Favorite Things Fridays - Coffee

This morning Chou woke up at 5am, and E was already sitting up, just waiting for us to wake up. This wouldn't be quite so shocking, except she was also wide awake at midnight last night. Seriously. Wide awake. I wish this was the exception, but it's the norm in this house.

My baby girl is happy, curious, driven, chill, sweet, beautiful, friendly... well you get the point. She's awesome!

She has to be, to make up for the one thing she is not.

She is not a sleeper.

She thrives on very little sleep. Yesterday she slept seven hours total (six hours overnight and a one hour nap). Today she's going strong on eight hours of sleep, as she actually took a real nap today!! I'm really hoping that doesn't interrupt her already obscenely late bedtime, but it probably will. <sigh>

I don't know if this is fair, but I blame her constant Energizer-like energy on her Asian lineage. At least I know she gets it from her dad. I love sleep, and need a decent chunk of uninterrupted sleep to be able to function at all the following day. I don't do well on little to no sleep, but Chou, even at the age of 30, can seamlessly pull all-nighters and function completely normally on an hour or two of sleep. He is amazing and takes over nighttime duty when E needs a little help settling.

He is also amazing and likes to wake me up with a cup of hot coffee in hand, ready to be consumed before I even emerge from the warmth of my covers. And while coffee doesn't completely fix lack of sleep, it most certainly helps.

Back to blogging and healthy eating

Chou and I are generally really strict with the food we bring into our home. If it's not whole, fresh, and/or generally nutritious, it rarely makes it past the front door. We've gotten to the point that all of our produce and the majority of our groceries come from market or the Amish health food store and we supplement with whole grain pastas and sometimes cheese and meat from the grocery store. Our diet is far from perfect, but we've come a long way in the past year. When I was pregnant, we committed to giving E the best possible nutrition. (Unfortunately she got pretty terrible prenatal nutrition because she made me way too sick to eat anything.) For us, this meant that she was exclusively breastfed for a minimum of six months (we started letting her taste foods around eight or nine months and she started actually wanting to eat them around ten and a half months). We have gradually changed our diet to include only things that we are okay with E eating and we've successfully eliminated all white flour/rice/grains, white sugar, preservatives, chemical additives, and most processed foods. There are obviously the occasional exceptions to this (I generally have cheese tortellini in my freezer because Chou makes an amazing tortellini soup, and Chou's an amazing pastry chef so every once in awhile I indulge...) and we don't worry too much if we're not eating at home. Since we've started being intentional with our food, we've both felt so much better and have generally stayed healthy and energized. E didn't get sick once for the first year of her life, and although nutrition isn't the only factor that contributes to good health, I think it has helped. A lot.

Unfortunately our whole foods diet went out the window in December. I ate endless cookies and goodies with zero nutritional value and can honestly say I noticed a huge decrease in my energy level. Additionally, E got her first cold the week before Christmas.

And then on January 1st, she developed a fever and came down with a super nasty virus that completely took her out of commission for a week. She's still not back to her normal sleep schedule eleven days later. Can I just say I never knew how exhausting caring for a sick child was? It's quite possibly more tiring than being sick yourself.

E never ate the junk I was devouring, although she had a few whole grain cookies, but she didn't get her smoothies for breakfast or as many healthy and balanced meals as normal. I'll never know if she would have gotten so sick if we had stuck to our normal foods, but it's a great motivation to get us completely back to our real food diet. I'm really thankful that she didn't get sick once in the first year of her life and I'm hoping we got it all out of the way for her second year :)

So for 2013, I'd like to keep up with real foods. I'd love to replace all conventionally grown meat with grass fed, as that hasn't happened yet, and we're hoping to participate in a CSA for the first time.

Kitchen help at its best!

Helping herself

Daddy's helper 

2012 New Year's Resolution

Have you ever had a relationship that repeatedly failed no matter how much you invested in it? One that you feel you gave it your best shot, and for some reason it just never worked out? You tried giving it distance and still got burned in the end?

Valentine's Day 2012

This is my relationship with Babies "R" Us. No joke. Their employees are always incredibly nice and try to be helpful, but time after time I get burned there. On December 31st, 2011 when E was less than a month old, I walked out of the store and solemnly vowed to not shop there in 2012. That was my one and only New Year's resolution. I held strong until October when we decided we really needed to go order the bed rails to convert E's crib into a full size bed before they decided to discontinue it and we were left with a headboard and footboard and matching dresser but no bed rails. Seemed logical enough and a valid reason to break my oath, and they were on sale. Plus, E is in a phase where she is not really into her crib hates her crib with a passion, and being able to convert it will help us feel like we're still able to get our money's worth out of it. So in mid-October Chou and I walked into the store for the first time in 2012 and ordered the rails. We were told they'd take up to three months (or something like that) to come in. No big deal. We're not in a hurry

So the week of Christmas they came in. Seriously?! We had seven days to pick them up, and didn't have a single day we could get them due to Christmas festivities and travelling, so we called to have them hold them an extra few days. We planned to pick them up on Saturday, but it snowed and we didn't want to waste E's first chance to experience snow worrying about bed rails. We called to delay again. No problem, they'll hold them til Monday. So this morning my parents swapped cars with us so we could use their van to get the rails. We ran into the store, loaded them up, and headed home. Chou pulled into an open street spot in front of the house and I reached behind my seat for my purse and caught a glimpse of the box. I wanted to scream. On the end of the box is written "French White". That would be lovely if E's crib were white. But it's not. They ordered the wrong ones. It's a special order and not returnable. 

I kid you not. I cannot win with this store. Ever!

I unbuckled E from her car seat and unloaded the van while Chou called the store. Chou was way more kind and gracious than I could have mustered at that moment, and after a rather long conversation, he assures me they'll fix it. They are out of stock in the warehouse right now so they can't be ordered yet (of course!) but when they come in, they'll order them, and in something like three months they'll be here and we can exchange the white ones for the espresso brown rails we want.

Good thing we weren't in a hurry :)

So for 2013, I think I'll stick with my resolve and realize that this relationship just won't work out. And maybe by Easter E will have the bed we bought in October...

May 2012

Fun with the camera... and lights!

We've had such a wonderful holiday season, and have truly enjoyed having Chou off from work for more than Christmas day and New Years day, and we've packed a lot into this month. We've celebrated the birth of Christ as well as Chou, E, and my grandmother, baked dozens of cookies to share, attended several Christmas parties, hosted Christmas Eve dinner, shopped/made and wrapped countless gifts, visited with relatives near and far, learned a few family recipes, ate way too much, frolicked in snow, enjoyed one of our all-time favorite sermon series at church, and we have enjoyed every minute! However there are still a few things we're trying to sneak into the last few days of vacation time. I've been meaning to let E play with Christmas lights and snap a few fun pictures for the past several weeks, but with all that's been going on it just happened this past weekend :)  We're also making handprint and thumbprint salt dough ornaments tomorrow on New Year's Eve. Better late than never! They'll still serve their purpose: next year we'll unwrap them to hang on the tree and marvel at how small E was a year ago. Pretty sure she hasn't grown that much in the past few weeks. But I digress.

Last year my due date with E was December 2nd, and everyone who heard my due date said, "Oh, fun, a Christmas baby!" As a mama who was ready to have this baby as soon as possible, I hated these comments! I was due one week after Thanksgiving and three and a half weeks before Christmas. I was not having a Christmas baby! She did indeed arrive one week after Thanksgiving and didn't make me wait til the 25th (thanks, baby girl!) This year, however, I'll embrace my December baby as a Christmas baby and have extra fun with all the decorations and lights :) Here are a few of my favorite shots of my one year old!

And here's my favorite. Mostly because I tried repeatedly to get some pics with the hat and she kept taking it off and throwing it to the ground. As soon as I forgot about the hat, sat it next to her and let her be, she put it on herself and I snapped this :)

Snow!

One of these days I'll get around to documenting Christmas, but until then...

It snowed today! We had a nice dusting on Christmas Eve, but we didn't get to go out in it so this was E's first time experiencing the snow. She kept pointing out the window at the flurries during lunch, so afterwards we set out to enjoy it.

E (thankfully!) got a snowsuit for Christmas :) Excellent timing! She hated it, but promptly got over it once we were outside. She loved the snowflakes! She like tasting the snow, making terrible faces, and going back for more. She didn't mind the cold one bit. Chou's dreams of endless father/daughter snowboarding just might be fulfilled in a few years.

Pear, Walnut, and Goat Cheese Salad

Chou made this recipe for Thanksgiving and I loved it! It's simple, refreshing, and satisfying. We found a wonderful goat cheese rolled in dried cranberries at Central Market that worked really well in this. Alternately, you could use any tangy goat cheese and add in craisins if you'd like.

Pear, Walnut, and Goat Cheese Salad with Honey Lime Vinaigrette

Honey Lime Vinaigrette:
Juice from 2 limes, approx 2 oz. total
1 teaspoon mustard
2 tablespoons raw honey
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

To make vinaigrette, combine lime juice, mustard, and honey. While whisking vigorously, slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Add a generous amount of salt and pepper. Set aside.

Salad:
3 ripe pears, cored and sliced thinly
1/4 to 1/2 lb goat cheese with craisins, crumbled
1/2 cup English walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
4 cups arugula
4 cups spinach

Combine all salad ingredients. Serve immediately with vinaigrette.

Favorite Things Fridays - Christmas Season

I love Christmas. Always have. Hopefully always will.

There's something magical about the whole community decorating and celebrating and giving and eating. It's nearly impossible to be grumpy when the tree is lit up, the house is decorated, and Christmas music is streaming.

I have some amazing memories of Christmas. My grandparents always came and stayed with us for a few days, so Kristin and I would give up our beds and camp out on Kath's floor on Christmas Eve. We had so much trouble getting to sleep, and had a habit of checking the window every thirty seconds to see if it was snowing yet. Eventually we'd drift off to sleep, and wake up to Dad waiting to see our faces as we ran downstairs to view the tree and all the presents. We'd will the clock to tick faster so we could wake the rest of the household. Every year we'd start by digging into Poppop's breakfast bread as he complained it was too underdone/overdone/not-as-good-as-last-year despite the fact that it was almost always even better than we remembered. We'd read the original Christmas story from Luke before tearing into presents and spending the remainder of the day listening to carols and putting together the puzzle we'd received. Then a few days later we'd pile into the van and drive to Jersey to do it all over again with the other side of the family. Christmas was, and still is, the only holiday that we get to see both sides of the family, and living two hours from both sets of grandparents made seeing them that much more exciting and memorable.

In all the cheer and excitement, we've been trying to take time to remember why we celebrate. It's so cliche, but it's so important! Our Life Group has been talking about the importance of remembering and how knowing where you came from is so vital to knowing where you're headed in the future. As we continue childhood traditions and add a few of our own, we'll continue to search for ways to focus on Christ coming to earth, on our Heavenly Father giving the ultimate gift. 

Getting the ornaments out

Decorating the tree

Coziest spot in the house