The Breakfast Lineup - Trying Yogurt Pancakes

For years, we have been following a breakfast schedule during the week.

Monday - Muffins / Banana Bread (earlier in the year it was smoothies, but the kids led a full-fledged revolt so I switched it back to muffins for the winter)
Tuesday - Eggy Bread
Wednesday - Waffles
Thursday - Cinnamon Rolls
Friday - Pancakes
Saturday - Wildcard (cereal, eggs, veggie sausage, potatoes, donuts, beignets)
Sunday - Wildcard

Connor and Helen essentially know what's going to happen the rest of the day, based on what they ate for breakfast. It's very grounding.

All of these items were selected because Connor would eat them, not because they were the best nutritional choice. Sometimes, I feel a bit of guilt over some of them, and I try and boost the nutrition content in small ways, without making the item undesirable to Connor. Parents everywhere are rolling their eyes at this, wondering how it is possible that the pickiest eater gets to dictate breakfast each day.



Here's my new twist on pancakes.

Although I'm a fan of the Aunt Jemima box - it's simple - and consistent, I thought I might be able to boost the nutrition by making the pancakes from scratch and adding yogurt to the batter. I also made up a strawberry sauce to put in - and on - the pancakes.

• 1 cup white flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup Stonyfield nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt
• 2 large eggs
• 5 tablespoons whole milk

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, add the wet and stir until the batter is the consistency you like. The batter was a bit thick until I added the strawberry sauce to it, which I did by just swirling it around the pancake after I had dropped the batter into the pan.

Strawberry Sauce

• strawberries, pureed
• small amount of lemon juice
• add sugar if the sauce isn't sweet enough

I liked the pancakes with the strawberry sauce inside them. Connor and Helen gulped down the pancakes with the strawberry sauce on top.

This post was created in partnership with Stonyfield. All opinions are my own.

Snow Daze

When you live in the Mid-Atlantic, you have some years with no snow, a few years with a few days of snow, and the occasional freakishly large snowstorm. (Famous last words to my South African au pair - don't worry about the snow, it almost never snows here and when it does, it melts by the next day. That was the winter of 2009-2010 when we had a record breaking 56 inches of snow. I still feel badly about that, though we had a lot of fun and that winter is the reason Connor and Helen think we live in a snowy climate.)

Because our snow usually melts within a few days - sometimes, more quickly than that, we are trained to take advantage of the snow when we have it. This year, we had 3 decent snowfalls. And by decent, I mean there was snow on the ground for at least a few hours. It, along with extremely cold days, resulted in several days with no school and a couple of days with delayed school. Ed also scored a few days off from work and a few days a late arrival. Here's what we did.

• Mud sledding! The first snow that resulted in a school closure and federal government closure was virtually gone by the afternoon. But we grabbed two more neighbor kids and headed to the sledding hill anyway. The mud most definitely did not bother Connor. But when I landed in a large mud puddle, I thought it was less than awesome. My washing machine got a lot of use that day.
• Helen skied down the hill by our home. Our most recent snow was a good one. Before the plows came through, Helen took a few runs down the hill and came back reporting that there were moguls on the street and she successfully maneuvered through them. I'm sad not to have a photo of this, because it would be a great one to show her when she's older and wonders why she was so impressed with that hill.
• Ed and I went cross-country skiing. Many years ago, Ed's parents gave us cross-country skis. We try and take them out anytime we can. Lucky for me, Ed is very smart and knows the snow will melt quickly and the plows will come, so he got me out early the day after our only really good snow. We got a few miles under our belt and I called it cross training for the day.
• Connor and his friend went flying over a manhole cover on the sledding hill at the park behind his friend's house. How neither of them managed to break something is still beyond me. Ed tried the maneuver once and caught enough air that the sled was toast after that.
• Purchased two new sleds. (Helen finally gave up the toddler sled and Ed broke our existing sled - see above.)
• Made snow cream - just like in Little House in the Big Woods! This was a huge hit.
• Built a snow sofa.

• Practiced whacking snowballs.

• Built tiny snowmen.

• Built an upside down snowman which was quickly a snow pile. Gravity. It works.
• Went skiing in Vermont with cousins, Wisp and Whitetail with friends, and Liberty with family. Total ski days for the kids this year are 10 - with hopes of getting another one in before the season ends. Connor can ski every trail at each of the local mountains, and has progressed to wanting to do moguls, jumps, and everything else daring. I've already asked Ed to handle the resulting ER visits this will surely cause. Helen is skiing both green and blue, and is a better skier than she gives herself credit for. We need to head out West next year to get her another week of lessons to build her confidence up a bit more.
• Scored a make-up day at school because of all the lost instruction time. But guess what? I'm planning on letting Connor play hooky that day. It only seems right. Now I just need to get caught up at work so I can do this!
• Ran in the snow - fun! and the ice - not fun!
• Drank LOTS of hot cocoa (Helen and me).
• Indoor swimming when we stayed at a hotel near Whitetail.

Things we failed to do:

• Light a fire in our fireplace, which was decommissioned when we had birds, but since the birds are dead, we could start using it anytime.

Although Spring visited us this past week, we may get one last breath of winter with some snow on Wednesday this week. Maybe we'll get that fire lit after all.

Elaine

Pile the Miles - and Dressing for Success

Helen's favorite part of nearly every athletic activity is selecting proper attire. She was delighted, a few weeks ago, to don her running shorts and head out for a 1 mile run with Moms Run This Town (with kids, this time!). Luckily, she realized that the cool temps meant she'd need a little more than her tiny running shorts, and added a few layers to go with them.

We are so ready to run this town - and drink hot chocolate afterwards!

After our run, we made our official house "Pile the Miles" chart. I'm aiming to run 1,000 miles this year, Helen is going for 20 and Connor is going for 40. We scaled each chart separately, so that the tops of each of our columns are aligned. We carefully colored in our progress to date - and made plans for our next miles.  It looks like we all have a long way to go! We'll see how they look on December 31!

Elaine

Science Fair

Unlike many area elementary schools, prior to this year, our school had no science fair. But, a mom at the school who does a ton of work already, volunteered to start one up. The students had so  much fun visiting the various projects and creating their projects that the fair is already on the calendar for next year. Our school is really lucky to have this parent - and she has a child just 1 year old than Helen, so she's going to be around for many more years.

Connor worked with Ed to test the expansion of various substances when frozen to two different temperatures. Helen played a supporting role. The highlight of the experiment for Connor was when I intentionally dropped an egg that had been cooled to 20 degrees to confirm that it wasn't frozen.

Many liquids freeze at 20 degrees.

Eggs, do not freeze at 20 degrees.

But that is OK, because seeing your clean-obsessed mom intentionally drop an egg on the floor is hilarious. Trust me on this one. It even made it into the final display board, which Connor was extremely proud to have created.

At the Science Fair, I had three very proud scientists. I was the jerk mom who ran in to see her child's project, spoke to the Principal briefly, and then dashed out - probably to go running, but I'm not entirely sure about that. I had something else to do, I know.

Elaine

Hoarding

Helen rarely throws anything away. In fact, quite the opposite. Whenever she notices me throwing something away, she takes a look just to make sure there's nothing she couldn't use. She then squirrels away the item (expired coupon book, paper clip, string, scraps of felt...) letting me know that she plans to use the item in "an invention".

I like the idea that she's trying to invent things. I'm not so thrilled about the piles of junk that accumulate.

Last night, I decided to start cleaning one of the three storage rooms in our basement. I wanted to vacuum and organize the area that surrounds my treadmill, because the untidiness of the area seems to add to the misery of running on a treadmill.

I came upon a metal box that looked like part of something mechanical, but I couldn't determine its provenance. I brought it to Ed and asked "trash or not trash", so I could determine if it could safely be thrown away. Ed decided that it was part of a heating system we replaced a few years ago, and deemed it trash.

At this point, my little hoarder piped up "It doesn't surprise me that you still have that useless piece of junk. You people never throw anything away."

Is she trying to say she comes by her hoarding habit naturally?

Elaine

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

This year's pinewood derby featured mixed-age runs. Rather than running the cars by Boy Scout pack (which correlates to age), each car was randomly assigned a number. It wasn't until the end of the evening that everyone found out who won their pack.

This turned out to be a very cool thing for Connor.

Three of the top four cars were from Connor's pack. They raced in three different heats, so three of these boys got to win their heats, which is a pretty cool feeling. From the parental perspective, it was awesome to watch Connor's joy as he won each of his heats, and equally awesome that a different kid won for their age group, so we don't have to spend a Saturday at the regional meet. (The back story here is that in Connor's first year of pinewood racing, his car was much faster than everyone else's car in his pack. It looked like a bus, so it was purely a function of getting the best axles and weighting it reasonably correctly, not a function of designing the most aerodynamic car. When we got to the regional race, Connor was so outmatched by the cars that other boys dads had built that he lost every race which was not fun.)

Connor came away with the design award - which means in a voice vote, his car got the loudest cheers. Ed and I had left the event by the time the cheering happened, so I cannot take credit for tilting the vote in his directions. He wins some cool camping equipment - which he'll receive at the next meeting. I actually love that his pack leader puts the emphasis on winning design, rather than fastest car, because design is where the kids really show their stuff.

Below is Connor's car, which Ed worked on with him. When it raced, a minifig with R2D2, Chewbacca, and Luke rode along, as well as a few weapons.

Connor worked hard on the car - and is already thinking about next year's car! He wants to win for speed and looks - which is a difficult combination, I suspect.

Elaine

The Gingerbread House

Connor got it in his head that we were going to make a gingerbread house at Christmas. If we were at my parents' home, I probably would've hopped right onto this. But we were at Ed's parents' home, and I just didn't think I could handle the mess of four children between the ages of 6 and 8 digging into all that frosting and candy. It would surely turn a small project into a giant mess.

Connor was extremely persistent in his desire to build a house, so finally I told him "We'll build a small village when we get home! If we build the house here, we won't be able to enjoy it at our house since we can't easily transport it!". This, of course, is the oldest and stupidest parenting trick in the book. Talk a kid out of doing something you don't want to do today - by promising something even better / worse in the future!

He fell for it. They always do. Parents always hold out that this will turn from an even bigger parenting loss to a parenting win, hoping the kid forgets what they were begging to do. For the record, I cannot recall a single time this has worked in my favor. But I still have hope.

Santa did her part to make the building of the house as painless as possible. She brought Connor a gingerbread house building kit.

And guess what? When I finally did bust it out a few weeks ago (after Christmas had passed, but before Epiphany), Connor and Helen hardly made a mess. And...they decided to wait until NEXT YEAR to build that village, because then we can start early and really, really make a lot of houses.

Elaine

Forgiveness

Ed and I went to a concert a couple of months ago. There were supposed to be two opening acts – a singer we were really interested in hearing, and a “spoken word artist”. Guess which one was sick and couldn’t perform, leaving the other one extra time? 

Which is how we found ourselves listening to a rather long performance by a “spoken word artist”. I thought Ed might fall over in agony as he tried to determine the appropriate number of beers to consume to douse the agony of being forced to listen to poetry. It might be the one moment in his life he was sad to not have a smartphone to use as an attention diverter.

But something really powerful happened during that performance and I cannot get this line out of my head - weeks later. I think it's the start of some real moving forward in my life.
 

Forgiveness is accepting that the past can never be better.

Since thinking about that - and running for a long time by one's self without headphones (which is how I nearly always run) gives a person a lot of opportunity to think about this - I've started to notice things that used to bother me have been erased from my head. Instead, I find myself wondering what I was annoyed about, and really understanding that some things just don't matter. And better, when I get annoyed with something that has happened, I'm able to move through it more quickly than ever.

I've been doing not only the proverbial work of getting rid of the past, but also have been moving mounds of stuff out of the house (with Ed playing a huge role in cleaning out the basement from boards and other junk left behind by the previous owners). I am lighter than ever.

I've found a new trough of positive energy to set out. But I'm cautiously guarding that energy, lest it be snapped up by people who have misused it in the past.

And wow, am I grateful for the new perspective. With every mile I pound the pavement, I'm letting go of it all this year.

Elaine

Balance

Parenting is an exercise in balance. And, sadly, perhaps, my parenting modus operandi seems to be to pile on as many things as I can handle, add another thing, let something I care about fall apart, and then subtract something so the thing that most recently fell apart can percolate back to the top of the list of things that get done. Although I don't feel particularly rushed in my life, I do notice that if I add anything, then something starts to give.

Which is how this blog has come to be set aside again. Apparently, I cannot run over 25 miles a week and still squeeze storytelling about my kids in. Which is a shame, because I bet I'll miss the stories in the years to come more than I enjoy running the half marathon.

So...the quick update, until I figure out what I'm ditching.

Helen has joined Daisy Scouts. Her first meeting was a couple of weeks ago, and even though she didn't know anyone there, the troop leaders were super nice. I have high hopes for the experience being one that introduces her to other girls who she'll share a class with next year at Glebe. I'd prefer to not be a troop leader this year, but if Helen feels excluded, I'll start volunteering at the meetings to help out where I can.

After being exceedingly proud of myself for getting ALL the patches ironed on in time for the first meeting, I learned that I wasn't supposed to affix the petals and center of the daisy. DOH! I'm peeling them off before tonight's meeting, except for the center of the daisy. Helen has learned the pledge, so she gets to keep that one.

Connor and Ed have been building his derby car. We have high hopes. The race is next week.

Ed also got stuck helping Helen with valentines. She loved the ones he made last year so much, that she insisted on copying them for her class this year. Overheard yesterday "Helen, if you're getting bored with this, we can work on it later". "Nope! I'm fine!". Ed has no idea how much stamina Helen has when it comes to crafting.

We've also taken advantage of the snow that has fallen here, and gone sledding probably a half dozen times. If I figure out how to move photos from the iPhone a friend gave me to this blog, I'll update the post. Otherwise, just imagine Connor flying down the hill, attempting to hit a jump that has been created by some snow. Hitting it, and flying. Good times...good times...

I'm still training for my half marathon, but also trying to convince my cousin to run a marathon with me next year. He's a runner, so even though he says he needs to get in shape, I'm guessing he could finish the marathon without much training if he set his mind to it. Me? I'm up to 8 miles at a good pace, followed by 1.5 miles cooling down with the kids. I've switched over to minimalist shoes and LOVE them. But...lots of training left to complete.

And, given how squeezed I feel for time right now, I am REALLY hoping I hit my revised time goal when I run in March, because I don't think I can keep this schedule up for many more months!

Cheers!
Elaine

My Semi-Indoor and Fully Unplanned Home Waterpark

It's cold in Arlington. Really cold. And while yesterday I was busy complaining that Connor's school had indoor recess (it was around 40 at recess time) today, I understood that same choice.

One of the joys of an older home is its natural "charm". And in my case, by "charm" I mean - my house is awesome for hide-and-go-seek because it has many nooks and crannies. There are also a few strange hide out spaces that I'm sure will eventually bring great joy to Connor and Helen.

One of the more unpleasant things about an older home is that stuff constantly breaks. We've pretty much replaced every part of our home in the past 5 years, and remain optimistic that we've finished with the big ticket items.

Today, Ed received a call from the babysitter (thank goodness she noticed and called) letting him know there was a water leak in the greenhouse. The greenhouse that, for all intents and purposes, has been decommissioned. We've tossed out most of the stuff that was once stored in it. We've watched as different panes of glass fall from various places in it. And we even had the foresight to have the heating system shut off and capped so we would stop wasting energy heating the thing and didn't have to worry about a pipe bursting out there in the boiler powered pipes. A pipe burst a few years ago, prompting this genius move on our part.

The only thing we forgot? We never turned off the water leading to the sink in the greenhouse. And while it is in the warmest corner of the greenhouse, with full panes of glass missing, it's really cold out there. And today we learned it was cold enough for a pipe to burst. I came home to water shooting out from beneath the sink - which would surely be awesome if it didn't mean thousands of gallons of water were spraying right next to my home and it was winter, so there was no possibility of running around in swimsuits and having fun with the burst pipe.

I eventually got the water to our home shut off so that Ed could solve this problem when he arrived home. And the one bright side I have discovered?

Connor actually washes his hands after he uses the restroom. I know, because right after he got home from school, he came running into my home office shouting about there not being any water, and noting that he NEEDED water to wash his hands. I gave him a bottle of sanitizer and told him it would have to do for now.

Any bets on whether this will be our only surprise this winter?

Elaine