Crib Notes: Turkey Pot Pie

Wondering what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers? Try this Turkey Pot Pie recipe.

Commuter Mom: Thankful

This year I am thankful for:
1. Commuter Girl’s new love of holding hands at dinner and saying what we are happy about. Last night it was apple juice.
2. Friends and family who are willing to take care of our dog while we are on vacation.
3. Thanksgiving dinner at someone else’s house.
4. Portable DVD players, headphones and Curious George DVDs on the airplane.
5. My health, and my family’s health.
6. Commuter Dad…for the husband he is.
7. Starbucks non-fat gingerbread latte.
8. The roof over my head.
9. The amazing people I work with, and the wonderful job I get to go to each day.
10. Being a mom.

Green Mom: Thankful

For these things, I am thankful:

1. Green Baby will get to enjoy his first Thanksgiving dinner—that I don’t have to cook
2. Green Dog’s torn ACL does not require surgery (who knew dogs could tear their ACLs?)
3. Green Baby’s child care center and teachers that seem to love him as much as I do
4. Green Dad makes Green Baby’s lunch almost every day so it’s one less thing I do in the morning
5. Trader Joe’s turkey meatballs, Dr. Praegers All Natural California Veggie Burgers and Potato Crusted Fish Sticks – quick, easy toddler foods
6. Day after Thanksgiving bargains

New Mom: Giving Thanks Too

Modern Mom has inspired me, and I too thought I’d reflect on what I’m thankful for this holiday season.
1) I’m thankful that the project I’m working on at the office which normally takes 8 weeks but has been compressed to a three week deadline (one of those weeks being Thanksgiving!) will also be over in three weeks
2) I’m thankful that NewDad made a surprise visit to the child care center’s potluck dinner last night
3) I’m thankful that NewGirl seems to be getting over a three month stint of separation anxiety at drop off
4) I’m thankful that we decided to host Thanksgiving at a restaurant so that we can retire to home and enjoy each other’s company with a clean kitchen and empty dishwasher
5) I’m thankful for full nights’ sleep, stable employment, access to great health care, good friends, a caring family, clean laundry, full bellies, a warm home, an adorable daughter, an earnest husband, my fellow bloggers, and the freedom to enjoy it all.

Commuter Mom: The Elephant in the Room

There was a pot luck dinner at Commuter Girl’s child care center this week to celebrate Thanksgiving. While I was happy to be able to go (I missed it last year) I was feeling a little stressed about making something and getting there on time. I brought hummus and pita and got there on time.

It was nice to be able to let Commuter Girl play so I could have conversations with the other parents. We see each other every day, but never have time for much more than a hello or good bye. Then the inevitable happened. Commuter Girl came over to me in tears. She was crying because her pants and sweater got wet. I couldn’t figure out what she had gotten into, so I got her to calm down and use her words to tell me what had happened. “The elephant peed on me!”

Turns out, the elephants had been in the water table earlier in the day and all of the water hadn’t drained out of them before Commuter Girl got to them. After some more tears I was able to get her to believe me that it was water and not pee. She wiped herself down with a paper towel and ran off to play with the owl puppet. We’re taking her to the zoo next week on our vacation…I wonder if she’ll be worried about the elephants.

Crib Notes: Bath Time

When giving your newborn a bath, put her in the tub still swaddled in a cheap cotton blanket (like the ones from the hospital). Let the blanket fall open in the bath, but keep it between your hand/arm and baby’s back throughout the bath. It’s the best way to combat the slippery baby problem, which can be very scary.

Modern Mom: Giving Thanks

This year, I don’t care if my Thanksgiving meal is perfect. I’m not worried about whether the house will be immaculate and the table set just so. I have different aspirations for the holiday this time around. I will be thankful if:

1. There is more laughter than crying or whining
2. My kids agree to skip pasta for one meal and fill their bellies with any of the seven (non-pasta) dishes I’m preparing
3. My house is still standing at the end of the night
4. I am still standing at the end of the night
5. The 11 kids, who will range in age from 1 to 13, can agree on a post-dinner DVD
6. The 12 adults, whose ages I will keep to myself, can agree that it’s okay for the kids to watch a DVD after dinner
7. There’s enough food left over to feed my family the next day so I don’t have to think about cooking (all the more so if there’s enough food to last the weekend but I don’t want to be greedy)

And if none of the above comes to pass, I will be immensely thankful and it will be more than enough if everyone in attendance is healthy and happy.

Green Mom: Pretty Paper

Since the day after Halloween, I have been seeing and hearing advertisements for Christmas. While I’m definitely not ready to shop yet, the commercials do have me thinking. How am I going to wrap gifts this year?

Normally, I use jumbo-sized rolls of wrapping paper purchased at Costco several years ago. This year, since that paper has finally run out, I’m trying to think of ways to wrap that won’t cause so much waste. I know gift bags are reusable from year to year, and while I do find them to be convenient, I think they are very anti-climactic for the receiver of the gift. I thought about purchasing fabric at the “Day after Thanksgiving” sales and using that to wrap the presents, but will people really save the fabric and reuse it or will it just get tossed like paper would? I love all the Christmas trimmings but shudder at how much extra trash goes into landfills each year during the holidays. I’m stumped.

New Mom: Lunch Rut

It was 11:00 p.m. Sunday night. We had been away for the weekend and had nothing in the fridge. New Girl’s lunch bag awaited. I had nothing to put in it. With her allergies, it’s both important and difficult to find proteins to include with her lunch. Cheese, eggs, yogurt, and the like are all off the menu for her, as are fish and tofu. I usually keep a supply of hotdogs or frozen grilled chicken for exactly this situation. But even those were nowhere to be found. I had no bread to make a sandwich, no beef to make a burger. So finally I scrounged together some pasta, frozen peas, Italian-style deli turkey, and a plum of questionable freshness. Then I reached for my ultimate desperation food — canned peaches. I figured that at least she’d enjoy those, if nothing else.

When I went to pick her up from school, I sheepishly looked at her daily sheet, afraid to see how resoundingly she had rejected my sorry attempt at a lunch. And wouldn’t you know, she had eaten every last bite of everything, except the canned peaches, which she didn’t touch. I came to the realization that even that child who can throw a major tantrum at the most embarrassing moment, who can interrupt your sleep on the night before your most important work presentation, who can get sick at the most inconvenient times, can also throw you a curve and give you a break just when you need it.

Green Mom: Season's Greenings

All of my family lives out of state, so when it comes time for certain holidays or birthdays that we don’t travel for, we make sure to send greeting cards. Recently, as I was standing in the card section of three different stores trying to find the perfect card for all the special people in our lives, I found myself wondering if there wasn’t an eco-friendly, green alternative to greeting cards. Sure some of them are printed on recycled paper and some of them come with seed packets for the recipient to plant, but they still have to be created in a factory, which in some way is probably polluting the air, the water, and who knows what else. Not to mention the fact that most of the cards will sit on a mantle for a few days, then get tossed out in the trash. Since most of the people the cards go to are from a different, more formal generation, a simple e-card or phone call would not do. I rarely buy cards to accompany gifts anymore, but I can’t quite come up with an alternative solution for the out-of-town greeting.

Modern Mom: My Unbecoming

Sometimes my children mistake me for a jungle gym. Last night, my daughter was practicing some particularly tricky acrobatics on my stomach when things got a little rough. “Sweetie,” I said. “I’m a person…be careful.” My daughter started laughing as if I’d said something hysterically funny. “You’re not a person,” she replied. “You’re mama!”

I guess that explains a lot. If I’m not a person, my children don’t need to respond when I speak to them. They don’t need to turn off the TV when I ask, or clear their dishes from the kitchen table, or clean their rooms. If in fact, I’m not a person, why should they listen when I tell them it’s too cold to go outside without a coat or that it’s time to go to sleep? It seems to me I have two choices: 1) get the kids to understand that yes, mama is actually a person, or 2) try to figure out a way to make my non-person status work in my favor. After all, a non-person certainly doesn’t need to go to the gym or feel guilty about eating a second bowl of frozen yogurt. Does a non-person need to wake up when the kids start stirring at 6 a.m. on a Saturday? Guess we’ll find out this weekend.

Crib Notes: Birthday Party

Introducing Crib Notes! Little bundles of information and ideas from one Mom to another. Crib Notes will be a regular feature on our blog, we welcome any tips or tidbits you wish to share.

Looking for a different and inexpensive option for a birthday party? Contact your local fire station. One friend just had her son’s birthday party (including cake and pizza, etc.) at her local fire station and they didn’t charge anything! Another friend says her local FD offers tours of the station for parties, though you need to find another place to serve your cake, etc.

New Mom: The Big Test

Next Friday New Girl and I go in for the BIG test. She will finally have skin testing for her food allergies. While the results won’t be definitive, and there are a notorious number of false negatives for this testing on children so young, I’m both very excited and very nervous all at once.

I am nervous, of course, about how she’ll handle the testing. Thus far in her short life, she’s been an exemplary patient, and I’m somewhat concerned that everything that’s required for this testing will change all that for good. At the same time, I’m excited to find out if she has possibly outgrown her allergies to milk, eggs, and soy. For the past year we’ve been ordered by doctors to avoid all of the eight most common food allergens with the exception of wheat (she had already testing clean for celiac disease). That has meant no dairy of any kind, no eggs, no soy, no tree nuts, no peanuts, no shellfish, and no fish. Now, after this testing, it’s possible that at her next birthday she could eat regular cake and ice cream. She might be able to participate in Pizza Day at the center. I may actually be able to take her out for a trip to the mall, visit a friend’s house, or swing through downtown without having to pack her own special food. I may finally be able to give her special milk-substitute formula the heave ho. Or, as the doctor indicated, we might find out that she’s allergic to something we never guessed — we could find out the culprit is actually cantaloupe or strawberries, or something else altogether.

While even negative test results will only be one step in a gradual process of determining her allergy status, I can’t help but feel like it’s also the first step in a certain kind of freedom for both New Girl and me — just so long as we don’t find out she’s allergic to tomatoes, which would be a cruel and unusual sentence to life without ketchup for my challenged little eater.

Green Mom: Thanks But No Thanks

Green Baby had a birthday recently and on the invitations we asked for “No Gifts Please.” Part of the reason was that we just wanted our friends and family to celebrate with us without the pressure of bringing a gift. Another part was because we are careful about the kinds of toys we want Green Baby to play with. Since the holidays are almost upon us, we will have to face this struggle once again. I’m not sure how to handle receiving gifts that we feel are unsafe, not because of the age requirements, but because of what they are made out of. I know I can donate them, but I have a hard time passing on a toy that I feel is unsafe to another child. I could try and return the toys, but then I have to go through the awkward ritual of asking for the receipt from the giver and many toy stores are getting strict with their return policies. Sometimes I think I should just lighten up, but then get the nagging feeling that what I feel is right for my child’s safety isn’t something I should compromise on. What do you do with gifts that you feel are not quite right for your children?

On a related note, I’ve recently been reminded of a Netflix type of site where you can rent toys. This is a great alternative to buying all of the must-have toys then having to get rid of them when the child outgrows them.