When we lived in China, we went out of our way to find a bar that was showing the Super Bowl and even missed a half a day of work (on Monday) to partake in what we thought was our duty as Americans to watch the popular game.  It has not taken much time back in the US for our excitement level for American football’s biggest day to plummet to the ranks of the noise.  For this reason and also because we do not have a tolerance level built up to more than a dozen kids in a house at once, we decided to decline the Super Bowl party invite we received and have dinner with friends instead.

We had our friends Hernán and Alejandra along with their three kids, Hernán (cito or junior), Bruno and Gisel over for an Argentine-inspired meal.  In case you are wondering, pretty much every time we have had someone over lately, the menu is Argentine as we are still perfecting the meat on the new grill.  Andy did all of the preparation on our side while I took care of Belén.  Even though Belén is teething and not what I would define as “easy to please”, I still got the good end of that deal since it involved a much needed afternoon nap.

Andy did a fantastic job of preparing the meal and everyone one enjoyed it.  It was nice that we actually finished the amount of meat that he cooked since usually so much goes to waste.  We are still figuring out the right amount to cook.  Hernáncito and Bruno are quite the carnevours so that helped.

The kids (especially Gisel) were really excited to see Belén as they had not seen her since she was probably less than three months old.  Alejandra enjoyed her as well and gave Little B a good dose of Spanish which reminded me I really need to start being better about speaking to her.

After dinner, Andy lit a fire in the firepit and prepared the coals for s’mores, while the kids watched The Goonies and I breastfed and put Belén down to bed.

Gisel turned out to be a marshmallow queen, so we were calling her (in Spanish), La Reina de Bombón (reina = queen; bombón = marshmallow).

I think she must have eaten at least five marshmallows two of which were part of a full blown s’more.  She also wanted to prepare the s’mores for her older brothers…it was pretty cute.

Her hair ribbons even served as a perfect diadem fit for “La Reina.”

It was a fun night but it left me craving one more day to our weekend…  Anyone else not ready to go back to work today?

This one is really going to throw you for a loop.  Two food-related posts in one week!  What can I say, the few times that I do cook or bake, I have to tell you about it because it is really a momentous occasion for me.

Saturday night Andy was making chicken de la parrilla (on the grill) and when I was trying to come up with a suitable side dish, I had a flashback to Sara’s bridal shower last year when her sister and friends has prepared a delicious vegan feast for the occasion.  One of her bridesmaids, Kelly, had made a dish using quinoa, something I had never heard of.

Quinoa pronounced “kwi-noa” is grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds.  It originates in the Andes region of South America.  Its protein content is 12 – 18%.

I wanted to share quinoa with Andy since I thought he would like it and it would fit into the Andy 4.0 diet (he has already lost 20 lbs!) so I decided to try and track down the recipe.

With some direction from Kelly, I found the recipe on allrecipes.com.

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 3/4 cup uncooked quinoa
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels
• 2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and garlic, and saute until lightly browned.
2. Mix quinoa into the saucepan and cover with vegetable broth. Season with cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes,
3. Stir frozen corn into the saucepan, and continue to simmer about 5 minutes until heated through. Mix in the black beans and cilantro.

It was pretty easy to make and is a deliciously healthy, vegan side dish chocked full of protein.  Andy enjoyed it and we plan to start incorporating it into our lunches from time to time.

Now that Belén is able to eat most foods, we decided to let her try as well.  It is hard to tell which foods she really likes, especially with the first taste, but she didn’t seem to dislike it.  I think the new texture threw her for a little bit of a loop, but she ate it.

And its kind of purty too.

I feel a little bit nerdy posting this but I honestly don’t know what to do.  I will likely look back on this post in a month and think I was such a dork for writing it, but oh well.  It will mean I have figured out what to do and have progressed as a person and as a mother.  I continue to learn that part of being a good parent is learning and adapting every day and I mean EVERY DAY.  The changes just keep on occurring.

So I had this pipe dream which is a possible reality but I don’t think for me, that I was going to exclusively breastfeed Belén until she was one-year old at which point I could transition her to cow milk.  I thought it might be possible even though I work and pump and all of that not-so-good stuff, but the reality is hitting me that the pipe is running out of tobacco or peyote or whatever it is that makes you slur your words and talk too much and dance naked around the communal tee pee .

I need to come clean.  I am a total freak about formula.  Why, you may ask?  ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD REASON!  It is one of those things that I got in my head I wasn’t going to do and haven’t thought much about it since until now when I am only pumping 5-7 oz. at lunch and each day that I do it I have been wondering how much longer I can really keep it up.  I think I am at the point where I want to skip the noon pumping and start the weaning process.  Now let me be perfectly clear…I am NOT ready to wean.  I am just ready to give up on pumping.  I still want to breastfeed in the morning and evening!  I don’t think I would have arrived at this point had I kept producing enough to sustain Miss Belén, but now that my bags of frozen milk supply has dwindled to single digits, I am seeing the writing on the walls and starting my contingency plans.

If I were a logical person (HA!  I recall countless arguments with my mother that resulted in comments such as, “‘IT IS NOT QUITE SO LOGICAL, ALE-CIA…THERE ARE EMOTIONS INVOLVED!”) there are plenty of positives to this very scenario:

1. No more pumping.

2. NO MORE EFFING PUMPING!

3. Oh my goodness, I really feel like I am realizing how much I really despise pumping.

4. No more Vitamin D drops, the formula is fortified with it.

5. Andy can do more feeding, which he adores…truly.

Oh but the drawbacks almost bring me to tears…  I cannot yet handle the possibility of being done breastfeeding.  It is such an incredibly intimate, powerful, wonderful time EACH AND EVERY TIME (except when biting occurs..very infrequently.)  Will I ever be this close to Belén again?  It starts with no longer exclusively breastfeeding, then it quickly leads to weaning with even more decreased production, followed by going off to Kindergarten, then next it is finding out from one of Belén’s aunties that she went to Planned Parenthood to get on the pill and didn’t want to talk to me about it because she thought I would freak out.  Oh no honey, I don’t freak out about birth control, only putting my nine-month old daughter on FORMULA.

Seriously, what is my problem?  See mom, the logical can be emotional…

Okay, so lets get serious here.  My true question is a dumb one.  What formula do we put her on, Similac, Enfamil, something else?  We still have free samples from when we brought her home from the hospital.  Has anyone had better luck with one brand over another?  Is there something that is organic?  I guess the word “formula”doesn’t scream organic to me.

For goodness sakes, I gave the kid salsa tonight to test her tolerance to spice but I am worrying about formula.  I just want to be clear that I know how ridiculous I sound.  You know when you have something that is not quite rational that you get hung up on.  Guilty as charged…

Tips, feedback, recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Also, when your kid started walking, did his/her feet point not straight ahead?  Belén is a bull-legged walking machine but based on Dr. Internet this will correct itself as she starts walking on her own with no finger assistance AND as she gets older.  Just wondering your experiences.

And last but not least.  Tonight was the first time I have witnessed what I assume is a diaper rash on Belén.  I assume that is normal considering there are creams galore to deal with it.  It is just yet another baby basic new thing for us, so I am curious if there are any recommendations in this department.  I have the Boudreaux’s Butt Paste^®which a friend recommended and it smells fantastic, but I don’t really know if it is the best thing to use or what.

Thanks for putting up with my novice questions!

I am wondering if reading the entire Twilight series while I was pregnant was such a good idea?

Today I learned about a new website called “Business 2 Blogger” at www.business2blogger.com.  The slogans on the site say things such as “where businesses and bloggers play nicely” and “we connect businesses and bloggers.”

Reading more closely, bloggers can benefit from the site because Business2Blogger promises to “level the playing field by giving you firsthand notification of PAID posting opportunities in your inbox alongside the Blogging giants.”  While businesses can “harness the power of blogger influence ” and gain instant access to targeted bloggers who can grow their brand.  Oh and did I mention “IT IS FREE!”?

Here is an example taken from the Business2Blogger website that explains how it works.  Pretty cool, eh?

Ann is a Blogger AND a Businesswoman, with a great blog and an etsy store that showcases her beautiful jewelry. She submits a Business Campaign Request asking for 20 Bloggers to each write about her beautiful new earrings, and run a contest giveaway. She gives them each a pair of the earrings to do a giveaway, and asks them to write a post on their Blog. To compensate each Blogger, she lets each choose something for themselves from her jewelry collection. They write their Blog posts, screaming about how beautiful their new earrings are to all their readers, and they each run a giveaway to send their readers into a jewelry-loving frenzy…see how this works?

I am cautiously optimistic that this could be a baby step in the direction of actually making some money on this here blog.  That is assuming there are products I actually feel are worth supporting.  If there is free stuff involved for you all, especially if they are cool products, I think it is totally worth it!

Anyway, it’s a cool business idea!  I always like things that bring power to the people so I hope it is wildly successful!

A friend from work sent me some information on something called “Blockfest” at a children’s engineering fair at Boise State University this past weekend.  The intent of Blockfest is to teach kids about math and science through blocks.  The entry info said it was for kids aged six months to seven years.  I was skeptical that a nine month old could gleen anything from the experience so I emailed the organizer to see if she really thought Belén was old enough.  She assured me she was.

Both being engineers Andy and I thought it would be great to expose Belén to engineering as young as makes sense, so we signed her up and showed up at the BSU Kinesiology building ten minutes late because we got lost on our alma mater’s rival campus.  The first block-playing session was just concluding so we hustled in to join round two. 

Our first station was foam blocks…perfect for Belén, or so we thought.

It turns out that Belén must be teething again because her only interest in any of the blocks was in putting them in her mouth.  We gave her the book we had been given we arrived so as to avoid her saliva on the blocks other kids would be playing with.

Then we learned that there was a “drool box” for blocks that had been sucked on (to be rinsed with Clorox wipes) so we let her go to town and then collected all of her saliva-contaminated blocks together at the end of the session. 

After two sessions, we figured we had created enough blocks for the drool box so we decided to sneak out early.  I don’t know that I would call the event a success for our little one, although she did find a different way to explore the blocks than most of the other kids(orally).  We look forward to participating in the event next year when presumably, putting the blocks in her mouth won’t be of paramount interest.

Our 50K training schedule called for two hours and forty minutes of running this weekend.  While I wasn’t thrilled about the distance, I was not dreading it until I received an email from Anna on Friday suggesting we run to the waterfall.  I bit my tongue or I guess I should say held my fingers back and I went along with the route proposal.  But when I woke up Saturday morning, I felt the kind of nerves in my stomach typical of a feared route or race that send one moving towards the bathroom. 

Waterfall is feared/dreaded by me for two reasons.  One, it is always way longer, more painful and way more uphill than I remember.  Two, quite a few years back, while running the route with my friend Sage and beloved dog, Sassy, we got hissed at by a badger and it scared the living daylights out of us.  There have also been dead deer carcases and other strange wild animal remnants on the run.  In short, it is desolate back there and you are really “one” with nature, which can be both good and a bit scary.

We commenced our journey at 8:30AM from our house.  I immediately began thinking how far we needed to climb.  Luckily my memory was a bit foggy on the route since I believe the last time I ran it was before we moved to China.  This is not a run you do for no reason.  It is typically reserved for marathon training unless you get talked into doing it with someone who is training and needs a running partner.  I thought perhaps it was an hour of climbing before we reached the waterfall.  If I would have been thinking clearly, I would have figured out that this was impossible because from our house it is at least 2:50 at our pace.  I think this is part of the problem with the Waterfall route, for some reason, you always deceive yourself into thinking it is easier than it actually is. 

In the interest of making a long story short I will summarize by saying it took a hell of a long time to get to the waterfall.  I almost had us turn back since I needed to be home right around 11 to get ready for BlockFest by 11:30.  Right before we were about to turn, we finally saw the sharp upward bend to the right and the rock that the water tumbles over.  At this point, we had been running for 1:40.  We decided to keep going to the waterfall and then take 8th Street back down, thinking it would be shorter than backtracking on the trail.  We were sick of punching though the snow so in some ways the road sounded really nice.

Anna, Erin and Lyla, just past the waterfall

As always, the actual waterfall was anti-climatic as it is really just a small stream tumbling over a rock.  The true aesthetic reward was the beautiful scenery we were able to witness being so far back into the Boise foothills.

Tiny stream that drops over the rock

Natures yin and yang

The trip down 8th St. was not as easy-going as we thought.  The top third to half was covered with snow which we had to punch through.  While it creates a soft landing and is easy on the joints, it makes for much more difficult running.  By this point, we were a bit bitter and really ready to be done.  As the 11 o’clock came and went and we still had a ways to run, I called Andy on my cell phone and asked if he could come pick us up.  He hesitantly agreed and met us on 8th Street about ten minutes later.  We were only about five minutes shy of the 2:40 mark and had covered around 15 miles (almost half the distance of the 50K).

Red/Golden Sands Next to 8th St.

Yesterday we went to the park to get some photos taken for the new blog header (coming soon!)  After some walking, the photo session and watching dogs run around, we headed to the swing set.  Even though Belén is not quite big enough to fully fill out the swing, it did not prevent her from having a grand ole time swinging back and forth.  It is so much fun to be apart of such sheer, genuine joy that only a child can express!

Swinging with Daddy

So much fun!

Now that the mercury is not consistently dipping below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, our cat, Ozzie is once again banished to the front step.  The outside exile started after he sprayed  in the computer room and then peed in Belén’s room while I was still on maternity leave.  Our hearts turned cold towards our long-time feline friend when he acted out in such a fragrant manner.  They softened slightly in sub-freezing weather and Ozzie enjoyed a nice stay back inside Casa Hoobing.

We probably would have let him stay inside longer term if he hadn’t started his neurotic tendencies which manifested in him coming into our bedroom in the middle of the night meowing until Andy got out of bed, walked upstairs with him and watched him eat.  Yes, that is correct…he already had food and water.  He wanted one of us to watch him eat.  AT 3AM!  And it was not going to be me!

Hearts harden again pretty quickly when sleep is disrupted in the wee hours of the morning.  The exile was reinstated, but we did feel bad enough to purchase a “warm house” for him.  He is so in love with the heater while indoors we thought it was only humane to allow him his one true pleasure while in exile.

When Andy brought it home, we noticed that Ozzie was not using the house.  We quickly figured out it was because of his other true love…food.

Andy cut a hole into his nice home, exposing the foam innards and creating more of a ghetto trailer park feel to it.  Now Ozzie is able to fit inside and loves it.

While many of you probably think we are cruel, let me point out some of the “wins” of the current situation:

1. No cat hair inside the house

2. No cat food inside the house

3. No litter box inside the house

4. Sleep right on through 3AM with zero disruptions

5. Catless neighbor kids can visit the neighborhood kitty any time they wish (and they do and he loves it!)

6. Dog feels extra special being able to sleep in the house

7. Welcoming committee every time you return to the house

8. Ozzie is able to defend his outside territory 24×7 from raccoons who come up through the storm drain and the other neighborhood cats

9. No spraying

10. No cat piss

With so many “pluses” how can we resist such an arrangement?  I still do feel just a little bit bad though…