It is 1 AM and I am still awake. Why? Oh, because I want my two year-old, who barely understands Valentine's Day, to have something really cool and handmade to give to her friends at church. Chances are that, while these are non-edible, the kids will eat them; no worries, I spent the extra 20 cents and picked up the non-toxic crayons for this DIY heart-shaped crayon project.
Here's a quick tutorial for heart-shaped crayons...
Unwrap lots of crayons. I used five crayons for each heart.
Eat, Love: Homemade Baby Food
In the end, making Lily's baby food did save money. One dollar buys a pound of green beans, which then becomes 16-1oz. servings of baby food. Two dollars worth of sweet potatoes made pounds of baby food! We also bypassed the preservatives and, at this point in her life she loves fresh fruits and veggies. Also, after reading labels I found that many of the baby foods at the store were not as nutritious as the high fiber, vitamin-rich foods I was making at home. The homemade food also made us more more comfortable with giving Lily the (nutritious) foods we were eating and helped her enjoy herbs and spices we would not find in the big name baby foods. Oh, and it worked wonders on the mommy guilt.
The surprising part? It was not as time consuming as I had anticipated. I would cook 4-5 pounds of sweet potatoes in the crock pot while I was at work during the day, then puree them and have them in the freezer. The actual time I spent preparing the sweet potatoes amounted to about 15 minutes. Halved peaches and a pyrex dish with a little water perfectly prepared peaches for baby food prep. Purees freeze very well in ice trays, and each cube in the tray is about 1 oz. When the purees have frozen, you can pop them out and store them in freezer bags labeled with each type of food. They thaw easily in the microwave and can be stored in the freezer for several months.
There are lots of cool baby food gadgets on the market, but you can prepare homemade baby food with just a few items that can be found in most any household. Once the food is cooked in a way that is appropriate for that food, you only need a blender to puree the food, ice trays to freeze the food and freezer bags to store the food. If you are like me and preparing food for the people you love is equivalent to actually telling them you love them, then preparing homemade foods for your baby will be totally fulfilling. Feel free to post any questions in the comments section. Also, check out http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com for great health guidelines, food recommendations by age, recipes and more!
Friday, February 3, 2012
Pray: Teaching our Children
Overwhelming. Huge responsibility. Must not fail. I remember the day Doug and I began discussing bringing a child into this world. We felt excitement, enthusiasm, anticipation and joy as we imagined what our child would be like. The awesome responsibility of parenting began weighing heavily on us from that very moment. How will we teach our child to let her light shine?
Every parent has grand and wonderful plans for their child. We all want the best for them and no matter how blessed our lives have been, we want even more for our children. I know for us, we want Lily to find things she is passionate about and to pursue them with everything she has. For the most part, we will not choose her passions. She may love music or sports or art. She may be an attorney or a teacher or a chef. Only time will tell. Some things, however, are so much more important than her choice to be a pitcher or a pianist or even president. No matter what she chooses for her hobbies or her profession, we want her to be Godly.
I often wonder how we are doing in instilling our spiritual and moral values in our child. My heart sings when I hear her singing "I Like to go to Church" or imitating her Bible class teacher as she lines up her cars and counts to see how many cars came to church. I am encouraged when she tells the checker at Target "tank you." Then I remember that she is 2, and that we have so much work to do to help shape the person she will become.
I was recently reading an article on Dr. Sears' site about raising a moral child. More than once in the article, he referenced a window of opportunity in the first six years of a child's life. In this window of opportunity, children unquestionably accept the virtues displayed in the lives of their parents. We have six years to shape the hearts, minds and souls of our children and then our influence begins to wane. Six years. The awesome responsibility of parenting becomes heavier and heavier.
The Bible (as usual) provides great insight. In Deuteronomy 6:4-9 we read the following:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
We must immerse our families in the love of God. We must immerse our families in loving God. We must do whatever it takes. In order to have children who love God with all their hearts, souls and strength, we must invite God into every part of our lives. Nothing can be more important.
It is perfectly acceptable to want your children to succeed in other aspects of their lives, but our kids have to see what comes first in our lives. Children listen to our words, but they learn from our actions. If we want their love for God to be number one, they must see God being number one in our lives. It is so much more than having them at church every time the doors are open. They must see us being kind, loving our enemies, helping those who need our help.
We want their lights to shine; let them learn that from us.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Eat, Love: Organic Foods on a Budget
My grocery bill is getting higher and higher. I owe it all to Netflix. I am a documentary junkie, and Netflix has a ton of them available on demand. One night I was looking for a good one to watch, and I came across Food, Inc. That's when my grocery bill began getting higher and higher. A look behind the scenes of America's food supply is sad, sobering and just really gross. I had smelled the feed lots of West Texas and the chicken houses of East Texas, but the glance of the inside I got from Food, Inc. had an impact on me.
I can't blame it all on Netflix. When Lily came along I began analyzing every factor of our lives, and food was one of those. We decided to start using beef and milk without added hormones as a first step. Study after study shows the age of the onset of puberty dropping; studies are not absolutely conclusive, but more and more evidence supports the idea that we are shortening childhood with the added hormones in our beef and milk. These added hormones make our dairy cows produce more milk and they make our slaughter cows get really big, really fast, but do we really want these hormones going into our kids? Just a side note: most other meats and animal product, like pork, poultry, and eggs, are free of added hormones due to government regulation.
I managed to move on from meat to produce. I was pretty sure I wanted to cut out pesticides along with the hormones. However, I didn't want to cut out hormones, pesticides and electricity; after looking at the prices on many organic foods I realized the electricity might just have to go if we were going to pay our big fat organic grocery bill. That's when I came across the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen, the list of foods that contain the highest levels of pesticide residue. By purchasing organic on these twelve items, you can reduce your intake of pesticide residue by 80%. Here's the list:
The Dirty Dozen
1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Strawberries
4. Peaches
5. Spinach
6. Nectarines
7. Grapes
8. Sweet bell peppers
9. Potatoes
10. Blueberries
11. Lettuce
12. Kale/collard greens
EWG also has a list of foods with very low pesticide residue. These foods, called the Clean 15, are listed below and, in the opinion of your humble blogger and her bank account, are not worth paying those organic prices.
Clean 15
1. Onions
2. Sweet Corn
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Cantaloupe
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms
Hope this helps! In the end, just do your homework and do the best you can by your family. Happy shopping!
For more information on foods and pesticides, check out http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/list/
Friday, January 27, 2012
Eat, Love: Flatout Pizza
If you are like me, you are often discouraged by the nutritional value of most quick and easy recipes. It seems like you pay a price with inexpensive and easy to prepare foods. Sometimes it feels like you have to sacrifice nutrition for convenience. As a busy mom who values healthy eating habits for her toddler, I find myself searching for meals that can be prepared in a short amount of time while also packing some nutritional punch. Oh, and they have to taste good. :)
A staple in our kitchen for healthy and convenient snacks and meals is the Flatout Wrap. The Flatout Wrap is a nutritious, low carb, high fiber, trans fat-free flatbread that can be used in so many ways. The obvious use is to wrap up anything that would normally go between two slices of bread, but there are so many other great uses. In our house, we love to use Flatouts to make pizza. Here are a couple of different ways to enjoy a pizza using Flatout wraps. Please note that there are many varieties of Flatouts, but we usually go for the Light Original. These contain 9 grams of fiber and only 90 calories per wrap.
Flatout Plain Jane Pizza
Flatout Wrap
Olive oil
1/4 c. Pizza Sauce
1/2c. Reduced Fat Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Any pizza toppings you choose
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put Flatout Wrap on a cookie sheet, brush with olive oil and bake for 7 minutes. Remove from oven and spread sauce on wrap. Add cheese and other toppings, then bake at 350 until cheese is melted. At our house, one pizza serves one person.
Tex-Mex Flatout Thin Crust Pizza
1 Flatout Light Wrap
1 tsp olive oil cooking spray
1/4 lb extra lean ground beef
2 Tbs taco seasoning
2 Tbs water
2 Tbs salsa
1/4 cup shredded 2% Mexican blend cheese
Shredded lettuce
1/4 cup diced tomatoes
1 Tbs fat free sour cream
On stove, brown ground beef in a skillet over medium-high heat; drain. Stir in taco seasoning and water; cook 2-3 minutes or until liquid absorbed. Cook lightly oiled Flatout in 350°F oven directly on grate for 7 minutes. On the Flatout, layer salsa, meat and cheese. Top with lettuce, a dollop of sour cream and tomatoes. Return to oven and cook 7 more minutes. Remove and cut into wedges.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Work, Pray: The Human Trapper Keeper
I do not have a natural urge to have an organized life. I have had a tendency toward chaos and disorganizaton since I was a young child. I didn't line up blocks as a toddler. In school, the Trapper Keeper was my best friend because I could close it and trap the hundreds of loose pages in my notebook. My CDs (remeber those?) were never in the correct cases. On my computer, I have photos in my music folder and music in my documents folder. I have replaced no less than five drivers licenses because they ended up somewhere other than that little window pocket in my wallet. I am a complete mess.
The funny thing is, I have always faked organizational skills very, very well. The Trapper Keeper was a metaphor for my life. When I was asked for an assignment from my terrifyingly messy notebook in school, I could always pull it out. When someone asked me to check something on my calendar, I could always find it. Problem is, it was not in the calendar. I am just really fast about searching my old emails for keywords or flipping through old receipts with notes jotted on the backs. Just because the photo I was looking for was in the music folder did not mean it was lost. Someone knew where it was. I knew where it was. There seemed to be some method of organization in my brain.
I felt a certain pressure to be more organized. I spent money on this stuff. Remember PDAs? I forked over a pretty large chunk of change back in 2002 for a state of the art Windows based PDA. I think I entered two important reminders in the PDA. I also loaded up some games, Bible software and some mp3s on the handy little gadget. Then one night I forgot to plug it in. I found it, complete with dead battery, weeks later. Owning a PDA did not change my life. Losing a PDA did not change my life. I still made those two important appointments the same way I had made appointments in all the other years of my life; I just remembered.
I spent a small fortune on file boxes, organizational cubes, daytimers and many other organizational tools. I am always so optimistic and excited about these new organizational tools. I start off with enthusiasm and within about three hours the enthusiasm wains. The file boxes end up being filled random papers, organizational cubes end up holding all the different types of junk I was originally trying to separate. The daytimers had no meaningful words written on them; instead the margins were filled with my doodling. I just relied on my memory.
Occasionally the chaos would become overwhelming. I would go through my CDs and put them in their proper places. I would organize my messy notebook, often because it was being graded. I would rearrange the folders on my laptop. I would clean out my purse. I would write things in my calendar. I would go to the Container Store. Then it would all start again.
I breezed through life on my memory, remembering appointments, assignments, meetings. Then one day the myth of mommy brain became a reality. I needed help. I needed organization. The way my brain worked seriously changed. I don't know anything about the science behind it, but I do know that in 9 quick months my daughter sucked half my brain power. I often say that she better be a smart kid since she took away so much of my intelligence. People laugh. It's as if they think I am joking.
When Mommy brain set in, I knew there had to be a better way. I suddenly had what I perceived to be less brain with more stuff to put in it. I had to have important numbers handy, I needed to know when appointments occurred, I had to have the right foods for Lily to eat, I needed to have seasonally appropriate clothes ready for Lily to wear, I needed to know which meetings I had coming up for work so I could arrange my childcare and I had this little human being depending on me to make sure it was all right. I suddenly became a pretty organized person. Lily made me do it.
There are still days I struggle with organization. Since I keep my calendar, address book and nearly everything else on a smartphone, one of those days came when Lily dumped my phone in the toilet. I still hae my Trapper Keeper moments, but most of the time everything is neatly filed away behind the correct divider. I feel accomplished. I was able to change something about myself. I changed something that once seemed to be a part of my personality. It's funny how motherhood can do that to you.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Love: Favorite Toddler iPad Apps
At first I was a little hesitant to let her play with it. I wasn't even worried about the obvious "toddlers break things" issue; I worried about what it might do to her brain. I even googled "toddler iPad brain" to find out if I was going to mess up the child. Her chants only got louder. "Hipad! Hipad! Hipad!" I finally decided there must be some way this little gadget could be an educational tool. I downloaded a Sesame Street episode about good eating habits and within a couple of days she was begging for yogurt instead of ice cream.Best of all, this iPad was God's gift to parents on road trips or the commute to work.
I started downloading apps that could teach Lily her ABCs, colors, shapes, Bible stories and anything else I thought could be beneficial to her. It is overwhelming how many apps are available. We have tried many, but there are a few that she goes back to again and again. Here are my Top 5 picks for toddlers:
