Craig is like, whoa. As long as he is awake, there is no rest. The other day he was thrashing around in his high chair after finishing his meal (and flinging the bowl across the room), so I let him get down and run wild so that the rest of us had some hope of enjoying the remainder of our dinner. In three seconds, suddenly a baseball cleat landed in the middle of the dinner table. We sat blinking splashed spaghetti sauce out of our eyes and wondering where the hell that shoe came from, meanwhile Craig was already off and running to the next scene of chaos. A drive-by shoeing.
Last night, I took him, filthy from playing outside, and got him all bathed and toweled off and pajama’d and hair combed, ready for bed. I turned my back to get the big boys’ baths going for seconds – seconds – and he was in the boys’ drawn tub, fully clothed and soaking, and quite pleased with himself.
And this morning, I gave him a cup of grapes to eat so he’d be distracted while I fed the boys. Again, within a millisecond of me turning my back, he was standing on the coffee table in the middle of a pile of toys and books, hurling grapes at the dog and hollering some kind of Braveheart battle cry.
He is The Beast. He is the Craigerator. He is exploring and learning and not malicious but merely trying out new things and yadda yadda yadda, WHATEVER. My back is aflame at all times, just from lifting him out of trouble. Please, oh god of mamas of little babies, please help us all survive until he turns 2.
Anyway. Here’s the meal plan. Rest assured that this post took hours to draft, as I was interrupted a billion times by Craig climbing into the kitchen drawer/throwing contraband Lego in the dog bowl/standing at my feet and screeching “up! up! up!” until I picked him up and he kissed me on the cheek. He’s a cute hurricane, at least.
Broccoli cheddar quinoa bites and whole wheat paprika baked fish sticks. These are basically broccoli cheese mini muffins and fish sticks. I’ve made the latter successfully, but the former is a new thing to try.
Spinach soup and grilled cheese with pesto. I have a lot of fresh spinach to use up, basically, so we’ll give this a whirl.
Spinach and feta and mushroom quiche. I mean I have a lot of spinach. Plus some feta I just found in the freezer.
Sausage and pepper one pot pasta. Less pots. More sanity.
Shepherd’s pie with potato crust. It will not look this fancy, and I’m using ground turkey.
And Craig just blew his nose on my pants.
*****UPDATE******** edited to add:
Buffalo chicken dip, for today’s game. We’ve got chicken, we’ve got buffalo sauce leftover from last week’s lettuce wraps . . . it’s just a natural marriage of game food flavors + game.
I’m scared.