Monday, February 16, 2009

Quickie



Nothing profound to say... just wanted to post a quick update. We all survived last week - my first week back at work full time (I had been at 4 days/week since last summer). I've been keeping an eye out any extra clingyness or insecurity in Roan, but she seems fine. It seemed like it was time for both of us. She seemed to miss out on the fun stuff the other kids were doing on the one day a week we spent together, and invariably something always seemed to come up at work that day too. What was supposed to be a day for quality time ended up becoming a huge stress fest, between what I wasn't getting done at work and all the errands that inevitably got crammed into the day. It does seem a little weird and sad that we only spend time together as a family one hour in the morning and ~3 hours at night. We'll see how it goes. I can always cut back down if I need to. (Hmm is it just me or do I sound like a heroin addict? I can quit any time I want.)

Other than that let's see... I have been on a ridiculous off-the-deep-end healthy cooking binge. About a month ago I got fed up with the cough and cold that had dragged on in Roan for 2 1/2 months. I took the advice of a friend and picked up a copy of Super Baby Food which advocates super-charging your toddler's diet with high nutrient foods. Roan has been eating applesauce laced with pureed kale, plain yogurt with flaxseed oil and backstrap molasses, and peanut butter balls rolled in wheat germ. We are all taking multivitamins too. And I dialed down the dairy too. I've swapped whole milk for enriched soy and limited her cheese. It's made a big difference on her congestion. Within a week we saw tremendous improvement.

So that launched me into practically a new lifestyle involving pureeing and freezing everything from beets to broccoli and sneaking it surreptitiously into our food. Arwen started to wonder if I was ever going to come out of the kitchen. A friend turned me on to a really cool book called Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry's wife). It's filled with great recipes for things like burgers and mac n cheese that are loaded with secret bonus ingredients. We have been eating very well, and very healthy. And I have been rather smug about how smart I am for turning around the family's health.

Which brings us to yesterday. Now Roan and I both seem to be fighting off colds. It's nothing serious but I'm totally bummed that the freezer filled with pureed veggies has not formed a permanent protective bubble around us.

Here is what Roan's been up to lately: Playing in the laundry basket. Seriously every night we come home from work and she spends a solid 2 hours playing in the laundry basket. Putting her babies and blankies in it, climbing in, climbing out, laying down, covering herself up, jumping in and out, pushing it all around... all the while chattering away. We could toss out all her toys and just give her the laundry basket and she'd be as happy as can be. I have a cute little video but it's too big to post. I'll try and cut it down later.



Oh yeah and remind me to tell you later about the Tuvan throat singers we had stay with us over the weekend.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ohhhh those throat singers. Can't wait to hear about them. Good move on the food stuff. From your previous post, just because Roan is showing deductive reasoning, realizing cause and effect and showing empathy and sympathy, she is perfectly normal for any 22 year old - OH WAIT - she's only 22 months!!! Ha Ha - Love Gramps and K

Anonymous said...

One more cookbook recommendation...The Sneaky Chef. Same concept as Seinfeld's. Btw...Roan is precious. I just want to squeeze her! Love, Amy