Mommin' It Up!

July 31, 2011July 30, 2011

Weekly Winners: Party Time!

This week’s Winners were taken at my dear friend Cortney’s (who you may have noticed I mention in, like, every post) son Carter’s 3rd birthday party. It was approximately seventybazillion degrees out, so Cortney bought a kiddie pool, got out the sprinklers, and put on a great party! Here are some of the cuties who came out to celebrate Carter.

My big guy, Joshua

Carter’s big brother Evan was packin’ heat to stay cool!

Bathing beauties, Sophie:

and Celia’s girl, Ana:

The birthday boy looks like he’s up to something:

The kiddos get creative with the sprinkler:

The girls share a laugh (certainly at the boys’ expense!)

We had a great time at the party! Happy Birthday Carter!

To see some more great photos from around the blogosphere, check out the Weekly Winners HQ at I Am Lotus.

July 30, 2011

Recipes to RUN to the kitchen for!

You’re gonna thank me for this post! Seriously, I swear. I made four great recipes this month as part of my duties on the Shared Tastes Panel for ReadySetEat.com. They were all WONDERFUL but there were two in particular that I want you to go make immediately. First, you might want to stop at the store and get some ingredients. And since ReadySetEat.com is aweeesome it will tell you at which of your local stores you can find the ingredients on sale! But anyhoo, here’s what you need to make FIRST:

Gingered Chicken Salad!

This was the easiest meal to make that I’ve reviewed so far, AND it was AM.AZ.ING. Also, it’s served cold so it was perfect for this rather irritating HEAT WAVE we’ve had these past few weeks! Here’s what you do: Mix canned chicken with mayo and LaChoy Orange-Ginger marinade, dump on top of cole slaw mix, snip a few green onions on top. YUM, YUM, YUM! Bobby and I both had seconds and we both gave it a big FIVE STARS! I will definitely make this again SOON. Next time though I think I will crock pot the chicken overnight and shred it because I am cheap and that is what I always do for chicken salad.

The next recipe you will want to put on your menu plan for this week is the Italian Chicken-Zucchini skillet. My CHILDREN ate this. My four- and seven-year-olds, who barely eat enough to stay alive, and then eat mostly peanut butter and fruit, ATE THIS! And they liked it! It is so tasty with chicken, zucchini, peppers, pasta, and yummy seasoned Hunt’s tomatoes. (I adore the Hunt’s with Basil, Garlic, and Oregano!) It cooked up pretty quickly and was easy to clean-up. The leftovers were great the next day too.

italianzucchini — Joshua and Sophie approved!

Finally, I couldn’t resist sharing this one with you also. Turns out I really, really LOVE zucchini! Who knew? This is an awesome meatless dish, the Zucchini, Black Bean and rice skillet. Sometimes I just don’t feel like preparing meat and this will be a great, easy, go-to dish for those nights! Tons of veggies and protein from the black beans, and it was sooooo good!

zucchiniskillet — Just make this! DO IT!

Those were my fave recipes from ReadySetEat.com this month! Log on to save them to your recipe box, find out nutrition information, and see where you can get the ingredients on sale. Then make them and THEN, after you enjoy them immensely, sit down and write me a thank-you note. 🙂 Enjoy!

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I am being compensated for my role on the ReadySetEat Shared Tastes Panel. The reviews and opinions are all mine.

July 29, 2011

Don’t poison the baby!

So apparently, Jonah is allergic to oatmeal. Like any genius mom, when I started him on baby food six weeks ago, I gave him oatmeal first instead of rice because my older two wouldn’t TOUCH rice but they loved oatmeal. I gave it to him for a few days like you are supposed to, and then introduced bananas, then apples, then sweet potatoes. Sometime in the second week, I noticed a teeny tiny bit of blood in his stool. So of course, I consulted my friend Cortney, because she is an expert on baby allergies as her son Carter had a bunch.

“It’s probably the oatmeal,” she said. She advised me to take out the oatmeal and sweet potatoes and then introduce them both back in after 10 days or so, one at a time, to see if there was any reaction.

On the fateful day that I re-introduced oatmeal, our House Church was having a get together at Cortney’s house. I fed him before we left and about an hour into it, he projectile vomited all over my poor friend Jen, then all over me, like 400 times. At first I honestly thought he had a stomach bug, because the vomiting was so similar to when my big kids have had something like that. But, much scarier when you have an infant. We rushed home, with Jonah throwing up FOUR TIMES in a 10-minute drive. Then, he threw up a couple more times at home. All in all, about 9 times in 4 hours. By the last few it was just bile – VERY upsetting when you see your baby throwing up that nasty stuff!

I decided to shelve oatmeal for awhile, because I thought vomiting was an odd allergic reaction and I really thought perhaps he just had a stomach bug. So I waited about a month and tried it again. Last week. Just before going to the POOL. Clearly this is evidence that I wasn’t convinced he was allergic! I gave it to him BEFORE WE LEFT FOR THE POOL.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I am kind of dumb.

Guess what happened next? Baby boy projectile vomited (again on my poor friend JEN!!) in the POOL. And it was A LOT. Gross. Sorry, people of Kettering!

He threw up again a few minutes later, so I packed the kids up and headed home. This time, I am thoroughly convinced that oatmeal is the Devil. For Jonah, at least.

And just in case the projectile vomiting wasn’t enough to spark my memory, Joshua made me this reminder, which now hangs on our dining room wall:

Ok, well, since there’s a sign and everything, I think I’ll just toss the oatmeal in the trash!