Kari|Doyle

As most of you know, my husband and I have been looking to start building another home VERY soon.  Well, Sean brought up an excellant point the other day.  He said “We shouldn’t start paying for our future until we’ve finished paying for our past.”  This meaning that we should pay off all our debt before tackling another huge loan (i.e. mortgage)  So!  We’ve decided to batten down the hatches and tighten up the budget as much as possible!  This is going to SUCK for about 8-10 months, but afterwards we will be…*drumroll please*…. DEBT FREE!!!!  Well, until we get that mortgage anyway. :)  This is going to be so amazing!  However, the sacrifices will be hardest on me, I think.  Sean really doesn’t enjoy shopping all that much, except for cars and that is a huge money-maker for us, so he won’t have to stop.  I, however, will need to put the total kabosh (spelling?) on all shopping for clothes and fun stuff for awhile.  *sigh*  So, I will be accepting donations in the form of gift cards, if you find yourself wanting to alleviate my sadness. :)  j/k  It’ll be okay…because afterwards we’ll have SO much more to work with!  YAY!!!! 

On a side note (that is far more fun), my baby boy got his first tooth on 2/28!  So cute!  I’ve attached a photo. :)  He’s also rolling around and holding his own sippy cup!  What fun parenting can be!  Oh!  And Sean bought us a jogging stroller (before the shopping embargo started) so we’ll be running outside as soon as the weather allows! 

My first tooth!

I believe I have had a breakthrough this morning!  I have been part of a weekly Weight Watcher email group where we try and hold ourselves accountable to each other for eating and exercise.  I have finally been able to get myself on a fairly consistent exercise schedule where I’m doing SOMETHING 3-4 days a week.  Usually Zumba two days, pilates two days, and a run somewhere in there too.  Anyway, so that’s coming along, but where I’m having trouble with is my sweets “addiction”.  I seem to do fairly well at choosing healthy meals, but then when its time for dessert, look out!  My BIGGEST weakness is cookies! (There’s no coincidence that I own a Cookie Monster scrub top!)  As I was writing my email this morning to the girls, I realized what I needed to do!  When I was engaged, I had a major ice cream habit…I LOVED it!  So, in an effort to lose weight, I gave it up til after the wedding.

This is the "Christmas Card" Annie made for me post-wedding...ha...ha...ha

Anyway, it was a success!  I lost the weight, and afterwards, no long craved it like I had before!  So, I’m going to do the same thing, but this time with cookies (and cookie dough)!  I declare that I’m giving all forms of cookies until May 1.  This should give me enough time to break the habit, and help me with my weight loss!  I will still be allowed to have dessert, but just not my major weakness.  Wish me luck!

I have ventured into the world of making my own baby food!  So, I did what every good new mommy does…I bought a book! :)  Cooking for Baby; Wholesome, homemade, delicious foods for 6-18 months.  I must admit that I was somewhat nervous (as I am with all things that I seem to be doing that are out of the “norm” with parenting), but my first attempt went GREAT!  After reading through the first part of the book, I made sure I had all the necessary tools:

1. Steamer basket

2. Ice cube trays

3. Sauce pan

4. Baking pan

5.  Food processor/blender

Okay, first task accomplished.  Next I looked through the recipes for 6 month old babies…pretty easy!  Basically steam or roast a veggie/fruit and puree.  Tada!  Baby food!  So, I purchased a butternut squash, a couple of yams, some organic frozen peas, a bunch of ripe pears, and a few bananas.  Today, I accomplished the squash and yams (recipes at bottom).  Huge success!  Very messy task, but was able to fill five ice cube trays with perfectly portioned, no additives, no preservatives squash and yams!  I let Kili have a little taste and my efforts were met with approval!  YAY!  So, any moms out there who are wanting to try making your own baby food, have at it!  Its not too hard, and one days work has left me with LOTS of baby food!  Tomorrow…bananas and pears!

Winter Squash Puree : Ingredients - butternut squash or baking pumpkin, 1 1/4 lb

- Preheat oven to 350 F.  With a heavy, sharp knife, cut squash in half.  Scrape out seeds and fibrous strings and discard.

- Put squash, cut side down, in a baking pan.  Pour water into pan to come 1/4 inch up the sides of the squash.  Roast until tender when pierced with a fork, 45 minutes-1 hour, depending on size.  Let cool

- Scoop out flesh and puree in a food processor until smooth.  Add water, breast milk, or formula to thin squash to a consistency your baby can handle.

To store: Refrigerate cooled puree in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or fill ice-cube trays or other containers to freeze for up to 3 months.

Sweet Potato Puree: Ingredients - sweet potatoes, 2, scrubbed

- Preheat oven to 425F.  Prick sweet potatoes with a small knife and place on a baking sheet. 

- Roast until wrinkled and tender when pierced with the tip of a knife, 45-60 minutes.  Let cool.

- Halve sweet potatoes, scoop out flesh from skins, and puree flesh in a food processor until smooth.  Add water, breast milk, or formula to thin sweet potatoes to a consistency your baby can handle.  As baby gets older and can eat thicker purees, mash some or all of the sweet potato with a fork. 

To store: Refrigerate cooled puree in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or fill ice-cube trays or other containers to freeze for up to 3 months.

So, I’ve got a lot of things I’m thinking about right now, and I’m going to blog about it in order to maybe make some sense of it all.  It may not make any sense to anyone else, but I’ll feel better. :) 

1. Church - my husband and I are trying to figure out if we should continue making the trek out to Rimrock, or if we should try and find a new church home.  We have been less than consistant about attending since Kilian’s birth because of schedule, but there’s more to it than that.  I just don’t feel as though I get as much from the sermons anymore when we do make it out there.  Also, I think I’d enjoy a smaller congregation where I can feel a part of the church, rather than just another face in the crowd.  I know some of that is our own fault because we could be more active, but its hard in such a large population!

2. Work - I’ve been toying with the idea of helping out as an instructor at Stretch Studio for awhile now, and I think I need to either go or get off the pot.  There’s a Zumba training coming up in March, and I definitely WANT to attend, but I’m trying to figure out how to balance teaching there and working at Young Life AND having a life at home!  It’s a lot…not sure where to go…

3. Teething - not fun.  Kilian is better, but mostly because we know how to handle him now with the teething.  Hylands Homeopathic Teething Tablets have been a God-send - thanks, Angelica! - and we are really trying to figure out what schedule works best for him.  I’ve given up on being scary mom and making him lay in his crib for three 2-hour naps.  It just doesn’t work for him, and I don’t want him to think the ONLY way to get me to come in is to scream bloody murder for an hour.  So, he gets 1-2 one and half hour naps and one 45 minute nap…seems to work for him…and he still sleeps through the night.  I’ve started going into his room right at the 1 1/2 hour mark and getting him up, and then he seems to be happy and he still is getting plenty of sleep. 

4. I NEED to get myself thoroughly back on Weight Watchers…Kilian is eating cereal now, so I don’t get as many points a day and I need to be more careful about what I eat.

Okay, that’s enough for now.  I’ve vented…I think I’m going to go clean, because that’s I do my best thinking.  Have a great Sunday!

So, my last post was about how wonderful Babywise is…and I do still believe that whole-heartedly.  I’m just going to share why I am a Babywise failure….

Kilian for the past 3-4 weeks has been waking up 45 minutes into his nap, 1 or 2 times a day.  He usually gets one solid nap in, but the other two are pretty junky.  I’ve insisted (in my head) that its a sleep issue, and have tried to let him cry it out (CIO) repeatedly with no luck.  He’ll either scream in his crib until next feeding, or until we give in and put him in the swing in an attempt to let him get more sleep (which doesn’t work anymore, by the way).  He sleeps EXCELLENTLY (is that a word?) at night for about 10 hours, but the naps are rough.  I just picked up Babywise again, in a desperate attempt to glean some new information from it.  I read “We find the monster appearing between seven and eight weeks and at four months of age (a little later than that, but close).  It might stick around one or two days or up to two weeks. (How about three weeks?)  What should you do if the intruder visits your baby?  Our emphasis and encouragement is to first approach the 45-minute intruder as a hunger problem, not a sleep problem.  Try feeding your baby first.  If the problem is really sleep-related, your baby will be disinterested in feeding or will not feed well.  But if your baby takes a full feeding, you have your answer”  THEN it goes on to say, “If your baby, whether she be at two or four months of age, demonstrates a need to feed more often by waking out of a sound nap, it may be an indicator of a decrease in your milk supply or the quality of your milk.  The downward spiral begins.  The baby is waking early in the nap.  Mother assumes it is a sleep problem.  This continues for several days.  Meanwhile, the baby is not getting adequate daytime sleep so she is not nursing proficiently.  The end result in a week’s time is two fold: Mother’s decreasing supply and a fussy baby who might begin to lose weight”.  Frick.  So, I don’t THINK I’m decreasing my milk supply, but perhaps my quality is not great.  I’m extremely worried that by my stubborness, my baby may have suffered.  So, tonight, I did the unthinkable (in my mind).  I fed him WAY early.  He went down for his nap without a fuss at 5 PM, and woke up at 5:45 on the dot!  I worried and read until 6:15, and decided to feed him.  Normally, he doesn’t eat until 7, so this is a bit early.  He did eat, but not great (cereal and milk both).  So, I’m making an effort over the next couple of days to feed him if he wakes early and just adjust his schedule a bit.  I’ll keep you posted.  Hopefully this helps…if not…I’m at a loss…again.  Please pray that I’m doing right by my son, and not encouraging bad eating habits…or worsening his sleeping.  *sigh*  It’s not easy being Mom.

So, since Kilian has been born, we’ve been following the Babywise method of raising our kiddo.  The books have received a lot of bad press, in my opinion, due to people who don’t use any common sense in raising their children.  Not to say that there are not other methods that work perfectly well, but people who try Babywise and lose their common sense are the ones who dislike it the most.  Anyway, the point of Babywise is that you are raising your children in a Godly manner, and also making sure that YOU raise your children, not the other way around.  Children can take over your lives and you can totally lose yourself in becoming a parent, and part of Babywise is making sure that doesn’t happen.  Some of the key points to Babywise:

1. Making sure you and your spouse have at least 15 minutes per day of “couch time”.  This is time where you focus on each other and talk about your day, etc.  Even if the baby is awake, they are not to interrupt couch time.  Sean and I have found this to be really great, especially with his line of work where occasionally he needs to decompress after work. 

2. Your baby is on a schedule of rotating feeding, waketime, and naptime.  Initially, its fairly stressful as you’re feeding every 2.5-3 hours, and you feel like you’re constantly feeding, but it definitely has benefits!  You can plan outings and gatherings much easier because you have a fairly good idea of what your child is doing at any given hour of the day.  The exception to that rule is when you’re changing feeding schedules, say from a 3 hour to 4 hour.  One of the important things to mention is that Babywise encourages you to keep the baby awake right after feeding for awhile to ensure that they don’t use the breast or the bottle as a sleep aid.  That takes me to my next point…

3. An important part of Babywise is ensuring that your baby does not use objects as sleep aids such as car seats, swings, mobiles, etc.  This encourages the baby to learn to self-soothe and be able to fall asleep in almost any given situation.  Also, the schedule helps ensure that the baby is sleepy at the same point every day.  You must also occasionally let the little one cry if they wake up after falling asleep.   Babies go through different sleep cycles, and occasionally become almost aware to the point where they may cry.  If that happens, let them cry a bit, and usually they will fall back asleep.  This is, of course, where you must use some common sense.  You don’t want to let your baby cry and cry and cry for hours on end.  I have used the swing to calm him down if he won’t resettle after waking during a nap.  Anyway, long story…

Well, my little man is awake and needing to eat, so I should go take care of him.  I’m going to try and post more about my experiences with Babywise, but we’ll see how that goes!

and most importantly: Happy Birthday Jesus!  How awesome is it that we are saved because God sent His Son to die for our sins!  Now that I have my son, I can not imagine letting him die for ANYTHING.  It truly shows how much God loves us that He let someone as important as Kilian is to me die for His people.  How great is it too that even though His Son died, He resurrected him and gets to spend eternity with him!  I also have that comfort knowing that if something were to happen to Sean, Kilian or myself, that we will be together again in the arms of Christ.  Praise God! 

Now for a totally-commercialized-non-Christian picture of my kiddo with Santa. :)  Merry Christmas!

Kilian and Santa 2009

I looked out my window this morning, and my breath was taken away!  Not only is it REALLY cold out (thus sucking the breath from lungs!) but it was beautiful!  The snow on our trees made it almost look like a black and white picture!  God truly shows us some amazing things, if we only choose to see them!  Thank you God for giving me such a beautiful place to live!

Thanksgiving is one of my FAVORITE holidays for many reasons, but the first and foremost being FOOD!  As I’ve said before, I love fall eating…so many good things, and most of them pumpkin!  Yum.  Anyway, this year for Thanksgiving, we were able to have Sean’s mother, sister, and niece in town.  We also had some friends of ours over which made for NINE people for me to feed!  Wow!  I was able to pull it off (with much help and three days of effort).  This was our meal:

Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato souffle (big hit!), cranberry sauce, rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, apple pie, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and blueberry pie (the cherry and blueberry were won in the Turkey Trot 5K)!  Everything else was made from scratch!  Yum! 

It’s also a tradition that I run the Turkey Trot 5K!  I’ve done it every year for FIVE YEARS now (and only won a pie twice!)  I was so proud that I was able to run the whole thing, and did it in 33 minutes.  Not my fastest by any means, but I did just have a baby.  Speaking of, it was a year ago this weekend that we found out we were pregnant with Kilian!  How time flies!

So, after all that jabber, what am I most thankful for?  Well, I am MOST thankful for my husband and son.  They are truly blessings to me.  Secondly would be my family.  I don’t know where I would be without them!  Thirdly, but definitely not leastly (?), would be my friends.  I have the world’s BEST friends….Annie, Sonja, Sharon, Marci….I LOVE you guys!  Last, pumpkin spice chai soy lattes with a shot of espresso.  Mmm…..

So, my son suffers greatly from the evil, Cradle Cap!  *dun, dun, dun!*  It just started as a little dandruff, which all the books assured me would bother me more than him.  I tried just using the brush they give you in the hospital, but that didn’t work.  He also started to get eczema on his forehead.  That was itchy, and I tried putting lotion on it, but nothing seemed to work.  His cradle cap developed into the yellow scabs, but still didn’t seem to bother him.  I didn’t like it though, so I read in What to Expect in the First Year, and they recommended using Vaseline, brushing the scalp, and then shampooing.  I truly believe that they suggest things in that book just to see what they can make new parents try!  Have you ever tried to shampoo Vaseline off of anything?  Not easy.  Anyway, my next effort was to purchase Disney’s Cradle Cap Care conditioner.  That was the same sort of deal as the Vaseline, although a little easier to shampoo off.  *sigh*  I gave in and called the doctor.  The nurse recommended Head and Shoulders, and 1% Hydrocortisone cream for the eczema.  The eczema is cured!  Hooray!  The cradle cap persisted, and now he started to itch his head like crazy!  So, rang the doc again, and we now have a prescription for Triamcinolon (Kenalog) to be used with regular baby shampoo.  It seems to be working.  YAY!  Take THAT Cradle Cap!

Happy Kilibear!