I Should Have Been More Clear...

Becoming a parent isn't always what we signed up for or what we expected. There's something new nearly every day, and so much of it is unexpected - some unwanted and some neat surprises.

No one ever asked me if it was ok to wake up at 6am. However, the wee ones periodically decide that they've slept enough and it's time to have romper room in one bedroom or the other - that is very audible in my bedroom where I have a deep and desperate need for sleep at that hour. I always heard about how life with newborns was hard because they didn't sleep through the night. I was prepared for that. I wasn't prepared to still not get full nights of sleep when they were this far out of diapers.

No one ever asked me if I wanted to ingest chemicals day in and day out. However, Mister Man went shopping with me today to buy a few simple things: crackers, applesauce, bread, and yogurt among them. Mister Man was excited to spot the bread first, but I told him we couldn't buy it at this store and had to go elsewhere because it all contained high fructose corn syrup (have you seen the studies showing that it contains mercury, among other health issues?). He didn't believe me, but sadly he looked at ingredient list after ingredient list and replaced the brands. We did find wheat crackers with four ingredients that we could buy. And we found some plain yogurt to which we'll add our own flavorings that avoided nasty chemicals we don't eat, but we bought no applesauce today because it all contained HFCS.

No one ever asked me if I wanted grey hair. And I don't. I really don't. Grey hair on women just makes them look older. It's not fair that we don't get to look distinguished. And my mom makes fun of me. And that nice little coloring job I did to make the bright red hair (that has since faded, thankfully) the other week? Yeah, those four silver hairs in the crown of my head decided that they liked their color and didn't absorb the dye. Give me another couple years, and you can probably just call me Granny.

No one ever asked me how much garbage I throw away on a given week. Our garbage company provides me with a 96 gallon garbage tote, however. The recycling bin is a mere 64 gallons. In general, we have a single garbage bag (and occasionally two) that goes into that massive bin each week. Our recycling bin overflows on a semi-regular basis - partly due to the large cardboard boxes from Costco that we use as grocery bags. I have to wonder how many people really throw away 96 gallons of trash each week, and then my head hurts when I start to picture the full landfills.

No one ever asked me if I wanted a kid who was different from all the others. But yet here I have Mister Man who is the sweetest little guy you could ever ask for. He still doesn't have a diagnosis, but this is likely short term, as tomorrow is day two of our nine hours of testing and evaluation by a developmental pediatrician. From the two hour meeting with me this afternoon, it sounds like they suspect at least some level of autism, which is no great shock for me. My heart breaks when I see him struggle with things that should be so easy for him - socially and behaviorally. But then I see how protective he is of those he cares about, and I know that I wouldn't trade being a special needs mom for anything.

No one ever asked me if I wanted to share in their lottery winnings. And I'm still trying to figure out why that is....

What question have people neglected to ask you?



PS If you know a little girl, you need to come enter this contest. Even I'm having fun playing with the doll we got. So don't forget about the Hot Locks giveaway!

So THAT'S Who Those Warning Labels Are For

With Mister Man now in kindergarten - and more socially aware - he's started to notice that what we feed him is far more restrictive than what other children are allowed to eat. He understands that we don't eat HFCS, trans fats, and other such fake foods, but it's still very hard for him to deal with not getting those treats sometimes.

In our latest trip to Costco, I discovered (or rather - THEY discovered, my little label readers) a product that is a "treat" similar to what many other kids have on a regular basis that I can - not quite feel good about - but be ok with giving them.

And so I bought the Simply Fruit from Fruit Roll-Ups. They're essentially just fruit juice and fruit puree, dried. And the wee ones were thrilled. They wanted to try them immediately, but we held off until after dinner. Then they wanted to share them with Grandma. Since we were going to see her the next day on our way to a birthday party, I packed some in my purse to show her.

On the drive to the birthday party (the very looooooong drive - we were in the car for longer than we were at the party, boo), the wee ones excitedly told Grandma all about them. They decided what flavor they were going to try, and they asked me to pass back their packages.

As I was helping Little Miss open her package, I noticed some writing on the wrapper, "PEEL FROM CELLOPHANE BACKING BEFORE EATING." (Yes, it was in all caps.) I giggled a little, and I showed my mom.

We then had a nice long conversation about how companies have to put the most ridiculous warnings on products nowadays because of the silly (and sue happy) people out there. I won't recap it, as I'm sure you've all had this conversation yourselves at one point or another.

Fast forward to our trip home.

The wee ones insisted that my mom try one of the Simply Fruits, and she decided on the Wildberry flavor. Since she was able to open hers by herself, I passed it back to her and thought no more.

A mere moment later, I heard an indignant, "Hey! Mine has a paper on it. How am I supposed to eat this?!

And yes, sadly, she was serious. She thought the cellophane referred to the outer wrapper. Fortunately, the wee ones were able to show her how it worked.



PS Don't forget about the Hot Locks giveaway!

Baked Potato Soup - Tasty Tuesday!

I did a lot of cooking last week. A lot. In addition to making regular meals for my family, I was also in charge of bringing lunch for twenty-five people at my local school district for our twice monthly meeting with the PTO presidents. That's a lot of food.

Since it was St. Patrick's Day on Wednesday, I decided that whatever I made had to fit the theme. Corned beef was out, since so many people are anti-corned beef - oh and the smell in a small room for two hours? Yeah, that killed it, too. I was going to do baked potatoes (Irish potato famine, anyone?) with all sorts of toppings and chili. Until the person at the last meeting brought in chili with all the toppings. Ugh.

I wracked my brains and finally came up with something. I made the Irish soda bread I mentioned last week, along with homemade whole wheat baguettes. I did a quick spinach salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Oh, and I made a baked potato soup.

I started making all of the above at 7am the day of the lunch. I had to be out of the house for an event at school at 10am. Start doing the math. Yikes! The soup was great. The second day. Cooking for two hours the day of the event? Well, it was decent, but it's possible that the potatoes were a little crunchy. Oops. Needless to say, I changed a few things around to account for my little mistake, and the soup - all two huge crockpots of it - has been gone for three days now.

I served it with a couple garnishes - fresh parsley, shredded cheddar, and crumbled bacon. The unexpected winner of the garnishes? The parsley made the best addition of all of them. If you're making this soup, make sure you put parsley on when you serve it!

Oh, and my other lesson? When traveling with two very full crock pots, use Saran Wrap, not masking tape. Those fill lines on your crock pot are there for a reason. My poor car.

Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:
3 bacon strips, diced
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 T flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper
4 c chicken broth
1 baked baking potato, cubed
2-3 baked red potatoes, cubed
1 t basil, dried
1 c half and half
1/2 t Tabasco (or other hot sauce)
1 c shredded cheddar
1/2 c fresh parsley, minced

Directions:
Bake your potatoes, and cube them. Note that the red potatoes will cook faster than the baking potatoes (you want the baking potatoes for their added starch to thicken the soup).

In a large saucepan (I used my Le Creuset bouillabase pan to make the whole thing), cook bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon and set aside. Keep 1 tablespoon bacon drippings, and dispose of the remainder.

Saute onion and garlic in the drippings until tender. Stir in flour slowly and mix well to ensure it doesn't clump. Add the salt, basil and pepper; mix well. Cook for 3 minutes to get the raw taste out of the flour.

Gradually add broth. Bring the mixture to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes, stirring regularly. Add the potatoes, cream and hot pepper sauce; heat through but do not boil.

You can also make this without baking the potatoes first. In that case, you'll want to take the boiled broth to a crock pot. Add the remaining ingredients as directed, and cook on low for 10 or more hours. It really is better the next day!

Garnish with bacon, cheese, and parsley. With all the soup I made, you'd think that I had a picture. Nope. I didn't take a one. It was so good I only remembered to take one after half the bowl was gone.

And yes, as always - go check out Tempt My Tummy Tuesday with Blessed with Grace!

I Learned My Lesson

As parents, we should be the ones teaching the lessons, especially when the children are small and impressionable. It shouldn't fall on the children to be the ones to remind us of the lessons that we're trying to teach. It doesn't always work out that way though.

Yesterday at breakfast, I got the wee ones' food ready, I gave them their vitamins, and I left my husband supervising while I ran downstairs to wrap a present for a birthday party we had later in the day.

Shortly after I got down the stairs, I heard mild cussing by my husband followed by "I knew this was going to happen. I could see it coming!" in a not so happy voice.

I trotted back upstairs, prepared to intervene and do damage control. I found him mopping up milk from Little Miss's placemat. He had placed her heavy spoon on the edge of the cereal bowl, and it had tumped over.

The issue here (for me) is that Little Miss has a dairy allergy. Therefore, she drinks rice milk instead of regular milk ($1.88 per regular gallon versus $2.99 for a quart). And since she can't have many foods with calcium, she takes a liquid calcium/magnesium supplement to ensure she absorbs her calcium (since she's too little for a pill, she gets it in liquid form). The vitamin that lasts us a little over a month is $23.95. She loves the blueberry taste and begs me to put it in her rice milk. I obliged yesterday morning, even though I was sure she wasn't going to finish all her cereal and milk, but yet I couldn't waste the vitamin.

Since the milk had spilled only on her just cleaned placemat, had I been in charge, I would have carefully returned the spilled milk to her cereal bowl. With my husband mopping it up, I had no idea how much she had or hadn't taken, making it difficult to redose her. Plus the wasting of money.

*sigh*

I asked my husband to stop sopping it up and explained - not the most patiently, mind you - the issue. He just didn't care a whit, as he doesn't get the whole vitamin thing anyway. And replacing something wasted? It's just money after all - yes, he came from a very different background from what I did.

I groaned, told him I didn't care what he did and went back into the basement to finish wrapping the present. A minute or so later, Mister Man appeared on the stairs.

Look, Mommy.

What's this, Mister Man?

It's money.

Yes, kiddo. I can see it's a twenty dollar bill. What are you doing with it?

I want to give it to you so Little Miss can get some more vitamins. (And yes , just typing this is making me tear up again.)

Oh, sweetie! That's really generous of you, but you keep your money.

But Mommy, they're expensive. You said so. Do you have twenty dollars?

I do. I have a lot more than twenty dollars. You keep your money, Mister Man. I love how generous you are, but your money is yours.

I sent him back upstairs, and then I sat down on the steps a little and cried. He can be such a sweetheart and so generous and so worried about and protective of his sister. And sometimes I can really make a big deal about things that are so minor.

I'm so glad that he reminded me of this. After I was done, I was able to go back upstairs and change the tone so that everyone understood - especially the wee ones - that Mommy doesn't like wasting things, especially expensive things, but that there are so many things in the world that are far more important.

And then we talked about the things that are more important. As my six year old son reminded me.

The Real Definition

We've all heard of bi-polar people. I always thought it was simply because of the extreme up and downs and some expert somewhere decided that poles were as oppposite as you could get, so bi-polar it was.

Nope, not really.

Bi-polar came about because of Chicago weather. We always joke that you can have all four seasons in a single day, but really that's a joke. It doesn't really happen.

Right now, I'm not laughing. Today is the first day of spring. The past few days have been wonderful. I've gone outside without a coat. The wee ones have been using their spring coats. My dear friend the sun has been showing his face, and it has been glorious.

Today? Not so much. We are going from one pole to the other here - winter spring winter - and I can only hope that our bi-polar trip finds some equillibrium soon and bring me back my precious spring.

This morning when I woke up:

This afternoon, with the snow not yet letting up:

C'mon. I want my spring back. Enough with the joke. It's just cruel after a long, cold, dreary winter.

Why I Love My Children

Little Miss and I were baking in the kitchen the other day when she turned to me to have a little conversation with me. It took me awhile to follow where she was going, but my heart melted once I realized the way she was thinking.

As background, I've been doing a lot of baking lately for a variety of reasons - Irish soda bread for a meeting, brownies for a ladies night, banana bread just because, etc. Most of the time, the end results were meant for outside my family, so I didn't generally attempt to make them dairy free.

Mommy, it isn't fair if everything is always for me.

You're right, Peanut. Everyone deserves a turn - yep, totally unsure about where she's going with this.

I don't get to always have everything. Sometimes it's other people's turns. She turned and fixed me with a very serious look.

Why yes, sometimes it's your turn and sometimes it's someone else's. Now I'm preparing for an admission about something bad that happened in preschool.

It wouldn't be right if we only ever made things for me. Some of the things we make we want other people to eat, and so it's ok that we make lots of things that have dairy that I can't eat. It isn't always my turn to get what I want.

Oh! You're right, it isn't always your turn, but next time we make something, I promise I'm making it just for you!

What a little sweetie! Now if I could just get a few adults I know to have the same lightbulb moment.

This Is Not A Setup

I haven't been around much this week. It's our school's book fair, and of the thirty total hours we need volunteers (geeky me, yes I calculated it at about 5am this morning), I'm there for fourteen of them. Plus Little Miss had a parent/child activity at school. And Mister Man has his language group. And I had a President's Council meeting today for two plus hours, for which I also provided lunch for twenty-five. Why does everything always happen in the same week?

Shockingly, that isn't the point of the post, as everyone is busy - this isn't exactly earth shattering news. However, because I haven't been home and my husband has been gone because he has conferences at his school, my mom graciously agreed to watch the wee ones after school today and tomorrow, including feeding them dinner and putting them to bed.

I happened to have an hour free between the presidents' council and my shift at the book fair, so I headed home to do some quick cleaning of my disaster of a kitchen (try making four loaves of bread, Irish soda bread, baked potato soup and homemade dressing for a salad in about three hours and see what your kitchen looks like at the end of it!).

As I was putting away some things in the fridge, I noticed that my mom brought dinner for the wee ones. Because apparently she didn't trust me to have food for them. Yep, me who loves to cook and bake has no food in the house for the wee ones to eat. My mother, who I've mentioned previously does not like food and never really cooked when I was growing up, instead made and brought dinner.

This is what I discovered:

I'm pretty sure that I'd mentioned at some point that my mom used to make up a pound of spaghetti and leave it in a Ziploc bag for us to eat when we got hungry. Yep, the tradition is carried on. I wasn't joking when I said my mom did that.

Although I will admit that we didn't get the extra protein from the turkey bacon that she included for the wee ones. This gets placed on a paper towel and stuck in the microwave to cook.

I was mildly jealous that they got that extra treat. Then I noticed something. My mom always made spaghetti for us. The wee ones get special shaped pasta with cool textures. Yep, they're definitely getting spoiled.