I had great intentions.  You see, my canned peaches from last summer were kind of a dud. Not living in a place where peaches actually grow, I had apparently bought a box of somewhat stringy, slightly mushy peaches, which when cooked and canned lost any real firmness they had ever posessed.  So, in order to use them up, I planned on making some nice peach muffins (something that you wouldn't expect to find nice firm fruit in).  Unfortunately, once I had already mixed together my dry ingredients, and half the wet, I realized that not only was Boy screaming like I had forgotten to feed him in the last ten minutes, but my last few jars of peaches had morphed into some sort of alcohol-like-food.  At this point Girl was singing some interesting nonsense song at the top of her lungs, and Boy spit up on my shoulder, and it seemed like a good idea to eat the peaches.  I refrained, this time.  My stomach audibly thanked my brain. 

I needed to improvise, so I pulled out a can of apple pie filling I had also made last year, and decided to wing it.  Here is my creation:

Apple muffins.

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 cup apple pie filling

(run a knife through it to dice the apple pieces a bit)

Mix dry ingredients then add eggs, oil and vanilla.  Fold in apples.  Bake in muffin tins at 350 for 25 minutes.  makes 12
 
I did mine in muffin cups, but if you don't do that, you should grease the muffin tins.
 
Husband said he'd eat them, and Girl ate more than half of it then pronounced the rest of it "sticky"  (not quite sure what she meant by that). 
 
 

WARNING: NEW MOTHER

I read an article a while back that made me laugh. The woman writing it was talking about "baby on board" signs for cars and how before she had children she thought they were to remind other drivers to drive more safely around her. Since having children, she realized they were to warn other drivers of her terrible driving as she strains to hand a goldfish cracker back to her child.

I think new moms need signs for everyday life too.

You start to lose your mind during pregnancy, but luckily, by the time it really gets noticable, you have a giant belly that warns people for you. However, once that baby comes out, the general public doesn't always get why you went to the doctor's office yesterday (after lunch and the library) with your shirt on backwards.

TOTALLY hypothetical situation.

*sigh*

Back to Life... Back to Insanity.

I know, it's been a REALLY long time since I wrote anything, but I have a really good reason, I swear!

I'd like you all to meet Boy. (Luckily for my blog I'm not introducing Girl2, OtherGirl, or Girl-II, Boy is just so much easier)  Though he looks about 12 in this picture, he was actually only about 2 weeks. He has joined our family with a certain type of unstoppable force.  From a torturous pregnancy highlighted by a suppressed immune system in the height of the worst cold/flu season I can remember, to a labour where I was sure I was going to die, and then started to worry that I wasn't going to, Boy was a trial before I ever laid eyes on him.  However, once I did, I forgave him for most of it.   He still has been a trial, not because he's a difficult baby, in fact, somewhat the opposite, rather it is the lingering effects of the emergency c-section that was required to get his massive 11lb, 6oz body out of me.  Yup, that's right.  There is no typo there.  (And for all you health care professionals, no, I did not have Gestational Diabetes, I just made a giant baby... all the weight is in his head, I'm sure). 

My c-section recovery has been slow.  They told me I wasn't allowed to lift anything heavier than 10lbs for 6 weeks (with Boy being the one exception).  I think that women who are recovering from surgery like this should be given a hat or a t-shirt or something so the general public will understand why they are making their mother carry the baby carseat around, or lift their toddler into the car while they just stand there.  For someone who is used to doing everything on her own, it kills me to have to let other people do simple things for me.   This, however, is just the normal part of recovery.  The abnormal part for me is the reason I have nurses coming to my house on a daily basis.  Apparently my incision didn't heal quite properly, resulting in a few weeks of constant bleeding, and now something they call "a cavity" which requires fresh, sterile dressings daily until it heals up.  I prefer not to look.  The whole idea of it kind of grosses me out.  Needless to say, I'm counting down the days until I can vacuum again, or carry my own laundry basket, or heave furniture around the room on a whim.  Until then, I'll be good.  I have zero desire to make this healing process any longer.

You can tell I am healing though.  Yesterday I took a book out of the library about cheese making.  (Husband rolled his eyes.  He typically refuses to eat anything I make that requires curdling, or various forms of bacteria).   I also took out a canning book, and am planning my canning season accordingly.  The canner will see a lot of new things before it gets put away for another year. 

Yup, I'm starting to find myself again.  Who wants to make homemade mustard?

another year.

Tomorrow is a big day.  It's one I wish would just skip a year now and then.  Today has been 5 years since the last time I saw my dad alive.  I should mark this day, but somehow, since I went to sleep that night and there had been no momentous change in my life, I don't see it as a day to remember. 

5 years.  In some ways it feels like a complete eternity, and in other ways I can't believe it's been that long.   It feels like yesterday that we sat, and sat, and sat...  14 hours into a surgery that should have taken 5.  Every so often, I try to imagine what it would be like to tell a family their loved one is gone, and I remember why I had no desire to ever become a doctor.  (That, and a mortal fear of bodily fluids).  

I'm ok.  Somehow, I think I've always been ok. I miss my dad...  and there have been many times in the last years that I have thought of him, and been sad that he couldn't be with us.  I watch Girl and think of how much fun he would have had with her,  how she would have made him laugh and amazed him, just like she does with us, and I feel sorry that she was kind of ripped off...  but somehow, I get it. 

I've never asked "why?", but instead have trained my mind on "now what?"  I don't know if that's the healthiest, but it's been working so far.  I'm not an island...  but I am a rock.

Senti-mental.

I stood for a minute with my hand hovering over the garbage can.  In my hand was a coloring book.  It was fully scribbled in, shredded and the cover was barely staying on.  It's the first coloring book Girl had ever used.  I didn't feel a need to keep it, and it was cluttering up my living room.  There were no pages left and Girl was no longer interested in it, having moved on to a new one.  I wanted to throw it away, but was suddenly second guessing myself.

This is probably how hoarders start. 

I'm not a hoarder.  I'm not the kind of person who throws everything away either.  I think I have a good balance.  I save a few things for sentimental reasons, and try really hard not to keep things that I'm no longer using.  Husband may disagree, but then I send him to the backyard garage/car graveyard/future project department and he's quiet. 

I know where this sudden attachment is coming from.  Luckily I understand it, so I can deal with it.  I don't need or want an old coloring book.  I just want things that I can no longer have. 

When I was a kid, my dad made me a dollhouse.  It wasn't a normal dollhouse (where would the fun be in that).  My dad was a draftsperson so he spent much of his time working on blueprints, floorplans etc, so he made me a dollhouse that looked like you cut the roof off a nice little bungalow.  It wasn't the typical multi-floor dollhouse.  It lay flat on the ground and had hardwood floors, baseboards, a fireplace and 4 rooms.

I rarely played with it.  I wasn't a doll person.  I would use it mainly when friends came over, but otherwise, it kind of took up space.  When I had officially abandoned dolls in general, my parents and I made the decision to give it away.  There was a girl, a few years younger than me, and if my memory serves me correctly, she had just had her tonsils out or something.  I don't remember being friends, or even really seeing her after that, but she loved dolls, and completely appreciated the dollhouse and box of barbie stuff I gave her. 

Since then, my dad died.

Things change when people die.  Compound that with the arrival of a little girl to our house.  I want it back. 

I have no qualms about calling the girl up and asking if the dollhouse is collecting dust in some remote corner of her parent's basement, and if so, asking for it back.  Problem is, I don't know who she is.  My mom and I racked our brains and came up short.  The person we thought it was had no idea what we were talking about, and really, thinking about it later, it wouldn't have made sense to give it to her, since her dad was a woodworker and he made her dollhouses of her own. 

I have to resign myself that it's gone, and that even if I spent the next 10 years looking for it, it is unlikely that I will ever know what became of it. 

One day, Girl may want something, and I hope I have the forsight to save it for her, but luckily, it probably won't be an old coloring book. 

I threw it away.

Non-dairy chocolate cake

There are many times I feel lucky, and having a family (including extended family) without any manner of food allergies is a blessing.  I don't normally need to worry about what I make, and cooking is easy.  Some friends of ours have a bit more of a challenge.  They have two boys with milk allergies.  Considering I practically live on milk and cheese, this is an extremely foreign concept to me.  The idea of cooking without dairy is daunting.  It's in EVERYTHING!  Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but HELLO  Chocolate? 

Girl's birthday party is coming up, and I have decided to make the birthday cake a non-dairy version, because as much as their oldest (2 1/2) has accepted his fate, I would feel bad making a cake that he couldn't eat.  All kids should be able to eat the birthday cake. 

So, I hit the internet and found a chocolate cake recipe that didn't have all sorts of weird ingredients.  (So often when you look for something dairy free, it's also vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, and enjoyment-free).  This recipe seemed simple enough, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

1 ½ cups unbleached white flour

⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

1 cup cold water or coffee

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 tablespoons vinegar

Preheat the oven to 375º.


Sift together the flour, cocoa, soda, salt, and sugar directly into the cake pan. In the measuring cup, measure and mix together the oil, cold water or coffee, and vanilla. Pour the liquid ingredients into the baking pan and mix the batter with a fork or a small whisk. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. There will be pale swirls in the batter as the baking soda and vinegar react. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter.


Bake for 25 to 30 minutes and set aside to cool.

So, I read the recipe and thought "why wouldn't I mix this in a bowl?"  but decided I'd follow the recipe as written to see if it made any sense.  Of course, my initial instincts were right, it made no sense.  It got clumpy and any time that could possibly be saved by not washing a single bowl was wasted trying to get the batter to mix evenly without spilling it everywhere.  Needless to say, I scraped it into a bowl, mixed it properly and scraped it back in right after stirring in the vinegar. 
 
So far...  it looks like cake, it smells like cake, and tastes like cake.  I know it tastes fine because it did not release nicely from the bottom of the pan, so I'd recommend a layer of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan to make your life easier.   Oh well, looks like it'll be a three layer cake instead of four. 

The Business of Being Born

I'm watching "The Business of Being Born".  I've heard a lot about it, so I was somewhat curious.  While understanding that every single woman in the world has a completely different view of what childbirth is "supposed to" be like, I anticipated a certain bias.  I was right.  I now know that doctors are all evil, don't care about your personal wishes, and are just all out for money.

I have trouble looking at this documentary as a balanced view of childbirth, because, well, it's not.  There are so many things that I see and hear that, while it makes sense, makes many assumptions.  The main idea toward this documentary is that natural, drug-free, home-birthing is the ideal.  Great. (For me, the ideal is the baby just falling out all on it's own, perfectly healthy and pain-free.)  They quote statistics about how there is a significantly lower infant mortality rate in midwife-assisted childbirth than there is in the hospital, but then, they talk about how midwives do extensive medical history to determine if one is a good candidate for home-birth.  I don't recall doctors being given that option.

I was also told that monkeys who give birth via cesarian section do not care about their babies, and that is how it is with mammals, and we are also mammals.  Excuse me?  Are you actually telling me that women will not care about or take care of their children if they are brought into this world using medical intervention?  I was born via cesarean, and I was close to needing one with Girl, and I can honestly say that I could care less how they got her out of me, she was mine and I loved her as much as any one person can.

It is somewhat difficult to reconcile this documentary, since being in Canada rather than the US, stats about insurance, and profits and liabilities aren't really issues to me.  While I do believe that going into labour naturally, and having babies as naturally as possible is great, I also am a firm believer that modern medicine has saved millions of lives.  Yes, women have been giving birth since the dawn of time, but up until "recent" advances, childbirth was the number one killer of women.   This documentary gives a somewhat biased view of hospitals, with the majority of the hospital footage being from the 50's when women were drugged, strapped down to tables and alone in dark rooms.  It seemed a bit like fear-mongering, something this movie was so adamant to say was the reason that so many women opted for medical intervention (fear of childbirth). Ricki Lake said her main goal for the documentary was to alleviate fear, but apparently that means just shifting it to doctors and hospitals.

Perhaps it's different in the US.  The hospital I gave birth in was equipped with birthing tubs, two-person shower, stability balls, beds that converted to allow for numerous labour positions, and likely plenty of other things I didn't use.

I'm all for women being able to make choices and give birth in the way they want, but I do resent being told that if I needed medical intervention that I would love my child less, or feel like less of a woman.

I read a lot of pregnancy forums and so many women go into childbirth (often for the first time) with a concrete plan.  This is how my baby will enter the world.  I went into childbirth with one item on my birth plan...  Get the baby out safely.  I never felt pressured to do anything.  I felt as supported as I needed to be (though, my levels of "support" are somewhat different than many women, in that, I could really care less who delievered my baby, and needed no more mental or emotional support than Husband gave just by being there and making jokes to keep me laughing), and overall had a positive experience.  I had pain medication, gave birth vaginally to a 9 pound baby with no need for stitches, had no trouble breastfeeding and am as bonded with my child as any mom needs to be.  I was given pitocin, (but I would have begged for it if they didn't, being 14 days overdue).   I had no expectations and therefore was not disappointed.   So many women decide how childbirth will go, and unfortunately, it's not really realistic.  It's good to have ideals, but you need to be able to adapt.  Things can change very quickly, and if you are the type of person who has difficulty dealing with change, yes, you will feel pressured, because sometimes you don't have a lot of time to change gears.

If you're someone who is really into home-birth, you'll like this documentary.  It will give you plenty of facts and statistics and scary, out-dated visuals that you can use to freak out your friends.  I, personally, wasn't a fan.  I resent the implication that giving birth in a hospital with pain medication makes me less of a woman, or less of a mother.  Maybe, if everyone just let people have babies in ways that they were comfortable doing it, we'd all feel less pressure and make less promises to ourselves.