Pinspiration Sunday~Abi mini update

This past Sunday we made a fun pineapple Hawaiian ish chicken with garlic ranch mashed potatoes. Here is the link to the recipe pineapple chicken. It's from a gal who has dealt with overeating and weight gain a large part of her life and she is now committed to healthier eating and maintaining a healthy weight. I love her blogsite! The only thing I'm not currently able to get on board with is her teeny tiny portions! LOL So, here are my changes to her recipe... We used a whole can of pineapple tidbits, not just 1 cup of pineapple juice. Then, since we don't have a grill (apartment living sucks!) we poured the whole concoction in a glass baking dish and threw it in the oven for 30 min. Worked nicely, except of course we missed out on the yummy caramalization you get from grilling. But once we get a house and a grill we will be trying this again. It's simple and yummy for sure and these days I'm all about simple.

yummy!

On to the mashed potatoes.. we are not a mash em' and mix em' kind of family. So we use the boxed potato flakes. No, not the best mashed potatoes in the world, but they fall into the simple category which makes me happy. We also like to punch them up with garlic powder/salt and sour cream. Well, since our discovery of Greek yogurt as an excellent sour cream substitute we've been using that instead. This time however, we added a packet of Hidden Valley ranch to the Greek yogurt.. um if you've never tried that, you should! It is sooooooo much better than ranch salad dressing/veggie dip and so much better for you! Well, anyway I made up the mashed potatoes, added some garlic salt/powder and a few big globs of ranch Greek yogurt, mixed it all together and wallah! Super delicious mashed potatoes!

Hubby says this is his absolute favorite mashed potato concoction so far! lol

This week was super simple, yummy and took barely any time at all. I love it when things can be thrown together and come out so delicious! On a side note I am not sure we will be having "Pinspiration Sunday" this week as hubby's grandparents are coming into town for the long weekend. While normally I would cook for any visitors, hubby's grandparents refuse to let us "dote" on them and usually treat us to dinner out. I am really excited for this visit because it will be the first time they get to meet Abi! Thankfully they are getting to meet her in her first year.. we were unsure they were going to make it as hubby's grandma has been in ill health. But I guess while she isn't getting better she isn't getting worse (thank goodness!) so they are driving the 18 hours to come see us!

Okay on to an Abi update:

Little miss has been doing much better in daycare this week, she's been taking naps (2-3) for about 35 minutes each! Unfortunately she wasn't eating very well while there and made up for it at night. She's been waking every 2-4 hours to eat. It's driving me crazy! But I guess that's why she's taking a long nap right now.. we're going on an hour! I love it! Anyway, yesterday when I stopped in to see Abi between classes she was napping.. and I couldn't stay too long because I had just spent time pumping and needed to leave so that I could find a parking spot near my next class. Ugh! I missed her soooooooooooooo much! When I finally got out of my last class and rushed over to pick her up I cuddled, hugged and smooched her for like 20 minutes before putting her in her car seat to go home! I hate missing her so much, but this time away is good for us.. I guess. We have her 5 month shots on Friday, so I will be able to at least update on her weight then. They don't measure her fully on the "off" months when we just go in for a nurses visit for shots so I won't know how long she is until next month. I think she's at least 27 inches though, mainly because she's slowly growing out of her 6 month pants! Which is crazy to me because she just turned 5 months. Thankfully her 6 month onsies still fit really well! There are quite a few really cute ones that I'm not ready to put away yet! lol

Alrighty, that's it for now.. I believe just heard lil miss awakening from her slumber. :)

Chugging along

I am happy to report that I have completed 8 meals from my Pinterest board! I have also made banana s'mores but I did not take pictures or blog about them, so I'm not sure I can count it toward my 35 desserts.. Also I have made a banana tortilla roll up for breakfast (tons of times!) which is on my Pinterest too.. but again no picture, no blog, no credit. LOL It's not like it was a hard recipe to follow! There are two recipes that I have blogged about that I'm not counting because my hubby made them while I just played with Abi, lol. Speaking of, little miss is now 22 weeks old, just over 5 months and has been rolling over front to back and back to front. Not consistently however, today she did it like 5 times in 10 minutes! She "talks" to her toys/burp clothes/blankets now, it is soooo cute! Unfortunately she is in daycare 3 times a week now that I'm back in school. I hate it. It's completely messed up her schedule and now she won't nap for me like she used to even though she's soooooooo tired. It is particularly difficult when we get home she want's to go to bed at 5:30 because she didn't nap all day! I let her nap but I wont let her sleep all night because then she'll get up at 4am! NOT GOOD when I have to be up at 6. Last night was awful even though she didn't spend the day in daycare. She was up every hour from 7 until 10:30, then every two hours until we got up for the day at 7:20am. Thankfully I enlisted hubby's help or I would have gone crazy. We don't even know what was wrong, she would just wake up screaming and we'd go in, pat her or pick her up and she'd be out in a few minutes. I did feed her every 4 hours because I didn't want her to get more upset about being hungry. Plus who wouldn't want snacks at night without the guilt? lol. But it reminded me of a month or so ago when she was getting up every 30 minutes screaming her head off (back when she was in our room in the rock and play) I can't imagine what we'll do if she decides she's no longer comfortable in her crib... yikes!
Abi sucks her fingers a lot now, and while she'll take a pacifier for a little while it's clear she prefers her fingers. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Hubby is all for it, but I'm more on the side of "you can take away a pacifier, you cannot take away fingers." Hubby thinks that us telling her to stop sucking her fingers will actually work. I'm sure it won't be that simple.
She is starting to grow out of her 6 month pjs but most of the other 6 month stuff fits fine. I don't know what it is about Carters clothing, they seem to have really inconsistent sizing. We just bought her some pants from a local resale shop in 9 months because she's quickly going to be growing out of her 6 month pants too. We don't have too many 6 month pants and she's growing so quickly that I didn't want to waste money on buying more size 6 when she will need the 9 month size soon. I cannot believe how quickly she is growing! My itty bitty little lady is getting so big and it makes me so happy and sad at the same time!
I can't believe Halloween is coming up in just a few short months! I am so excited to pick out Abi's first costume! I had talked with a few friends about it a while ago and we were going to have a Flintstones theme, one gals 2 yr old girl as Wilma, the other gals 3 yr old son as Fred, her youngest as Bam Bam and my Abi as Pebbles... but we haven't really talked about it since so I'm thinking we may do something a little more age appropriate instead. I really want her to be a pumpkin because that's one of my nicknames for her. So we'll see.
Gosh.. what else..? I can't think of anything at the moment, but if I do I'll come back and write some more! LOL

Pinspiration Sunday

So I've decided that I make too many little changes to the original recipes that I find on Pinterest. But honestly I'm okay with that as long as the majority of it is true to the original. Today's dish was creamy avocado pasta.

Yes, super delicious and with all the healthy fats from avocado and none of the bad fats from butter and cream! It was supposed to be like a fettuccine alfredo, but we only had linguine noodles (whole wheat). I also used grape tomatoes instead of the campari and we omitted the pine nuts. This is by far my favorite pasta dish! Here is the link to the recipe Creamy avocado pasta It's a must try!

Lastly here is another pinspiration. I've made a shadowbox of things that remind me of the day Abi was born. 

I think I'm going to add her name in there somewhere before I hang it. Simple and sweet!

Pinterest Sunday ~ Frito Pie

Yes friends it is time for yet another Pinterest recipe. Tonight I made frito pie. I made it pretty much according to the recipe here. There is one major exception... hubby forgot to pick up tomato sauce, so I substituted marinara spaghetti sauce instead. It worked out pretty good in the end though, we both liked it quite a bit. There was one other change, I used greek yogurt instead of sour cream. I do that with everything now, it's just so much better!

 I have decided, if I ever make this again, I will not be putting the fritos on the bottom as they just turned to mush. But all in all it was very good and quite the comfort food...

yum!

I keep forgetting to mention that we now make our own taco seasoning. I found out how here and we LOVE it. It is seriously the best and you can make it without salt! 

Miss Abi update

Okay, so since Abi is in bed for the night (yes at 7:15pm!!!) I will post a little update about what she's been up to this month. For starters, she's 19 1/2 weeks old. She's found her toes again (she had found them at 16 weeks, had them for about a week, then didn't play with them until just recently) and she's trying to eat her toes now too! Speaking of eating.. she's not only sucking on her fingers and favoring her middle and ring fingers at once, then her thumbs.. she's also trying to put every thing into her mouth. And while it's really cute, if she can't fit something into her mouth she screams at it. And gets so upset that she starts crying. Not just crying, but the red-faced, silent screaming cry that makes moms afraid that baby isn't breathing. Yeah, she's gets pretty upset. So we try not to give her things to hold too much, unless we really really need a distraction. But it's hard because that's how she learns right now, so I feel awful keeping things from her. She's also been screaming more than cooing. Which gets so annoying! Anyone else go through this? I know several of you have babies around 5 months or older, so if you went through a screaming phase did it end yet? Please tell me an end is in sight! LOL. Also, if any of you are currently going through this.. you are not alone! :)

On a brighter note, Abi has also been kind of grunting when she's playing with her toes, and it's hysterical! Much better than the screaming and almost always makes me laugh. She's also grabbing things with more purpose, instead of just flailing her arms and happening to grasp something that's in front of her. Fine tuning her motor skills! :)

Playing with her toes.. and grunting lol!

I almost wet myself when I took this pic, her eyes are priceless!

Little miss book worm :)

I've got Abi on a schedule now and for the most part it's working wonderfully. She wakes up about 7:30-8am. We play for an hour and a half, then she gets a bottle and goes down for a nap. It continues like that until bed time. At that point it's bath, books, bottle and bed. Up until today we were using a lullaby cd to signify nap time. But that only got me 20 minute naps. Well today I turned on her white noise machine that we use at bed time and she took 30 minute naps! Hey it's a small victory. I had been holding off on using the white noise machine for nap time because I didn't want her confusing nap time which is shorter with bed time which is supposed to be all night ;) But it seems to have helped. And so far tonight she's sleeping just fine. We shall see how the rest of the night goes. She sometimes wakes up to eat at night, other times she sleeps through. I never know how it's going to go. But most nights I get at least 4 hours straight. Which is much better than the up every hour that we were going through when Abi was still sleeping in our room. I miss her, but everyone's sleeping so much better now! Okay I think that's it for now. Time to pump and shower since I actually have time to do those things now!

Pinterest Sunday

While I have a moment (I actually have access to my computer!) I will post about this past Sunday's Pinterest dinner. I made spicy Dr. Pepper crock pot pulled pork. It was alright. Very spicy! If you don't like a lot of heat, use half the can of chili peppers! Anyway it was really easy, pork, 12 oz of Dr. Pepper, 1 can of chilis in adobo sauce and an onion. That's it! We felt that it didn't have enough flavor though so we put bbq sauce on top. Which gave it a sweet and spicy taste. So it ended up not bad at all!

The next day I made a salad and added the leftover pork. It was even spicier, but also very good! lol

Okay, I'll write again soon.. don't want to push my luck! But I'll leave you with this pic of Abi

SO stinkin' cute!!!!!

Mia

Sorry I've been Mia for a while... I've got Abi on a new nap schedule and she is doing wonderfully! However, our nap time routine involves my computer playing lullaby music, do I can't really get to it much during the day. I figured out that I was keeping Abi up too long and that she needed to wind down before naps. This led me to start feeding her about 30 min before she'd need to nap (every two hours!) and by the end of the feeding she is usually sleepy enough to put down. It's working so well, except she's not napping very long. She is however sleeping mostly through the night so im happy!