become pretty nasty very quickly.  We were in the pediatrician's office on Christmas Eve morning.  Charlie ended up spending the holidays on an oral steroid, along with albuterol and budesonide via the nebulizer every few hours.  It was a little difficult, but we made it through.  We ended up staying home for Christmas Eve, and each opened one gift.  Charlie was so excited for Christmas to come, but managed to go to sleep pretty easily!
Anyway, here are shots from our Christmas Eve:

 Matthew slept through it all.

 Martin got Ticket to Ride- the card game version.  Ticket to ride is an AWESOME game, and I hope the card game lives up to the same standards.  We haven't gotten a chance to play it yet, though!

Charlie got Mommy a pair of earrings.  Every time I wear them he says, "You're wearing the earrings I gave you!"

Loki got a new bed.  He usually ends up shredding them at some point, but so far its still in great shape. I think that is because the cat took it over and claimed it as her own!

Gingerbread

I bought two gingerbread kits this year.  Charlie had so much fun decorating them.  By far, our little conductor thought the train was better!  The only unfortunate thing was that I didn't plan for a place to keep them and they ended up hogging 1/3 of our table for the entire holiday season.