And it's already October...

Hi Everyone,
Long time no blog. I was just looking up a recipe on this and realized it has been months since my last actual posting. And seeing as how it's 1am here, why not just write an update now. Sure. Why not.

Much has changed, much is the same. Eleanor is now 2 years and 5 months old, she's running and talking in full sentences and being goofy and enjoying life. We go to a 2-year-old co-op play group of 10 children that is run at a church in town that has a fabulous co-op preschool. While this play group is not formally associated with the preschool, all of the other children involved are the younger siblings of children attending the school. We meet once a week for 2 hours, most of the moms stay but this past week I left Eleanor there while I went out and she did fine. It was nice to walk around the campus area with no agenda and do some window shopping.

Nothing happening these days on the Civic Theater front. I helped out doing hair for the musical Bye Bye Birdie at the end of September and had a fun time. I auditioned for another play at the beginning of October but didn't get a part, which I am still pretty bummed about. I enjoy having time to myself as a stay-at-home mom, but I miss some of the fun being around other people, and not just other moms or Ben.

As of recently, I am working for my mom processing her online sales and managing some advertisement/promotional aspects. It has been a slow start but I think it will pick up once we hit the advertising aspect harder. I was also recently offered a part-time short-term position doing some administrative work for my church friend Pat and her business. This would also be a home-based position, working on my own time. While this too sounds great for me, the one who is at home all day, I am trying to find the balance between wanting some extra income and doing work that maybe isn't the most enjoyable way to spend what little spare time I feel like I have these days. I have grown selfish with my schedule and I imagine most people assume I am dying for something to do; not so. I look around my house and see a million things I would like to do, and usually it is just a matter of finding tasks that I can do while simultaneously entertaining/watching over/teaching/helping/feeding/loving/reading to our daughter. The balancing act continues.

Ben is doing pretty well- he recently finished the Herculean effort of repainting our garage, almost. He asked that I finish the window sills, and I still have the "attic" window to paint, and the final coat on the back window. I keep forgetting about it... Nevertheless, we are very glad to have that monkey off our backs.

Next Monkey, errr, I mean Next Home Repair: New hot water heater.

Maybe that will be a story for the next blog post!

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

1 1/2 flour
1 Tbls. Baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup cooked oatmeal
1 ripe banana, mashed
1 egg
1/2 cup skimmed milk
2 Tbls. oil
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup Splenda baking mix
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Sift dry ingredients together, mix with wet ingredients just until moist.
Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes.


Makes 11 muffins at 3 WW points each.

Chicken Enchilada Soup- low fat and tasty!

This stuff is spicy, tasty, and filling!
Don't let the pumpkin fool you- you don't taste it or notice it at all!
My husband had no idea of this secret ingredient until I told him.
Serve with some tortilla chips and a dollop of sour cream to mellow it out if needed.

Makes 9 cups, 1 cup is approx. 2 Weight Watchers points

3 c. Fat Free Chicken broth
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes (do not drain)
1/2 c. diced onion
3 c. green enchilada sauce (or 2 10-oz cans)
1 15 0z can pure pumpkin
10 oz cooked shredded chicken (I used 1.5 raw large chicken breasts)
1 c. frozen corn

If chicken is raw, saute chicken in bottom of large soup pot with 1 tablespoon olive oil or non-stick cooking spray and diced onions. Then remove chicken to cut up or shred and put aside. Add chicken broth, enchilada sauce, tomatoes, and pumpkin to onions in soup pot.

If chicken is already cooked, saute onions alone in pot, then add broth, enchilada sauce, tomatoes, and pumpkin.

Heat to a low boil, stirring occasionally. Add chicken and corn, cook 5 minutes longer. Add salt and pepper to taste (I found it unnecessary). Enjoy!

Tasty Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hi friends,

This afternoon I modified a recipe I found in a cookie cookbook and came up with one tasty oatmeal chocolate chip cookie (and I'll be honest-- mine looked WAY better than the pictured cookies in the cookbook).

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes ~50 cookies, 3 Weight Watchers points for 2 cookies

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
Dash of salt

1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup superfine sugar (or regular if you don't have superfine)
1/2 cup light brown sugar (not packed)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup oats
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together first 4 ingredients small bowl, set aside. With an electric mixer, cream together butter and both sugars. Add egg and vanilla extract, beat until light and somewhat fluffy. Add flour mixture and blend on low until thoroughly mixed. Stir in oats and chocolate chips, mixing well. Using a melon baller or cookie dough scoop sprayed with nonstick spray, drop rounded balls onto cookie sheet, with one inch space in between cookies. Bake 9-10 minutes until edges appear firm, but still soft to the touch in the middle. Transfer and cool on wire racks.

Christmas and home again

Well, the presents are all unwrapped, it's bare under the tree once again, and Eleanor's new toys are strewn everywhere. It seems like Christmas was just yesterday, but no, it was in fact 5 days ago, and we celebrated several states to the east with my family in New Hampshire. We're just too lazy to put all these new toys away...even though I did manage to fill a whole laundry bag up with "old" toys and bring it up to the attic to make room for the new ones. We might be seeing a toy chest in our future.

All in all, we had a great holiday week with our family, filled with lots of our favorite things: cut-out cookies (a Ben favorite), downhill skiing (Heather), LOTS of dogs (Ellie), fondue (Heather), doing computer things for my dad (...Ben?), eating out and eating often (all of us), AWESOME PRESENTS, and seeing all of our big family!

The only hitch in the entire wonderful week were the two crumby 14.5- and 15.5-hour drives that bookended our vacation. The first drive we left around Ellie's bedtime and hoped to simply drive through the night, baby sleeping soundly; however, she did not understand this and took 2 hours to go to sleep, and then proceeded to wake up and cry at every toll booth and gas stop we made along the way. The result: thanks to a borrowed car DVD player, we were all enjoying Sesame Street videos at 1am. That and a wrong turn that we didn't know about until 40 miles later which forced us to take an impromtu alternate route left the first journey less than easy. On the return trip, we tried a different method of leaving at around 1pm in the afternoon, hoping to arrive in Ann Arbor around 2am. The baby aspect of this drive went incredibly well, she was very good and watched a lot of Sesame Street videos (Thomas the Train proved too boring). The unexpected aspects were having to take 2 45-minute breaks during the day for Eleanor to get some energy out at rest stops, and then a surprise snow storm outside of Cleveland that turned a simple 100-mile drive into a 3 hour white-knuckled experience where we passed several cars that had spun off the road into ditches. After checking the weather radar via my dad on the cell phone, we decided to hold strong and drive it out, but I was close to calling it a night and pulling over to a Motel 6. We pulled in our driveway around 4:40am, and fell into our beds, exhausted. Eleanor surprised us both by sleeping in until close to 10am, so we did get some sleep before Ben headed off to work for a half-day. I get tired just remembering this trip!

Now we are all home again, but our poor house isn't quite in tip-top shape yet. We are almost all unpacked, but still have loads of laundry to do and boxes to put away and new toys to find storage spaces for. We are having 2 families from our baby play group over tomorrow for dinner (since none of us can really go out for actual New Years with our dear babies in tow), so I am going to "dream the impossible dream" and plan on all this junk being picked up and food being cooked and ready by 6pm tomorrow, just in time for Ben and all our guests to walk in the door.

My musical rehearsals for NINE are back in full swing- we thankfully get tomorrow and the weekend off, but our show opens up in 2 weeks from tomorrow, so we're really trying to polish things up and get ready!

We forgot to bring our camera to New Hampshire (and amazingly that's the only thing we forgot), so no pics to post yet...


HAPPY NEW YEAR, FRIENDS and FAMILY!

Ellie's 18-month check up

Hi friends and family,
Today Ellie went to her 18-month check up and she's right on track!
Her stats:
35 3/4 inches tall, 100% percentile (she's been 100% in height since 2 months old)
29.06 lbs, 95% percentile (actually this is the lowest percentile she's been since she was a week old)

She's the height and weight of a 50% percentile 2 1/2 year-old, and she's 1 1/2 years old ;)
So yes, she's a big little girl, but as the doctor points out, she's simply following the growth curve (side track-- just got to clean up Italian dressing off the carpet. She's curious too, ps.), her growth curve just started out higher than most babies and continues to be high.

Eleanor also got her second H1N1 booster shot, so she is all immunized. I just heard today from the nurse that the H1N1 vaccines are now available for the general public, so hopefully I can get one sometime soon.

A funny side note- while waiting to see the doctor, we found out there was another little girl (maybe 4?) named Eleanor there as well. The confusion arose when the nurse called for "Eleanor" and we both stood up ;)

Eleanor now recognized the song "Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer" when she hears it on the radio, and will point to her nose. We've been watching a few holiday clips on the computer, and she knew Frosty was a snowman when we first saw him (we have many snowman ornaments on our Christmas tree that she can locate if you ask her, too).

Excited to see some of you soon!

Potato Leek Soup

I made this soup for the first time this week and really liked it. I took several recipes I found online and modified them to one that was both easy and somewhat healthy.

2 medium-large leeks, leafy tops cut off, and chopped finely
2 lbs white potatoes, peeled and chopped to approx. 1/2 inch cubes
3 cups chicken broth, or 3cups water and 3 chicken bouillon cubes
1 peeled and chopped (as finely as you want in soup) carrot
1 cup whole milk (I am sure skim or lowfat would work well too, I just went for the creamy factor)
2 T. margarine or butter
2 T. Dried parsley
2 tsp Rosemary
1 tsp Thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

In medium-large soup pot sprayed with non-stick spray, heat margarine/butter and leeks on medium heat, stirring until just bubbly. Then reduce heat to low and cover, simmering for 10 minutes. Stir every 2 minutes or so, do not allow leeks to burn. If leeks are getting stuck to pot, spray in more non-stick spray.

After 10 minutes, add the broth/bouillon and water, potatoes, carrots, and seasoning. Heat covered pot on medium-low for 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender, stirring frequently. Once potatoes are tender, remove from heat and use a potato masher to mash potatoes directly in pot. More mashing for finer soup, less for chunkier soup. Finally, add milk and salt and pepper to taste. Can add more milk for thinner soup. Serve immediately.

Entire batch using whole milk is 20 WW points.
Makes 4 meal-sized portions, or 6-8 smaller portions

Boun Appetito!