Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
THE best Chicken Noodle recipe ever
I occasionally make my own recipes. This one was made when Monkey and I both had terrible colds a couple years ago. I really like it and make it every once in a while. I HATE canned chicken noodle now after this. It's excellent for clearing out a stuffy nose or for just something yummy and comforting. We're having this for dinner tonight with some bread from the bread maker (a yummy one with the Italian blend seasonings in it).
Chicken Noodle Soup
- 2 lbs chicken cubed and cooked in olive oil with salt and pepper (and maybe some garlic powder if you like it)
- 2 32 oz containers of chicken broth (low sodium) + a cup of water OR 1 32 oz container of chicken broth + 3 boullion cubes
- Linguini or rotini pasta-however much you like. I do about 1/2 a package of linguini and a full box of rotini-we like lots of noodles
- About 6 carrots cut up or a bunch of baby carrots cut up
- Celery cut in to small pieces
- Frozen peas-about 1/2 a 12 oz package
- 2 small potatoes cubed (you can leave the skins on if you scrub them well)
- Spices to taste-I like to do a lot of each because I don't add any extra salt or pepper: Oregano, Parsley, small amounts of cayenne and crushed red pepper, Italian seasoning, Basil
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Monkey's Reading Adventure
Go to Adventures With My Monkeys now-I've just updated the blog and have some new posts about Monkey's reading. He's already gone through lesson 7 and can read 5 books by himself!
Cloth Diapers-Flats challenge (copied from Adventures With My Monkey)
Everything in our lives is part of schooling right? I'm participating in the Dirty Diaper Laundry flats and handwashing challenge. For more info click the button.
I'm making most of my flats. I'm buying a dozen Gerber ones that I can use as super thin ones doubling in prefolds, etc. I'm making the rest from flannel (order from JoAnn's today with code FREE25 and get free shipping on orders over $25) and hemp fleece that I've been saving for a while. I was going to use the hemp fleece as inserts but I think it will be better suited this way and I will get longer use out of it.
I already cut some white flannel with stars on it as 21"x27" (4 of those) and 6 hemp fleece 27"x27". The hemp fleece is thick so I don't think I'll be able to fold it small to use as a normal insert but the flannel should work if we want to use it in pockets. I plan to take a bunch of these and PUL covers with us when we go on our trip to Oregon so I can wash them out and dry them overnight rather than taking a big bulk of diapers or using disposables (and potentially having blowouts). I plan to blog about my experience :)!
I'm making most of my flats. I'm buying a dozen Gerber ones that I can use as super thin ones doubling in prefolds, etc. I'm making the rest from flannel (order from JoAnn's today with code FREE25 and get free shipping on orders over $25) and hemp fleece that I've been saving for a while. I was going to use the hemp fleece as inserts but I think it will be better suited this way and I will get longer use out of it.
I already cut some white flannel with stars on it as 21"x27" (4 of those) and 6 hemp fleece 27"x27". The hemp fleece is thick so I don't think I'll be able to fold it small to use as a normal insert but the flannel should work if we want to use it in pockets. I plan to take a bunch of these and PUL covers with us when we go on our trip to Oregon so I can wash them out and dry them overnight rather than taking a big bulk of diapers or using disposables (and potentially having blowouts). I plan to blog about my experience :)!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Birthday post coming soon...what we're doing now
I will get the birthday post ready soon with his birthday gifts, Chucky Cheese, the zoo, the cake, etc but I wanted to post a link to our Tot School/Homeschool blog (more like Preschool now) with my post about Brendan's first day reading.
http://monkeybunnsmama.blogspot.com/2011/04/taking-break-from-letter-of-week.html
Enjoy!
http://monkeybunnsmama.blogspot.com/2011/04/taking-break-from-letter-of-week.html
Enjoy!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Wonky Wednesday
Well I have a bunch of pictures to share from our crazy life (mostly today) but the all need a little explanation. WARNING-one is a picture of a REALLY messy diaper...you've been warned!
The first two go together. I saw this when I got Brendan up one morning last week. He decided he needed to put one of KORVER'S diaper covers on! It's technically a one-size and actually DOES fit him but not on the smallest snap setting-you can see his prefold hanging out there.
Brendan playing on my iPod-no not Angry Birds. It's the Toddler Teaser's Quizzing game (with shapes, numbers, letters, and colors-I got it mainly so he'd learn lowercase letters)
Apparently you *CAN* blowout in a cloth diaper but it's more of a seeping (the second picture is the outside-it leaked straight through the stitching on the BumGenius diaper). This was one of the many things that helped make today an up/down day...
Korver "helping" fold laundry after his messy diaper. He grabbed for his blue miracle blanket out of the pile so I decided to put it over him-the basement is cold anyways!
Some other things I didn't get a picture of...
The kids woke up at 6 AM today screaming. Brendan wanted to see Daddy because he got woken up by him getting ready for work. Daddy didn't go say "Hi" so it was VERY hard to get him calmed down. He also peed in his sleep again so his skin got burned (I'm working on a letter to Glenn Beck right now about Obama Care and how we've got screwed over and now Brendan likely can't get insurance because of a preexisting condition and a loophole that Utah found in Obama Care). It took a while to calm both kiddos down (Korver just needed to nurse-he was happy as a clam after he got milk). I got up with Korver before 4 and had a VERY hard time getting back to sleep so I really only got about 5 hours of sleep and need 7 to function so I decided after both kids had breakfast to lay down. Brendan tore the house apart. He cleaned most of it up without being asked though.
We got a bill on Saturday from the Perinatologist saying we owed another $55 and they were sending us to collections for the service 8/24 but it was the first bill after the original one that asked for a $20 copay (which I immediately paid). Our insurance said (on the Explanation of Benefits) that we didn't owe them ANYTHING even the $20 copay after they reprocessed it in January. SO the insurance is working on helping us get our $20 back and another $20 from another doctor.
After getting off the phone with the insurance I got done nursing Korver again so I took him downstairs to change the diaper and was surprised by the blowout. While I was changing him Brendan was putting his cars in his backpack and I asked why-usually he only puts blocks in his backpack in his room (cars are upstairs).
"Because I broke Sally" he said quietly.
Sally is a car from the movie Cars. He has a plastic Sally that pieces together so she wasn't broken-he had just pulled her apart. I put her back together and told him when he thinks he breaks things he just needs to give it to me and I can fix it. This was all after he purposely tore a page in his book AGAIN. I fixed it with tape but explained we didn't need to tear books we need to be nice to them...
Then Korver "helped" me fold laundry. While I was folding Brendan sat and watched Daddy's clock and said "Is it 4?" "Is it 5?" and so on. Apparently it takes 10 minutes to fold 2 big loads of laundry...
It's been a total up-down day today!
The first two go together. I saw this when I got Brendan up one morning last week. He decided he needed to put one of KORVER'S diaper covers on! It's technically a one-size and actually DOES fit him but not on the smallest snap setting-you can see his prefold hanging out there.
Brendan playing on my iPod-no not Angry Birds. It's the Toddler Teaser's Quizzing game (with shapes, numbers, letters, and colors-I got it mainly so he'd learn lowercase letters)
Apparently you *CAN* blowout in a cloth diaper but it's more of a seeping (the second picture is the outside-it leaked straight through the stitching on the BumGenius diaper). This was one of the many things that helped make today an up/down day...
Korver "helping" fold laundry after his messy diaper. He grabbed for his blue miracle blanket out of the pile so I decided to put it over him-the basement is cold anyways!
Some other things I didn't get a picture of...
The kids woke up at 6 AM today screaming. Brendan wanted to see Daddy because he got woken up by him getting ready for work. Daddy didn't go say "Hi" so it was VERY hard to get him calmed down. He also peed in his sleep again so his skin got burned (I'm working on a letter to Glenn Beck right now about Obama Care and how we've got screwed over and now Brendan likely can't get insurance because of a preexisting condition and a loophole that Utah found in Obama Care). It took a while to calm both kiddos down (Korver just needed to nurse-he was happy as a clam after he got milk). I got up with Korver before 4 and had a VERY hard time getting back to sleep so I really only got about 5 hours of sleep and need 7 to function so I decided after both kids had breakfast to lay down. Brendan tore the house apart. He cleaned most of it up without being asked though.
We got a bill on Saturday from the Perinatologist saying we owed another $55 and they were sending us to collections for the service 8/24 but it was the first bill after the original one that asked for a $20 copay (which I immediately paid). Our insurance said (on the Explanation of Benefits) that we didn't owe them ANYTHING even the $20 copay after they reprocessed it in January. SO the insurance is working on helping us get our $20 back and another $20 from another doctor.
After getting off the phone with the insurance I got done nursing Korver again so I took him downstairs to change the diaper and was surprised by the blowout. While I was changing him Brendan was putting his cars in his backpack and I asked why-usually he only puts blocks in his backpack in his room (cars are upstairs).
"Because I broke Sally" he said quietly.
Sally is a car from the movie Cars. He has a plastic Sally that pieces together so she wasn't broken-he had just pulled her apart. I put her back together and told him when he thinks he breaks things he just needs to give it to me and I can fix it. This was all after he purposely tore a page in his book AGAIN. I fixed it with tape but explained we didn't need to tear books we need to be nice to them...
Then Korver "helped" me fold laundry. While I was folding Brendan sat and watched Daddy's clock and said "Is it 4?" "Is it 5?" and so on. Apparently it takes 10 minutes to fold 2 big loads of laundry...
It's been a total up-down day today!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Tot School/Homeschool blog
Here's a link for our Tot School/Homeschool blog:
http://monkeybunnsmama.blogspot.com/
http://monkeybunnsmama.blogspot.com/
Cloth Diapers
So some of you may be wondering WHY we do cloth diapers. I started doing cloth diapers when Brendan was 2 1/2 months old because I was sick of laundry. Yes seriously! I really started doing LESS laundry with cloth diapers because I was washing Brendan's clothes multiple times a day so they wouldn't stain bad with all the disposable blowouts. When we started cloth we didn't have a lot of diapers at first so I was doing diapers every day and Brendan's clothes every other day (still less laundry). We built up our stash and I started making them. After just a short period of time I started washing every 3 days and eventually once a week. The bonus is when a baby is JUST breastfed (no solids) you don't have to do anything with the poop-you toss all the diapers in a DRY pail with a washable liner and when you're ready to wash you just put them in the washer and do a cold rinse, hot cycle with detergent (we LOVE Rockin Green), and cold rinse and then hang dry (we put prefolds and inserts in the drier). Easy peasy!
I started cloth diapering Korver when he was about 3 days old (full time-his first cloth diaper was coming home from the hospital). I wanted to make sure all the meconium was gone and it was by the time the hospital 'sposies ran out. We haven't looked back!
Before Korver was born I took some pictures of my changing table system. It's really really easy to cloth diaper if you have a system in place. I have the changing table set up with 4 bins (I'll describe in the pictures) and the diaper pail is under Spencer's sink (we have our own sinks in the hallway of our bathroom area) along with both boy's laundry hampers.
I started cloth diapering Korver when he was about 3 days old (full time-his first cloth diaper was coming home from the hospital). I wanted to make sure all the meconium was gone and it was by the time the hospital 'sposies ran out. We haven't looked back!
Before Korver was born I took some pictures of my changing table system. It's really really easy to cloth diaper if you have a system in place. I have the changing table set up with 4 bins (I'll describe in the pictures) and the diaper pail is under Spencer's sink (we have our own sinks in the hallway of our bathroom area) along with both boy's laundry hampers.
 |
| Full changing table |
 |
| Closeup of the bins |
 |
| Bottom right-inserts and One Size diapers (until they started fitting) |
 |
| Just a picture of the inside of that same bin |
 |
| Side view of same bin |
 |
| Another side view of same bin |
 |
| Fitted diapers-bottom left |
 |
| Top left-prefolds and bigger prefolds to put under bum when changing |
 |
| Top right-fitteds and covers (now has pocket diapers and covers) |
 |
| Side view of same bin |
 |
| Another view of same bin |
 |
| Bar on Brendan's closet so he doesn't destroy it |
 |
| Top has the wipes container, spray for wipes, diaper creams, etc. The bin under it has changing table pads, wetbags, snappis, pins, etc. To the left of those are Brendan's prefolds and cover and snappi |
Monday, April 4, 2011
Today Song and Korver's new trick
Brendan loves to sing! He makes up his own songs and own words and also loves to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and the Alphabet Song. He'll often combine these to make his own song. He likes to sing about what Mommy or Daddy or Korver is doing and then he'll sing "TODAY!" (and always the same way) at the end of his phrase. His new part of this song and speaking regularly is to state that he's speaking "Enguhlish" and he makes up his own language and will throw in a few English words a few Portuguese words (Spencer speaks Portuguese around him and to him on occasion and this is why he started making up his own language) and of course when it's in a song he'll throw in a "TODAY!" here and there. Hopefully I can get it on video sometime but whenever he sees me pointing a camera at him he stops.
I wanted to post a video of Korver's new trick. Hopefully it will work! He's growing like crazy and becoming quite active.
I wanted to post a video of Korver's new trick. Hopefully it will work! He's growing like crazy and becoming quite active.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)