Jack's first watermelon!

This blog is all about food. We Huffmans love to eat. All of us. Here's more information than you would ever want to know about our eating habits.

First all, there's breakfast. It's by far the most challenging meal for me to provide and I don't love breakfast foods to begin with so I kinda wish breakfast just didn't even exist. Cereal, a very reasonably priced and tasty option in America is rather expensive and quite boring here. Some American brands run as much as 12 dollars a box! Andy has found a brand of German cornflakes that he likes so I buy them about 5-10 boxes at a time for a little less than four bucks a box. He's memorized the German labels and attempted to read the back of the box in German. Reading labels is a little of an obsession for him. Der Nuperfriesh de start en den tag!!!! (a fresh start to the day!) Andy can eat cornflakes every day and be just fine but I get quite bored with them. So we sometimes opt for bagels. That sounds easy enough but the place we get the bagels is kinda far away. So I try to stock the freezer with bagels from time to time. EG likes a cinnamon bagel with cream cheese. Another option for breakfast is toast made from semi sweet Chinese sliced bread. It's ok in a pinch. EG's faves include oatmeal and yoghurt. I also make banana bread and other muffins from time to time. I made cinnamon buns yesterday, which were great, but way more like a dessert. I'd rather have it as a late night snack or something. Recently EG has started to ask for fried rice for breakfast. We often have some left over in the fridge so she and I have been enjoying that lately. In my opinion, it's the best of our breakfast options.

For lunch we eat Chinese or left overs. The Chinese is usually way better than the leftovers. Lunch may be my biggest meal of the day. I don't love breakfast so I eat very little and by lunch I'm starving. That on top of nursing gives me quite a lunch time appetite. EG loves the Chinese. Fried rice day is her favorite by far. That's when we take all the left over Chinese food or fresh veggies in our fridge and stir fry them with rice. By we, I mean Xiao Li. It's so yummy.

And then there's snack time. We have one in the morning and one in the afternoon. If she hasn't already had her yoghurt for breakfast, she'll have that for a snack. She usually drinks the yoghurt but occasionally we put it in a bowl and add sprinkles, which EG pronounces, "Sphinkles!" Otherwise, she has fruit, or pretzels, and some Chinese snack foods that are pretty normal tasting to our American taste buds. She loves running errands with me because it usually includes a snack-one that takes a while to consume, like a lollipop!!!

And dinner. Oh dinner. I spend a lot of time thinking and preparing for dinner as we eat American food and it takes a while to prepare. We eat everything from Spaghetti and grilled chicken to Philly cheese steaks and chicken salad sandwiches. We love food. We love American food. We love dinner.

Dinner is a little challenging for me, as I have two little eaters who need lots of attention during dinner time. From shoveling pureed pumpkin into Jack's mouth to cutting up noodles and making sure EG eats everything, dinners are sometimes a tad chaotic at our house.

We also love dessert. Sometimes we go the extra mile and have things like homemade popsicles! And then other times we do something simple like watermelon.

Speaking of watermelon, Jack got his first taste of watermelon this week in quite an unconventional way! Let me explain-I've been nursing him for almost 8 months now and making lots of baby food for him. I recently decided to wean him. The main reason was that we felt like I was just not able to keep up with how much he needs to be drinking per day. I was sad as I feel super attached to nursing him for some reason. But he seems way happier these days. He's started to eat Rusks. I know...what is a rusk? well, evidently it's a word for a teething cracker. I bought these vegetable teething rusks this week and he had a blast gnawing on one while we ate dinner!

I found evidence last night that Jack was not getting to eat from me. It seems he decided to take his hunger issues into his own hands. Last night as I was changing his poopy diaper, I found paper in his poop. Upon further observation, I recognized it was from a book we have! The funniest part is that the book he decided to snack on is called "God Made Food," a book full of pictures of food. I confirmed this by finding missing pages in the book. It seems his food of choice was watermelon!!

CONGRATS KATIE!

Way to go sister! We are proud of you! Danny is a great instructor! You should ask him about the first time he took me out to do a left turn. I now know you should break rather than speed up when turning left. It didn't take us too long to get out of that ditch, did it Danny?

Rossie, Welcome to Our Room!

Hi! This post is for my Rossie. My mom tells me that Rossie loves to see where her grand babies sleep. "If I can just see where you lay your head at night, I rest much easier!" So my mom and I had this idea that we should give Rossie (and my other grandparents) a tour of our new room!

The idea of the room is that it will be a fun place for both Jack and I to sleep, play, read, and enjoy life! Jack isn't actually sleeping in here yet, but maybe one day! Between him waking up sometimes and me yelling out in my sleep, my parents decided to wait a while before we share a room. But I can't wait until we share this room. I think primary colors were a great choice-don't you? Not too girly and not too boyish!!! Check it out!!! Mom got the red curtains made and the white valance was a long curtain that she got made into a valance! All the decor is from Ikea and is a primary color animal theme! What a cute rug! Dad hung these shelves. Mom painted the letters and she plans to get some frames made to put on the shelves with pictures of all our grandparents and our Aunts and Uncles! This is a view from the window. We still have our changing table, even though I don't wear diapers and Jack would for sure roll right off that thing! Mom uses it to store all our clothes and she plans to put some pictures on it!

Here's another view from the window. The door across the hallway is to the bathroom. The little orange board in my room has pictures of people we are praying for and some memory verses and other things we are learning about!!!

We covered the bean bag with matching fabric. I love to sit with Mom and Dad in the bean bag and read before bed!

I like to brush my teeth...everywhere I go!!!

Dad hung these shelves. He worked very hard and he taught us all a very important lesson. He said that doing a good job around the house includes cleaning up your messes after you work. He did a great job hanging them and we all pitched in to vacuum, wipe up and throw away the trash. He said he learned that from Poopaw.

He also hung these super cute pictures.

And especially for my Rossie-here is where I sleep! I'm on the bottom bunk right now and I'm not allowed to go on the top bunk. But when Jack moves into my room, I'll get to move to the top!!! Isn't it cozy. Mom and I love to get in the bed and read and "talk about things" before I take my nap.

Thanks for visiting. Rossie, want to have a sleep over? I really think you would like sharing a room with me!!! I was thinking you could come over soon and spend the night and you can sleep on the top bunk!!! Miss you!!!!

So Happy Together

Our dear friends, David and Marianne, along with their precious baby girl, Sarah, came out for the day last week. You might remember that Jack and Sarah have an arranged marriage. From the looks of things, they are getting off to quite a good start!!!

Hi Sarah!! I'm so glad you came over to play!!! Being with you makes me Happy!!!!

If they do get married, these pictures will be perfect for their rehearsal dinner video!!!
So thankful for good friends!!! As you can tell from the pictures, Jack is not a small dude. He is consuming MASSIVE amounts of food. Since he eats so much, I am trying to get him on table food as quickly as possible. Making enough baby food to keep up with his appetite is no small feat. He had his first bite of french fry tonight at KFC! Ok, so that's not a very healthy intro to big people food but liking fast food is important if you're a Huffman. We like fast food, it's true. But more than that, it's one of the only western, quick, convenient and kid friendly options for us here in China. We love to grab McDonald's for lunch on Sundays on our way home and there's a KFC not to far from where we live. It took EG quite a while to start liking fast food (though she has now been thoroughly converted to a fast food lover) and I hope it won't take Jack quite as long to realize the goodness of some McDonald's french fries.

Besides Jack eating his first french fry, there was one other highlight from our time at KFC tonight. It came when Emma Grace had an accident in her pants while playing in the playland. She immediately felt the need to take off her wet clothes and started running through KFC with no shoes and bottoms...just a shirt and a hairbow. She also told me today while using the bathroom, "I need some privacy!" Oh, my sweet Emma Grace, I just love you.

From this post, you might think all we eat is fast food. But rest assured, health conscious grandparents, EG was munching on pears and broccoli at lunch and Jack scarfed down sweet potatoes and zucchini before he had his first fry. Actually, I am pretty sure it's my mom who passed on the love of McDonald's fries to me! Thanks mom!!!! Wish you were here to enjoy some with us!

Eclipse!!!

Our world is just amazing. July is usually the rainy season here but as you can tell from my weather report, we haven't had very much rain. I am actually pretty happy about that since I have two little ones who love to get outside, even though it means I am losing the bet with Andy! Oh well. Along with really sunny weather, we've also had an earthquake and a solar eclipse! The earthquake happened a couple weeks ago and was a couple hundred miles from here. We were eating dinner and felt it and went outside just to be safe. It was scary for us after the big earthquake that happened here last year.

And yesterday we got to experience a solar eclipse! We took EG outside to see it, though I am pretty sure she didn't understand. It was a little cloudy, which made it great for looking directly at the sun. It never got totally eclipsed here but here are a couple photos of what we saw!

Mostly eclipsed:Later on: July has been an interesting month nature-wise!

Push Ups

Jack is working on his crawling skills. This is his newest move! He gets up on his hands and toes like he's ready to do a push up! It's hilarious-he lunges forward to try and reach whatever is in front of him. So fun.

Here are a couple funny conversations I had with EG today!

We were walking outside and EG was carrying one of her baby dolls.

Me: Emma Grace, is that baby heavy?

EG: No

Me: Well, if something is not heavy, then you say it's light. Your baby is light. Is mommy heavy or light?

EG: light

Me: Thank you. Is Jack heavy or light?

EG: Heavy.

Me: Is Daddy heavy or light?

EG: He is BIG!!

Later on the same walk:

Me: You know North Carolina is in America.

EG: I remember that place. I remember Momma Nette. She is special. Is Poppa Dan special?

Me: Yes!!!

EG: Is Katie special?

Me: Yes!

Mr. Seven Months

We're getting to that stage where getting Jack to sit still for a picture is quite a feat! He is super active and really close to crawling. He grabs everything in sight, inserts promptly into his mouth and usually mananges to spit up carrot or pumpkin onto everything he touches! My carpet will never be the same! He is a joy to be around, wears 9-12 month clothes and he can now crawl backwards! Andy thinks he'll be crawling for real by August!