the everyday: part 3 {march 9, 2012}

This kid is loving life.

 

Waking up early.

Skipping naps and requesting elmo instead.

Broken of a pacifier.

Counting to 10.

Eating jalepeno chips.

Talking with her hands, not sign language-style, but i-am-a-girl style.

On a super strong antibiotic that is clearing an infection that has been lingering for probably six months.

Speaking in full sentences. Most often:

• “I want to go to grocery store?”
• “Mama kiss it? All better.”
• “Shilah big girl. Give paa-faa to Babu Beau.”
• “Where it go? I FOUND IT!”
• “Shilah read hungry cat-pillar, booooo-tiful buuhh-fly”

Yes, I know some of those weren’t full sentences.

On a related note, we have been careful not to get her stuck on saying “mine!” and consequently, she speaks in the third person often. Better? Worse? Oops.

I shall leave you with are a few great parenting reads for the weekend:

An article in the Huffington Post:

And, a delightful read on parenting:

a purple baby shower {baby violet}

On Saturday, I had the honor of hosting a baby shower. Honor. I mean it. What an amazing friend we got to celebrate, and I had four other ladies to put this shower on with me. Talk about the party planning dream team.

Scott and Lydia are having a baby girl. Her name will be Violet, which I think is beautiful. And it fits Lydia. Scott too, but it really fits Lydia. I love it.

I had Scott answer a bunch of questions that we were going to go through at the party but we didn’t even get the chance. Scott left a note at the end, how happy he was that Lydia gave him the gift of naming this little girl Violet and in an instant it occurred to me that this name I have been thinking of, praying for, talking about for months that fit Lydia so, so well…was Scott’s idea. And I thought that was pretty special, how well the three of them will fit together.

Anyhow, we did a photobooth at the party, which was a great way to get pictures of people at the shower and avoid all of those awkward sitting-down-opening-presents shots I usually get. These are way better.

Friends:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A special appearance by Nana from NC!

 

 

There’s a veggie dip in the bottom of these cups. What a wonderful and mess-free idea!

a pretty mobile with something we want our children to know: God loves His childres/with a never stopping/never giving up/unbreaking/always/and forever/love.

A step back from the photobooth:

Notes for Lydia

Make a headband for baby V.

Sign a frame for V’s room

 

 

 

 

a side of pretzel {recipe: pretzel rolls}

who doesn’t like a side of pretzel?

these pretzel rolls are delish, but serve them aside a salad or something of the sort because they are, um, dense. it’s a lot of bread, but who’s complaining?

Pretzel Rolls

adapted from une bonne vie

makes 8 large rolls

Dough Ingredients

• 3-3.5 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 1/4 cups milk, lukewarm
• 1/2 cup water, lukewarm water
• Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Water Bath Ingredients

• 7 cups water
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 4 tablespoons baking soda

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 200
• Combine 3 cups of flour and teaspoon of salt in a large bowl.
• In a small container, mix yeast with warmed milk and let rest for 10 minutes.
• Add canola oil and warmed water to yeast mixture.
• Pour yeast mixture into with flour and salt.
• Hand-knead in the bowl until dough is mostly smooth. Add more flour if your dough cannot be easily handled. The dough will be somewhat stiff.
• Turn off preheated oven.
• Cover the bowl with a dish towel and put in warm oven to rise for one hour.
• Punch down dough and knead in bowl for one minute. Cut dough into 8 pieces.
• Form balls by pushing dough into a circle in your palm, and then pull all of the outside edges of the dough to the center and pinch.
• Place dough balls seam side down on a well-greased surface.
• Let the dough balls rise for 15 minutes.
• While the dough balls are rising, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get the pretzel “bath” ready. In a large pot, bring water, salt, and baking soda to a rolling boil.
• Plunge three dough balls into the water and let them “poach” for 1 minute total. Using a slotted spoon, transfer them to a well-greased baking sheet. They will be sort of slimy.
• With a serrated knife, cut 2-3 lines across each roll and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pretzels are a rich brown.  These are best eaten the same day they are made.

free valentines printables {free download}

it’s the day before valentine’s day.

maybe you need some valentines.

you’re in luck. i know, you didn’t think you’d get lucky today. you’re planning your last-minute trip to spend 4x too much on valentines at walgreens right now.

there are three different valentines – you can click the link to the pdf below each one and you’ll get an 8.5×11 document with four valentines per page.

i made these for an amazing party that a friend threw last weekend, hope you enjoy them too!

click here to download the red valentine PDF.

click here to download the pink valentine PDF.

click here to download the blue valentine PDF.

free for personal use. please do not sell.

on-hand dessert {recipe: the best, easiest, most reliable chocolate chip cookies}

These cookies are amazing. I have made three batches each time, and every time I form the dough into five logs, wrap them in plastic wrap, drop them all in a big Ziploc bag, and put them in the freezer.

Then when people are over for dinner, or I’m headed out to see a friend, I take out a log, preheat the oven, break the dough into chunks, and drop it on a cookie sheet.

Delicious homemade cookies in 10 minutes. Wonderful.

The Best, Easiest, Most Reliable Chocolate Chip Cookies

makes about 72. adapted from MADE.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shortening
• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 6 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 bags choc chips (12 oz bags) – 1 semi-sweet, 1 milk chocolate, 1/2 bag white chocolate

Instructions:

1. Mix the shortening and butter with white and brown sugar, three minutes.
2. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix seven minutes (a long mixing time is necessary to completely combine the ingredients.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, and salt). Add 1/2 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix. Then add the other 1/2 and mix.
4. Add in the chocolate chips and mix.
5. Refrigerate dough while oven preheats to 350.
6. Place 1/4-cup balls of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet (NOT nonstick is better for this – just a regular pan)
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes or just until the cookies are barely golden on parts of their tops. Allow them to cool for a few minutes and transfer to a cooking rack.

If you make the whole recipe of dough, you can freeze some for later:

• Divide the dough up into 4 or 5 piles on pieces of plastic wrap.
• Use the plastic wrap and your hands to shape each pile into a loaf.
• Roll them up inside of the plastic wrap.
• Place them all in a ziplock bag together. Put them in the freezer.
• When you’re ready to bake a few cookies, take out a cookie loaf. Cut off chunks of dough and bake them as above but for 11-12 minutes.

advent and me feeling sorry for myself

i finished our advent calendar. yesterday on december 1. precisely 30 minutes before the first activity.

it’s cute. here’s a picture:

this weekend i can share the details of what’s in all of those envelopes.

in the meantime i am going to do a bit of whining. you don’t have to read this if you don’t want to.

i’ll write about it, and then i will be over it. okay?

i have strep throat.

no biggie – right? but this is strep throat after: five days of an intense stomach virus for shilah, five days of the flu for shilah, a ~5-day cold for each of the three of us, and a sinus infection and ear infection for shilah. also somewhere in there jon and i both got versions of the flu, it was near the beginning but i don’t remember much besides sweating out a fever in the middle of the night and that a new container of 50 ibproufen went empty in a matter of five days or so.

i am tired of either missing stuff or going places feeling like crap or holding a sick toddler.

that’s all for now. i feel silly writing this. we have medical care and medicine and our general health is fine.

bye.

my favorite dessert {recipe: key lime pie}

My favorite dessert

Key Lime Pie

½  cup key lime juice
¼  cup heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup cream cheese, room temperature
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 to 2 teaspoons finely grated orange zest, divided
5 egg yolks
whipped cream, for garnish
Graham cracker pie shell(recipe follows)

Whisk sweetened condensed milk with the egg yolks. Whisk in cream cheese. Stir in whipping cream and  key lime juice. Pour into a prepared crust and bake at 325° for 15 to 20 minutes.

Easy Graham Cracker Pie Shell
1 1/2 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup white sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted

Mix graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and melted butter until well blended . Press mixture into an 8 or 9 inch pie plate.
Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 7 minutes.

colorado

at the beginning of the month we went to Colorado Springs with Jon’s family. We were there Thursday-Monday and we packed the weekend with tons of activities and time seeing all the places from Jon and his siblings’ childhoods. We went to places like palmer park, garden of the gods, the flying W ranch, the balloon races, the pantry, and fargo’s. All that and we even skipped things like going to pike’s peak and the air force academy in the name of naptime.

And, just so I can document this – Shilah did excellent on the plane. She played and played and slept only the last few minutes of the second flight on each leg of the trip!

Here’s the photo recap:

family photo

 

declan kindly played with shilah – often.
lincoln!

balloon glow – all the balloons are blown up and lit up at night!

sleepy 5:30am mornings getting to the balloon races

connor forgot his shoes!

aunt coralee

connor

balloons!

grandpa and jon

declan’s “smile” face

aunt megan

shilah learned to cheers

grandpa and grandma

shilah

engaging the heart {parenting: part 4}

Read the premise for and additional notes on this series.

Part 4: Engaging the Heart

This piece is short, but so, so practical.

We are wired not to see ourselves with accuracy. It’s why we get defensive when someone calls us out for something we did wrong, it’s why we want to blame our sin on and why things my boss says to me at my yearly review can surprise me.

We think we see well, and then we realize later that we didn’t see well. Later we look back  and realize where we were wrong. Sometimes years later. We make phone calls and say we’re sorry.

Kids are the same. A long, loud lecture doesn’t typically help your child see where his behaviours are wrong and his heart is in the wrong spot. We have to help to open the eyes of their heart by drawing them to personal insight. They need to see for themselves, not just hear us tell them.

We need to ask heart-oriented questions  any incident or misbehaviour to help kids see what was really going on instead of blaming someone else, or a situation, or just being defensive of their wrong actions. Here are five heart-oriented questions to bring them to this confession:

1. What was going on?
2. What were you thinking and feeling when this was happening?
3. What did you do in response?
4. Why did you do it? What were you seeking to accomplish?
5. What were the results?

Do you see what those questions are getting to?

We can finally get away from, “You can’t hit him just because he hit you first!” Instead, it’s, “You can’t hit him because you are upset.”

Your heart is at the center of your actions. Your behavior came out of your heart – you can’t just blame it on another person or situation. You are responsible for how you act! You are responsible for how you respond!

What that looks like for us:

• Shilah can say a lot of words but doesn’t string many together. She’s starting to talk about emotions. She’ll say “happy!” when we’re on the floor reading books. We’ll ask these questions in a simple form and help feed her some answers. “Shilah, you hit mama, you know that hitting is disobeying, right?” “When we had to leave your toys to go change your diaper, did that make you sad?” “Did that make you upset?” and talk her through – even though you are upset you have to obey, you can’t just hit mama because you are upset.

How it’s going:

• Apparently I am also a child, because I find myself asking these questions in my own head when I start to get defensive, when I tend toward gossip, when I begin to be judgmental. I think these questions are as fitting for us as they are for our kids.

 

 

targeting the heart {parenting: part 3}

Read the premise for and additional notes on this series.

Part 3: Targeting the Heart

We must be aiming to impact the hearts of our children and not just change their behaviour.

We live out of our hearts:

“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” –Luke 6: 43-45

God has already given us everything we need to guidance. He is in me, for me, and with me. 

Each person’s heart is their causal core. According to the Bible, the heart can: repent, believe, see, pray, sing, discern, grieve, think, list, give, harden, fear, hate, love, pray, turn away, rejoice, know, remember. The things you do and say are an overflow of the heart. You can’t do or say something and then say that you “didn’t mean it.” You did mean it. Your heart was angry. You wanted to hurt someone.

We have to focus on the heart of our kids, and not their outward resulting actions. Lasting change travels through the pathway of the heart, so that the resulting behavior is good, genuinely good. In our frustration as parents, we use:

• threats (“you don’t want to know what will happen if you keep xxx”),
• manipulation (“if you are good, you can have xxx”)
• guilt (“you shouldn’t be driving your parents crazy like this”).

These things may change behaviour, but they don’t change heart motivations. When that child is faced with a decision on their own, without a nagging parent hanging above them threatening, manipulating, and guilting them, they’ll make the bad decision because there’s no overflow of good direction in their heart. Instead, we have to see that we have no ability to change our kids on our own. Our teaching helps protect them, but does not restore them. Only Jesus can help you teach them, and only Jesus can restore their hearts.

Being an Example:

 Every time you talk to them about their behavior, tell them also how you struggle. Model an understanding of what’s beneath their disobedience. 

What that looks like for us:

• Understanding that Shilah’s behaviour comes from her heart has to be coupled with knowing that when discipline is hard or days are just challenging, God is not so unkind or unwise that he will call you to a task and not enable you to do it.
• As a parent, we shouldn’t get angry. If I was truly concerned about the condition if my kids’ hearts, I wouldn’t be angry – I would be loving and compassionate and perseverant. In an instance that I am angry or upset or frustrated, I am angry not because she defied God, but because she defied me. She broke my law or intruded on my comfort. As parents, we have to get over ourselves. Confess to God that you are incapable of leading your kids with your own strength. God is calling you to value something greater than your laws and your comfort. This means a lot of prayer, for my own attitude and my own heart.

How it’s going:

• There’s not a lot of immediate satisfaction in parenting. Sometimes, there is, but some days you’re disciplining a lot and they’re tiring and so whiny and it would be easier to let them watch three hours of TV and get some work done, because accomplishment in work often reaps praise quickly. It’s easier to just correct their crappy behaviour so that they’re not making you look bad in public or leaving you with a headache at the end of the day. It’s hard to parent, but I am trusting that it’s worth it.
• We have to relate to them. I struggle everyday, so I can’t be surprised when she does too. In defiance, I turn off my alarm and go back to sleep in the morning. In defiance, Shilah turns and runs the other way when I ask her to come here please. Same thing. So, when I am disciplining, I try and talk to her a bit. “I know it’s hard to obey mama sometimes, and it’s more fun to play with your toys right now, but we need to clean up so that our friends feel welcome when they come over! Can you trust mama and obey?”

Next week, I will walk through practical questions to use in talking with your child. It’s my favorite part of everything we’ve learned!