this moment 12.3.10

Penelope's Birthday Cake

It came out a little lopsided, but as Peter says "it's ok, it just looks homemade!"

And it was, well semi-homemade I guess, to be exact. I used an organic cake mix box and tweaked to make it healthier and tastier.

Again, the credit is due to my friend Tara for the recipe. Thanks Tara!

I made a cream cheese icing, from the Red Velvet cupcakes icing in the cookbook A Thyme to Celebrate.
Then I decorated it with teal blue sprinkles on top and lemon drop candies on the sides.

I made two cakes the night before her birthday, so she had one mini cake on her actual birthday on Thursday, and then she had a piece of the bigger cake at her party. On her birthday, she wasn't a big fan on the icing but really liked the cake. At her party, she wanted nothing to do with either. All her guests gobbled it up and gave me compliments, so who knows why she didn't want it.

Here are the ingredients:

Raw milk
real butter from grassfed cows
real range free eggs 3
Dr. Oetker's organic cake mix
One bag of thawed frozen organic strawberries pureed with 2 tablespoons of Rapadura

I used the recipe on the back, but substituted melted butter for vegetable oil and decreased the milk from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup to balance out the liquid ratio because I added the strawberry puree.

Here is what the mix looks like. When it cooks the batter looks kinda of brown.
I buttered a glass pie pan and poured it in. For Penelope's personal mini cake I used a little ceramic bowl from my friend.

Don't let her face fool you, its a very moist and tasty cake!

Let me know if you try it. :)

Baby Sign Language

Penelope is exploding with growth in the Baby Sign Language department these days. It usually just takes me showing her the sign once or twice and she signs it back to me.

I first starting doing sign language with her at about 5 months. It took her about a month to do her first sign; Eat. Then it took her another month to do her next sign; Rain. Oh, how she loved to sign Rain!  You can just see her little eyes light up when she realized she was communicating in a more sophisticated way.  The words have been coming slowly but surely ever since, until about a month ago and she just took off!

These are the signs she knows:
Eat
Rain
More
Book
Phone
Papa
Hair
Hat
Bird
Elephant
Dog
Cat
Nurse
Milk
Night-Night
Truck
Tree
Wind
Baby
Diaper
Water
Airplane
Potty
Fan
Turtle

She doesn't do them perfectly, each one is kind of her own little version. For example, the sign for water is your three middle fingers tapping your lips. She just taps one finger and she taps the corner of her mouth.  So I have adapted and sign her version of the sign back to her.  Not sure if this is what you are "supposed" to be doing, but I thought it would validating to her and be good encouragement that you don't need to do it perfectly to communicate.

Here is a couple pictures of me teaching Penelope the sign for Flower, which incidentally, is one of the ones I have been doing the longest and she still hasn't signed it back to me!

You just take your fingers together and tap on either side of your nose, like you are smelling the flower. I usually say the word, and then sign and then say the word again.

These are some of the books and resources we have used along the way:

This is what I started out with:
A friend gave this to me while pregnant and I really like it because it comes with three little baby board books that are literally Penelope's favorite books.
It also has a little fridge magnet of lots of signs, so its helpful if you are in the kitchen and forget a sign, you can just reference it very quickly.


Then I won this DVD at raffle:
This link is for the entire kit, so I am not sure on the whole thing, but the DVD is pretty useful, because a live woman is demonstrating the signs. I think some of the picture books can be difficult to interpret and its nice to see someone actually doing the sign.



This is one of our favorite Baby Sign books:
There are so many out on the market, that we are able to pick up a different one at the library each week, but this is a great one.

Baby Footprints Birthday Decoration

Remember this post? Well, this is what I ended up doing with them for her party!

 

These were my supplies. I went a little nuts in the Martha Stewart section of Micheal's but it was worth it!

 

I made this sign to hang on the front door. Nothing like some glue and glitter for a craft project!

 

And then made these to go in the front play room as decoration.

 

Each month had a foot print and a picture of her during that month. Before I pasted the original's to the scrapbook paper, Peter scanned them for me and uploaded them to our computer so we always have a copy.

After the party, I took them down and put them all in a scrapbook as a keepsake.
I am so thrilled with how the decoration and scrapbook keepsake came out. Mostly, I am just stoked that I managed to keep my shit together long enough to remember to stamp her feet each month!

I am tempted to do it again for her second year, but maybe just do it quarterly, instead of monthly??
:)

Sausage-Sweet Potato Soup

Ok, so its not exactly the consistency of soup but its really freaking good!

 

4 to 5 sweet potatoes
1 cup of lentils ( I got the French Black Lentils from New Leaf in the bulk section)
1 pd sausage (I bought Thompson Farms Hot Sausage from New Leaf)
1 pd collard greens
1 onion
1 tablespoon garlic
2 cups chicken stock


A woman named Tara gave me the recipe for this meal. It sounded so delicious and nutritious when she told me about it, I went out to New Leaf that day to round up the ingredients. It's a great Fall recipe too, with the sweet potatoes and the warmth of the soup to warm you up on a cold day.


It made a ton of food too! I had enough for dinner plus leftovers and then two other containers made it to the freezer each holding enough for dinner and leftovers.


I served with cous-cous, but you could any kind of rice, both Penelope and Peter inhaled it.


First, I boiled the sweet potatoes and lentils. Wait, back up, first I soaked the lentils over night in water, to make them easier to digest. I just found this article that says you can ferment potatoes in keifer or yogurt to make them easier to digest, so next time I will do that.


While the potatoes where boiling I cooked the sausage. Then I added the onions and garlic and cooked them in the sausage fat drippings. Yum!


Then I added the collard greens and let them sit on top of the onions for a few minutes. When they started to get soft, I started folding them nice and easy.


Once the potatoes and lentils were soft I put them in the food processor and pureed them with the chicken stock. Peter and I both like our soups pretty thick, so mine is pretty thick. I think it would take another cup or two of chicken stock to make it more of a soup consistency. On a side note, you can not puree potatoes and lentils in a blender. Maybe if you have a nicer blender than me, I don't know. Mine's a piece of you know what. My food processor is on the top shelf that I can't reach without standing on a chair and I was trying to save 5 seconds by not getting in down,instead I wasted like 10 minutes attempting in the damn blender and then getting the food processor down and transferring it all in. Not to mention dirtied it up for no reason. Ugh, lesson learned.


Then you just mix it all up and enjoy!

 

 

 

Penelope Likes to Nurse- A Handmade Book

This is the little book I made Penelope when we were attempting the Big Switch.

Although, the Big Switch was a Big Flop, she LOVES her book! She also really likes her books, We Like to Nurse and Mama's Milk and Near Mama's Heart (see below for Amazon links).

I just got prints of all the pictures I had of her nursing. I did them in a 5x7 size to make them easier for her to see. Then I cut larger rectangles of black card stock and pasted the pictures to the card stock.

I decorated the front and back cover with some scrapbook paper that came with an album I got at my baby shower.

I bought some self laminating paper at Micheal's and I laminated the front and back cover.  My original intention was to laminate the whole thing to make it more durable, but after doing the front and back, I realized it wasn't going to do shit to keep it safe from Penelope the Destroyer, so why waste my time!

Then I hole punched each page and threaded some ribbon through. Tied it up and viola, handmade book!

I think making a personalized book is such a useful idea to help with any transition, whether its moving to a big kid bed, weaning from boob, paci or bottle, getting ready for a baby sibling, or to explain bedtime routines.


Have you ever made a personalized book for your little one?

This Moment 11.12.10

More newborn pictures in honor of Penelope's 1st Birthday!