Banana Bran Muffins

The dozen muffins I made last night were gone by morning, so I feel confident to say this is a yummy recipe! I wish it didn't have refined sugar, but at least it wasn't excessive. Some muffin recipes I found had a whole cup of sugar in them! I may reduce it to 1/4 cup because apparently you can reduce sugar in baking by 1/3 without affecting results.

Here it is:

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup natural bran
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup unsweetened plain yogurt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup mashed banana (2-3 bananas)
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour milk (sour milk by adding 1tbsp vinegar to 1/2 cup milk)
2 tbsp molasses
3/4 cup raisins
3/4 cup (or so, I didn't measure) frozen blueberries note: put them in a dish to thaw while you're mixing up the batter. Otherwise you'll have to cook the muffins longer.

Mix yogurt, brown sugar and egg together. Stir in mashed banana, buttermilk and molasses. Add dry ingredients, raisins and blueberries and stir just until moistened. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full of batter. Bake 375 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

A Sampling

Here is a sampling of what Eva brought home from school today. She can draw animals better than I can!


These two are heavily inspired by The Lion King:

Scar on top of the mountain, Zazoo on the left, and baby Simba on the right.

Mufasa

Eva's new hat...

Yesterday we went out for a drive to find a new park. We didn't find any parks, only bad roads and dusty fields. The drive wasn't all for naught....We found this guy selling hats on the side of the road. We decided to take a few pictures of the hats because Eva brought her camera with her. (I'll post her pics later) Eva spotted a purple cowboy hat and a little negotiating later she owned it.

Good form...


Eva was very excited...


She was having fun...

Big Boy Bed

Micah hasn't been wanting to sleep in his crib for a few weeks. Yesterday I took off one of the sides to make it into a "big boy bed". He likes it but he still didn't want to sleep in it tonite. I had to wait until he was asleep to transfer him from our bed. Not that I blame him really- we do have maybe the most comfortable bed in the whole world!! (Three years since we bought it and we still thank God for that blessing almost every single night. Awesome investment!!!)

His crib mattress, on the other hand, is plastic covered and has been slept on previously by 4 other children. Not quite as cozy.

I'm not in a big hurry to buy him a bed, though. I'd rather wait to invest in a full bedroom set for him once we're living in Canada again, hopefully owning our own home and planning to stay put for some time. Get something that is just right for our situation. So for now, he'll either sleep in his 'daybed', or maybe on the futon. And that will do just fine.

Parent-Teacher Conference

On Friday we had a meeting with Eva's teachers. I was looking forward to it because Eva has not been overly excited about school lately and I was hoping they'd have some ideas.

Here are some of the things they said:

- Eva is very smart
- She has a fantastic memory
- She is good at puzzles
- She focuses well on her work
- Her spanish is coming along nicely

Her main challenges are twofold:

- Patience- waiting her turn when she wants their attention or needs help.
- Opening up to her classmates. And this is exactly what is causing her to feel lonely and to semi-dread school. Yes, there is a language barrier and sure, making friends doesn't come as easily to her as it does to some. However she has been in the classroom long enough to get a feel for her classmates' personalities and to understand that she has a place of belonging there. Her classmates are still interested in getting to know her, but eventually they will stop trying if Eva continues to rebuff them. Her teachers felt that Eva is emotionally ready to push past this barrier and they asked our support in communicating that to her. They believe (as do we) that although it may be difficult for her, she can do it.

I talked with Eva about these things over the weekend, and she didn't argue. It was as though she knew that this talk and expectations were coming. I will be interested to see how the next few weeks and months unfold.

All Micah

Pretty typical weekend Micah... nudie boy watching a movie.

Since I posted about his dry day, he totally regressed in the potty training department. He got sick and the antibiotics gave him the runs, so we had to go back to the pullups. After a couple of weeks of that, even when his diarrhea resolved he got very relaxed about his toileting. We changed more dirty diapers in the course of a few weeks than we had in the whole previous year, I think! Thankfully, that ugly phase has passed. But he doesn't care to use the toilet for pee if he's got a nice absorbant pullup on. So he does best nude. Generally he will use the toilet or the grass out back if he's naked. If he is wearing anything on his bottom, he just uses that.

I have heard that some kids can be trained with a weekend of nudity. Not ours!

Soon....

Good Energy Today

Today has been good. Micah is finally sleeping pretty much through the night! I think he might have woken up at 4am, but I don't really remember. I slept hard and felt good today.

I hosted Bible Study- there were only two of us. We watched the U.S. Presidential inauguration and ended with prayer. Not a usual Bible Study format, but it felt right on this historic day.

I tried to get Micah to sleep before going to pick up Eva from school, but there wasn't enough time. I tried again after we got home, but I guess he had rested enough during the first try to sabotage another effort.

Eva has the sniffles again. She's lasted a whole two weeks. She has been feeling a little stressed about school again- she says she's lonely- so I'm sure that's a contributing factor. I hope that this passes quickly and that it remains mild.

I am making pizza from scratch. The kids always enjoy using the rolling pin, dressing up their own little pizza, and eating copious amounts of raw dough. Often Micah doesn't have any dough left for his personal pizza. ;) I enjoy making pizza, but it is quite time consuming, so I am pleased that I have enough energy for it today. And that the kids were very accomodating. It wasn't so long ago that I had to fight for every productive moment in the kitchen!

Another Exceedingly Painful Errand!

I needed to get that big, bound document done before tomorrow so the kids and I walked down to Office Depot this afternoon. I was hoping that my favorite OD employee would not be on duty.

I felt lucky to see that though he was on duty, he was not the only one working! So I caught the eye of a competent-looking copy professional and asked her to do her thing.

It was a good start. She got right after printing the documents, as the kids played quietly on the floor with the toys they had brought.

Then it went wrong. The kids ran wild into the store, and my favorite employee was consulted about my job. NOooooooo! Unsurprisingly, he immediately put the stoppers to the progress. He told me that there were too many pages to bind into one book. I knew this was not true, since I had made the identical book for myself only a couple of weeks earlier. Then he took it upon himself to straighten the pages, even after I told him that I wanted to check through them to make sure they were in order. Guy, they're going to need straightening again after I check through them!

Gah.

Then Guy and the other employee took forever measuring the width of the papers and deciding whether they could indeed fit them into a single book. Finally, Guy gave the go-ahead for Girl to start punching the holes. As she bound it I silently rejoiced, as I tried in vain to keep Micah's ear-piercing shrieks down. My heart sunk as I saw Guy fiddling with my book.... and even further as he pulled out all the binding and started again. By now thankfully the kids were engaged in some quiet imaginative play but I was ready to pull my hair out. It was a good hour before we walked out with that one document. Amazing. I can only hope that the speed of service there improves with time and experience.

* * *

After leaving there we checked out the new gym next door. Andrew and I have been eying it up during construction and I wanted to see what it's all about. It is a circuit-concept gym... probably not what we'd be looking for. If we were serious about going to the gym, that is. ;)

Then we popped in to the new dance studio next door. I found out there are ballet and jazz classes for Eva's age. We watched a tap class that had the kids thoroughly rapt. Eva says she's interested in taking dance classes but who knows? I'll show her some examples of ballet and jazz on the computer and we'll talk about it for a while. I don't think she needs anything more on her plate during the week just yet- school is pretty draining for her.

Childbirth Education Update

To complete my certification, I need to read a bunch of childbirth related books, write reviews on them, observe two attempts at natural childbirth, attend a series of four La Leche League meetings or a lactation class, attend a workshop and write an exam.

I flew through the books way back when I got them, but haven't gotten around to writing the reviews yet. I have no excuse.

When I entered the program, they were just changing over from an in-person workshop format to an online format. Since then, as far as I know, no workshops have been offered.

There are no lactation classes offered in this city, as far as I know.

My investigations showed that the La Leche League in the city was not currently meeting.

Natural births here are few and far between. Also, it's not until recently that I feel comfortable with the idea of running off and leaving the kids for an unknown period, on short notice.

So, I was feeling a little bit in limbo about my course requirements. And the two year deadline for completion is now looming (this spring).

All of the sudden things seem to be coming together! I got in contact with the only midwife working in Torreon, who also is the only person giving childbirth classes. She will be attending a waterbirth at the end of next month and is going to ask the mom if I can attend as well. I am very hopeful about that. She also told me that a La Leche group has started meeting! I attended my first meeting on Saturday and it was good! There was a mom there with a so-cute week old baby girl. There was another mom there who is still nursing her 4 year old and her 2 year old. Two very pregnant women. And a married girl who is thinking about starting a family, and wanted to find out more about breastfeeding. She brought along two unmarried friends. Finally, there was a supportive pediatrician in attendance as well.

Just earlier that morning I had been mulling over the fact that I had to somehow find at least two couples to teach my course to within one year of certification. Our expat group has shrunk considerably and I'm not sure anyone is planning a pregnancy. How would I manage that requirement? Would I have to somehow arrange to run a course during a visit home to Canada? Well, after the meeting one of the very pregnant ladies approached me and asked me anxiously when I'd be ready to give classes. She said she thought there would be a lot of demand for it, given that there is currently only one option in the area. I was blown over. I had not considered teaching in spanish. My spanish is good, but to teach in my second language? Makes me very nervous. So that was scary and encouraging all at the same time.

I definitely have to get on my reviews, but apart from that it's a bit of a waiting game now...

Dental Visit

Andrew took Micah to the dentist on Saturday. I had a meeting to attend which started a half hour before Micah's appointment so Andrew was on his own. Naturally, right about the time I should have been leaving for my meeting, Eva dropped a heavy object on her big toe. Oh, did she wail! We were at a loss because she was clutching the toe for dear life and refused to give us a peek at it. She cried hard for at least 30 minutes. We felt terrible for her. There was no sign of blood, and every once in a while she could be distracted enough to stop crying, so we felt that it wasn't the sort of thing to deserve an visit to the hospital. However it was frustrating for both of us because she would not let us "do" anything.

All the energy floating around got to Micah too. At one point he was wailing because I wouldn't give him a tic tac, Eva was propped up in the bed crying with pain, Andrew had retreated into his special happy place, and I was in a leaving-the-house frenzy. Andrew said it was a gong show getting the kids into the car but got much better once they were on the road. The kids were then fantastic despite the one hour wait at the dentist which just about put Andrew through the roof.

The reason for taking Micah to the dentist at such a tender age? An abundance of plaque! When I first saw it I was in shock. I thought it was Cheerio residue. But it didn't wash off or brush off. Geez. And here I thought I was doing so well with their diet. I think our dental hygiene routine is decent. My mom suggested that it is saliva related, as she has similar issues with plaque buildup despite a fantastic dental hygiene routine. (I hope you don't mind me sharing, Mom!)

Micah was really accomodating and still in the dental chair, but later complained that it "willy huwt" on a few of his front teeth. I'm sure he won't be overly excited to go the next time.

Eva is fine.

Exceedingly Painful Errand

Tomorrow starts the new Moms' Group I am hosting at my place. (I'm excited!). As part of my prep I wanted to make a copies of a few pages from a book. Never one to like wasting paper, I wanted the pages to print duplex; that is, on both sides of the copy. Now, I have done this sort of thing before, as a copier layperson. So I KNOW it can be done and I KNOW it is not overly difficult. But this Copy Professional, after spending a good 25 minutes working on the task, told me the system wouldn't allow it. He was prepared to give me on four sheets what I KNEW would fit on two. I gave him a word of advice about the position of the book on the copier glass and finally it was done. Oh how I wished that had been my only copy requirement of the day. But I had four more documents I wanted to print. The next one was an easy two page text Word document I wanted printed duplex as well. That one went fairly smoothly, phew. Then another two page Word document. But this one I wanted to print duplex and in colour, because it was a collection of photos Eva's grandparents had sent for her documenting the birth and demise of a snowman in their back yard. How much more difficult could it be than the previous document? Evidently EXTREMELY MUCH more difficult. It took him at least another 25 minutes to print that one for me. (Eva was thrilled with her collage, by the way). By this point, Micah and I had decided to leave the other 300 page bound pdf document for another day, and hopefully a different Office Depot employee.

I'm exhausted all over again just thinking about it. But happy to have my documents!

Um... Growth Spurt?

All signs point to yes.

On Sunday, Micah ate more steak than I did. Yesterday, he ate more salmon than the rest of us put together. Today, he ate 3 consecutive bowls of Cheerioes for breakfast, a banana and bowl of raisin bran for snack, a sandwich and a half for lunch, and two HUGE plates (more than me) of mac'n'cheese!

update: he also had another plate of mac'n'cheese before bed. And then he had trouble sleeping- growing pains perhaps?

Eva's Bike

Here is Eva on her new bike....We'll get some action shots or video soon.

Eva's Pictures

Today Eva was blasting tons of photos inside the house. It was awesome. She was getting right in there. In fact, she used up all the batteries. Here are some of her pics...They are so good. By the way, we used Lightroom to go through them all and these were her favourites. Dana and I did not help Eva at all. This was done while I was probably watching TV and Dana was feeding Micah.

Something to Look Forward to This Spring!!

The last two years it has been a long haul from January to July. Both years both sets of parents came down around Christmastime, and then we didn't have any visitors or go anywhere until summer.

This spring we have a beach vacation with Andrew's parents to look forward to!! We just booked and are we excited. Whoohoo!

In other news, Eva got a bike on the weekend. A two-wheeler with training wheels. Her friend Xochi grew out of it and passed it along. The first try was discouraging for Eva and she gave up pretty quickly. But today she REALLY got moving. She was devastated when I told her she had to come inside. She wanted to "ride in circles all day long". She had a serious fit, yikes. But it was so exciting to see her on that bicycle. We'll go out tomorrow a few times yet. And I'll get a photo, I promise.

Another Rough Night

It never ends...

Ah well, the good news is that I almost always have an opportunity to catch up on the lost sleep in the mornings with Micah. Can't say the same for Andrew though!

Yesterday afternoon Andrew went for a run- first run in quite a long time. This may or may not be relevant.

At about 10pm he started feeling rotten. He got chills and the shakes. No fever though. He had flank and back pain. Makes me wonder if he has some kind of kidney infection. Could pulled muscles or a complaining body cause these sorts of symptoms? He never got a fever. Today he feels a little better. No more chills but still some pain. So weird. I feel bad for him!

Now of course I couldn't sleep soundly knowing he was feeling so rotten. Until he settled down, neither did I. Got a few decent hours after that, and then Micah was up and bugging me. I didn't give in and feed him, but he did ask repeatedly. Then he fell asleep and my restless legs took over keeping me awake.

It is truly amazing to me how there seems to be always something going on to interrupt and disturb our nights. But by now it's the norm. So we work around it. I am so grateful for my nap opportunities, and I will NEVER, EVER take a good night's sleep for granted again!!

Micah Night Weaning Update

Micah has now gone two nights without nighttime snacks. Not that it stops him from asking. But he is not as insistent as usual. He's getting the picture but it might still take a while before he is sleeping through.

Picking Lemons

Yesterday we went to Señora Laura's house. Laura was my spanish teacher for nearly 2years. She is so good with the kids and such a good person. She had the kids hunting for lemons on the ground so that she could make more lemonade for them.

Abnormal or New Normal?

Micah's 'normal' is to wake up at least 3 times in the night asking for milk. Sometimes more- more times than my foggy brain can count. Well last night before bed I told him he could have milk ONE TIME between bedtime and the time that Daddy gets up. He agreed. And stuck to his end of the deal!!! He slept more soundly than I've seen him sleep. And much later!

Here's hoping this is new normal!

Good Car Repair Experience

I was mildly surprised to have quite a good experience at the Honda dealership this week. When I took the van in, I mentioned that there was a lot of noise in the back and that I wondered if the rear struts needed replacing. Left the door wide open for them to say "yes", right? But they didn't! They tightened up the back seat, adjusted the back door, took the coins out and changed the oil. It was done on time. The van was clean when I picked it up. All the rattling has been mostly eliminated. I thought the price was quite fair. I was pleased!

Easing Back Into Reality

Tomorrow Andrew goes back to work. But it won't be the return to the regular routine because Eva doesn't go back to school until Wednesday. We will miss him so much!!

I was thinking of taking them to play at Carl's Jr, a fast food restaurant. They have a great play structure and the kids have fun. The thing is that it's probably wrong to play there without ordering anything, and there is nothing there that I want to order!

Oh yeah, I don't have a car to go anywhere in. My van is in the shop to have, among other things, the coins removed from the CD player (again! This time Micah was the perpetrator).

Andrew made an amazing batch of chili con carne this afternoon. Chock full of good whole foods. Including 2 types of beans, which are slowly making their way into our regular diet. Now if I could only find tasty fish in this inland desert city....

Kids played beautifully together yesterday pretty much all day. It was spectacular. Today they turned their attentions back to us. Andrew did lots of crafts today, we both did some trampoline jumping. Micah helped me grocery shop. Eva helped Andrew with the chili a little- until she got distracted by the tv that I was using to distract Micah so he would let me finish my lunch.

Eva said the cutest thing the other day. "I shouldn't drink from a cup after Micah does because he's sick, and then I personally could get sick." Oo, I got a kick out of that one.

Eva is very excited to go back to school. She is disappointed that it's not time yet.

I am very excited that nobody has a runny nose (or worse) anymore!