the first and only time she’s worn these cute purple shoes. too small now. :[
well friends, i’m off to eastern WA for a few days for turkey day! i totes still have time to bust out my maternity jeans because lets face it, elastic waistband = prime pants for eating a crap load of food. i’m really looking forward to a few days away and hanging with my in-laws. i love them.
while i’m gone, you should do some things (you know, after you’re done stuffing your face with stuffing). first, enter the giveaway in my last post if you haven’t already. free stuff for your baby = you’re kind of dumb not to (sorry, but seriously). secondly, follow me on twitter so i can follow you. i don’t really get twitter (i know it’s not that hard but there are so many symbols that mean something else…@, #, etc) but i’m trying. i promise i won’t tweet stupid junk like ‘i just went number 2′ or ‘i’m making a turkey sandwich’. unless of course i’m really bored.
happy thanksgiving everyone! i’m thankful for my fam, orajel & vicodin, yo gabba gabba and under-eye concealer.
f all the things that come along with having an older baby (i still will not call her a toddler), mealtime can be one of the more trying times of the day. it’s messy and if your little one is anything like Harper, it can end in tantrums, spitting things out and throwing food on the ground for the dogs to clean up (or you if you don’t have dogs). there have been a few meals in our house that have ended in tears (mine ironically) because H has refused to eat. she’s picky. like, really picky.
so when i received an email asking to review eebee’s Mix&Mash Adventures, i was both nervous (because my kid thinks she can survive on pancakes and mac&cheese alone) and excited to get some new ideas. eebee is one of only 3 shows that actually enthralls Harper, so i was stoked to get started. eebee’s Mix&Mash Adventures is a fun and cute parent/baby interactive cookbook that encourages making meals and snack with your baby while playing, learning colors and nutrition, and best of all, bonding through food.
with the unique and (my favorite) easy recipes, i learned an important lesson : give into the mess. it can all be cleaned up. Harper had so much fun getting her hands in the ‘Cur-eed Rice & Bananas’ that i couldn’t help but ignore the fact that a lot of it ended up in her hair.
the book comes with an interactive DVD, which would be perfect to play along while you cook/eat if you have a small tv in your kitchen (we don’t, but Harper enjoyed the DVD just as much in the living room after her meal). with cute recipe names (Blueb-eebee Soup) and fun directions (mash, mush, moosh, OLÉ!), we had fun together and hallelujah, no one cried.
buy it :: pick up eebee’s Mix&Mash Adventures at Barnes & Noble, Amazon or head on over to eebee.com to buy it. it will make a great gift for your favorite baby (6 months or older). and it’s so new, chances are the recipient has never seen or heard of it before (no embarrassing duplicate gifts) :]
win it! :: Every Baby Company has offered to give one lucky HH reader a copy of the book and DVD! to enter, leave a comment on this post and feel free to vent about your feeding woes or any tips you’ve found to work at mealtime.
to get more entries, do any (or all!) of the following, comeback and leave a new comment for each, stating what you did so that each comment counts as an entry:
- become our friend on Facebook (or let me know you already are)
- follow eebee on Twitter @eebeebaby
- become eebee’s friend on Facebook
- post a link to this giveaway on your own blog (please add the link in your comment here).
giveaway will end Friday, November 27th at 11pm PST. winner will be announced saturday, November 28th. winner will be chosen at random using random.org, so be sure each entry is a separate comment. good luck readers! i’m off to (happily) clean rice off of my own shirt.
it’s really no secret how much i like pho. i talk about it frequently and dream about eating it daily. if asked to choose between pho and a good vietnemese noodle salad, i would probably keel over from the sheer pressure of it all. since the only pho place in the Harbor charges over 14 bucks for a bowl of pho (but to it’s credit, the chicken that it comes with is freaking amazing), and i refuse to drive to tacoma everytime i want some (which is daily), i decided to try to make some at home.
many of the recipes i found online were authentic, but a little too time intensive for me. i want it now. i stumbled across this easy recipe at Soon, Then and it sounded right up my alley – easy. today i ventured to the store, which was kind of a dumb idea since it’s so close to turkey day and the crazies were out in effect, and bought all the goods to make scot and i some steaming bowls of chicken pho (or pho ga as you’ll see it at restaraunts). scot prefers the beef and meatball variety, but i like the lightness of the chicken broth so i always order chicken. the ingredients were fairly easy to find at the regular grocery store, and once you have the spices and sauces, you just need to buy the noodles, meat and veggies the next time you want to make it.
shopping list:
- 10 cups chicken broth
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 1 1/4 ounces fresh ginger, 4 1/2 inch thick slices
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 3 cloves garlic, halved
- 2 star anise
- 10 whole cloves
- 2 large skinless, boneless chicken breast, trimmed
- 8 ounces fresh bean sprouts
- 16 ounces rice stick noodles or udon noodles
- 3 green onions, sliced
- 1 or 2 limes, cut into wedges
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
do this:
1] combine broth, chicken breasts, garlic, onion and fish sauce in large pot and bring to simmer. i sauteed the garlic & onions for a few minutes before adding the rest.
2]combine the ginger, cloves & star anise in a tea difuser and submerge in the soup.
3] simmer for about 30-40 minutes until the chicken in cooked through. remove chicken and cut into small pieces (i used 2 forks to pull it apart into shredded chunks) and put back in the broth.
4] follow directions for whatever noodles you buy. the ones i got (thin rice vermicelli) called for a 15 minute soak in cold water and then add to the soup for 10 minutes at the end.
5] remove the tea infuser, discard spices, and ladle the soup/chicken/noodles/deliciousness into large bowls.
6] add sprouts, cilantro and lime to your liking. i personally enjoy a ton of sriracha, lots of sprouts & cilantro with no lime. scot prefers hoisin, sriracha, sprouts and basil with lots of lime.
7] shove in your piehole repeatedly using chopsticks.
scot had 2nds and we still have at least 2 or 3 heaping bowls left for tomorrow (or after i finish posting this). it was delicious and easy and i’m really excited that i can make it anytime now. my next attempt will be to make my favorite vietnemese salad bowl. my friend bree and i eat them like they are going out of style and it’s kind of our “thing” to go and eat them whenever possible.
if you like pho, try this recipe! and let me know what you think. some big yummy prawns would also be nice floating in this soup if you’re into that sort of thing (which i am).
and i also heart the gap. if you do, too, here is a pretty awesome deal so you can go get your shop on.
20% off all purchases through january 30th, 2010 – just enter GAP20 at checkout. this includes sale items!
then, if you really like saving, enter GAPSALE25 and get an additional 25% off sale items. yeah, seriously. 45% off your purchase. sorry, 20% off and then an additional 25% off of that. and if you spend over 50 bucks, you get free standard shipping.
i didn’t check out the little boys stuff, but they have robeez maryjanes and other to-die-for cute stuff already on sale in baby girls. go! now!
o sugarcoating here, people : i’m downright miserable. i’ve literally been sick for nearly 2 weeks. first, it was a cold. then it was a horrid dry cough that seriously burned my throat. then i felt a little better. then my ears started hurting, until it felt like my eardrums would burst. then i got a fever and a migrane for a day. then i felt better! now, fully congested, sneezing, drippy-nosed hot mess of a human being. to top it alllll off, a very painful wisdom tooth pushing it’s way out because i was (and still am) too broke and too much of a wuss to get them removed when i was 19.yes, you heard me right : i am teething. now i can understand why Harper cries – it friggin’ hurts man!
the only saving grace in this whole ordeal is the fact that 5 days after being diagnosed (that’s not the right term but i don’t care) with the swine flu, our little piggy is done with her anti-virals and feeling wonderful. this makes me me smile, even though smiling hurts both my ouchy tooth and my irritated under-nose which is raw from blowing it all day. do you feel sorry for me yet?
in all seriousness, i am SO glad the little monster is feeling better. hearing your child has h1n1 is enough to send any mama (or papa) into a hysterical paranoia induced crying fit (which i did, btw, once after leaving the dr’.s office and again in front of the poor girl ringing up the prescription). i hunkered down for the worst and while it was no walk in the park, my kiddo far exceeded my expectations in dealing with it. she obviously gets her toughness from her dad, and not her mama based on the title of this post and the whining here within.
hen ever i’m out and it’s just harper and i, people often comment on how much she looks like me. they’ll say “she has your eyes” or “there’s no doubt she’s yours!”. i mean, i see it, don’t get me wrong, but look at little Scot! (p.s., just buildin’ mah gingerbread house guys, no big deal!). she without a doubt has his eyes and for the love of pete, his eyebrows.
an agent at my old office (ya know, when i worked in the ‘real world’ and wore a bra every day) was convinced that i brought my brother to a work party when it was in fact my husband. he said we look related (thanks?). i guess it’s true what they say, that you find a mate that resembles you. we looked really similar as little kids, which explains how H can look just like me and just like Scot.
thanks to everyone for sending love our way while we battle the big oink. harper is doing really well. her fever broke thursday and she is actually eating and playing now. i do have to say that the moola spent on the tamiflu was well worth it, either that or my kid is really excellent at having the swine flu.
t’s a sad state of affairs in the M household. this morning Harper woke up with a high fever that scared the crap out of me. her skin was scorching when i picked her up, so i knew immediately she had a fever, but she was acting totally normal. her temp was 102.1 so i knew something was really wrong. i called the dr. and they said to come in since it was such a sudden fever.
i gave her a dose of tylenol, some breakfast (she would only eat the banana, and threw her pancakes on the ground, so i knew something wasn’t right because holy heck, those are her favorite) and got her dressed to go. her fever had totally gone down by the time we got to the dr.s office. in fact, she seemed so well that i felt a little silly being there, and a little bummed that i was going to pay for an office visit that was unneeded (goooooo no insurance! yay america!). dr. lavinder checked her out, she was weighed (still chillin’ at 19 pounds) and then came the big mean lady with the flu swab. just…wow. i thought shots were bad. no, sticking a stick up a baby’s nose really far and and then turning the stick in tiny circles? that’s bad. the nurse shimmied out the door like a ninja and left me with my unconsolable child and telling me the results would take at least 10 minutes. FANTASTIC! i’ll just sit here with this baby you just pissed off.
when dr. lavinder came in she was as surprised as i was to report that our little monster has not only type A h1n1, but type b influenza also. isn’t that special? TWO flu’s!
(i am totally using sarcasm and jokes to mask my sadness and bitterness that my poor baby is being subjected to this nonsense. she doesn’t even go to daycare for crying out loud! i sanitize all shopping carts to the point of almost rubbing the stores name off!)
the good news is that we caught it so early that tamiflu is a great option and we’re hoping it will reduce her discomfort over the coming days (oh and guess what? tamiflu only costs ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! did i mention i love america?). by the time we got home she was back to 102 and had a runny nose and cough. the tamiflu made her throw up (first time ever, and SO sad i cried) which it is known to do. she has mostly been wanting to cuddle with scot and i and clings to her blankie. i’m just hoping we can all survive the next week.
stupid pigs.
