Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Whole Wheat Cookie Bars

This recipe is for whole wheat cookie bars. They are totally delicious and a great way to get more fiber into your kids. Thank Erika for showing me the way :)

Whole Wheat Cookie

Mix:
2 eggs
1 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon backing powder
1 teaspoon backing soda
2 unpacked cups of brown sugar
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups oatmeal
1/2 bag to a full bag of chocolate chips

Spray pan, either 9 by 13 for thicker cookies or half a baker sheet for thinner.

Put in oven at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Let cool slightly and cut into bars.








Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Wrong Type of Praise?

This is awesome. My friend is in this video telling a little untruth to her daughter. From what I understand her children have ribbed her about it pretty hard. I wonder if she realized she was part of the experiment. I'm definitely taking this video into consideration on my parenting style. We recently had a very poor parent teacher conference. In less than fifteen minutes our son's teacher mentioned structured preschool three times. We are still a little unclear on if she was suggesting we should have put him in structure preschool or if she was suggesting we should pull him from school and put him in now. It was very discouraging. We came home and evaluated what she had said. With somethings we agree with her. He is shy and immature. This manifest itself in the fact that he doesn't sit perfectly in his chair at all times and is timid about projects. With some things we totally disagree. One frustrating aspect was the fact that she marked him incapable of doing things that we have proof that he does, which means he either does not do these things at school or she isn't spending enough time with him to actually see him do them. Also frustrating is to have a teacher prepping you for holding your child back at the end of the year when two months in he is already capable of doing all the things you were capable of doing at the end of a year of kindergarten. Thank you no child left behind legislation. We have conflicting views on how to deal with his "issues". She wants me to make home life more structured to match school and to push him to work more on his penmanship. I think that is nuts. I have been inspired by this tape though. I liked how the Hong Kong mom's responded to their children's bad test scores. They helped them find ways to learn the material so their children could do better. We are trying something similar at home and with very little effort are seeing big pay outs. We've started journal writing at home. Invest in some five cent notebooks and you are set. Friday night E spent a significant amount of time writing stories about making a pizza and checking a video out from the store...the two fun things we did that day. I'll also made some simple flash cards with scrapbook paper I never use. We've also been working on following directions and I've been working on stressing, "Good effort" versus "You are so smart." Because I do think he is so smart...but apparently that doesn't help a child to hear :)

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Ms. MD

When you are married to a doctor and the Saturday shift is suppose to end at noon...it is no big surprise when you get a call at 1:30 saying, "I'll be home in just a second, I just need to finish filling out some discharge paperwork." It is also no surprise when a 10pm shift doesn't end until 1:30am, because when there is a baby on the floor seizing how are you going to leaving. Just one reason your friendly doctor deserves some bucks...because you know he owes his wife nice presents to make up for the "over time" :)

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Breastfeeding: The Stresses, The Joys

Breastfeeding is such an emotionally issue for me. You carry this child in your body for nine months and almost everything that makes it comes from you. You support it, you feed it, you keep it warm, and protected. Then you birth your child and it is once again up to you to support you child, to protect it, and to most importantly feed it. Breastfeeding is a natural thing; humans have engaged in the practice since the beginning of our species. It is something with share with all the other mammals on earth. For thousands of years it has been an integral part of our species propagation and yet it does not always come naturally.

With big E, it took 72 hours for my milk to come in. Those three days were torture. My baby was hungry and was crying for food almost constantly. He was jaundiced and had lost a pound since his birth. I knew he needed food and I wanted to give it to him, but nothing was coming from my breast. My hungry baby had sucked my nipples into scabs and still nothing. Finally after 72 hours the milk came in. I can remember that euphoric moment. I was sleep deprived, had sore breast, and could barely sit without wincing but when little E choked on that first mouthful of milk I wanted to jump up and scream for joy. I won't say that I totally loved breastfeeding, but for the first year of my son's life it was the way I feed him. He loved it and it was no surprise that he was quickly in the 90% percentile in weight. I didn't mind and all in all it went pretty well.

When G-bear was born my milk came in a whole day earlier. Unlike her brother though, G-bear was a horrible nurser. From birth she was a finicky eater. She would eat just enough to get my milk to let down and then she would fall asleep or pull away to play. When she was ten months old my appendix burst and after three horrible days of trying to deal at home with a "swollen lymph node" (the diagnosis of the idiot emergency room doc). When my family doctor finally figured it out, I was sent to the hospital to have an emergency appendectomy. A family friend at the ER gave me a blessing and took my kids home. That night my daughter was weened. I guess it was a blessing she was never that into nursing. Still I will always love Liz the sweet woman who took my kids that night.

When Peach was born I thought that breastfeeding would be cake. I figured my milk would come in even sooner than it did with G-Bear. I was wrong. Peach was a vigorous nurser, and I nursed her every two hours, and anytime she cried. At the hospital the only thing that got us was scabby nipples. When we came home my milk still was not in and Peach was quickly losing weight. At three days old the pediatrician had her come in, and then because of her massive weight loss requested I come in the next day. I nursed her all that day, and still my milk did not come in. We had actually passed the 72 hour mark of my milk coming in and there was nothing. In desperation that night I gave her a little formula after she has nursed twenty minutes on each side. I repeated this regiment after each feeding that night and again in the morning. Finally when I went in to the doctor her weight loss had stabilized but I still had no milk. There was no let down and I could see her getting no milk. At this point I was in tears. After having a baby your hormones are crazy, you are not getting any sleep, and not being able to feed your own child puts you over the edge. I would sit on the couch or on my bed crying while Peach frantically tried to get milk to come. I spent quit a bit of time at the breastfeeding clinic at our local hospital. They were amazing! These women are so calm, and they are such good advocates for mom and baby, a calming force in a sea of hormones. They watched me feed her, weighed her, and gave out lots of advice. Finally at a week she was able to get a little milk out. It wasn't much but she was finally getting enough to measure on a pre feeding/post feeding weigh in. I kept at it, nursing every two hours, and at two weeks she hit close to her birth weight and had a three ounce feeding. After that I was able to relax a little. Since that time Peach has become a champion nurser, and has quickly gained in height and weight. She is far from obesse but has the look of health. My milk supply is different then it was with my other children. I don't spend lots of time engorged and for the most part have no need for breast pads, but the milk is there when I needed it, and Peach has been able to get enough to sleep through the night since she was a month and a half. I'm happy for her. I'm grateful to my body for finally pulling through for me.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Slum Dog Millionaire

Who hasn't heard about Slum Dog Millionaire, between the Oscar buzz and the Human Rights violations Slum Dog had the world talking. There didn't seem to be a day that went by that I didn't hear some new tidbit. A couple of weeks ago I brought It home from the library. When I told Dr. J it was about a boy on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire he fell asleep on the couch. Five minutes in I knew I had to wake him up. It was so bright, so full of life. From the moment the boys start running through the slum I could tell it was going to be something special. The premise is ridiculous and genius. The acting can be cheesy and heart breaking. There is violence, evil, extreme poverty, desperation, exploitation, murder, and yet somehow at the end I was happy. There was an overflow of color. It is not a movie to be taken lightly. I didn't realize until after the movie was over that it was rated R, but I wasn't surprised to find that out later. Multiple murders are witnessed. A man is set on fire. A young boy is blinded. A girl is exploited. Poverty abounds. Still though there is something about it that just catches the imagination. I had to add it to my top five favorite movies. The list currently includes:

Edward Scissor Hands
Forest Gump
The Painted Veil
Benjamin Button
and now
Slum Dog Millionaire

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A delicious snack!

Looking for something light and delicious...try a small bowel full of frozen grapes. I've actually started getting an extra bag of grapes to freeze. I rinse them, pull them off the stems, and throw them in a freezer bag. Delicious.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

A Hero's Funeral

My cousin buried her husband today. My mom said the chapel was completely full of just family. I wish I could have been there. You are a good wife Brooke. We all love you and are thinking of you everyday.

To My Baby Sister

Please explain what you want me to tell my daughters :)

Spider

I came out with little E on Friday when his carpool showed up. Anchored to my van and a tree was this crazy spider web. This of what an engineer feet it is to have created something so complex in a night that but for four anchors was completely free standing. It was incredible...and creepy. Spiders make my skin crawl. To truly understand how amazing this is, check out picture numero 4. That brown dot about three inches off the hood of my car, right above the tree is the spider sitting in his web.




A side shot. The wind was blowing and he just kept surfing it out.



This incident of course made E's day.