Adventure breakfasts

Lately Big Girl and I have been having Adventure Breakfasts. Little Girl gets them too, but the whole adventure concept is probably lost on her.

Rules are simple: each morning is a new surprise menu and you can only fall back on cereal once a week. This week we have had smoothies and scrambled eggs with shredded Parmesan (Monday) and gluten-free hot cereal with raisins and brown sugar (Tuesday). Insert fruit as available.

Tomorrow's surprise will be pineapple coconut yogurt and some leftover biscuits I served with potato soup earlier this week. 

It has been a fun experiment so far, a way to use up some of the things I had in the pantry or fridge, and a nice change from rice and corn cereal. Let's face it, those get so old after awhile.

She doesn't know it yet, but Big Girl gets a turn to plan the menu next week. I'll have to okay it, of course, and I'll end up doing a lot of the preparation but I think it will be fun for her to play chef for the week.

Happy birthday Little Girl!

It's been twenty-one months that I've loved you: nine months that you grew inside me and the year that has followed.

Six years ago, barely pregnant with your older sister, I dreamed vividly of two little girls, one a preschooler and the other a newborn just home from the hospital. Many times over the next few years I thought of that dream, even during the three years following your sister's birth when I was learning to adjust to the idea that she might be an only child.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, though, I had a feeling you would be here someday--although maybe not necessarily a girl. In fact, I called you Jack the entire first half of my pregnancy, so convinced I was that you were a boy after all. I remember when the ultrasound technician told me I was having another girl my first words were "are you sure?"

You were born during one of the hottest summers of my life, though I'm sure it only seemed that way due to my suddenly heavy and awkward size. When you were born, rain finally fell and ended our drought. It seemed to parallel the tears of joy I cried at meeting you for the first time.

I thought that I loved your sister and wouldn't be able to love you as much. I have discovered that I love both of you equally, and with an intensity that I never knew I could. You are the children I dreamed of many years ago.

I love the moments when you smile a three-tooth grin, or tell me "ssssss" with your finger in front of your mouth when you think I'm too noisy, or cling to me like a baby koala, or even when you throw a food you find distasteful on the floor and innocently say "uh-oh." I wish I could remember these times with your sister, but I was in a postpartum fog for so long that I didn't calm down and appreciate much beyond my stress and anxiety. You have the benefit of my experience and I won't make the same mistakes that I made with your sister.

Admittedly, you have fewer pictures in the scrapbook, and the ones that are in there also feature your sister or one of her various limbs, usually in your face. She loves you so much that she can't stand to be away from you. We all feel the same way. We love you, our big Little Girl, and wish you a very happy birthday.

Goals for July

This has absolutely nothing to do with the post but I do love some well-placed irony...

I got a good start on my dining room (nothing picture worthy) and hope to finish this month.

I might be taking a lesson from Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin (a book I read earlier this year) and give myself permission to abandon a project. I have a few flowers that haven't found a home in my yard yet and I may find someone else who wants them. They are annuals that will lose their blooms soon anyway so I don't want to stress myself over plants with such a short shelf life.

I forgot to update that I did organize my medical records--as well as the rest of my filing cabinet--but I couldn't take pictures because the top of the cabinet was being used as a painting stand for 12' baseboards.

I'm starting to run low on my generic beauty products so I think it's time to look at some of the pins for natural shampoo, body wash, etc.

So:

1. Finish dining room
2. Find a new home for my forlorn flowers
3. Make a few new bath products
4. Read two books

Books about food and picky eaters

Last month I read this book:

I enjoyed this book. As primarily a memoir, it was not earth-shattering but a well written book about how Americans tend to eat a lot of processed food. The book was the author's attempt to teach nine volunteer cooks how to cook from scratch and do away with pre-packaged, high sodium everything. I could really see the author's passion for food in her writing and that in turn made me feel renewed enthusiasm for cooking.

But what mostly got my attention was a comment on the back from the author of this book:

Both books are equally well written accounts of bringing people back to eating whole foods, but this one really resonated with me as a mom. I thought I was raising non-picky, healthy eaters but upon reading this book, I see there is so much room for improvement. I'm only halfway through so I can't give a full review, but I see where some of the tips could be implemented in our lives.

Parts of the French eating model seem harsh (and the author herself agrees). Even from birth, children are put on an eating schedule, and I fall on the side of breastfeeding on demand in the early days. However, I think the concept is true that sometimes we can get stuck in the on-demand mentality of feeding our kids so they never learn delayed gratification. The snacking chapter was especially enlightening.

The book is not about making kids go hungry or getting involved in power struggles over food ("you'll sit here until you eat every last green bean, Miss" types of battles). Instead, the French parents lead by example with healthy and adventurous eating habits and kids naturally learn a mannered approach to eating well.

I did notice that beyond baguette, there was not much listed in the diet that made me think "oh, I couldn't eat that" (pasta was mentioned in a negative light). Maybe expanding my cooking repertoire to include leeks and kohlrabi might not be a bad thing.

I'm on Facebook!

All the cool bloggers are doing it and I'm one of them now! My page is still very basic but I'll work on it. Hopefully it will be an outlet for "what's for dinner?" type posts as well as things that I think wouldn't make a full blog post.

Busy Saturday here. Didn't get a chance to garage sale but I am participating in a sale today (at least my stuff is) so hopefully I'll make some money.

Eating an elephant one bite at a time

I'm feeling overwhelmed this week. It's not that I'm doing that much, it's just a combination of having been sick + keeping a to-do list with 100 tiny tasks on it. 

I know moms are supposed to be blessed with superhuman multitasking ability but I guess that superpower skipped me. I would much rather work on one thing until done and then start another. But life doesn't give me that luxury.

So today and hopefully by the end of this weekend, my elephant consists of the following:

1. Finish my sister's housewarming present and mail

2. Sew in a million ends on a scrap yarn afghan I made for church

3. Frost cupcakes

4. Pack a picnic lunch for tomorrow

5. Do something with the flowers that I brought home from the garden center well over two weeks ago. Fortunately we've had enough rain they have been thriving in their pots.

6. Go to the grocery store and replace the tomatoes, cottage cheese, and whipping cream I need for meals this week that molded when left in my 80+ degree van overnight.

7. Pick up an item I bought on a Craigslist-ish Facebook site

8. Put out an item I sold on the aforementioned site for pickup

9. Make lemonade (since life didn't give me any lemons, I had to buy them at the store)

10. Have my husband bring in the huge bucket of joint compound I bought and patch the dining room walls (round two).

11. Fill out paperwork for an upcoming doctor's appointment

12. Mix up a batch of homemade Pamela's baking mix*

*after declaring my undying love, I found a copycat recipe online that, while good, is not the original. However, I can't beat the 75% off price and will continue to mix my own since I bought all the ingredients already.

On the plus side, today I have already:

1. Bought joint compound

2. Baked cupcakes

3. Mopped the kitchen floor

4. Finished grocery shopping for the week (at least I thought...)

5. Procured a couple of addresses I've been needing

6. Helped Big Girl clean her room

7. Washed two loads of laundry 

8. Played with the kids on the swingset

So if I'm not around much this weekend I'll be busy eating my elephant.

Baby fever

I don't have baby fever. I wonder if that's normal. I fully expected to, and tonight as I was rinsing the shampoo out of Little Girl's hair while attempting to keep her from standing up in the tub, it hit me that I have a toddler.

The second child has been so easy compared to the first. I guess it's different for everyone and a lot depends on the child's personality but Little Girl has been a nice surprise after the challenges I overcame with Big Girl.

Not to say it hasn't been hard, especially the last five months of waking up at least twice in the middle of the night to rock and nurse back to sleep. She's a messy eater and a 19 pound chunk that has no interest in walking. Plus, I'm starting to question the wisdom of raising a baby in a two story split level house which will need, by my estimation, approximately six baby gates.

Maybe it's because I'm a seasoned parent or maybe it's a combination of many things, but this past year has been just a flicker on my timeline. Nursing was such a challenge the first time, and I honestly think it was both our stubborn personalities put together that helped us fight our way to what I determined was the "finish line". Sleep was insane. I think I could count on one hand the number of times Big Girl slept through the night that first year. And that's with a very liberal definition of sleeping through the night. I missed my life at work like crazy and many days thought I would go insane with no adult interaction (or interaction with anyone who had a vocabulary of more than 12 words).

So why don't I have baby fever? Maybe it's because there are still a few challenges with raising children that are still fresh in my mind but I think it's because I feel a sense of peace and contentment. I look at the future and see our family of four and it just feels right.

I guess I do have baby fever in a sense though. Not for an 8 pound newborn but for a 2500 square foot house. I love the anticipation of pregnancy and watching the creation of something new. I'm expecting a new house.

Original color of walls: yellow
Joint compound: white patches
Sample paint: various shades of brown
Ultimate paint color choice: blue

Please don't judge...not only am I repainting, this seems to have become a catch all spot for random junk. I guess the before and after will be really satisfying this way.