One of the first finger food recipes I made for Kate are these oatmeal banana drops--a recipe that I found (and slightly modified) on www.wholesomebabyfood.com under "teething biscuits."
This recipe caught my eye because it contains no egg or wheat--two things we had yet to introduce to Kate at the time. These "cookies" were a favorite of hers from the start and they're my go-to recipe when I have overly ripe bananas on the counter about to go bad. They're easy to toss into my bag for an on-the-go snack, make healthy (and cheap!) treats for daycare or playgroups, and they're freezer-friendly!
Ingredients
1 c. quick oats
1 c. ground oats (grind quick oats to make a course flour)
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ginger
1/4 t. nutmeg
1 t. baking powder
1 c. (about 2) overripe bananas, mashed with a fork
1 t. vanilla
1 T. oil
2 T. applesauce
Directions
Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients. Add wet to dry. Drop by spoonful onto parchment paper or greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.
My Notes
The original recipe calls for 3 T. oil (and no applesauce), but I thought the cookies were a little too oily. I cut the oil to 1 T. and added 2 T. applesauce for a slightly different (and healthier) variation. Feel free to play with the amount of oil and applesauce you prefer.
I spin 1 cup of quick oats in my food processor to make the 1 cup of ground oats. Actually, I grind up several cups of oats at a time and store them in resealable snack bags so I have ground oats on hand for future recipes without having to dirty up my food processor each time:
Before becoming parents, G and I were pretty independent people. For the most part, he kept track of his schedule, I kept track of mine, and neither of us were too terribly concerned about what the other had planned unless it involved ourselves or a plane ticket.
Oh how times have changed!
Now that we're parents we schedule things like mowing the yard and going to the bathroom a week in advance. We even discuss our work schedules on a regular basis to determine who can do daycare drop-offs and pick-ups. I don't know what I'm having for lunch today, but I know G plays volleyball tonight, has a Fantasy Football Draft on Thursday night, and is going to the Packer game next Thursday night. Our schedules are totally dependent on each other!
Of course this doesn't include the fact that Kate has more on her little social (and medical) calendar than I did all four years of college combined! My solution to make managing our lives a little easier is our "command center"--this dry erase calendar system (from Pottery Barn) mounted in the kitchen in a can't miss spot with our lives on display:
The top left piece holds these cute little pewter G&D letters I received years ago from my friend Aly (back in our Nestie days!), a container of push pins for the bulletin board, dry erase markers, and notepads.
The lower left piece is a bulletin board where I pin cards and keepsakes from friends and family:
Close-up of one of my favorites--a birthday card from my sister-in-law Lesley:
We use the calendars to keep track of appointments, which days Grandma Pam is coming to take care of Kate, birthdays, weekend events, Kate's 10 days of antibiotics, and even (occasionally) meal planning. I wanted to have two months on display--instead of just one--because we often need to plan so far in advance that we need to see what's coming up next month.
Can you tell I'm looking forward to my Ft. Meyers getaway next month?
One of my favorite things about this system is that the calendars slide onto a wall-mounted track, so when August is over I can slide it off the top track, wipe it clean to get it ready for October, and simply move September from the bottom track to the the top track--easy peasy!
We've been using this system for a little over a year now and I'm not sure what we'd do without it!
How do you keep track of your family's lives? I'd love to hear your ideas!
The language explosion is in full effect as Kate continues to talk up a storm! I’ve been writing her words down on a Post-It when we hear them, and that sucker is covered from front to back. I can hardly keep up with her! Here are the ones I managed to capture on that little 3” x 3” piece of paper:
Cup
Bib
Hug
Messy
Milk
Kabooey (a word Grandma Pam made up—she loves it)
Sippy
Applesauce
Farkel (a travel dice game—she carries the little container around everywhere)
Sky
Cookie
Puppy
Potty
Shopping
Sunscreen
Plate
Hey (said if I take her plate away thinking she’s done eating, but she’s not)
Moon
Baby
Goodbye
Two
Three
Doggy
Poopy
Pee
Horsey
Keys
Light
Ducky
Kate
Thanks
Bug
Syrup
Yogurt
Slide
Medicine
Yellow (which appears to be her favorite color)
Doorbell
Guitar
Marker
Bottle
She’s starting to put words together, too:
“All gone” (when she’s out of food—usually fruit)
“Get down” (when she wants down from being held)
“Snuggle Puppy” (one of her favorite books)
“More, please” (when she wants more food—usually fruit)
“Hold this” (usually asking someone to hold Bunny so she can use both hands to drink from her sippy cup)
“Bless you” (after someone sneezes)
“Have a good day!” (My personal favorite to hear—and her personal favorite to say…to everyone at Target…over and over again.)
She’s also beginning to string letters of the alphabet together and is starting to say some numbers in counting order. At bedtime she sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with me as I get her into her pajamas. I pause at parts of the song and let her fill in the blanks with “sky” and “high,” and when we get to the end of the song she says, “Up a…” to get me to start it over again. It's so much fun to see her wheels turning as she tries to figure these things out!
The neat thing about this month is realizing that she really does understand the words she’s saying (versus last month, which was mainly repeating words after we said them first). For example, she’ll pick fruit out of the fruit bowl and tell me what they are as she goes: “Apple…pear….nana.” Then she’ll see a picture of an apple on one of her books, point to it and say, “Apple.”
Another example is this exchange between G and Kate after one of her meals:
G: “Kate, you made a mess.”
Kate: “Messy.” Then she walked over to get the broom and attempted sweeping up the food on the floor around her chair.
One day she even requested her snack! As we walked into the kitchen I casually asked her, “Kate, what would you like for your snack today?” not at all expecting a response.
“Cookie,” she replied.
“Um…okay,” I replied in awe as I heated up an oatmeal banana cookie and realized we were having an actual conversation. “Any other requests?”
“Eggs,” she stated.
“You want eggs, too?” I asked skeptically.
“Eggs,” she repeated. (And if she had a greater understanding of the English language I’m pretty sure she would’ve added, “Get on it." That’ll come next month, I’m sure.)
G walked in the kitchen shortly afterwards, looked at Kate’s plate and then at me with surprise and said, “A cookie and scrambled eggs? For snack?”
I explained what happened, and added, “Hey, I asked, she answered. How could I not honor her request after that?!”
Of course 17 months hasn’t been all fun and games and cookies and eggs. Kate is also doing some testing. Most notable has been her desire to be picked up and held or carried constantly. She went through this phase right around the time she turned a year old, and we were so grateful when it passed.
Now it’s back.
Sometimes I feel like a car in one of those radios station contests—whoever touches it the longest without letting go, wins it. I’m the Toyota Scion and Kate’s the overzealous contestant who has absolutely no problems peeing in her pants versus taking a bathroom break so as not to break contact with any part of my skin.
It’s not that I mind holding Kate, of course, but what I don’t like is when she comes up to me and fusses to be picked up—or even worse, just screams at me and tugs on my clothes. That is definitely not the kind of behavior this Toyota wants on board! We’ve been working on teaching Kate manners and she already knows the words “up” and “please,” so I began asking her to say, “Up, please” in a nice voice and when she does that she gets rewarded with being picked up. When she comes to me guns blazing, she stays on the ground. It took her all of 20 minutes to master the magic of manners. Now she calmly and politely requests, “Up please” when she wants to be picked up—and that’s a request we’ll gladly honor!
Kate has also put “diaper changing struggles” back into her rotation of behaviors to bust out just when Mom and Dad think everything’s going great. A couple of months ago I shared a trick I used with baby pictures that worked great for awhile, but it lost a bit of its luster this month. My new trick? Musical greeting cards. We got one for G for Father’s Day that has little cartoon animals on it and sings a silly song in a funny voice—she is absolutely mesmerized by it! She only gets to play with it when she’s on the changing table, so (for now) diaper changes are back to going smoothly.
I'll end with this video of Kate enjoying the toy blender Grandma Pam got her. She was making her very first faux smoothie!
One of Kate's favorite snacks are these apple plum bars. I started making them for her when she was just beginning solid foods. They're soft enough that they make a great finger food, and delicious enough that the adults don't mind finishing up the leftovers--on the rare occasion that there are any!
Ingredients
5 T. Butter, softened
2/3 c. Brown Sugar
1 Egg, beaten
3 T. Milk
1 1/3 c. Flour (I use whole wheat flour)
3/4 t. Baking Soda
1/2 t. Cinnamon
1/4 t. Ground Cloves
1/4 t. Nutmeg
3 lbs Apples, peeled & chopped
3 oz Dried Plums, finely chopped
Directions
Cream butter and brown sugar. Mix in egg and milk. Mix in dry ingredients. Add chopped apples and finely chopped dried plums. Mix thoroughly.
Spread in greased pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until cooked through. Cool for 10 minutes before cutting. Freeze leftovers.
My Notes
Be sure to chop apples into pieces that are small enough for your child.
I recently made a batch where I tried to chop the apples with my food processor. It wasn't the best technique for chopping (they turned out more minced/nearly pureed), so I only did a couple that way and added them to the bowl, and then chopped the rest of the apples with a knife. The batch turned out extra moist and extra apple-y, so I think I'll do it that way again next time.
Time for a mid-year 2011 resolutions check-in! Although technically the year is already more than halfway over and this post should have been written six weeks ago…which leads me to my first resolution for 2011:
#1. Be on time.
As you can see, I haven’t exactly knocked this one out of the park. Although really I set this resolution with the goal of not being late to meetings and appointments, and I think I’m doing pretty well in those two categories. My solution has been to just schedule fewer meetings and appointments.
Problem solved. Next!
#2. Running 400 miles.
My year started off very slowly in this area, but I’ve since picked up the pace and am back to running my ass off. As of today I’ve logged 251 miles, which is slightly more than half my goal—and considering that slightly more than half of this year is over I like to think I’m on track. I signed up for a half-marathon (13.1 miles) which takes place in my town next weekend (eek!) so that’s certainly helped motivate me. Nearly all of my free time over the past 3 months has been committed to my training, and I am very hopeful that this half-marathon experience goes much better than my last one. With only 8 days until race day I am (mostly) pain-free and my running feels strong. I started out with the goal of just finishing the race this time, but my training has gone really well and I’ve since set an additional goal of finishing in 2 hours. I’m super excited, but also super nervous! As long as I can stay pain-free I shouldn’t have any problems getting another 149 miles in between now and the end of this year. So far so good!
#3. Finding more time for blogging.
Hahaha…yeah. See Goal #2 for the biggest reason why Goal #3 has not exactly gone as planned lately. Plus, apparently no matter how hard I look I can’t find more than 24 hours in my day. They’re probably in my bedroom somewhere underneath the mounds of laundry that I never put away. Or in my bathroom, which hasn’t been cleaned since the last time we had non-family visitors over (my new threshold for busting out the toilet brush). Bottom line: My free time is lost and I better find it soon before it dies of starvation or cuts off its own arm. Luckily I still have 4½ more months to keep looking.
That's the status of my 2011 resolutions to date. How are yours coming along?
I crazy, stupidly, loved this movie. The characters were all fantastic, I loved all the storylines, and I laughed so hard and enjoyed it so much that at one point during the movie I actually started applauding. Right there in the theater. Along with 200 other people, who also spontaneously started clapping their hands--and I am not a clapper, people! Go check out this movie and let me know what you think. I plan on seeing it at least twenty more times.
I was super-duper excited to have one of my bestest best friends, Allison, come visit me in mid-July! The weekend she was down was hot as hell, but we still made the most of it drinking lots of wine, hitting up the Saturday morning Farmer's Market, shopping up and down State Street, giving Kate her first haircut (eek!), having a coffee table picnic, more wine, Sunday brunch with my local BFFs, and lots and lots of girl talk! Seeing her was just what I needed during this crazy, busy summer. Thank you so much for making the trip, Allison!
Next time I'm naming my Bread Baby. That's how much I love it.
For as long as I've lived in Madison, people have been telling me that I just HAVE to get the Hot & Spicy Cheese Bread from Stella's Bakery at the Farmer's Market. When Allison and I hit it up the weekend she was down, it was clear that this bread was a fan favorite. Everywhere we looked we saw people carrying bags of this bread, hot and fresh from Stella's stand. Most cradled it in their arms like a little Bread Baby, unable to wait until they got home to dig in.
Allison and I fell into that second category.
Add me to the list of locals that will now be telling everyone, "The Cheese Bread from Stella's is a Farmer's Market must buy!"
Not my picture--although I probably couldn't do much better.
My friend Jill--who is currently pregnant with Baby #2--had these s'mores cheesecake bars at a party and quickly had a craving to eat them again.
Enter moi.
I had to make a dessert for a work thing and she was quick to email the recipe and inform me that the baby needed this. What baby wants, baby gets, so I whipped these up, and they were both delicious and blog-worthy. Click on the link above for the recipe and try them yourself!
5. Plucking my eyebrows in the car while I'm stopped at a red light. No pictures of this one because, let's face it, I need two hands to pluck and I very rarely have a passenger when I go to town with the tweezers from my center console. Plucking my eyebrows in my car while stopped at red lights is nothing new for me, but I seemed to do it a lot in July, and on one particular day as I was ignoring the car next to me and admiring the perfect natural lighting, closeness of my car's visor mirror, and my well-manicured arch, I thought, "This is one of my favorite things. It's going in the blog."
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My Pregnancy
Looking for my weekly pregnancy and maternity fashion links? They can now be found in the "My Pregnancy" page which is linked in the header of my blog. Enjoy!
” (one of her favorite books)
