Birthday Trifecta

It's that time again wherein we celebrated our existence.  I had a great birthday because it was the first birthday my husband didn't have to work through the evening. He has always worked nights since we've been together and always had to work on my birthday. Now that he has a day job I made our evening birthday celebration mandatory for all family members. We ate steak and it was delicious.

The Birthday Girl

Next up, Baby Girl had her first birthday! We celebrated by visiting puppies. She loves puppies. We celebrated more later in the week when we met up with her dad in Chicago. He won a trip to a convention through a class his last semester so we met him in Chicago at the end of the convention to have a family trip.

Last of all it was this guy's birthday. Last year was so great he probably thought it couldn't get better, but it did. I'm good like that. Besides, how could getting a robot ball NOT make the greatest birthday a boy could want?

Hey there

I've been rereading last year's blog posts to remind myself what I've talked about. Lots of baby stuff. Understandable. I was on a steep learning curve, and it's a job that doesn't allow for many other concurrent occupations or interests.

Speaking of concurrent occupations, who has two thumbs and no longer is a regularly scheduled employee? This girl! I thought I might need to work a bit longer, but everything worked out to leave after the new year. I will provide support to the office on occasion but I'm confident things are under control without me.

As expected, my husband graduated from his university in December in what has to be the longest but most efficient ceremony I've ever been to. He's working as a month to month contract employee but looking for a full time position somewhere else since this company can't bring him on full time. No, he doesn't have any solid prospects yet, and no we aren't confining searches to a particular geographical location. He won a design competition in one of his final classes and as part of his prize the client is taking him to Chicago in March for an international product show. That will be an excellent networking opportunity for him.

The child we made is taking tentative steps already. She's still a crawler but will be walking in no time. She's so dang light she has no bulk to carry around. She's almost 10 months old and wearing size 3 MO pants today. She has 3 teeth with more coming. It's making her life miserable this week on top of having a cold, but I don't mind because she's the only thing I have to worry about and I've been getting great sleep. Starting on New Year's Day she miraculously began to sleep through the night for the first time ever. It's amazing how quality of life and emotional endurance improve after a night of uninterrupted slumber! I feel like I can take on anything right now.

I work with the young women at church now. Our congregation is so small that we combine with the young women who share our church building and there are still only a handful of girls. It's been fun getting to know them and interesting experiencing the program as a leader instead of a participant.

That brings you up to speed on our current status. This is going to be a year of big changes for us. Already it's different with me no longer working and my husband no longer in school. It's exciting and a little scary to know other things are going to happen, but have no idea what form they will take or when. Maybe we'll stay here in Colorado or maybe we'll end up on the other side of the world! Ready or not, life as I know it is changing again.

Stay tuned.

Food

I am recently engaged in learning to meal plan effectively.  Coming home from a long day of work and then deciding what to have for dinner and realizing everything we might make that could pass for a real meal requires thawing and cooking is the worst.

Second worst is actually having ideas and realizing we're missing one key ingredient for each option.

Tied for second worst is when I have lots of ideas that all involve milk or cream.  My husband is lactose intolerant and baby can't quite handle cow milk proteins yet so that makes me dairy-restricted as well for now.

After too many hangry nights and the grown-up decision to eat more vegetables, I decided to start meal planning.  It takes a bit of effort and I'm kind of lazy, but so far so delicious.  Sometimes the meals take just as much effort to execute as before, but pre-deciding what to eat and knowing all ingredients are on hand is half the battle.  With those two things taken care of, and I'm much more willing to make the meal.  

It's also satisfying to realize we aren't wasting food like we used to.  Not like it happened a ton.  My husband is a rock star at eating leftovers, but we used to partially eat something then the rest ended up in the fridge and eventually going bad because it didn't go with anything else.  Now everything we buy, particularly fresh perishables, has a plan and gets used up in time.

I realize these things I'm learning are all things people who meal plan tell you are great about meal planning, but it's one of those things you still just have to do to realize and appreciate the benefits for yourself.  Having babies is like that too.

I decided from the start I should blog about all this because I've been anemic on the blog ideas lately. Meal-planning leads to blog-planning.  How appropriate. 

When I remembered, I took pictures:

Ginger salmon with sauteed veggies and bacon

Pesto pasta with chicken and sauteed asparagus. I made the pesto myself!

Pork empanadas with quinoa and black beans

Ham and bean soup improvised from the broth leftover from slow cooking pork for the empanadas

Mini meatloaf, homemade mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob

Hamburger and homemade sweet potato fries

Fish tacos (except all we had were giant tortillas so more like fish burritos)

Meals not pictured include Waldorf salad, chicken fingers and onion rings (I've been on a deep frying kick), panini, french toast, tikka marsala, pulled pork sandwiches, and pizza (our dairy splurge when we can't help ourselves; my pizza is amazing).  

Most of the things we make take 30 minutes or less.  The most time intensive dishes are probably pizza and the empanadas. The latter has a particularly long prep period including slow cooking the pork and assembling the empanadas.  Actual cook time is like 25 minutes tops.  They can be made and frozen for later cooking, and one batch is big enough for 2-3 meals for us.  And I usually cook 4 lbs of pork at a time and use it for other dishes too.

I've also been planning healthier snacks to take to work or have on hand at home.  We've been enjoying lots of carrots and hummus, applesauce, and granola bars.  Baby girl is starting solids in earnest soon.  I want her to eat what we eat, so we better eat what I want her to eat.

Most of my recipes and improvisation inspiration comes from allrecipes.com.  If you want a particular recipe for anything seen or mentioned above, let me know.