As I mentioned in my last post, the weather this past weekend was really crappy. We ventured out for a few errands on Saturday and Sunday, but mostly, we were stuck in the house. At times, it was challenging to keep Nora entertained. Who knew that babies could suffer from cabin fever at such a young age? We’re in for a long winter. Ugh.
Yesterday, Michael went to meet a friend who was visiting from out of town. He was only gone for a couple of hours, but it was a good chunk of Mommy-Nora time. She seemed to be getting bored with her toys, so I looked around for something interesting for her to play with. My eyes landed on an empty cardboard box that we had FINALLY unpacked in her room the day before.
In the words of Charlie Sheen: WINNING. The kid spent at least 15 minutes amusing herself with the box. And I amused myself by taking pictures.
And yes, she is wearing her Bills jersey AGAIN. We had a lucky streak going there. Unfortunately, that’s now over. Can’t say she won’t still be sporting it every Sunday, though. It’s awfully cute. :)
If you live in a place where you get to truly experience all four seasons, you know exactly the smell that I refer to. I wouldn’t know how to describe it to you, but there is just a SMELL that comes with the change of each season. And right now, here in New York, it smells like fall.
It’s a good thing we got out to enjoy the smell (and the sunshine) last weekend, because this weekend was so very awful. If last weekend was the picturesque perfection that is a New England autumn, this weekend was the exact opposite of that. I can take–I even welcome!–the crisp, chilly temperatures, but the dark, rainy, dampness is just gross.
So let’s reminisce for a few minutes about how awesome last weekend was, shall we? We took Nora to an apple farm on Sunday morning. (You know we’ve been busy when our first apple picking venture of the year doesn’t happen until late September! Usually we’re out there sweating our asses off the first chance we get, at the end of August.)
Of course, they lost today, but you know what? You can’t win ’em all. We’ll see what happens next week. The fact that I can even say “we’ll see” right now is a testament to the fact that things MIGHT be changing for the Buffalo Bills. Hooray?
This is one of those recipes that has been spreading around Pinterest like wildfire.
In an effort to inject some sort of normalcy back into our lives, we’ve dedicated one weekend morning to making pancakes the past few weeks. Last week, we busted out pumpkin pancakes. And let me tell you–those are still my favorite, and Nora LOVED them. I still highly recommend.
But, when I saw this recipe for apple cider pancakes, I knew that we had to give these a shot, too. It’s a cold and rainy fall weekend in these parts, and we woke up Saturday morning with a plan to make a nice, hot breakfast.
And, well, these were good. But in my opinion, they weren’t GREAT. Would I make them again? I guess. It’s not like they tasted bad. But will I make them again? I don’t know, because there are other pancake recipes I like better, and if I’m going to go through the effort, I might be more inclined to pick one of those.
A few things that contributed to this recipe’s so-so review: The recipe itself is weird. I don’t understand the whole “make a batch of pancake mix” thing. Why? Why do I need to have a bunch of extra pancake mix on hand (that I now need to store separately from everything else)? When writing a recipe, why not just provide the measurements for exactly the amount of dry ingredients I need to make it? We like to have extras on hand (we refrigerate and/or freeze the leftovers and pop them in the toaster for easy breakfasts), so after making the pancake mix, I tripled the ingredients for the remainder of the recipe (in other words, I used 3 cups of pancake mix, and 3x the amount of everything else, too). After that, it made what I would consider to be a standard amount of pancakes, but I still had a lot of pancake mix leftover. Annoying.
In addition to the weird pancake mix part, the recipe was sort of a pain in the ass. Separate the eggs? Whyyyy? I’m sure there’s probably some culinary reason to do so, but damn. There were so many steps and dishes and… blahhhh. I just wanted to make the batter and make the damn pancakes, you know?
As far as the finished product is concerned, I just couldn’t taste enough apple cider to make these things worth my while. There was also a somewhat tangy aftertaste that I attribute to the yogurt. In the end, these weren’t a winner in my book. Which sucks, because the photos on Pinterest made them look oh.so.fabulous. On a side note, I do like this woman’s blog, so at least I was able to “discover” her through these pancakes. Look at that, a shiny bright side! :)
Apple Cider Pancakes
(Source: Tokyo Terrace)
*This recipe makes a large batch. If you are making these for 2 or 3 people, just save the extra dry mix as I’ve indicated below. This way you’ll have plenty for the next time you decide to make pancakes! If you’d prefer not to use whole wheat flour, use white flour instead.
Pancake Mix:
– 3 cups whole wheat flour
– 3 cups white flour
– 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
– 3 teaspoons baking powder
– 1 tablespoon salt
Place ingredients in an airtight container and store until ready to use. Or continue with the recipe below, which makes nice amount of pancakes for 2 very hungry people or 4 not so hungry people:
To make pancakes:
– 1 cups dry pancake mix
– 1 egg, separated
– 2 tablespoons olive oil
– 1/4 cup buttermilk (or buttermilk substitute)
– 1/4 cup plain yogurt
– 1 teaspoons honey
– 1/2 cup apple cider (or apple juice if you can’t find cider)
– Unsalted Butter (both for cooking the pancakes and topping them when they are finished)
– 3 Tablespoons sugar + 1 1/2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
Place the 1 cup of dry mix in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk the egg white, buttermilk, yogurt, honey and cider. In another small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and olive oil. Whisk the wet ingredients in one bowl until combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry mix and stir until just combined. Lumps are good! Don’t get rid of them!
Heat 1 tablespoon of butter or vegetable oil in a medium pan. Measure 1/3 cup of the batter and pour into the pan. When you start to see small bubbles on the top of the pancakes and the edges are beginning to cook, flip the pancake. Be sure to add more butter or oil as needed so the pancakes don’t stick.
While the pancakes are still warm, top with some butter and allow it to melt over the top of the pancakes. Sprinkle with the cinnamon and sugar mixture and eat!
I was a breastfeeding mother. And in the blink of an eye, I’m not anymore.
It’s weird to think that it’s over.
Nora and I have come to the end of our breastfeeding journey. It was 1 year, 2 weeks, and 1 day, and I breastfed her at least once every single day. I have never been apart from her for more than 24 hours. I was supposed to be, but the flight got cancelled, and the way things have worked out since then—I just haven’t been away from her to ever miss an entire day.
I didn’t know how it would end until we were right there at the finish line. On Monday night, as I prepared to nurse Nora before bed, I realized that I would be away from her for bedtime on Tuesday because of a work function. And since she started refusing bottles completely at the beginning of September, there was no way to offer her the bedtime feeding like we would have (by bottle) in the past. I’m big on not taking steps back after making steps forward—so I knew that if she successfully went to bed without nursing on Tuesday, I probably wouldn’t bother to pick it back up on Wednesday. I was suddenly faced with the very real possibility that this nursing session, the one I was minutes away from, was going to be our last.
Honestly, I’m OK with it. I didn’t cry, but I sat there and tried to take in as many of the details of it as possible. Her little lips positioned in the latch that I’m convinced has pretty much always been perfect. The way she sleepily, drunkly closes her eyes as she sucks. We are long past the days of her snuggling into me to nurse (she just lies there in my lap, with her head turned to the side), so I actually found myself reminiscing to earlier days, when nursing was more than just 5-10 minutes at bedtime.
I always planned to breastfeed. Truth be told, I think my mom would’ve killed me if I didn’t at least attempt it, but lucky for her (and me), I already had my own reasons for wanting to do so. Still, I went into it with realistic expectations; I knew that it did not work out for everyone, so every time someone asked me if I planned to breastfeed, I told them, “Yes, I’m going to try.” From the very beginning, I had lofty goals; I really wanted to make it at least six months, if not a full year. Aside from the bonding and health benefits, I was attracted to the money savings. My real goal was to never have to buy formula, as I’m too cheap to do so if I could feed her for free.
I forced myself to break the big goal into little pieces. Make it through the time in the hospital. Make it through the first week. Make it through the first three weeks (I had friends who swore that if you could make it that far, you’d be golden). Make it through maternity leave. Make it to six months. Make it to nine months. Make it to her first birthday. When Nora was born, they didn’t give her a lot of time up on my belly/chest. I regret not asking why or insisting that they leave her there longer, but it all happened so fast and I was so new to the whole experience that I went with the flow. They whisked her over to the baby bed, and seemed to keep her there forever. They never expressed concern at the time, but I found out later that her breathing was faster than they liked, so maybe that was the reason. But once I was stitched up and cleaned up, they swaddled up Nora and brought her over to me to nurse. I was prepared for this part—I had even come to the hospital wearing a nursing bra. Nora’s hungry little mouth opened and the nurse helped me get her latched on for those precious first few minutes.
An hour or two later, I was in the darkness of the room where I would be staying. Because the hospital was so busy, I was actually in there with another mother and baby (it was temporary)—a mother and baby who were already sleeping. As I got settled and the nurse left me—just me and my baby on one side of the curtain, while the second mother slept with her baby on the other—Nora suddenly started to scream. I panicked a little, not wanting to disturb our roommates. I figured she was hungry, so I did my best to get her latched on myself.
As it turns out, I did it completely wrong, because it hurt like hell, and my poor boobs took days to heal from that initial mistake. When we were discharged a few days later, Nora suddenly decided she didn’t want to nurse anymore. It ended up that she was hungry and frustrated that my milk had not come in yet. Lucky for me, my milk came in full force that very same night, but I still could not convince Nora that nursing was worth her time and effort. It was a hell of a night, with my poor, crying baby starving, and me bawling because I thought she was rejecting me (hormones, y’all). The next day, with a trip to the pediatrician to meet with a nurse/lactation consultant, we were back on track.
We’ve never looked back.
I had a stellar breastfeeding experience. For the first 4-6 months, I had an oversupply which allowed me to not only completely satisfy Nora, but to build up quite the impressive freezer stash. I eventually worked my way up to somewhere around 400 oz. Our freezer was FULL of breast milk. Once I healed from that first solo feeding in the dark, I never had any pain. I never suffered from mastitis. I believe I had a clogged duct once, but it cleared up within a day. I have a supportive workplace that provided a private “mommy suite” office where I could pump every day—the first month back, I pumped three times a day, but ultimately found that I could still match her intake (or even have excess) by dropping to two sessions. Nora had no problems switching back and forth between the breast and bottle. I used to look at her growth and think to myself, “MY BODY is doing that”—it’s an incredible feeling of accomplishment. I attribute the loss of all of my baby weight (and then some) to breastfeeding. I was able to wear my regular jeans again when Nora was just 11 days old. For the first time in my life, I found that I could eat whatever the hell I wanted without worrying, and THAT.IS.GLORIOUS.
I dropped pumping in August. Back in the day, I didn’t mind pumping. Then, over the weeks and months, I slowly grew to hate it. Breastfeeding Nora was not a chore, but pumping sure was. Once we were in the “home stretch” approaching her first birthday, I knew I still had enough of a freezer stash to get me through, so I dropped one session, and then the other.
Then, a few days after Nora’s birthday, I dropped the morning nursing session, but we were hanging on to the bedtime one. I knew I would stop, and that it would probably be soon, but I just wasn’t sure HOW I would stop. It was admittedly hard for me to pull the trigger.
And then the trigger was kinda-sorta pulled for me on Monday. It made sense to stop. So we did.
There are advantages to being done. I don’t HAVE to feed her anymore. Michael (or anyone else) is just as capable of doing it as I am, because she drinks cow’s milk from a sippy cup, and finger foods from the tray of her high chair. I haven’t been drunk, or even experienced a strong buzz, in nearly two years. Pumping was so much work, and each drop of milk so precious, that I could not imagine “pumping and dumping.” I never wanted to. And now I could go and drink a whole bottle of wine without concern. Not that I would (often). Nora initiates early-morning wake-up calls, you know. My body is “mine” again for the first time since January 2010. No one is counting on it to grow a human being, or feed one.
Breastfeeding was wonderful. I plan to do it again some day. I will look back on it fondly. I will remember Nora’s tiny little body curled into mine. I’ll remember the feeling of her sleeping up against me in bed when we would doze off during middle of the night (side-lying) feedings. I’ll remember the months when she became more alert, and wanted to unlatch every five seconds to look at the world around her. I’ll remember the way she used to grab onto one of her feet and do her “cheerleader stretches” while eating. I’ll remember her funny “acrobatic nursing” as she approached toddlerhood, when she would try to put herself in crazy positions while continuing to nurse. I will remember.
It’s sad that it’s over, but mostly I’m just happy. Lucky. Grateful. Proud.
And in need of a good push-up bra.
It seems like our lives will never be “normal” again.
I think back to the days when all we had to do was a few chores in the evening. Make dinner. Do dishes. Wash and prep Nora’s bottles, make our lunches for the next day. Maybe a few loads of laundry. Clean a bathroom. Then? Collapse on the couch with the laptop or the remote control. I had time to upload and sort through pictures. I had (some) time to blog.
Weekends were full of errands–some fun, some not. We had family dinners. We occasionally went out to eat. We spent plenty of time playing with Nora. Once she was in bed, we’d watch TV, or maybe rent a movie.
Life is just so much different right now.
I don’t really mean to complain–I know how lucky we are to have a house, even if it is one that takes up so much time. And despite the imperfections and the amount of work it is requiring, I really do love it. I love having space. I love having a driveway, and a backyard. An actual dining room. Multiple bathrooms. It’s just that I guess I thought that after five weeks of living here (six since closing), we would be able to sit back and enjoy it a bit more.
I never intended for us to end up with a fixer-upper. I knew that this place needed some work, but it all seemed so minor when we were looking at it. But it turned out that things that seemed small ended up being a bigger deal than we thought. And simple things take more time than we planned. The funny part is that compared to other houses we looked at, this place needed considerably less work. Can you imagine if we had ended up with one of the other ones? Good god.
Before Nora’s birthday party, the pressure was enormous. My dad was coming to stay with us, and if we didn’t get the upstairs in decent shape and prepared for new carpet–and then get the carpet installed–we couldn’t get our new bedroom furniture delivered, and my dad would not have had any place to sleep. Plus, we invited like 50 people (we are crazy) to our baby’s first birthday so we wanted the house to look at least somewhat decent.
During those first weeks, we worked ourselves ridiculously hard. There was no rest. During the week, we worked full-time jobs, came home with Nora, fed her, (briefly) played with her, bathed her, and put her to bed. Once she was down, we maybe ate something, and then we worked, worked, worked until we collapsed into bed at midnight. The next day, we’d do it all over again. Weekends consisted of multiple trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot. My mother-in-law generously offered to take Nora for a few hours each day, so that we’d be able to get more work done. When we did have Nora, one of us took care of her while the other did some kind of project around the house. It was exhausting.
The week leading up to the party was crazy, but we did it. The carpet was installed on Thursday, my dad arrived on Friday, and our bedroom furniture came a few hours after he did. The party on Saturday was a success.
After all of that, you’d think we would give ourselves a little break.
You’d be wrong.
On Sunday morning (Nora’s actual birthday, mind you), two of our (very handy and do-it-yourself-savvy) friends arrived at 10:00 a.m. I took Nora on a very hefty Home Depot run while Michael, our friends, and my dad ripped down nearly all of the drywall in our family room and started to replace it.
Two weeks later, we are still working on that damn drywall project in the family room. Last night, we went to put primer on the new walls and ceiling (finally!) only to be faced with a fairly significant setback. :::sigh::: Such is life.
Last week, I came down with something–extreme nausea and dizziness–so I was down for the count for five days. On the one hand, it totally sucked to feel like that, and to be so unproductive. On the other hand, OHMYGOD IT WAS SO NICE TO CATCH A BREAK. But as soon as I felt decent again (on Friday), I put myself back to work.
The past two weekends, we’ve slowed down a lot. We do our projects when Nora is napping or in bed for the night, but otherwise, we are trying to treat our weekends like normal weekends. Still, I just want to know when this is all going to be over. If you’ve moved into a house that had a lot of “projects”–how long was it until you were truly settled? (Please don’t tell me never.) I know that “constant” home improvement projects come with the territory of homeownership, but this is just ridiculous.
The place is starting to feel like home, but like I said before–I just want to be able to enjoy it. Is it too much to ask?
On the bright side, Nora’s room is nearly complete (finally) as we have been working on hanging things up on her walls. And we just finished the dining room this past weekend, so that’s something. Photos to come soon. :)
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
