Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Mexican Pizza

Since Chris is working evenings and I am solo to prepare dinner and watching the kiddos, so dinner has been dumbed down a bit. I know once a week I make pizza with pre-made pizza crust. They are little personal sized crusts, that come in a three pack. I dig them. At least for now until I can make my own again.
But having a small cheese pizza every week has already started getting old, but I love how simple it is and Devon gets to make her own. She only eats half though, but I just put the other two pieces in her lunch for the next day. So it works out well. No wasting food. I decided to try to make a "mexican style" pizza. I love black beans and have been itching to use my cilantro from the back yard, so that's what I did. I played with the idea of using salsa instead of marinara sauce, but then I thought it would drown out the fresh cilantro taste. So wa-la! Here is my idea.

Marinara sauce with black beans, and fresh, yummy cilantro. I'm am totally digging the fact that I can just walk out to the back yard and Wham! here's some yummy cilantro and soon other veggies. It's incredible.

And then I put a mexican four cheese blend on top. It was pretty tasty and Matthew even ate a piece, but his didn't have cilantro on it. The third pizza I made was half black bean and mexican cheese and half mozzarella. Next time I will definitely add more cilantro, man I love that stuff, and maybe diced bell pepper and jalapeno. Very yummy stuff.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

My Growing Garden

So last week I was pathetically sick and couldn't tend to the gardens. This made me nervous, but we got some kick butt rain. Yesterday I went out back to assess the damage and everything is doing great!! One of my tomato plants has tripled in size! Nine out of ten of the cucumber seeds I planted took. All my carrots are popping up. And my basil and cilantro that I thought was done for has started coming back with new growth. Plants are so cool.

I'm very excited! This might actually be a productive garden. I was having honest doubts that everything would just shrivel up and die. I'm not expecting a plethora of veggies, but things are looking good so far.

Here are some side by side comparisons.

I planted these tomato plants on April 8th. I got them from a cute nursery in Elgin called Bloomers. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in the upper left empty space I planted a small row of carrot seeds and also in the lower right hand empty space. I've heard carrots are really easy to grow so their a good confidence plant for me, which is why I planted two packs worth between my three garden beds.

Here is the same box on April 19th. Lots of progress huh!! Check out the one tomato plant in the lower left hand corner. That is the one that I said was three times as big as it was 11 days ago. WOOT! Also notice in the upper left hand corner a small row of what looks like grass. That is the carrot seeds taking off. They are also off to a good start in the lower right hand corner. Yep. I'm good. It just makes me giddy, to look at them.
I know this isn't the best picture because I took it in the morning while there is still shade. On the left side I planted four bell pepper plants. About six inches to the right of them I plants another row of carrots. Then to the left of them I planted two rows of cucumber plants, five seeds in each row.

Here is the same box 11 days later. At first I was a little bummed that the bell peppers weren't taking off like the tomato plants, but then I read online that bell pepper plants are slow to get going. So now I don't feel so bad. But they did grow a bit. You can also see the long row of carrots. I'm going to have to learn how to can with all the carrots we might get out of this. And then to the left of the carrots are the two rows of cucumber plants. Nine out of the ten seeds took. Pretty exciting huh? For Christmas you just might get a jar of homemade pickles from us if things go well.

Now to my bad box. I call it that because it was the first one I planted and obviously didn't fill it enough with soil, so I'm not expecting much from this one. As you can see in the picture all the plants look pretty and green. These were planted on March 25th. Starting in the left corner of the top row we have two bell pepper plants, one sweet pepper and basil. Starting from the left of the bottom row I have a bush of cilantro, two rows of carrots planted, and then another bush of cilantro.

Now you can see things have gone downhill and it hasn't even been a month yet. The basil in the top right corner I thought was dead, but the big rains revitalized it back. There are new green leaves growing on top of the yellow ones. The same goes for the two bushes of cilantro. The carrot seeds seemed to have taken as well. I'm just worried that the soil in the box isn't deep enough for them to mature correctly. Brilliant me didn't till the dirt under it. I like to call this the looser box. But I have definitely learned a lot from this box. All three of them couldn't be perfect. At least not on my first try.
So yeah in a couple of months, come on over and get ya some veggies. :) I can't wait until I get to take Devon and Matthew back there to go pick a cucumber and eat it right there, because there will be no chemicals on my plants, so they can get away with not washing them off.
So what do you think?

Monday, April 13, 2009

Long Days

Now that Chris's hours have changed from 9pm-7am, to 4pm-2am, mine have too. Chris used to wake up around 4:00 in the afternoon and shower then come downstairs and be with the kids while I cook dinner. We would all get to eat together and clean up and head out for an evening walk. Well, now he's up between 10am and 11am, and gets to see Devon as she is getting home from school. He leaves now about 2:45pm. So there really isn't mealtime opportunity because Devon eats at school and Chris eats when he gets hungry.

After one week of this schedule I realized cooking the dinners I used to is pretty much not going to happen because Matthew isn't quite big enough to stay happy by himself that long. So I've been making lots of pasta, and almost homemade pizza. I get credit for putting on my own sauce, cheese and toppings right? This also makes my days seem much longer. I'm definitely more worn out by the time the kids are asleep at 8pm.

I have had one bit of salvation though. My good friend Bridget who lives just around the corner. We hang out most nights walking around the neighborhood, in each others front yards or at our houses, whatever we are in the mood for. It's really been nice having company in the evening. And I really adore her kids. Devon and her three year old are best friends, and on days when we don't catch them after dinner Devon is really bummed.

Chris seems happier with these hours because he's not flip flopping his sleep hours, and that makes me much happier too. But like I said these days seem awfully long now. Let's just look at today.
Wake up at 6:30am
Feed both and dress kids
Get Devon to school on time
Go to the grocery store
Put all the groceries away
Unload dishwasher
Sweep kitchen floor
Clean out litter box
Sweep the cat room
Play and read to Matthew
Bring Matthew to bus stop and get Devon
Feed Matthew lunch
Help Devon with homework
Put Matthew down for a nap
Punish Devon for swinging Xander around
Put Matthew back down for his nap because he never really fell asleep
Put Devon down for quiet time
Watch Twilight with a few interruptions (this is rare)
Let repair man in to fix laundry machine
Kiss Chris goodbye
Do two and a half loads of laundry
Water vegetable plants
Play with kids outside
Make almost homemade pizzas for dinner
Clean kitchen
Reload dishwasher
Take kids for walk
Come home and play a little longer
Bathe both kids
Put Matthew to sleep
Put Devon to sleep
Fold third load of laundry
8:15pm plop into glider and blog

Now I go read until I fall asleep, which should be soon.

Friday, April 3, 2009

It's Over and It Wasn't a Big Deal

So if I can remember correctly I've written three or four whinny, dramatic blogs about the devastation of the idea of weaning or trying to wean or the word weaning. I've made a big hoopla about it and now it's over. Hooray!

Was is torture? Did I have to listen to Matthew screaming in his crib feeling rejected? No and no. I do think it has altered my hormonal state a bit. I seem a bit testy and easily peeved at the opposite gender. I'm not sure why, but I made this observation last night. My neighbor is weaning her boy also, he's only three days older than Matthew, so it's good to have someone to relate to. And yesterday she seemed to be in the same mood as me, so this lead me to believe there is something going on inside us besides lack of milk production.

I finally got inspired to start weaning because when Matthew would latch on a few days ago, he just seemed to be there, not really into the whole drinking thing. Then he chomped down and I said that's it for him. He made it a little over thirteen months, he's fine. So at nighttime and nap time I just bring a cup of milk upstairs with me and we still sit in "our spot" and sometimes he drinks, sometimes he doesn't. Then I take him in his room, kiss him, say "night night" and lay him on his belly. Then I would pat his back until he fell asleep. So for about five minutes or so. But now I don't pat him all the way to sleep, just for a couple of minutes to get him sleepy and he can fall asleep on his own. It's been working great and he doesn't even cry. I'm so lucky to have two kids that have been easy to put to sleep. Yeah me! I did it!

Big Boy Talkin'

Well, Matthew is definitely not holding back in his quest to be big. I always think that he tries to "make up" for being so small. His doctor even told me after he was born that we may need to consider his gestational age, meaning how old he would be if he had been born three weeks later, when looking at milestones. So since then I have been subconsciously not expecting him to do things on time, much less early. Well, I'm done with that. He has been doing great in terms of development, and always has been. So now I'm ready to start bragging about my boy.

The past couple of months he has been using many words and phrases, but not on command. He says "all done" but not always in context, he says "bite" and one of my favorites is when he says "yes" because I have never met a toddler who said yes before no. No holds so much more power. This morning I asked Matthew, "Are you ready to go bye bye?" when it was time to take Devon to school and he said "yes" and started walking toward the door. It was awesome.

Let's see, he also says "dada" and "mama." And Mama is finally being used more frequently. Today he started saying "cat" but if he is saying it in an excited state, like when he's chasing the cat he says, "tat tat tat!" It's adorable. And he started trying to click his tongue to call Xander to him like we do. So cute!

So that's all I can think of. Time to feed him snack number two. And it's only 9:40am!