Olivia: A Snapshot

Olivia recently turned two. She was SO thrilled to have her "happy day"...she's still talking about it weeks later! I know the two's are supposed to be terrible, but she is at SUCH a fun stage (not that we don't have our moments...) Here are some things about Olivia at two that I don't want to forget!
GORGEOUS: People are always telling me I should put her in modeling. She is such a beauty! Light blond curls, bright blue eyes, full red lips, and a golden tan. Lucky little lady.
FUN: She loves laving fun with friends, and talks about them constantly. "Sunno" (Sumner), "Esesen" (Edison), Addie, Tommy, etc are all mentioned about 10 times a day. It's a sad day for her when she doesn't get to see her friends.
She also loves bubbles! She got a bubble machine for her birthday, and she plays with it every day. I love to watch her dance in the bubbles. Dancing is an automatic reaction from her. Speaking of which...
THE GIRL'S GOT MOVES!: She dances ALL the time! It is SO fun. This morning when I got her out of bed and brought her into my room she immediately climbed up on the bed, turned on the radio on my clock radio and started bustin' a move to the pop song that came on. She dances with such intensity that it's contagious, and we usually all start dancing along. She also recently learned how to jump. She loves it.
TALKER: She is talking so much now. I love that she is learning to communicate so well with language. We are still speaking Spanish with her 3 times a week. She understands Spanish great, but mostly speaks English at this point. However, ALL drinks are called "Agua". I love it. Some of the other cute things she says a lot are "I hold you!" (meaning, "you hold me") and "I help you" (when she wants help). She loves "appy sauce" and "appy juice". She talks about her sister all the time, and is quick to let me know "Anna crying". For a long time she has told us "Amo" (te amo), and she is now branching out to say "love you" (only it sounds like "yuh you"). She also refers to herself as "wivi". We'll have to work on those "L's". She likes counting to ten in English and Spanish, and loves practicing the ABC's, as well as singing loads of primary songs (in both languages). She also recently learned the chorus of Justin Bieber's "Baby", thanks to her Auntie Lauren (who, for the record, decidedly does not have Bieber Fever). She's always singing "Baby Baby Baby Oh". Totally cracks me up!
FAVORITES: Her favorite foods are fishies (goldfish crackers), popels (pretzels...but to be fair, she's actually starting to pronounce it correctly), beies (berries...craisins, strawberries), eggs, appy sauce (apple sauce), noonles (pasta), chokick (chocolate, candy), i-ceam (ice cream, frozen yogurt), cake (as in, her birthday cake), and other "nummies".
Her favorite color is pink (pick) as far as I can tell, but she does talk a lot about her "puple thumb" (she recently smashed her thumb in the car door...it's not purple anymore, but she has a good memory).
Her favorite things to wear are "pretty dresses". But they don't stop her from getting dirty. Which is good, since her favorite thing to throw is potting soil, closely followed by mulch and gravel.
Some of her favorite activities are to "fwing" (swing), dae (draw), and listen to music (and dance to it, of course).
Family is her other major favorite. She LOVES "Papa Joe" and "Gampa". She's nearly as enamored with "Ama" and "Gama". She also does a lot of asking about her aunts and uncles. Today she wouldn't rest until we called aunt "Kissy" (Christy). Pretty sure we woke poor Christy up (two hour time difference...) but she was a good sport.
MISS INDEPENDENT: She likes to do things on her own. She's adamant about getting out of the bathtub by herself (which results in a naked little thing running around until we can catch her in a towel), she likes to dress herself (which requires lots of patience from mom & dad because it is a slow process...and if we so much as touch her or the clothes, she has to start over), she climbs in and out of her booster seat by herself, in and out of the car/carseat by herself, and in and out of the stroller on her own. She hates riding in shopping carts, and always reminds us by saying "I walk!" She also knows how to use our smart phones. She can call specific people, on purpose (usually daddy or Papa Joe), open her favorite apps (bubbles), start and stop episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, etc. She also loves to hold the phone to "Tango" (video conference) with family.

She is such a sweetheart, gives lots of hugs and kisses, and I absolutely adore her.

Enchiladas the Slow Way

My slow cooker enchiladas got bumped from Friday to Sunday because we finally found a great babysitter, and we went out on a date Friday night! But that's a different story.
So the enchiladas...(These are not my enchiladas...I didn't take a picture, so I found this online, but mine looked something like this.)

I had never made them in the slow cooker before, but they turned out FANTASTIC! I think it's going to be my new standard for enchiladas. The coolest part is that you can just adapt your favorite enchilada recipe and cook it slow. Here's how:

Cut the tortillas into quarters (I used corn...not sure how it would turn out with flour).
Put a little sauce in the bottom of the slow cooker, and then layer tortillas, sauce, meat, cheese, tortillas, sauce, meat, cheese, until you fill the slow cooker or run out of ingredients. (I used my small crock pot, but you could use any size...just depends on how much you want to make.) Then cook on low for 3-4 hours. SOO yummy, so easy, and a great option for the heat of the summer!

Thoughts on Food & Cooking

I love, love, love cooking! I love creating and I love eating, and I have recently realized that I ESPECIALLY love those things when they are simple. I occasionally get all fancy schmancy, but more often than not, my dinners are to the table in about 30 minutes (unless it's in a slow cooker, in which case, the total time I SPEND on it is still under 30 min). Lately it has been HOT, and it only took one casserole to realize that I don't want to turn on the oven and heat up the house any more, so I've been planning my meals carefully. Here's this week's lineup:
Sunday: Veggie-infused Sloppy Joes
Monday: Cranberry Meatballs with Rice
Tuesday: Curried Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Wednesday: Carnitas
Thursday: Pink Pasta with Italian Sausage
Friday: Slow Cooker Enchiladas
Saturday: Pasta Primavera
Each of these meals is created either stove top, on the grill, or in the slow-cooker to minimize heat production. Perfect for summer. I may have to get creative to transform more of my oven meals into slow cooker recipes in order to keep this up.
Some facebook friends petitioned me for my carnitas "recipe" yesterday, so I thought I might as well share what I did here too...
Carnitas

Take one pork loin, about 1.5 lbs, toss it in the slow cooker and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Chop up a few small sweet peppers, a small onion, and a handful of cilantro and cover the pork with those. Add 1/2 cup water. Let it cook on... low for about 6 hours. When it is ready, pull out the meat with tongs (it should fall apart) and scoop out most the onion, peppers and cilantro to add to the meat (but leave the liquid behind & discard when cool). Shred and serve on warm corn tortillas with guacamole, sour cream and pico de gallo. My FAVORITE guacamole is just mashed avocado with salt and onion powder to taste, but you can do something fancier if you like that. For the pico, chop up onion, jalapeno, tomato, and cilantro, and add salt to taste. This time I added fresh corn because I had some leftover corn on the cob. It was delicious. Oh, and don't forget a lime wedge on the side! It brings out all the flavors perfectly!

Aren't you tempted?

The other thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is how to keep our family healthy. We went sugar-free for the month of May, and it was such a great experience. Not only did I lose nine pounds, but I felt fantastic! And, as I mentioned in a previous post, I saw a drastic change in Olivia. June 1st we took a trip to Texas to visit Jon's family, and celebrated Olivia's second birthday while we were there. All of that equated to plenty of sugar, and sure enough, the tantrums were back. Since we have been home, I've been really careful, and now that a few days have passed (and she's had the chance to detox) she's an absolute delight again! Suspicions confirmed. We don't plan to stay 100% sugar free from here on out, but here are some of my take-aways from the experience:
-No more sugar cereals! I used to think cereals like frosted mini-wheats and honey bunches of oats didn't count as sugar cereals. I was wrong. Feeding your body sugar is definitely not the best way to start your day, and I have found that if we eat plain cereal (like plain cheerios...still have a LITTLE bit of sugar, but almost everything does) we are more likely to add fruit to it, which is good for us. If I run out of bananas, I add a little bit of agave nectar for sweetness. Still delicious, and SO much healthier, which equals happier.
-Dessert is not necessary every day. Let alone three times a day. And yes, that candy bar counts as a dessert.
-IF we are going to eat dessert, it should be for a special occasion, and there is no need to feel guilty about eating it after the kids go to bed. Sugar can have a powerful negative effect on small children.
-Watermelon can be just as tempting to kids as m&m's, provided the m&m's are not in the picture. :)
-Lots of recipes call for WAY too much sugar. After we ended our sugar-free month I made some banana muffins. I used half the sugar that was called for. They were totally delicious.
-Ice cream and chocolate chips do not need to take up permanent residence in my freezer. If it's not there, it is SO much less tempting!
-There are LOTS of great ways to satisfy a sweet tooth (believe me, we know all about those around here!) that don't actually involve lots of processed sugar. Examples: fruit, whole wheat toast with honey, cereal with agave nectar, greek yogurt with honey or fruit, a fruit smoothie, homemade popsicles. I am also really excited to try out some of the recipes on honey.com. Turns out there are lots of baked goods you can make without sugar. I'm just waiting for the weather to cool off so I can use my oven again. Also, I am falling in love with Agave nectar. And I think I might need to invest in an ice cream maker to make some yummy, healthy ice cream. Recommendations?

If things go as planned, sugar will not be making a major reappearance in our lives. Here's to healthy, happy food!

It's Virtually a Book Club!

Last night I went to book club. Jon was gone at mutual (activity night for the youth he works with at church), and the girls were asleep. I didn't need a babysitter, because book club was in my own basement. But I didn't have to clean up for company, or fix snacks for anyone but myself! Talk about awesome! To make it even better, the other members of the book club were some of my favorite people in the whole wide world! No, not my imaginary friends...my mom and sisters!! We had our first ever book club over skype. We did a four-way video call, fixed our own snacks, and chatted the night away. Our selection was "Parenting with Love & Logic" by Foster Cline and Jim Fay (highly recommend!) and we had a fantastic discussion about the content, as well as sharing plenty of our own parenting anecdotes. Even my not-yet-parent sisters joined in. The only thing that would have made it better is if Diana, who got sick and couldn't make it, had been there. I finished the evening feeling like I had really spent a night with the girls. I can't wait to do it again! Best book club ever!

Friday the 13th

I'm not a superstitious person, but Friday the 13th always makes me a little nervous. You see, 13 years ago, my family was awakened early one Friday morning (you guessed it...it was also the 13th day of the month) to a house quickly filling up with smoke. My then soon-to-be Eagle scout brother heard the alarm we slept through, and ran
through the house alerting the other eight of us, and even getting the dog out safely. As we ran out into the snow on that cold, Michigan, February morning, my sweet sister Maria began to cry. "Don't worry," we told her, "we'll be alright!" "It's not that!" She protested, "I'm not wearing any pants!" Pants or no, we piled into our station wagon and watched as not one, not two, but seven fire trucks pulled up to our billowing home to quench the threatening flames. The radio was tuned to the oldies station, and as "the pied piper" played in the background, my ears distinctly heard the lyric "I'm the fire fighter..."  Luckily (pun intended) the only permanent damage was to the laundry room, where I (yes, I) had put a load in the dryer late at night. The rest of the house was permeated with smoke, though, and we moved, temporarily, to a hotel while things were scrubbed from top to bottom. My sister and I both recall comments about camp fires at school that day, although we thought the clothes we had salvaged smelled okay. I guess "okay" is relative.
So another Friday the 13th is here. And I will go about my business with a touch of nervousness. But not enough to keep me from driving my little family through 5 states to NYC this afternoon. I might just rub my lucky rabbit's foot to be safe, though. Or more likely, offer a silent prayer. Which should probably be a prayer of gratitude. Because that day could have been so much worse. And I'm pretty sure it was more than luck that kept us safe.
Happy Friday the 13th everyone! (And for the record, I don't own a lucky rabbit's foot).

Munchkin off Sugar

This little munchkin fell asleep during dinner the other day. I think she's getting tired of watching the rest of us eat. Time to start rice cereal, perhaps?
In other news, Jon and I are not eating sugar for the month of May. It's been a bit easier than I thought it would be thanks to loads of fruit, but the side effects have been astonishing! Not only do Jon and I feel great and have lots of energy, but Olivia (who still eats the occasional grahm cracker, but by association eats MUCH less sugar than before) seems to have emerged from her premature case of the terrible twos, and has been an absolute delight! I admit that I always thought that people who didn't let their kids eat any sugar were demonstrating nazi tendencies, but I have been humbled to discover that they just might be on to something. I am now very interested in researching the effect of sugar on children, and I think this change might become a semi-permanent one. Thoughts?

Just giddy about turning four months old...

Anna is four months old today, and couldn't be happier about it!

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