The Saturday 7

1. Lucy had her 2 year well child check up yesterday. She weighs 25 lbs (32%) and is 35 inches tall (83%). It's so crazy that she has consistently been tall for her age! I don't know where she gets that from! She had 3 shots. When they put the first one in, she just yelled "owie!" When the second two went in though, she really cried. :-( She recovered quickly though thanks to a sucker and some Elmo stickers. :-) The doctor is referring us to a pediatric podiatrist because her left foot points in so much when she walks. I'm glad she's being proactive about it. Hopefully at this age it will be easily correctable.

2. I made a couple new winning recipes this week. Chicken Tortilla Bake and Cream Cheese Spaghetti Casserole. The spaghetti was my favorite, so I'll share that recipe here. I linked to the other one if you want to look it up.

Cream Cheese Spaghetti Casserole (from Plainchicken.com)

12 oz spaghetti
1 (28 ounce) jar prepared spaghetti sauce
1 lb lean ground beef
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 clove garlic, minced
8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated [I used shredded 5 cheese Italian]

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees.
In a skillet, brown the ground beef until cooked through; drain fat and stir in spaghetti sauce.  Set aside.
Cook spaghetti according to directions on packet.  Drain and place cooked spaghetti in bowl.  Add cream cheese, Italian Seasoning and minced garlic.  Stir until cream cheese is melted and the spaghetti is thoroughly coated.
Lightly grease a 9x13" pan.  Spread a small amount of meat sauce in the bottom of the dish.  Put spaghetti on top of sauce and top with remaining meat sauce.  Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.
Bake for 30 minutes, until bubbly.

It was great as leftovers, too! Justin and I both had it for lunch the next day. Yum! 

3. Now that Lucy is 2 and we're almost out of diapers from the last box I bought, I've decided to get down to business with the potty training. We've been having her try to go every night before bed. She's gone every night for the past week. Sometimes she just squeaks out a tiny little bit, but the past couple nights she's really gone. We've been reading potty books and talking about it a lot and rewarding with candy. So she's definitely interested. I have 5 days off next weekend thanks to Memorial Day, so we're going to do the "wear underwear and take her to the bathroom every half an hour" approach. Wish me luck! Haha. I'm sure I'll report back next week.

4. Lucy has a new phrase: "excuse me." It actually sounds like "me me." But it is so cute. I figure she must have learned it from me because I say that to Lola 100 times a day as I'm trying to walk up and down the stairs. (Lucy also says, "move, Lola!") Yesterday, Lucy wanted to sit in the chair I was sitting in, so she pushed on me as hard as she could, shouting "me me!" Haha. 

5. We have been loving the warm weather this week. Lucy absolutely adores being outside. And I'm loving the chance to work on my tan for Libby's wedding. But  I'm a little hesitant of going outside these days. There have been so many bear sightings in our area lately. In case you're new around here, I have an inexplicable phobia of bears. One was spotted about 5 miles from my house. *shudder* 

6. Speaking of fears . . . I saw this sign in front of a church this week: "Anxiety is unbelief in disguise." Sigh. I usually love those cheesy church signs. You know . . . "Ch__ch - what's missing? UR!" Lol. I think they're great! But I'm not a fan of the anxiety one. I hate the implication that my anxiety is disbelief. I truly believe that some forms of anxiety are a chemical imbalance. My life absolutely changed when I went on anxiety medication. It erased so many of my anxious tendencies. (Obviously not all of them, as number 5 illustrates!) But even aside from that, God does not promise to give me smooth sailing! Terrible things happen to Christians. Certainly I know that God has a plan for my life, and nothing happens to me that he doesn't allow. But that doesn't stop me from worrying he will let awful things happen! I'm still afraid of the pain. I'm not saying it's right to constantly live in a state of fear. But I think calling all anxiety unbelief takes it too far. 

7. I have been doing terribly on my Radical Experiment. I never remember to pray for the countries, and I'm about a whole book of the Bible behind in the reading. I need to devote like a whole afternoon to reading the book of Leviticus.