Blueberry Muffins ~ Addictive!!!

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line muffin pans with papers or spray with cooking spray.  I recommend using papers to avoid sticking.  (Recipe makes about 2 dozen medium muffins.) 

 

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup coconut oil (melted)

2 eggs

1 cup milk

4 cups fresh blueberries

 

Directions:

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.  Mix in eggs and milk.  Slowly add the coconut oil (to avoid splashing) while mixer is on low.  Spoon in blueberries so they don't mash.  Fill muffin pans/papers 3/4 of the way with batter.  Add streusel topping if you desire before baking.  (*Double the streusel recipe.)  Bake 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Enjoy!   

Air It Out!

"A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine."  -- Anonymous

And it doesn't matter when it happens, as long as it happens!

WARNING: If you're not a fan of poop stories, you may want to skip reading this post.  Last chance...you can't say I didn't warn you....

Last night my husband was changing our son in the middle of him playing with his train table; bad timing, yes we are well aware of that, but when nature calls you need to take care of it.  He was about to put on a fresh cloth diaper when I told him it was OK for the little guy to "air it out" for a while before bed.  This is nothing new; I try to give him a short break throughout the day to let his skin breathe without being confined to a diaper 24/7.  So, anyway, back to the train table he went sporting just his t-shirt with everything hanging out for all to see.  Within a minute my husband is yelling for me to grab the wipes.  It was definitely too late!  We had a lovely trail of blueberry-tainted poo around the train table carpet.  (I should have mentioned that since Sunday he has consumed nearly 3 pints of fresh blueberries during snacks and mealtimes!)  Now my husband is awesome when it comes to changing diapers and even washing the soiled cloths, but unexpected poop messes on the carpet sends him a tizzy!  I come around the corner and there my son is 5 feet in the air and an arm's length away from my husband; poor guy was trying his hardest to remain smear-free.  That doesn't happen when playtime is the only thing on this child's mind and he is attempting to break loose from daddy's hold.  I handed him his toy bucket and off to the bath we went. 

Lesson of the evening is in the quote above; he definitely showed daddy how critical playtime is day and night!

It's OK to Ask...

I was recently out shopping with my little guy when an older couple was standing behind us in the check-out line.  Of course, there was one lane open and the customer was doing a return so the line was beginning to snake through the store.  I debated leaving the cart of merchandise behind and returning on a different day, but we held out for our turn.  I've noticed since giving birth to my son that many people feel the need to say something to your child the moment they make eye contact; something I am OK with except the day a woman said she would take him home with her because she always wanted a little boy, but I will save that story for another day. 

We've been in line now for a good 6-7 minutes when the wife of the couple behind us was eagerly trying to get little man to say hello to her.  He eventually did so in his own bashful way of flashing a quick smile before nestling his face into my protruding pregnancy bump.  Her husband stood next to her looking at my fair, but sun-golden arms and poker straight hair and abruptly asked, "where did those curls come from?" his eyes now looking at my little guy's head.  I knew by the look on his darling wife's face she was not only embarrassed, but did not approve of his question being asked in public.  I gently smiled and said, "It's OK.  He gets those beautiful ringlets from daddy, definitely not me."  His wife now felt the need to follow-up his question with comments about how well behaved he was in the shopping cart waiting and his adorableness.  In my eyes, she didn't have to say anything; her husband asked a legitimate question and no, I wasn't offended by it nor should she be.  

It's OK to ask where those ringlets came from as I certainly don't have them, but surely wished I did.  It's OK to ask where he got the perfect year-round tan from too; luckily that is a perfect blend of both daddy and me.  When my then 4-year old niece met our little guy for the first time last summer at a restaurant, she loudly asked, "Aunt Mia, do you know your baby is uh whittle bwown (a little brown)?  The woman sitting near us waiting for her food turned red in the face as if she was embarrassed for me.  Unfortunately my husband did not have military leave when I was traveling and it had been some time since my niece had seen him, but a quick conversation about how Uncle Tony and Aunt Mia's skin colors made baby D's skin color cleared up her innocent question and vacation proceeded as normal.  But back to the couple out shopping the other day.  I am not offended by those questions.  I would rather you ask then make assumptions.  I am OK with who I married and how our son (soon to be plural) appears and you should be OK asking me where those ringlets came from.

Building A Bookworm

As I venture down the parenting path through life over the years I am sure there will be 415,689,372 and more things that I will feel guilty about with my boys and want to redo over and over again, but since I am only 17 months and 2 days into this humbling journey, there is one that haunts me regularly- reading to my son daily and nightly!  I don’t know, maybe it’s the teacher in me (and the fact that my master’s degree is in early literacy), but if my husband and I haven’t read a stack of books to him throughout the day the panic sets in- will his vocabulary suffer, will he learn his letters and sounds on time, will he continue to develop a love for learning and reading, and…the…list…goes…on…  Now don’t get me wrong, he isn’t quite a year and a half yet, so I am not expecting him to pick up a book and recite it to us nor am I expecting him to sit for 10 minutes at a time to listen to a variety of texts; the anxiety takes a toll when I think we played too much throughout the day rather than taking 2 minutes here and there to read a story.  Yes, trust me, after teaching preschool and attending hundreds of hours of professional development on the concept of play and a child’s development, I understand and value the critical need for play in a child’s daily routine, but how do you balance time between play and books with your children? 

I recently read an article from The Children’s Reading Foundation that talks about reading to children starting at birth thru school-age and my mind and heart are at ease now.  Reading 20 minutes a day to your child proves to have a significant impact on their language and cognitive development.  I think it is important to remember that the 20 minutes a day doesn’t have to be a consecutive chunk of time; building it into your daily routine is up to you and how it will best fit.  Another point to consider is that while introducing and modeling good reading practices and strategies with children is an essential skill, you can build literacy into your schedule through conversations, songs, and fingerplays too.

Here are some ingenious ways to develop these literacy moments with your littles:

• Sing songs during bath time, washing your hands, getting dressed, cleaning up, etc.
• Read books during breakfast and lunch
• Visit the local library for story time
• Obtain a library card
• Listen to stories on CD in the car
• Felt Board Story sets
• Letter magnets on the fridge, talk about them while you’re cooking
• Label items around the house; point them out during the day
• During TV commercials, mute the TV and read a story
• Have books available during playtime for your child to handle

Rainy Day + Gutter = Instant Adventure!

Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day
Little sailor wants to play!

Rainy days are sure to dampen anyone’s day especially during the summertime, but with a bucket of trains, trucks and cars and a $5 plastic rain gutter from Home Depot (cut into smaller pieces) we didn’t let weather stop us from having a morning of adventure in our living room!

*We also had a bucket of balls nearby along with a second rain gutter cut the same size.  (The store associate cut the 10 foot rain gutter into two 4-foot pieces and one 2-foot piece.)  We raced the balls down each gutter!

DIY Water Wall of Wonder

Little man is finally on the upswing from his daunting adenoid surgery, stomach virus and post-op infection (yep all together!), therefore we are back outside from sun up until sundown.  HOORAY!!!  We have the typical outdoor water table with recycled plastic bottles, cups, measuring bowls, etc, but it was time to take the outdoor water play to another level; I’ll admit it, I was bored with the water table.  Since our little sailor can’t keep his fingers and toes out of anything that has even a few drops of water, I knew we needed something durable yet easily accessible for his small exploratory hands and feet.  I have seen so many of the shared Facebook posts from numerous teaching pages, mommy bloggers, etc. promoting outdoor water play pop up in my newsfeed lately, so I set off to Home Depot yesterday afternoon with no plan in place other than to purchase anything we could zip-tie to our fence that would hopefully provide endless hours of water play, investigation, and imagination!  I am not sure if I should be proud of this or not, but there is an associate at our local store who will literally walk me through EVERY step of my DIY kiddo projects offering her suggestions, improvements, etc. until I leave with a bigger and better idea; unfortunately, she was on vacation yesterday, but with no plan in place, I don’t think my project turned out too shabby.  For under $30 (don’t forget the military discount they offer!) and within 30 minutes during his naptime, I was able to construct the next best thing to golden Oreos in my son’s eyes I do believe!  (Even my husband left the remote and couch behind yesterday to get wet with us!) 

*Since we live in military housing, I couldn’t screw the water wall pieces to the fence, so I purchased extra long zip ties to secure everything in place.  Don’t have a fence to utilize?  Don’t fret; you can use a recycled wooden skid, peg board, plywood, etc.    

 

Possible items to use:  funnels, tubing, PVC pipe pieces (I spray painted mine to break up the boring white), kitchen colanders, recycled plastic containers (ketchup/mustard bottles, milk jogs, cottage cheese/yogurt containers, drinking cups, measuring cups/bowls, watering cans, etc.  Get the little ones involved- look around the house for anything that could be turned into another part of your water wall!            

If you like what you read, share it.  And, please do not forget to follow me & subscribe to my blog.  Happy reading!

The Morton Arboretum

 

We took an unplanned family daytrip on Thursday to Lisle, IL to an AHHHH-MAZING place, The Morton Arboretum!  Their website does it NO justice!  When I was reading some info about the gardens and what it has to offer its visitors, I knew my husband really had very little interest in going, but he said we could “give it a try;” his famous words when he is only going to keep me happy.  (HA!)  I figured the worst thing that could happen would be spending the day outdoors in gorgeous Spring-like weather (finally) as a family of 3.5.  (Our newest sailor makes his appearance in just about 6 weeks- Eek!) 

We were pleasantly surprised when paying at the gate that with my husband’s active duty military ID card both of us received free admission- bonus!  (Our little sailor was free since he is under 2.)  I knew the arboretum was well over a thousand acres, but what I didn’t realize was what it offered for children.  The “Children’s Garden” is absolutely incredible!  In fact, we spent more than 3 hours in just HALF of this area!  Our son went wild in the Sound Garden, playing with the old-fashioned water pumps, exploring the in the Frog Fountain, and so much more!  We had no idea how large the children’s garden was until we were ready to hit the road, loaded up little guy in the wagon and walked through the remaining children’s spot.  There are play areas to climb, run, jump, slide, and simply be a kid among the beauty of plants, trees, water, insects, and anything else part of the natural world!  The toddler garden maze is simply just the cutest activity, but of course our little adventurer was more interested in the large garden maze and getting lost among the tall bushes and shrubs giggling away as he ran along the dirt paths.  While we were following our 16 month old maze guide, we were discussing how taken aback we were with this landmark.  At one point my husband actually made the comment that if we weren’t a good 45 minute drive away we would visit each weekend!  The day of learning, discovery, and enjoyment we had together was truly one we will never forget and hope to recreate again in the near future!