Dishing it up

This week I started out with a rough meal plan. And a hellaciously large grocery bill-- due in fact that I went to the store ALONE. I milked the alone time for all it was worth. I walked EVERY SINGLE aisle in the store. Dangerous. Then to top it off, I managed to forget at least one major ingredient of nearly every planned meal. Required a trip back to the store on Tuesday, but since I only needed about 4 things, it was fast and easy.

Monday
Spicy Pork and Tofu
Brown Rice
Salad

Tuesday
Whole Wheat Rotini with Pesto and Veggies
Salad

Wednesday
Stuffed Portobello Caps
Salad

Recipe

4 large Portobello mushroom caps
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, divided
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup finely chopped fresh spinach
1/2 cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese, divided
2 tablespoons finely chopped Kalamata olives [I didn't have these and left them out and don't think they were missed]
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
3/4 cup prepared marinara sauce

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Coat a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray.
2. Place mushroom caps, gill-side up, on the prepared pan. Sprinkle with salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Roast until tender, 20 to 25 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, mash ricotta, spinach, 1/4 cup Parmesan, olives, Italian seasoning and the remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper in a medium bowl. Place marinara sauce in a small bowl, cover and microwave on High until hot, 30 seconds to 1 1/2 minutes.
4. When the mushrooms are tender, carefully pour out any liquid accumulated in the caps. Return the caps to the pan gill-side up. Spread 1 tablespoon marinara into each cap; cover the remaining sauce to keep warm. Mound a generous 1/3 cup ricotta filling into each cap and sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan. Bake until hot, about 10 minutes. Serve with the remaining marinara sauce.

Makes 4 servings.

Thursday
Chili
Salad

Friday
Lasagna. Well, that was the plan. I had cooked it, and taken the foil off the top to brown the top layer of cheese when Avery started crying. I went upstairs to nurse her and she decided to take her good old time. And honestly, I totally forgot about the lasagna. Needless to say, it was burned by the time I smelled it and remembered. So dinner ended up being Wendy's. A real bummer when you consider the time and cost of making lasagna. Sigh.

Four Year and One Month Stats

Today we went for Ellis and Avery's latest Well Child visits.

Ellis had her 4 year check and 2 shots - her first of 2 H1N1 and her last of 2 Hepatitis A. She was a very brave girl, until after the fact. She spent a good portion of the afternoon refusing to talk to me, pointing at her arm and whimpering. She finally fell asleep on the couch this afternoon and I hope that when she wakes up I will be forgiven.

Ellis' 4 year old stats:
Weight: 28 lbs [3rd Percentile]
Height: 37 inches [3rd Percentile]

Avery is following in her sisters' footsteps. And, although she is growing by leaps and bounds, she is still a peanut! And still a sleepy one. I hold her and see a lot of this:


How sweet is that! I could just sit and stare at her all day long [That is if her sisters, laundry, dishes, and life in general would allow it!]

Avery's 1 month stats:
Weight: 7 lbs 14 oz [5th Percentile]
Height: 19 inches [3rd Percentile]
Head: 14 inches [3-5th Percentile]

Birthday 'Do

This weekend I cashed in on my birthday present from my mom. She gifted me highlights and a haircut. And, it is amazing how far that can go for making a girl feel human and pretty again!

Thank you mom!

I am not that gifted in taking pictures of myself - so these were the best that I could get, but they give the basic idea. I had some layers put into give some shape.







Was glad for the lift, even if the hairstylist did make the comment "Highlights will work great for camouflaging your gray."

Uh, thanks. Way to make a girl feel *young*.

Dishing it up

I thought [wrongly] that I would feel like getting creative and cooking. Since I am not rushing around trying to work and take care of things at home. That I would have all kinds of ideas for dinner - since I spend 4-6 hours sitting on the couch nursing a day and watching a lot of the food network.

Not so.

I am totally NOT inspired. Want meals that take little prep time. Little clean-up time. And if I can avoid the grocery store - even better. The pickings are getting pretty slim around here. Unless there is a way to make Power Bars into a dinner entree, I will have to put on my thinking cap. Make a menu. And get to the store. Wish me luck.

Here is how we fared this week.

Monday
Beef Stew [Courtesy of Grandma Jean!]
Drop Biscuits
Salad

Tuesday
Vegetarian Soft Tacos
Salad

Wednesday
Parmesan Chicken
Egg Noodles
Salad

Thursday
Vegetarian Style Stuffed Potatoes
Salad

Friday
Girls are eating Popcorn Chicken, Pierogies and Mac and Cheese
Not sure what the grown-ups will be eating. I am seriously considering a bowl of Hot Grape Nuts.

A Little Joy...

...helps the medicine go down.

I have been trying just about everything to get Ellis to take her antibiotic. Forcing it. Spoons. Syringe. Bribes.

What we got was lots of crying, thrashing, and her eventually spitting it out or throwing it up.

But today I tried something that worked like a charm. No crying. She doesn't even know that she took her medicine!

I mixed the antibiotic into some ice cream and served it to her on a mini cone!

Covering Mouths

Although it is probably too late.

The chorus at our house sounds a little bit like:

Cough, cough, hack, hack.
[And even the cat having a hairball.]

Lovely.

When, oh when, will it end?

I am guessing about 2 weeks after school lets out for the summer.

Viewing Habits

There was a very strange mess at our house. It was a bird feeder filled with orange slices, cranberry juice, and some other possible "Mystery Ingredients." I realized this morning, when unloading the dishwasher (and the bird feeder was in there), that my mother must have found this delightful concoction and cleaned it up. She would not have known that this was one of Chase's "Chopped" concoctions.

I don't know what other 6 year olds are watching these days. Although we watch our fair share of Disney Channel and Nick programming, Chase's 2 favorite shows right now are both on the Food Network:

and

Chopped has inspired a lot of mystery ingredient concoctions lately. The bird feeder was a mock blender for a mixture that I am sad to say that I [and Mark did too] actually sipped. I was lucky this time. It wasn't too terribly gross. She is still sticking to things that she might willingly eat.

She hasn't been totally influenced by the show. After all, last night the TV challenge was to make a dessert with cherry tomatoes, tofu, and ginger snap cookies. Yum?

King Luther Day

Yesterday, Chase had the day off from school. According to her, it was "King Luther Day". It was also, according to Chase, January 15th [And she is right that is MLK's actual birth date] She did not want to hear that it was actually the 18th and that it was actually "Martin Luther King Jr. Day."

"Martin Looter?? Martin Luker?? Martin Loofa?? I think it sounds much nicer as King Luther Day."

Okay, Chase.

So how did we spend this holiday?

We started the day by high tailing it to the dentist. Momma needed to have the filling replaced. I had made it through the weekend by using orthodontic wax [a great tip if you ever need it!] Here's to hoping that the dentist got it right this time. She says that there must have been a little ledge on the filling near my gum and that flossing eventually dislodged it. That's what I get for actually flossing...

This was an early morning run. The dentist saw me before she had opened for the day. I guess that she was jam packed - since some people were off of work for the day. It was a good thing that the place was empty, because I had all three girls with me and Chase and Ellis happen to be sick. Ellis is the sicker of the 2.

Before even pulling out of the dentist, I had called and made an appointment at the pediatricians. Chase just has a cold, but Ellis has progressed to a sinus infection and the doctor thought that she might have heard a small rattle in one lung. Ellis passed the oxygen test at 95% so the doctor said we won't worry about the lung, but she did prescribe Augmentin. Ellis' first Antibiotic. We are lucky to have gone 4 years without! Now I have the task of bribing her to take the medicine 2 times a day for 10 days. Not easy. But even after only one dose, her coughing and congestion are already improved. She still has a fever, but it is only around 100 instead of 103. Looks like things are headed in the right direction.

The doctor gave Chase and Ellis a stern talking to before we left the office. She told them not to breath on the baby, kiss the baby, lick the baby [that is my favorite warning!] or touch the baby. Apparently any fever the baby might get over 100.5 would necessitate a trip to the hospital and some very scary and invasive tests. At her tender age they worry about bacterial sepsis, which is pretty rare, but so dangerous that they don't take any chances with fevers in this small of baby. Oh goody. Hoping that this is the same bug that I fought recently and that Avery is getting all my antibodies.

But we finished the day on somewhat of a high note. We had a delicious beef stew dropped off by my Mom. Yum. Only one lonely bowl is leftover [Which Chase has claimed for tonight's dinner!] And Ellis made it through the night with only one coughing fit at 3am [A vast improvement over the night before where she was up every hour on the hour.]

How was your "King Luther Day?"

Universal Rule

But why?

Why is it that things happen at the most inconvenient of times?

Problems like to strike most often in the middle of the night. On a weekend.

In my case, the filling I had put into my tooth, less than a month ago, fell out last night around midnight. I cannot eat or drink anything without extreme pain.

And the dentist can barely squeeze me in on Monday. And because I am nursing, there isn't much other than Advil that she can recommend. She is calling in some topical numbing agent for me to use that she said should help a bit. Apparently Orajel would just make it worse. And apparently nursing causes the gums to be more swollen than usual and she said probably is making the pain worse than it normally would be. Go figure.

Part of me thinks that she owes me one - that she should come in on a Saturday to fix this. After all, her filling didn't even last the month. But I understand that she has a life, too.

But seriously, is it just me? Or do these things always seem to happen in the middle of the night. On a weekend. [Occasionally they might happen on a Wednesday - but only if there is a blizzard brewing...]

Fungus Among Us

I should have known better. I should have been downing my acidophilous and caprylic acid. I did take antibiotics, after all. But it seemed like the yeast had passed us by.

But it is here today. I have the soreness, the painful letdown and a fussy baby to prove it [not to mention the intense sugar cravings]. But it's not here to stay! I have started the treatments for systemic issues and plan on stopping at the mustard seed to get some gentian violet. At least I have learned how to deal with it from past experiences--even if I didn't learn enough to be pro-active [can we all say "denial"].

Working hard to get back that delicate balance.

Recipe Round-up

This is a post for my sister, Christa.

Welcome to the world of having to prepare dinner for you husband on a nightly basis. One of the most challenging things I do. Finding something substantial enough for Mark to call dinner. Here's what was on our menu over the past year.

And, another inspiration. She tends toward some heavier and meatier selections than I do. But, she has some great recipes and ideas.

Another great resource is Allrecipes.com and they even have the option of telling them what you have on hand and them suggesting some recipes. Of course I couldn't forget Betty. Try the easy meal finder. Also the menu ideas.

And when you find a great, fast, filling, and well received recipe, pass it along. Mark would love some tested and approved variety!

2 Weeks and A Due Date

Yesterday marked the second week of Miss Avery's life on the outside. And today is her official due date. I am so thankful to be reporting on how things are going here on on the outside.

This past weekend, Avery had her second doctor's appointment. Her jaundice is nearly clear. She gained 10 oz during the week taking her to 6 lbs 10 0z! She is a strong baby and is holding her head up and on Monday she even reached for and grabbed a toy-- much to Ellis' delight! She hates being bathed and having her clothes changed-- so it doesn't happen very often. But now that I can breath and smell, I am sure that it will have to happen more often.

It is great to be on the mend. I am still tired out more easily than usual, and am glad for the excuse to climb in bed and nurse. The house is messier for these forced rest periods [Chase and Ellis are great at playing together, but it nearly always includes some kind of couch cushion fort, stuffed animal picnic, or dress-up time that required everything out of the dresser and now is on the floor] but I can live with that for awhile.

And a belly update. I am happy to report that I am able to wear my own jeans and though they are a bit tighter, they are not obscenely so -- I am about 10 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight -- and I swear that about half of that is Avery's meal supply. Not bad for being only 2 weeks postpartum.

Seriously, Mom?

Avery and I were having a very serious conversation the other day.

She seemed very concerned about what I had to say.

Or, was questioning my sanity, already.

Pink Gun Slinger

Watch out.

Ellis is quick on the draw.


Her weapon of choice?


The ice cycle.
















We have a full arsenal.

*These pictures were taken last weekend and many, many inches of snow ago. Expecting another 5-9 inches today!

Fried Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwiches

Are You Hungry Tonight?* That's what you should be having for dinner.

Apparently it was Elvis' favorite. And it is his birthday, after all.

*I was given this cookbook on my 18th birthday. If you read through his favorite recipes, it is no wonder that he needed ever size-increasing jumpsuits!

One Week and Counting

Yesterday marked Avery's One Week Birthday.

I celebrated by getting an antibiotic [which hopefully mentioning will not jinx] that has helped me turn the corner and feel more human. My sense of smell returned this afternoon! And although I am still a bit under the weather, I am much less congested. Yippee! I has been hard to enjoy much of anything when feeling so gross.

Avery is waking up more these days. And when awake, insists on being held and taken around to look at lights. Sitting in one place to look at lights is only good for a few minutes, but walking and looking is such a hit! She also prefers to be held when she is sleeping. Shortly after being placed in her basket she will start crying. Pick her up and she stops crying and immediately goes back to sleep. Amazing how quickly babies seem to figure this out. I need a few extra arms. I am not a huge fan of the sling right now - feels too much like being pregnant and my chest is still a little sore. Maybe once I really feel human again it will have more appeal. [I remember that it worked well for toting Ellis around.]

I am sure that another week will bring additional changes and adjustments.

Looking forward to facing them without a pocket full of Kleenex.

4 Day Check

We braved near blizzard conditions and bad roads to trek into the doctors office for Avery's first appointment.

She weighed in today at 6 lbs even. And she shrank. They measured and remeasured. Stretched. And measured again. And they have no idea how the hospital got 19 inches. Today's stretchiest and longest measurement was barely 18 inches. Can't say that I am totally surprised. We grow 'em short at our house.

She also has a mild case of jaundice. I was told to find some sunshine for her. Hm. Has the doctor looked out the window today? Fortunately, it is very mild and the doctor thinks it should clear up soon and we shouldn't worry much about it.

We get to head back next week to make sure that she is back up to her birth weight. The way this girl nurses, 6 oz in a week should be NO problem!