Picture Updates

Since I haven't been blogging much, here is a little picture update of the little monkey.

Michaela refuses to let me feed her anymore, she is all about being an independent eater! Here she is eating some banana coated in Cheerios (makes it easier for her to grab). She is on the road to walking! She can cruise along furniture, and uses her little car to zip around the house.

She discovered the joys of balloons at a friends birthday party last week. I wrapped the balloon around her waist and she had a blast grabbing at it and playing with it.

She starting to show tendencies toward OCD. She always lines up her bath toys neatly like this, and is starting to seperate them into categories (ducks, turtles, crocodiles, and letter toys).

I finally attempted using my MobyWrap as a back carrier. I was terrified I would drop her, but I found an easy way to get her on there that feels much safer than the other ways I had tried.

She has started pulling up in her crib, and I'm terrified she's going to fall out! I can't put the gate up because it makes soooo much noise and always wakes her up. I can't just leave the gate up because I'm too short to put her down. I think it is time to buy a new crib, any suggestions?

Her first birthday is coming up! Since she is my little monkey, the party will be monkey themed. Aren't the invitations I made cute?

That's all folks!

Chinese New Years Resolutions

I was being a very lazy blogger over New Years and never got my resolutions out. So being that this weekend was Chinese New Year, I think it is ok for me to publish them now. :) In no particular order:

*Get our budget back on track. Philip and I pretend to be healthy spenders, but really, when it comes to something we really want, we are like ADD children in a candy store. As I was looking at our spending from last year, the biggest problems were groceries, eating out, and buying gifts for friends and family. We are going to try to eat out less, and share meals when we do. I plan on making menus every week to help streamline my grocery spending. And I want to make gifts as much as possible, or really take advantage of after-holiday sales for the upcoming years presents.

*Spend less time on the blogosphere. I know, this seems crazy, but it seems like I am constantly checking my Reader. As much as I love reading my favorite blogs, if I can keep my habit down to one time a day, I will have so much more time for other things I have been putting on the backburner, like making a baby book, writing my novel, or planning menus.

*Spend more time in the present. I seem to always be planning ahead and looking to the future. I put off projects because I think next week or next month will be a better time. I need to start paying more attention to the things that are here in now in my life, including my husband and my daughter. I need to appreciate the little things and spend that extra time playing or listening instead of trying to get something else done.

*Work on my relationship with God. I need to stop taking our relationship for granted and really start behaving like the Christian that I am. I want to spend more time in prayer, both structured and through my actions and thoughts towards other people.

*Treat my body more kindly. I want to stop shoving bad and harmful food into my body. I want to stop lying around on the couch and letting my muscles turn to pudding. I want to stop criticizing my body and blaming it for all the bad things in my life. I am going to treat my body the way I treat Michaela's. I give her good healthy food, it is time to be just as nice to myself. I have her walking and moving around all day. It is time that I follow her lead and do the same. I adore every little hair on her head and every adorable little fold of skin on her body. It is time that I learn to love myself that much.

Wish me luck with my resolutions! I hope to re-evaluate in the summer and see how I am doing.

Thank you Reynolds...

Dear Reynolds,
I hate you. I know hate is such a strong word, but in this case it is completely applicable. I know we used to have such a good relationship, I mean I use your products several times a week for cooking, storing, and even cleaning purposes.

But yesterday I decided to cook the extra turkey that I bought at Thanksgiving so that I would have turkey instead of chicken for my recipes the rest of this week. I decided to use your famous turkey cooking bags so that I wouldn't have to be continually checking and basting it. I am not a stupid girl. I know that my roaster is metal and that plastic and heated metal do not belong together. But for some reason I thought that this would have been taken into account with this product. I mean, I'm sure that a large majority of turkey roasting pans are metal right? And there was no warning anywhere on the box or on the instructions! I just assumed that this was magic plastic, you know the kind that would have been specially designed to not melt to a still-new favorite metal turkey roasting pan in under 30 seconds. I guess I was wrong.

To conclude, I hate you Reynolds. For messing up my pan, for making me spend an hour trying to clean the burned, melted plastic off, and for making me spend my day continually basting my turkey while my pissed-off, teething daughter screamed in the background. Grrrr.

Chocolate Mousse & Tuiles

Motherhood for Dummies hosts Family Moment Mondays, check her out to get more ideas on how to spend time together as a family!

My FMM today is a delicious recipe that I tried out this weekend. We were invited to a friends house for dinner and asked to bring a dessert. I sat racking my brain trying to come up with something that would be easy and fast, and finally turned to Kraft, my go-to website for quick food. I found this delicious recipe for chocolate mousse using Toblerone candy bars. This was super easy and super quick to put together. With your supervision, a child could easily make this. If not, your kids will love licking the mixing spoon with this dessert.

The only problem was that this mousse was a little bit rich. I started thinking of ways to balance the richness of the chocolate, and decided to try making some mild cookies to go along with the mousse. I decided to make a tuile- a thin, mildly sweet cookie that can be shaped however you like while still warm from the oven. I found this particular recipe here. Your kids will love making these cookies into little cups, rolling them into little cylinders, making them look like waffle cones, or simply draping them along a rolling pin to create a pringle shape like I did. If you want to go one step further, you can dip, or drizzle the cookies in melted chocolate once they are shaped.

Toblerone Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:
· 8 triangles (2.5 oz) Toblerone Chocolate
· 2.5 cups Cool Whip, thawed [I used about 4 cups, it made it a little less rich.]

Directions:
· Microwave chocolate about 1 minute or until mostly melted and let cool about 30 seconds.
· Add in Cool Whip and stir until well blended.
· Chill in refrigerator for at least 1.5 hours. [The longer it chills, the better it tastes, and the more mousse-like a consistency it becomes.]

Belgian Tuile Cookies

Ingredients

• 1/2 c butter, softened [I used margarine]
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 c all-purpose flour

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375, grease cookie sheets.
• Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Add egg white, vanilla, and salt
• Gradually add flour until well blended.
• Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet, and flatten slightly with a spatula. [These spread when they cook. The original directions say to place them 4 inches apart on the cookie sheet, but I did them about 1 inch apart and they were fine.]
• Bake 6-8 minutes, or until golden brown.
• Pull them out of the oven, as soon as you are comfortable handling them, take them and place them over a rolling pin to create "pringle" shape.
• Let cool about 1 minute before removing from rolling pin.

Homemade Baby Food

I've started making Michaela's baby food. When she first started eating solids, I wasn't worried. All the little jars read "Ingredients: Carrots" or "Ingredients: Peas". Then the jars in the next stage started listing ingredients that I had no clue what they were. I realized that Michaela probably shouldn't be eating food with chemicals or additives that were more than 5 syllables long.

I started doing my research and found this awesome website that lists all the foods and timetables for introducing them, along with combination and recipe ideas up through toddlerhood. It is actually much easier than I thought it would be. Basically I bake or steam the vegetable or fruit, puree it, freeze it in ice cube trays, bag it, and pull it out the evening before I use it so that it can defrost in the refrigerator overnight.

The biggest change came with going out though. It seemed like such a hassle to carry an ice pack with frozen food to a restaurant or friends house. For these nights I rely on bananas, pears, and avocados. None of these have to be cooked, and can easily be prepared by mashing them right before feeding.

Like I said, it is really not as hard or time consuming as it sounds. It took me about a week (just working during naps) to make enough food for a couple of months. Now I feel much better about what is going into my little monkey's tummy. :)

Brussells Sprouts Really ARE Disgusting...

Last week brussels sprouts were on sale at our local grocery store. I'd never tasted them before, and I knew how healthy they were for you so I thought I'd give them a shot. They couldn't really be as bad as everyone makes them out to be right? I mean, it had to just be dirty lies inspired by generations of vegetable hating children right? Surely with my advanced adult palate, I would love the cute little vegetables.

Um, no. When kids say brussels sprouts are gross, it's because they really are gross. I tried sauteing them in a little bit of olive oil and adding a bit of cheese on top. They looked delicious. Then I took a bite. And gagged. Ok, it must have just been the method of preparation. The next night I chopped the rest up and cooked them with apples and brown sugar. They looked delicious again. Then I took a bite. And gagged. Yup, I can guarantee you I will not be forcing my children to eat brussels sprouts. They are disgusting. :(