Weekend Fun

This weekend has been quiet.  It's very cold here, and my husband had to work this weekend, so the girls and I mostly just stayed home and did lots of fun stay-home stuff.  We had more tea parties, this time with little sister joining in.

 

We played with baby dolls and did some gymnastics in the basement.  We made a little gift to give the other kids at Miss's school for Valentine's Day.  Miss and I even completed her first homework assignment from school this afternoon when she didn't take a nap.  She was given a poster board heart at school and instructed to decorate it with the things she loves for Valentine's Day.  So today we talked about what she loves.  We taped photos of Lass, Daddy, Mom (I'm now "Mom," not Mama or Mommy), an ultrasound picture of Sis, and our dog Jonah to the heart.  Then she added photos of herself reading, doing gymnastics, eating ice cream at the pool, and picking a worm out of a carton while fishing with her Daddy.  She added a ballerina sticker, a picture of watermelon, which she said is her favorite food, and interestingly, a picture of her Papa's tractor.  She was quite decisive about what she wanted and didn't want, though I had to prompt her a bit by showing pictures and asking her if she wanted certain things.  I loved hearing the things she wanted to add, and was surprised by some things she didn't care to include, like a picture of her Oopsie Bear Care Bear.  It makes me smile when she surprises me with things like that.

Also this weekend we did some work getting things ready for baby Sis.  I did some crafting during nap time, which I'll post about when I have some finished projects to show.  Miss helped me fold clothes for Sis, which we transferred from the back of Miss's closet into Sis's.

She was so excited to help, and kept singing a little made-up song about the clothes and how her baby sister was going to love them.  She said, "Baby Sissy will be so happy that I helped fold her laundry.  She will love me so much and will give me a big hug."  I can't wait to see how wonderful these girls are going to be when their new sister arrives.  Miss was great with Lass, but she's so much older now, it will be fun to watch how much more she can understand and help with her newest sister.  And I'm happy for Lass to have to chance to make the transition from Baby Sister to Big Sister.

And seriously, there is just something about the relationship these girls have that makes me smile every time I see them playing together and anticipate so happily the addition of another sister.  I love to watch them.  I'll turn around and randomly see them snuggling together or playing a sweet little private game.

Lass's language is really exploding, so they can talk to each other much more now, and I love to hear their little conversations.  Miss has a sweet little special voice that she uses for Lass when Lass is upset and Miss is trying to console her.

Usually, though certainly not always, they share pretty well too.  I bought a two-sided easel (which hasn't been put together yet) so they could both use it at the same time more easily than the easel on their Learning Tower.

But when I witness moments like this one, I wonder why.

This weekend the sisters, as always, played lots of dress up.

Miss wanted to try to take a picture of her sister with my camera, and she did a pretty good job!

Miss also got her fingernails and toenails polished.  She has been very excited about this, and wanted to paint her Daddy's fingernails when he got home from work today.  He was going to let her do it, until I told him that the only polish remover we have is the super non-toxic stuff that doesn't really work very well.  He decided to go for a pedicure instead.  Both girls got a chance to paint his toenails.

Miss tried to finish up after Lass polished almost every part of his toes but his nails.

The finished product on the foot that Miss did by herself.

I'm sure this is the first of many nail polishings for this Daddy.  I love that he's such a good sport about it.

This weekend wasn't terribly productive.  I only crossed one thing off my extensive to-do list.  The stuff above about getting Sis's clothes folded and moved into her room is misleading.  I started the project, but since I don't have her dresser in her room yet or enough hangers for her clothes, I actually got very little done.  I hung some jammies, folded a few swaddle blankets, and moved two boxes, one with newborn cloth diapers and the other with newborn and size 3-month clothes, into Sis's room.  I got a little bit done on some growth charts I'm making for Lass's and Sis's rooms, like the one I made for Miss a while ago.  And that's about it.  Really though, I don't care that I didn't get much done.  When my husband is working the weekend and we are pretty much house-bound, I just do my best to have as much fun as possible and avoid meltdowns, either from my girls or myself.  This weekend, we did a pretty good job.

Paleo Progress

We have been doing pretty well with our attempts to shift our eating habits to the Paleo diet.  Dinner has been easy.  We've eaten a Paleo friendly dinner every night for the past few weeks.  As I predicted, breakfast and lunch have been a bit more of a challenge.  In an attempt to get my girls to eat more Paleo friendly breakfasts and not spend a ton of time cooking in the mornings, I made these cheesy egg muffins using a recipe I found on a website my brother sent me.  Here's the link to the recipe.  

I actually messed up the recipe because I doubled it, but forgot to double the amounts of any of the ingredients other than the eggs.  Duh.  They were still pretty good, but a bit dry for my taste.  I also used the same recipe (again, doubling only the eggs) to make another dozen egg muffins, but this time I used blueberries (I smashed them up a little bit when stirring them in) instead of cheese.  I thought my girls would be more likely to enjoy these, and I was right.  They were pretty good, though again, a touch dry for me.  I think next time I'll skip the coconut flour, yogurt, and baking powder and make these more like mini frittata muffins, with just eggs, a little coconut milk, and whatever other ingredients I decide to add.

The girls did eat up the muffins, and they also enjoyed to smoothies I made to go with them.

My favorite smoothie recipe:

2 bananas
2 handfuls of blueberries
8-9 frozen peach slices
Approximately a cup of unsweetened coconut milk (I like So Delicious brand, it comes in a carton like milk, rather than in a can)
Blend.
Drink.
I half this recipe for a 3-year-old-sized smoothie.

So, we've had some success with breakfasts.  I also made these pancakes last weekend.  The girls loved them.  There were enough leftover for a quick breakfast on a school morning, but I think next time I'll at least double the recipe and then have some to refrigerate and freeze.

Unfortunately, though I had plans for sausage, hard-boiled eggs and fruit, and a few other good breakfasts, Miss has been asking every morning since the pancakes have been gone for oatmeal.  I guess I just have to let the oatmeal run out and then get back into the good stuff.

Lunch has been similar.  We've had good days (chicken and corn today, ham and fruit the other day, etc) and not so good (PB&J, mac and cheese for a play date).  Surprisingly, I have learned that Miss really likes to eat "sandwiches" wrapped in lettuce.

This from the girl who really won't eat a sandwich otherwise, unless the bread is stuck together by it's contents (PB&J, grilled cheese).  If it's not, she just takes it apart and eats each component separately, so we don't do ham or turkey sandwiches here.  Unless they are wrapped in lettuce now.  I guess her lack of interest in bread sandwiches has turned out to be a good thing, since I don't have to try to get her out of the habit of eating bread so much.

We've done well with snacks, mostly eating different types of fresh and dried fruit, and Miss has discovered a love for cashews.  We have only resorted to bunny crackers once or twice when at the store during snack time.

I even developed my own yummy recipe for Paleo friendly hash, which we had for dinner last night.

I had some huge daikon radishes that I thought would substitute nicely for the potatoes in a hash, so I chopped one of them up into pretty small cubes (about a quarter inch to half inch square), browned it up with some onion and combined it with some browned ground venison. 

And it worked!  The hash was very yummy.  My husband even said it reminded him of the yummy greasy corned beef hash breakfast he used to get at the hospital where he used to work and has craved since.  I'll take that as a compliment, since the result of my efforts was actually not greasy at all.

Here's the "recipe," though I'll warn you in advance it's not terribly precise with measurements.

Paleo Daikon Radish Hash

One huge daikon radish, chopped into 1/4 to 1/2-inch cubes (it probably ended up being about 3-4 cups once chopped, if you're using several smaller radishes. I included the photos above, so you could kind of see how much).

One pound ground venison or beef

One medium yellow onion, chopped

Low sodium chicken broth (about 1 cup)

2 Tbsp butter

S&P to taste

Brown your meat.  Remove it to a bowl but leave the fat behind.  The venison had very little fat, so if you are using beef you might need to drain some of this off.  I probably had about 2 Tbsp of fat left in the pan.  Add the radish and onion, along with about 1/2 tsp kosher salt.  Stir to coat with fat, add the butter, then cover and let soften.  After a bit I thought it started to look a bit dry, so I added about 1/2 cup of low-sodium chicken broth.  When the veggies start to soften, take the cover off and stir frequently until they begin to brown (you should have the pan on medium high or hotter).  It took about 20-30 minutes for things to get softened up enough and begin to brown (this might go faster if the lid of your pan has a good seal to keep in the steam, mine doesn't).  Add the meat back into the pan along with another 1/2 cup or so of chicken broth.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the radish and onion are soft and nicely browned.  Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

It was a great warm comfort-food dinner on a super cold night.

And speaking of super cold, I have not really been all that interested in taking the girls out for the past few days because it has just been so cold here.  Today it snowed as well, so we had a stay-in-the-house-and-in-our-jammies day.  It was nice, though I did start to feel a little bit cooped up after two days of not going anywhere.  I felt the need to spice things up a bit, so I brought out the play-dough.

I'll be honest and just say that I really hate play-dough.  It's just messy and I find it annoying.  What can I say?  It's not the most frequent activity in our house.  Okay, it's a very, very infrequent activity in our house.  But, that makes my girls love it all the more!!

 This was her very special creation - A fish!  She said she made it for Grandma.

And I'll be honest, now that we have this little plastic picnic table that I can easily bring into the kitchen for them to play on, the play-dough really wasn't that bad.  In fact, I could see us doing it a bit more often.  Maybe.  The girls loved it, so that made it worth it.

The girls also got creative with their dry erase crayons.  These things are awesome, BTW.  A friend of mine found these for her kids and got some for us too when she learned of my lack of enthusiasm for dry erase markers with a 17-month-old.  These are so easy to wipe off most surfaces and they don't rub off nearly as easily as markers, so if you brush against the board you don't wind up with crayon all over yourself.  But, they do clean up relatively easily with a wet cloth.

Miss kept asking me what I wanted her to draw with her blue (her favorite color).

This is the look she gave me when I asked her to draw a square.  She said, "I already drawed a square Mama."

Well then.

It's supposed to warm up a bit this weekend so we'll be venturing out some.  Stay warm!

Cozy

We're being home bodies this weekend.

I love the weekends when we are all home together.  We did get snow the other day, so we're feeling extra warm and cozy, mostly just staying in and having fun.

Daddy is making fire and sharing milk-froth-topped tea, dancing and tickling, playing monster and reading books.

Speaking of reading books, I have two book clubs this week and just started reading the first (600+ page) book on Wednesday.  I managed to finish it tonight, and have one more book to get through by Thursday.  So I'm making this a quickie tonight.  Happy weekend!

Winter Finally?

We have had the most wonderful weather so far this winter.  So far the temps have been mild.  In the past week most days have been at least in the 40s.  Today was around 50 degrees!  So far we have had very little snow.  Not even enough to cover the grass yet.  

Naturally with such beautiful weather, we pushed nap time back today and played outside after lunch.

Who would miss out on this for nap time?

We can sleep plenty tomorrow.  Notice I stressed above that the weather has been great so far?  Well, it's supposed to get cold tonight and start to snow.  I think we're predicted to get 3-5 inches tomorrow.  Honestly, around here in January, that's not really that much.  But we probably won't be doing this for a little while:

I'm sure the girls will also enjoy finally getting to play in some snow.  But they'll be so bundled, the crazy carefree running and playing of today might be slightly less unencumbered.

This will probably especially be the case for Lass, whose little body will be back in "I-can't-move-my-arms!"status with her snow pants and heavier coat.  The girls are quite interested in the snow though, so I'm sure they'll enjoy it when it comes.  Somehow we still have a few small patches of the white stuff  that have survived the warm weather.  Of course the girls went right to them.

"It's cold!"

We'll still try to get out and have lots of fun in the snow when it comes.  I'm kind of looking forward to snow angels and snow men and Daddy pulling the girls around on their little sled.  Kind of.  I'm stocked up on hot chocolate and soup, and The Daddy has been building some fabulous fires in our fireplace on the weekends.  So bring on the snow.  It can be winter finally.  We're ready.