Nap time. That’ll do. (Taken with instagram)
These are letters to my sweet baby D, documenting our adventures as a new family, from play time and milestones to culinary explorations. These days are long, but the years are short, so I do what I can to preserve the memories.
4 weeks ago
"I watch the babies equally horrified and amazed, recognizing that crawling babies are to sleep-deprived parents what Zombies are to people who are being chased by Zombies."
2 months ago
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Sweet D just turned 2(!!) — I’ll write about that more later — but for his birthday we made a ton of cupcakes. Unlike at his first year birthday party where all he wanted were the strawberries, this time he was all over the cupcakes. Or tuptakes as he likes to call them. Today we were hanging around the house and I noticed a bunch of bananas on their last legs, so I decided it would be super yummy to have a little mini banana muffin for a snack. I got Gweneth Paltrow’s cookbook for Christmas and have been enjoying a number of its recipes, so I thought I’d check to see if she had one for banana muffins, and as luck would have it she did! They sounded good, crazy healthy, and I miraculously had almost all the ingredients on hand. Do yourself a favor, make these today! They’re nutty without having nuts, sweet without too much sugar, and chock full of fiber with the bananas and wheat flours. Best part was that D assumed they WERE cupcakes since they were made in the same tins, so I had no trouble convincing him to eat some. Also, the mini chocolate chips I added in didn’t hurt the situation either.
Banana Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins
(adapted slightly from Gweneth Paltrow’s cookbook)
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup whole wheat spelt flour
1 cup all purpose flour (or white spelt flour)
1/2 cup barley flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 very ripe medium bananas
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup mini dark chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease mini muffin tin or line with papers. Sift flours, baking soda and salt together in a bowl. Puree bananas in a stand mixer or food processor. Add canola oil, syrup, sugar and vanilla and mix well. Add in flours and mix just to combine (over mixing will make muffins tough). Fold in chocolate chips. Evenly scoop batter into muffin tins (*note: I only filled one 24-count mini muffin tin with batter, but I still had a bit of batter left, I just didn’t feel like cleaning another tin. The recipe would probably yield about 36 mini muffins) Bake for approximately 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in a pan for a few minutes, and try to resist eating the whole batch at once.
*You could certainly do these as full size muffins too, I just find that the minis are perfect for toddler hands and appetites. If you choose to go big, bake for about 23-25 minutes, and you should get about 12 muffins.
2 months ago
3 months ago
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Our boy is observant, yes he is. Dylan spoke is first full sentence yesterday and this is what we got: Riley eat cheese. Not bad for a 23 month old! Many of his words involve Riley dog, and eating, and telling her no, or to come, or her bathroom habits. But it’s not just about Riley. He’s really talking up a storm, and more and more we’re actually understanding what he’s saying. Sometimes I’ve caught myself assuming that he was just talking nonsense, when in fact he was asking for something quite clearly. Case in point: We were at the Peninsula Creamery the other night and he points across the table saying Cheese. Bunnies. Cheese. Bunnies. I thought he was pointing at the salt shaker, so I just ignore it and gently tell him that no, that’s not cheese, it’s salt you dummy, and it’s not for playing with. A few minutes later I reach into my purse (also across the table, behind the salt), and realize that I had put a snack trap with “Cheesy Bunnies” (Annie’s cheddar snacks, kinda like goldfish) in there. It dawned upon me that he saw me put it in there earlier, and he was asking for it specifically. “You want these, D?” “Duh mommy, that’s what I’ve been asking for this whole time!”
Which brings me to another milestone: We’re eating out at restaurants again! After about a six-to-nine month hiatus we are slowing re-entering the world of dining out and we couldn’t be happier. Eating out was one of our favorite things to do, pre-baby. And D was a great restaurant goer for the first year of his life. We took him to brunch at Calafia when he was one week old (he slept under the table the whole time), slept under the table for three hours at a wedding reception in Italy when he was four months old, and even wolfed down the teriyaki salmon at the Los Altos Grill when he was a year old. But then something changed. He became a toddler and wanted nothing to do with menus and ordering and eating and sitting still. After a few unsuccessful attempts at taking turns chasing him around restaurants we gave up. But then a few weeks ago we thought we’d give it another try at someplace casual, where we could order at the counter and have our food delivered quickly. It went swimmingly well so we tried it again, and again, and have now graduated to real, honest-to-goodness restaurants where someone seats you and takes your order and serves you food and then you pay and leave. He’ll generally make it through at least 75% of the meal and has even made it through the whole thing a couple times (with only minimal iphone support). It’s a miracle. Just in time for our lives to be upended again with the impending arrival of baby #2. I have a feeling we’ll be eating out A LOT in the next three months!
3 months ago
3 months ago
