Cooking for one is no fun!

Now that the big kids have gone back to their Dad’s for the school year, and Tommy has left for the sandbox, it’s really quiet here.  We joked before everyone left that August was the month of “leaving” and that September would be the month of “peace”.  Well, it’s not even September yet and it’s already Too. Darn. Quiet.

In addition to it being too quiet, there is too much food in this house!  What an adjustment to go from cooking for 5.5 people to cooking for just 1.5!  Turns out just two chicken breasts actually last me four days.  I do not like to eat the same thing for four days in a row (unless it’s a Chopped Chicken Cobb Salad from Panera).  A head of broccoli that used to disappear in one night now sits in the fridge so long I end up having to throw it out.  That 5 pound bag of potatoes started creeping me out with all of its’ eyes staring at me every time I open the pantry!

I did manage to grill some chicken burgers the other day and made just a few homemade “fries” to go with, and a fresh salad.  Unfortunately, the romaine has already started to wilt because it’s not being consumed quickly enough.  At this rate, those Panera salads are easing themselves into becoming part of my daily diet.

Today I cooked a homemade pizza, one of my favorites!  I take a thin crust, top it with a glaze of olive oil and italian herb seasoning, a thin layer of pizza sauce, mozzarella, green peppers, onions and turkey pepperoni.  To top it off, I sprinkle more italian herb seasoning on top and bake it at 425 for 10 minutes.  It’s really quick and delicious.  However, since I made this for lunch, I didn’t feel like cooking for dinner.  Yes, there were plenty of leftovers of this pizza.  Who wants to eat the same thing for 2 meals a day?  Not me.  So…I had to run out to drop some stuff off anyways so to Panera I went.

Doesn't this look WAY more appealing?

Besides, cooking for one (and a half) is no fun!

Wordless Wednesday

Learning to socialize from a 12 year old

I was on my way back home yesterday on a flight from DC to Atlanta when I saw a young boy being escorted onto the plane by a flight attendant. He is what is deemed an “unaccompanied minor” by the airlines. As he walked onto the plane, I could see his face was still wet from tears he shed while telling his father goodbye. His eyes were all red, and he looked really scared. My heart broke for this little boy, and made me think of my three children I had just dropped off at their dad’s the day before.

I wondered why his father wasn’t flying back with him. I wondered why his mother didn’t fly up to DC to go get him. I know that children over a certain age fly unaccompanied all the time, and it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. This little boy seemed so clearly upset and bothered by being alone. There was another unaccompanied minor that was sitting next to him. She was a very confident looking young girl…she looked younger than he was, but I would soon find out that was not the case. The flight attendants warned both of the children to stay in their seats when we arrived in Atlanta so they could escort them both off the plane. Afterwards, there were a few moments of awkward silence. I felt sorry for the little boy…I figured he was probably embarrassed about crying and now too shy to talk to the little girl seated next to him. I felt sorry for her too. I thought she probably was scared to talk to him for fear he would burst into tears at any moment. My thoughts of pity for the two of them were interrupted by the sound of their chatter!

The little boy apologized for the crying and explained to the little girl that he was just sad because he was leaving his dad’s and didn’t want his summer vacation to end. He introduced himself as Ryan. Ryan then went on to ask the girl what her name was, and she answered. They talked about Harry Potter, iPods, Angry Birds, school, sports, summer break, where they each lived, who they had been visiting, divorce, siblings, cousins, step-parents…they didn’t stop talking the entire flight. I was reading my book and overhearing lots of the conversation because they were seated directly across from me. By the end of the flight, I was just feeling sorry for myself…I had NEVER had the courage to strike up a conversation with a complete and total stranger, and then continue that conversation for a full hour and a half. It’s not that I’m stuck up and don’t want to talk to anybody…and in general I believe that most people don’t take the initiative to strike up such conversations because they don’t want to be seen as a pest. I don’t want to bother anybody. The man next to me might just want to sit in peace and read his newspaper (most likely he does!!). That’s all I usually want too! On the flip side, I really don’t get out much and should take the opportunity to meet new people when and where I can.

All in all, it’s pretty ironic that I learned something about socializing and meeting new people from some 12 year old boy that I initially thought was a shy, awkward kid…he sure proved me wrong!

I am now “that lady”

I may have been 7 or 8 years old the first time I was exposed to breastfeeding.  I was on an airplane with my mom and grandmother and I remember seeing a woman nursing her baby.  I saw a breast, felt my cheeks flush red, and quickly looked away.  I had never seen anyone do THAT before!  What on earth was she doing?  I can’t remember if I asked my mom or grandmother any questions about what I had seen.  I was probably too embarrassed to ask.

Fast forward 25 years…I am now “that lady”.  I have flown many times since my youngest was born.  I always nurse in public while traveling…in the airport and on the plane.  I really have no choice.  When my baby is hungry, I feed him.  It really is as simple as that.  This attitude isn’t limited to our travels…it’s an everyday way of life.  I have been blessed to never have encountered any rudeness or dirty looks as a result of me nursing in public.  I’m discreet, but I will not pile up blankets on top of my baby’s head…I live in Florida where it’s hot!

Sadly, a friend of mine (who does not breastfeed) has encountered negativity–while traveling.  She was on her way home after visiting me and her 9 month old daughter was asleep in her arms in the cradle hold.  A young boy (between 8-10 ish years old) was seated next to her.  The boy’s mother made a big scene and complained to the flight attendant that she didn’t want her son sitting next to that lady while she’s breastfeeding.  My friend got a little angry.  She was obviously not breastfeeding, and lifted her baby away from her body to prove that she wasn’t, which, in turn, caused her baby girl to wake up.

All I can say is that I’m glad it wasn’t me!  I’m pretty sure I would’ve told the woman where she could go and how to get there.  I’m proud to be “that lady who breastfeeds her kid in public”.  I’ve nursed at church, the mall, the beach, various restaurants, public parks, my kids’ school, the doctor’s office…practically everywhere!

Gawk all you want…maybe you’ll learn something!

The 7 P’s

This is a repost from Happy Baby Chronicles – because I think it’s a really important subject!  Enjoy!

Happy Baby Chronicles – The 7 P’s

The Dog Days (of summer) are *almost* over

Boy, this summer is sure winding down quickly.  I’ll be taking the kids back to Maryland in less than 3 weeks, and they’ll start school just a mere 10 days later!  The time has flown by again this year.  I’ve got a list a mile long of things that we need to do before they go back home…doctor appointments, clothes shopping, visits to the library, and hopefully squeezing in a couple or three more beach visits before they leave.  I’ve started on this list…Karissa wanted these “design your own” Converse All Stars, so they’ve been ordered.  She’s been poring over the Justice for Girls website all summer, carefully selecting all the clothing she *needs* for her first year of middle school.  The boys are SO much easier.  They honestly could care less about clothes and shoes.  However, Nathan has been hovering around the front door all day, waiting for the Fed Ex man to show up with his iPod Touch (his only wish for his birthday…which is August 19th).  Jacob…well…Jacob would be content with some new legos or some sort of action figurine.

I remember when it was back to school time when I was young.  I couldn’t wait to pick out my new set of clothes from the JCPenney fall catalog (I’m talking EVEN into my high school years…am I showing my age??).  It might’ve been 90 degrees on the first day of school, but gosh darn it, I HAD to wear those new jeans and new sweater on the first day!  I got giddy over new pencils, pens and notebooks!  I remember the swarm of people that would flood Peoples Drug and Dart Drug (ok, now I really AM showing my age) to pick up their packets of loose leaf paper, bottles of glue, and 3-ring binders the evening after the first day of school.  One thing that has changed for the better is that schools typically hand out supply lists before school starts, some as early as the last day of school prior to the new school year.  This at least gives parents some time to plan ahead and prepare!

Along with the end of summer also comes the end of my peace and quiet…since school is starting, so will the phone calls riddled with complaints about how “expensive these kids are”, “Don’t you know how much school supplies cost?”, and the “You really need to send me more money, who cares if you pay your child support?”  I usually just chuckle under my breath and say…”Welcome to my World…how does it feel”…etc., etc., etc.

I think the video says it all….love this song by Florence and the Machine.

Take two Midols and call me in the morning

With my daughter fast approaching her teen years, and right smack in the middle of her “tweens”, the drama is ever ensuing at our house.  This morning, I walk into my bathroom to find a host of toiletries belonging to her on the countertop, accompanied by her used bath towel lying on the floor, and a trail of her discarded pajamas and underclothes.

“Karissa!!”, I yelled across the house.

“What?”, she yells back.

And, so the drama begins.  I ask her what all that stuff is doing there, she gives me her answer with a sprinkle of tweenage attitude, and then I. Get. ANGRY.  My head starts to roll and bob at the same time.  Then I breathe.  I’m still upset with her, but rather than yelling, I try to reason with her, and a lecture begins.  Bad move on my part.  More attitude is spewing from every pore on her body.  She is rolling her eyes, about to cry, bobbing HER head.  It is a battle of wise estrogen versus the novice estrogen.  Girl, I brought you into this world…yadda yadda yadda.  Meanwhile, had my mother not been in the other bathroom blowdrying her own hair and could’ve seen/heard what was going on…she would have been LAUGHING!  At ME!  Ha!  I think she would have called that karma.  Or paybacks.  Either way it’s a witch with a “b”.

Later (like 20 minutes later), my daughter is walking through the kitchen and proceeds to drop her iPod Touch on the floor.  Given, it was a complete accident, but it still cracked the entire screen to the point it’s not usable.  In the process, she gets a pin prick amount of blood on the tip of her finger, and you would’ve thought somebody just stabbed the poor child.  She needs a Band-Aid, I absolutely have to get her a new iPod Touch because CLEARLY it’s my fault that a) she dropped it, b) Apple didn’t make it with a stronger  screen to begin with, and c) pretty much everything is Mom’s fault, so this must be too.  So, as I am telling her that I am in NO way going to fix it for her, I’m looking online to find the info for Apple repair.  This is otherwise known as “caving”.  I’m famous for this.  Yes, I totally caved.  I started thinking that I had paid almost $250 for this product just 3 short months ago for her birthday.  It’s an investment.  I actually just ordered another one for my soon to be 9 year old for his upcoming birthday yesterday.  I can’t just let it be trash.

However, this behavior on my part has created what looms in my daughter as her sense of entitlement.  I really need to learn to stand my ground.  I have a hard time with that, mostly because I am only with them for such a short time and I want our time together to be as peaceful and enjoyable as possible.    I will be working on that.

And so begins what will be a series of dramatic mornings, that rollover into afternoons and evenings.  This will be the story of my life, so long as she is with me (and probably alot of the time she is not) until she is at least 30.  Thank goodness I’ve only got one girl…so far!

It’s ok to be a food snob

The word “snob” has such negative connotations, but when it comes to food, there’s nothing wrong with being one.  It wasn’t that long ago that I wasn’t so particular about what I put into my mouth.  Although I didn’t eat fast food often, I did eat it.  Wendy’s, Burger King, occasionally McDonalds, and sometimes Arby’s.  Usually, I would deeply regret my choice immediately after I ate.  I would always tell people that it’s not that I didn’t like the food, the food just didn’t like ME!  It only takes a few times of abusing your body and having it reject those foods before you surrender to your body and stop feeding it junk.    While for many people, fast food is convenient, cheap, and highly accessible, diets that consist of alot of fast food are killing us.

In the last several months, I started buying meat that was considered “humane”.  Free-range chickens, grass-fed beef, cage free eggs.  I’ve also started buying as much organic local produce as I can at local farmers markets, and getting the rest from the “organic” section at my neighborhood grocery store.  Where I live, I’m fortunate in that the grocery stores have a large variety of organic items to choose from.  I’ve scoped out the farmer’s markets in the area, and even looked into joining a CSA (it’s just the driving distance on a weekly basis is a bit far for me to commit to at the moment).

The Single Wife has written about Clean Eating a few times on her blog.  I love reading all her posts, but its the ones about food that really got me thinking.  Skip the processed foods.  If you can’t look at the ingredients and pronounce them, there is a problem!  The more we get back to eating natural foods instead of GMO’s, the healthier we will be.  If you haven’t seen it yet, Food, Inc. will make you think twice about what you’re feeding yourself and your family.

Last week, I took my kids to Panera for lunch.  We checked out the menu online (I go there frequently, but the kids had no clue what they had) so they could be prepared when we got there.  Two of them chose the kids PB&J, and the other wanted grilled cheese.  The kids meals are served with an organic squeezable yogurt, and they have plenty of other things to drink besides soda.  Organic milk, lemonade, water, smoothies, or juice.  I was pleasantly surprised when they ALL agreed that the food was delicious and tasted better than…McDonalds!  Wow!  In fact, they have been surprising me  all summer.  They have been eating more fruit than I can keep in the house.  I buy apples, bananas, oranges, peaches, watermelon, grapes…they eat it all.  There are some days that I have to tell them “No” because I’m afraid they’re going to overeat.  One night at dinner I made some free-range grilled chicken, salad, fresh steamed broccoli and brown rice.  They came back 2 and 3 times for more.  This just proves that kids do like good, wholesome food.  They don’t have to always have chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers and pizza.  Do I treat my kids to the occasional cookie or ice cream?  Sure I do.  Do I allow myself those same things from time to time?  Of course.  However, those are looked upon as “treats”, not as a part of our everyday diet.  As an alternative to those “treats”, I buy them organic yogurt.  These are the one thing that I have TRIED to develop a taste for, but no matter what brand or flavor I try, I just can’t like it.  However, the kids all love it.  Stonyfield makes a really delicious yogurt and the kids love the Blueberry, Peach and Banana flavors.

What are some of your favorite clean foods?

Are we having fun yet?

Most definitely!  We had a rocky start to the week…it started off like this:

Saturday, a week ago, I went to pick up the big kids.  I arrived and ended up waiting an HOUR for them to finish getting ready before we could leave.  No biggie…we had plenty of time, and Tristan was happy so long as he had his Mommy.  Once I picked them up, we grabbed our lunch and dinner at Subway, went back to my parents’ house and then to the airport.  Smooth sailing so far, right?  Yeah…until I heard those dreaded words at the airport…”Ground stop in Atlanta”.  Our flight was seriously delayed.  At first, it looked like it would be just for 30 minutes…they let us board the plane, I got all optimistic, and we were excited to leave.  Once everybody had boarded and gotten situated, the captain announced that another ground stop for Atlanta had been issued and we wouldn’t be permitted to take off again.  We sat on the plane for about an hour and a half before we could take off.  We had a connecting flight to make in Atlanta, and I was nervous that we would miss it.  Once we landed, I was relieved to see that our connecting flight had also been delayed, and wouldn’t be departing for another 45 minutes.  Big sigh of relief.  And then the captain had to open his big mouth again and tell us that although we had landed, our gate was full and we would not be able to deplane  for another half hour or so.  It ended up being about 50 minutes before we were at the gate and off the plane.  My connecting flight departed and the hunt for another flight began.  All this was occurring after 10:30 pm.  I was TIRED!  So were all the kids.  I found the gate where a flight to Orlando would be departing around 11:15, and it has already  boarded confirmed passengers, and was in the process of putting stand-by passengers on.  I needed to get on that plane if I wanted to get home in time to watch Tommy complete the Dad’s Day Triathlon the following day.  Well, thank you very much, Gina from Delta!!  She got us on the plane and we were off…unfortunately we wouldn’t arrive in Orlando until nearly 1 am, and the drive home is just over an hour.  We were getting home around 2:15 am.  The kids went right to their beds and passed out, and Tommy and I followed suit.

Somehow, around 5:30 am, Tommy woke up, got himself ready, and left for the Triathlon.  He said he kissed me goodbye, and that I tried to get up to join him and he told me to go back to sleep.  I don’t remember any of that.  I do remember waking up around 8:30 and finding a text from him shortly after that he had already completed it.  I was stoked he did so well, but not so stoked that we had all missed it!  We went to brunch after he got home, then I spent the rest of the day grocery shopping and letting Tommy catch some rest before we had to go to his boss’ house for a picnic.

Right after Tommy woke up from his nap, Karissa had taken Tristan with her into the kitchen.  Nothing out of the ordinary when baby-hog junior is around.  Less than two minutes later, I heard a blood-curdling cry come from the kitchen.  Something happened to the little guy.  I ran to the kitchen, hurdled over Jacob who was standing in the doorway.  Karissa was already holding him, but he was still crying.  She told me that she dropped him.  Before you freak out…she had placed him on the kitchen counter and he was sitting up.  She thought he would be okay for “just a second” while she turned around to get something (whatever it was, she forgot about what she was getting in all the confusion!).  He lunged forward and fell off the counter, straight onto the tile floor.  He landed on his back, and the back of his head.   He cried for a good bit (as would I have if my head had hit that hard floor).  I wasn’t really too concerned because he didn’t have a knot anywhere on his head that I could see.  It wasn’t until he vomited twice that I started to panic a little.  I thought it would be best if we took him to the ER to get him checked out to ensure he didn’ t have a bad head injury or a concussion.  So much for that picnic!!

We spent one hour in the ER (yep, just one hour!! quickest ER visit EVER!), then were sent on our way with some piece of mind.  Off to the picnic we went anyways…just a little late.

So, that’s that tale of our first 24 hours (almost…but not quite) in Florida.  I’m happy to report that the rest of the week was somewhat uneventful.  So, are we having fun yet?

I had to share this…from The Single Wife: Tiny hands……

Tiny hands…….