Emily at 15 Months

Emily is in such a fun stage right now! She's smiley and happy the vast majority of the time.

Day to day:

*Is a great sleeper! Sleeps 11-12 hours at night. Still takes 2 naps most days, but occasionally will take only one.

*Great eater! Has 3 meals and usually 2 snacks a day.

*Weighs 22 lbs, 5 oz (40%); Is 29 in tall (11%); head is 18 in (44%)

*Wears 12 month clothing, size 4 diapers and size 3 shoes

*Has 7 teeth (3 bottom, 2 top teeth and 2 top molars)

Likes:

*Eating! Favorite foods: all fruit, bread, pancakes, cheese, goldfish, peas, sweet potatoes, squash, anything sweet

*carrying around clothes and putting them over her head

*wet wipes or damp paper towels (she likes to clean her face and hands over and over)

*"helping" me with laundry and emptying the dishwasher

*music

*her stuffed pink monkey

*books

*bubbles

*being outside

Dislikes:

*meat, tomatoes

*shopping for more than a few mintues in her stroller

*holding someone's hand

New tricks:

*putting her hands over her eyes, then taking them away and saying "boo!"

*pointing to her nose, eyes, ears, hair, feet, hands, belly button, and her freckle when asked

*blowing her nose

*following simple commands

*words-uh oh, cat, dog, bird, bubble, mama, dada, cheese, more

*giving high five and "knucks"

Skills she's working on:

*lots of talking and communicating

*running

*eating with own spoon (just started this)

*holding mama or daddy's hand

*following instructions

Emily is SUCH a sweet little girl. She will randomly come up to us and give us a hug, then go back to what she was doing. She "talks" a LOT during the day! She is usually very happy when she wakes up and is often content to talk to her animals in her crib for up to 30 minutes before she wants to get out. Emily gets VERY excited when Grandma Elvi comes over. She immediately starts taking out all of her toys to show to Grandma, and only has eyes for Grandma, even if Matt or I are at home. We love her so much, and are so grateful she is our little girl!

Brown Sugar Muffins

A friend called one afternoon to ask if I wanted to do a breakfast playdate the next morning, since the afternoons are so hot right now. What a fun idea! Since I had already been to the grocery store for the week, I thought I should make muffins from ingredients I already had in the pantry. My original idea was to make my mom's delicious oatmeal muffins, but as I flipped through the church cookbook, I stumbled across this recipe and thought I'd try it out! The muffins were really delicious, and I will definitely be making them again. The only modification I made was to only make 1/2 of the crumb topping. I've learned that whenever recipes have a crumbly struesel-like topping, it's best for me to just make half, since I always feel like I use too much and still have a ton leftover.

Ingredients:
4 Tbsp butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 1/3 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Topping (full recipe)
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 Tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375. Grease or line muffin tin. Cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and egg and beat until light. Blend in milk. Combine flour, baking powder and salt and add to butter mixture, stirring just until flour is moistened. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full. Mix together topping ingredients until crumbly. Sprinkle topping over muffins and bake 20 min. Yield: 12 (Though I didn't fill the muffins overly full, this recipe only made 9 muffins when I made it. Maybe if I just filled the cups 1/2 full, then it would make 12??)

(This picture is approximately one year ago. Amazing how much babies change in a year!)

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

Today is Mom's birthday! Happy Birthday, Mom! We planned to spend some time together today, so I asked what kind of birthday dessert she would like. Her response was chocolate cake. (no surprises there!) I have a "go to" chocolate cake recipe that never disappoints, and I've made it for Mom's birthday before, so I know she likes it! The cake is very chocolatey and moist!

Sidenote: I've been watching cooking shows lately, and several times I've seen chefs add a bit of coffee to chocolate cakes. They say it doesn't taste coffee-ish, but just makes the chocolate even more chocolatey. So I considered adding 1/4 cup hot coffee and just 3/4 cups of boiling water, but I was too scared. I wish I would have now, because worst case scenario--the cake would taste like coffee just a little bit, and my mom likes coffee! Maybe I'll have to make it again soon, to try out my little experiment...

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate cake (found on the back of Hershey's Cocoa box)

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup veg oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 c boiling water (I usually heat water in tea kettle while I'm getting batter ready)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour (or use Baker's Joy spray) 2 9 in round baking pans.
2. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed 2 min. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour into pans.
3. Bake 30-35 min or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 min. Remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost.

"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

1. Melt butter. Stir in cocoa.
2. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating on medium speed to spreading consistency. Add more milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla. (Or, you can be like me and just dump all ingredients into a bowl and beat on medium speed.)

Crockpot Chicken Tacos

I've decided that at this particular point in my life, the crockpot is the absolute best way to make dinner. Not only does it keep me from heating up the oven, and thus my entire house in the already ridiculously hot days, but I can work on prep or pieces of the meal during Em's naps. Tonight I decided to make shredded chicken taco meat in the crockpot. This is what I did:

1. Place 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts in crockpot. Add minced garlic and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2. Add 2 cups of water--chicken doesn't need to be covered.

3. Cook on low for 3 hours.

4. Take chicken out and shred using 2 forks. Dump out liquid from crockpot and wash.

5. Place shredded chicken back into crockpot with approximately 1 cup of water and taco seasoning. (I made my own taco seasoning using this as a guideline, but changed it up a bit.)

6. Turn crockpot to warm for an hour...or as long as you need until dinner time!

7. Serve in warm flour tortilla or taco shell with lettuce, cheese, cilantro, jalapenos, tomatoes...whatever toppings your heart desires! (would also be good in nacho form!)

(I kept trying to take a picture of Emily, but she only wanted to grab the camera, so every picture is a super close-up!)

Strawberry Shortcake Cake

I really love The Pioneer Woman's blog! Not only is she hilarious, but she has great recipes, pictures and anecdotes about her life and family. I've made multiple recipes from her blog, and there are many more I plan to try! Since we were planning to have dinner with Matt's family on the Fourth of July, I was going to bring oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, watermelon and cantelope. Matt was talking to his mom on the phone that morning, and she mentioned that she wanted to have this cake, but really didn't feel like making it, since she had so many other foods to prepare. Matt quickly said "Laura will make it!" So I ran to the computer to look up the recipe and make a list of needed ingredients. Now, this cake was not overly difficult to make, but there are multiple steps, and it took several hours from start to finish (with breaks in between). But it was 100% worth it! Everyone really liked it, and said I definitely had to make it again.

This is the link to the recipe, complete with detailed instructions and pictures (one of the other reasons I really love PW's blog). I highly recommend making this cake ASAP--not only are strawberries in season, but your life will be vastly improved by eating it ;)

Fourth of July, 2011

(July 2-Emily needed to get used to the idea of the pool for a few minutes before actually getting in)

On July 4, 2010, Emily was only about 3 weeks old, and we were in the midst of new parent sleepless nights and foggy days. So we didn't do anything at all to celebrate the 4th of July. However, this year we decided to venture out and have some good family time, and attempt a firework show. After some really delicious smoked chicken, brisket, baked beans, potato salad, fruit, bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos and strawberry shortcake cake, we packed up and headed out to a local park to brave the heat, crowds, fire ants, and watch fireworks.

Emily's normal bedtime is 7:30. This has been the case since she was about 4 months old, and she hasn't gone to bed later than 8:00 since then. The fireworks started at 9:30, so this whole thing was a big adventure for us on several different levels. Luckily, there were lots of interesting people to watch, and Emily was pretty happy at the park. Matt carried her around for about an hour to get in some good people-watching. She also had several bites of cookie, lots of water, and some time to walk around the grass. Once the fireworks started, she was a bit scared. She did watch them for a short time, but then felt safest clinging to Matt with her head on his shoulder. She didn't cry, but I don't think she really enjoyed the fireworks either. All in all, she was quite a trooper! After the long drive home, she was put in her crib at about midnight! Of course, she didn't really sleep in this morning, but I think she'll make it up in longer naps the next day or two (finger's crossed).

Matt and I really enjoyed spending the time with his family and my mom, and Emily seemed to have fun as well. Hopefully next year the fireworks won't be quite as scary!

Summer Reading

(notice the tiny foot with the pink painted toenail??)

So I've decided that the type of books I read definitely changes during the summer months. Not sure if this is due to a Southern Literature reading challenge I participated in a couple of years ago, or for some other reason. Regardless, I now find myself looking for lighter, fun Southern-type fiction to read during the months of June-September. Luckily, my local library has lots of fun summery reads--yay libraries! In the queue for this summer are several books by Fannie Flagg, several by Sarah Addison Allen (a new author to me), and a book I've been hearing about for several years-Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore. Later this week, I'm planning to make a blackberry/raspberry cobbler, complete with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream...sounds like a good combination with summer books, right??

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

I saw this recipe last night on the really great blog Heavenly Homemakers (another Matt and Laura couple!), and thought it would be perfect to make this morning, as I had 2 VERY ripe bananas that needed to be used. I added a few extra spices, and I think they would be even more delicious with either nuts, mini chocolate chips or raisins (if you're a raisin type of person...which I'm not). Emily especially loved them!

1 and 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 cup mashed ripe banana (about 2-3 bananas)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup melted butter
2 eggs

Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, mash bananas, and add honey, melted butter and eggs. Stir into flour mixture.

Spoon batter into 12 lined muffin tins. Bake at 400 for 18 minutes.

(Please excuse my food photography. The photo above shows one muffin cut in half with butter melting on it. It looks much better in real life!)

Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

I had a leadership meeting for my MOPS group last night and I signed up to bring dessert. I thought it would be fun to try a new recipe from my new cookbook. Anna has this cookbook, and we made a few recipes from it when I visited her in the spring. She gave it to me for my birthday and there are approximately 500 cookies, bars, cakes and breads that I need to make in it! Anyways, these brownies did not disappoint! I do have 2 little pieces of advice: #1 when you are marbling the brownies and cheesecake batter together, do it several times. I didn't "marble" enough, in my opinion. #2-don't eat these brownies until they are 100% cool. Even better, make them one day, and don't eat them until the next day. I know that sounds weird, but I ate one warm, and was sad that they didn't turn out very well. But I ate another one a few hours later and it was delicious. I ate one today and it was devine! So here's the recipe:

Brownie ingredients:
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 and 1/2 squares unsweetened chocolate (1.5 oz)
2 cups flour
1 and 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream (I used yogurt and it was perfectly fine!)

Cheesecake Ingredients:
1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tblspn vanilla (yes, NOT teaspoon)
1 cup (6 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions:
1. In small saucepan, combine the water, butter and chocolate; cook and stir over low heat until smooth. Cool.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. Add eggs and sour cream; beat on low until just combined. Stir in chocolate mixture until smooth.
3. In another bowl, beat the cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla; set aside. Spread chocolate batter into a greased 15x10x1 in baking pan. Drop cream cheese mixture by tablespoonfuls over batter; cut through the batter with a knife to marble. Sprinkle with chocolate chips.
4. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 min or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Cut into bars.

(And here's just a picture of Emily being cute.)

Catching Up!

It's so difficult to believe that my tiny little Emily baby is now 1!! We had a little party on June 11, and I think we all had a great time celebrating Emily's birthday and watching her eat an entire cupcake (strawberry with cream cheese frosting). Her well baby appointment went well. The best part was that she got to stand on on the big scale. She looked especially tiny and cute standing there in just her diaper :) Her 9 month and 1 year stats:

9 month: weight-18 lbs, 5 oz (40%), height-26.75 in (23%), head-17.5 in (63%)g

1 year: weight-20 lbs, 6 oz (38%), height-28.25 in (23%), head 17.75 in (50%)

Emily has changed dramatically in the last couple of months. She started crawling when we visited the Letvin's in North Dakota when she was 9.5 months old. Once she figured out how much fun being mobile was, she didn't want to stop with crawling, and took her first steps right around 11 months. Now, she is walking all over the place, and sometimes even tries to run. She is a much happier baby now that she can get where she wants to go! Emily also "talks" constantly these days. The only actual words she says are "uh oh", "hi" and "dada" but she has her own version of a few other words like "diaper" and "thank you." Her biggest frustration these days is when she wants something and can't communicate what it is. She still does a few signs (more and milk), but hasn't started doing any others, even though we've been working on a handful of them for months. She has her own little language and just jabbers non-stop! So cute to hear her little voice!

We are down to nursing just in the morning and before bedtime. Emily isn't a very big fan of cow's milk, but she loves yogurt, cheese and cottage cheese, so I think she will be able to get a good amount of calcium, fat, protein and vitamin D, even if she doesn't drink much milk. She's still a great eater, and is pretty open to trying new foods. She loves all fruit, cheeses, and breads. She also does pretty well with chicken, pasta and some veggies. Peas, carrots, green beans, squash and sweet potatoes are her favorites, but she isn't a big fan of avocado, broccoli, or tomatoes. We'll keep trying!

Emily has become quite a good sleeper (yay!) She sleeps anywhere from 10.5-11.5 hours at night, and takes two naps that usually total 2.5 hours. She is starting to show signs of going to just one nap a day, but I don't think she's quite ready yet. So funny thinking back to the first 3-4 months of her life and how most of my life revolved around getting her to sleep and to stay asleep. I'm sure there will be other sleeping issues over the next few years, but I'm glad we're well past the newborn sleeping!

Well I've written a mini-novel, so I'll call it good for now! Matt and I are loving Emily's cute little voice and personality these days--she cracks us up every single day! We feel so blessed to be her parents!

Making Baby Food

One of my favorite things to do these days is to feed Emily fruit and veggies! I started giving her food when she turned 6 months old. It took about a month for her to really seem to enjoy eating from a spoon. Now she likes pretty much anything I give her (though she did balk at green vegetables at first). While I have bought some commercial baby food, I have also made some myself. Some friends have thought this is a bit crazy, but I have found it to be really fun, plus it saves a little bit of money. So far, I've made mostly vegetables- sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, and green beans. Apples are the only fruit I've attempted. I decided I needed to expand my horizons and make some more fruit, so I made a quick trip up to our new Whole Foods store and bough one bag each of frozen peaches and mangoes.

Peaches are one of Emily's favorites, plus they have a good amount of vitamin C and are great for easing constipation. Emily really likes mangoes as well, and after reading about their anti-viral properties, I thought it would be especially beneficial for her to eat them during this flu, cold and RSV season.

Even though making baby food seemed a bit intimidating to me at first, you really don't need very many items to make it. A steamer basket (baking or steaming seems to be the best way to cook the fruit/veggies to retain the most nutrients), large pot, a food processor or blender (the Magic Bullet is SUPER easy and fast!) and ice cube trays.

Since I know Emily likes both peaches and mangoes, I thought it would be fun to prepare them together. (Adding yogurt and maybe a little fresh banana sounds like a very delicious and nutritious breakfast!) I added about 2 inches of water to the bottom of my pot then inserted the steamer basket, followed by both bags of frozen fruit. Then I covered and steamed the fruit for about 15 minutes.

After the fruit was tender, I put about half of it into the large Magic Bullet cup. Since I had previously read that both mangoes and peaches could be pretty runny when pureed, I didn't add any water.

After blending for about 20 seconds, the puree was creamy and the perfect consistency and texture for mixing with oatmeal cereal or yogurt.

I then spooned the puree into ice cube trays. There was exactly enough to fill both trays with some left over to give to Emily right away. The ice cubes are about 1 oz each, and Emily eats 1-2 oz mixed with oatmeal each morning. For her afternoon/evening meal, she has 1-2 cubes of veggies.

While I cleaned up the kitchen, Matt fed Emily the peach/mango (meach? pengo?) combo and it was a huge hit!

I calculated that the cost per oz was approx. $.24. Since these were organic fruits, the cost to buy commercial baby food would probably have been about $.40/oz. So the savings for this batch was approximately $4. While that doesn't sound like much, I believe I've saved at least $25 so far by making my some of my own food. If I was better about buying the fruit/vegetables when they were on sale, the savings would be much higher. Vegetables are definitely cheaper than the fruit! I have given Emily both organic and non-organic food, and have tried several different brands of baby food. I just think it's fun to try lots of different things right now! I also bought frozen blueberries and peas, so I plan to make those this week.