Friday, January 11, 2013

Currently Reading

The daddy bear is currently reading...


Ya, daddy bear likes to keep his reading list pretty short.

The mommy bear is reading...


I'm enjoying Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, and have concluded that it's one of those books you have to own.  On my nook, I have The Wednesday Wars and it's frankly quite awesome so far.  

And finally, the baby bear...


These are the books that we read at least once per day.  Ethan is obsessed with Good Night, Gorilla.  I personally find it very challenging to read this book to him because, well, there are just so few words.  My estimation is that we read this book at least half a dozen times a day.  He is also loving the Llama Llama books which I find adorable.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Favorite Christmas Present

One of the Christmas presents I got from Jake this year was this recipe organizer app called Paprika.  I love it.  I've only been using it for a couple weeks but it has already made my life so much easier.  One of my favorite things is how easy this app has made it for me to share my recipes.  All I have to do is click "share" and then "email" and it formats the recipe nicely in an email for me.  The lame thing is you have to pay for the iMac version, the iPhone version, AND the iPad version if you want the app on all your devices.  As you can see below, I've entered 114 recipes so far and I still have about 300 more to go...  So I better get to work.


Here are a couple more screenshots:


Happy cooking!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Ethan the Weight Lifter


One of Ethan's 2013 resolutions is to get an impressive six-pack.  To achieve this, he turned to mama's newly purchased bag of red potatoes and he lugged it around all morning long.  I couldn't pry it from his hands.  It was almost like Charlie Brown and his blanket except for that bag of potatoes weighed three pounds.  After about a dozen drops, the bag broke open and the potatoes fell all over the floor.  He lovingly picked them up one by one, carefully put them back into the bag, and was back to business with the weight lifting.  That milk belly of his is going to be gone in no time.






Monday, January 7, 2013

An Accidental Prank

I pulled my first and worst prank ever last week without really meaning to.  Remember how I was sick last week?  Well, I was getting ready for bed one night and while I was changing out of my daytime pajamas into my nighttime pajamas, I looked down at my legs and to my horror found that they had turned a blueish purple.  How did that happen?  For a split second I thought that my sickness had somehow taken a dive and turned into something horrible but then I saw that my slippers had turned a bluish purple too!  It didn't take me long to realize that it was because of the the new leggings I wore underneath my sweats.  They bled.  The new leggings were purchased by my mom.  She got both Leah and me some.  So I took a picture of my legs and sent it to both my mom and Leah.  To my mom, with the intention of tricking her to think that I have somehow froze my legs in AZ; to Leah, with the intention of warning her so that she doesn't get the same bluish purple legs.  I didn't even think about tricking Leah because I knew she would be hard to fool with her medical background and all so I just sent her the picture.

I cropped the original image to minimize skin exposure.
To my absolute delight, my mom believed me.  She was so worried about my legs she sent me a string of texts instructing me exactly what to do to warm them back up.  I was feeling pretty good about the joke that I pulled on her so I told her the truth soon after.  We both had a good laugh.  Leah never texted me back that night so I went to bed early with a stuffed nose without thinking too much of it.

When I woke up in the morning, I found several missed calls from Leah and a few texts from both her and my mom.  Apparently Leah didn't get my text until late that night.  After looking at the picture with no explanation, she thought that I had dislocated my knees.  She FREAKED OUT.  Since she couldn't get me or Jake on the phone, she called my mom.  My mom said that Leah was already crying when she answered.  Poor Leah let her imagination run wild.  She first thought that maybe I had fell and hurt my knees and when I didn't answer my phone she thought I had gotten abducted.  I have no idea how she went from dislocated knees to abduction but one thing I do know is that my sister loves me.



During the aftermath, Leah went into a very logical explanation as to why she thought my knees were dislocated.  Her husband, who is also pre-med, agreed that my knees looked deformed.  The final diagnosis: Congenital Ugly Knee Syndrome.

The end.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Bah-baye Mama




I had always been the one to put Ethan to bed ever since he was born until about a month ago when we decided it was time to stop co-sleeping with the bug.  Jake is the one who puts him to bed now.  When we first started changing things up, E screamed and kicked and cried at the top of his lungs when daddy came pulling him away from mommy, but he doesn't do that anymore.  He willingly went to daddy after snuggling with me on the couch, waved to me while he said "bah baye", blew me a kiss, and that's it.  I watched Jake carry him into his nursery.  There was no screaming, no kicking, no crying.  I should be happy, and I am glad that he's not sad, but there was an ache in my chest.  I feel like he doesn't need me the way he used to need me anymore and that makes me just a little bit sad.  I'm sure I'm just walking along the road of young motherhood like so many have walked before me.  It's sometimes good to know that I'm not alone in this, that my mom, my mom's mom, and so many other moms out there have all felt what I'm feeling tonight.  

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Sick on New Years + Quinoa Fried Rice


Being sick on new years day wasn't half as horrible as it sounds.  If I had to rate this cold from 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst cold I have ever had, this would be a three.  Yup, it's pretty meh.  I thought for sure that I would be kicking the dead germs' butts and getting back to my normal self by now (this cold started a few days after Christmas), but I'm still not completely over it yet.  I've finally proved my mom's truthfulness when she told me as a child that I had to rest to get better.  I was a very obedient child, though she might not agree completely, and therefore I had never had the chance to prove her words wrong until now.  A mama gets no rest with a one-year-old running wild in the house and on the walls and over her hair.  It's real comfort, though, that my child hasn't caught what I have.  But then it really isn't that bad when your husband gives you the royal treatment while he's home with dinner in bed and the frequent head-pokes through the door just to check on me while blocking the King of all wild things from entering the bedroom.

Anyhow, I made dinner the other night which was a rather ordinary action in itself, but the fruit of my work was quite delicious if I do say so myself.  I made quinoa fried rice or perhaps you'd rather call it fried quinoa, like Jake, since there's really no rice in this dish at all.

{ Quinoa Fried Rice }
Adapted from Damn Delicious

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
1 head broccoli, cut into florets
2/3 cup frozen corn
2/3 cup frozen peas
2 carrots, peeled and grated
3 cups cooked quinoa
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
3 tablespoons soy sauce
Salt to taste
Chicken powder
2 green onions, sliced
Sriracha, for serving

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium skillet over medium high heat. Add garlic and onion, and cook, stirring often, until onions become translucent, about 4-5 minutes.

Add mushrooms and broccoli. Cook, stirring constantly, until vegetables are tender, about 3-4 minutes. Add corn, peas, carrots and quinoa. Cook, stirring constantly, until heated through, about 1-2 minutes.

Add ginger, soy sauce, a pinch of salt and some chicken powder. Gently toss to combine. Cook, stirring constantly, until heated through, about 2 minutes. Stir in green onions.

Serve immediately, drizzled with Sriracha, if desired.


Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Ethan: One Year in Review

Don't you sometimes just hate some of my blogpost titles?  Urgh!  They are so unoriginal.  I shall make it a resolution to have more creative blogpost titles in the coming year.  Anyway, while I was hunting down a picture of Ethan from a year ago for yesterday's post,  I saw a whole bunch of cute pictures of him from last year and I decided to pick one picture for every month and put them all together.  It's crazy how much he has grown!