Product reviews, parenting articles, and advice for first-time moms from the experiences of real-life mommies.

Egg & Sausage Muffins

I’ve been following lurking around the RocksInMyDryer blog for a little while now and have been thoroughly enjoying her “Works for Me Wednesday” posts.  She usually has it open to everyone to post their own links for whatever topic she’s designated and I wind up spending a few minutes hours following all the links to great posts.  

So, this week’s topic was 5-ingredient recipes.  My kind of cooking!  Needless to say, I’ve spent lots of time perusing everyone’s creative ideas and have bookmarked several to try out.

The first recipe I tried was for Egg & Sausage Muffins at ISpeakBeanish. They turned out great!!  I added some cheese (hello – I AM a cheese-aholic!) and then I blended up some fresh yellow squash and zucchini to “hide” inside the egg mixture that you pour over the sausage. You couldn’t even taste the veggies (thank goodness, otherwise my family wouldn’t have eaten them) and the two oldest kiddos LOVED them.  We had plenty leftover for breakfast the next day and I’m about to freeze the rest to have on hand for whenever Shawn needs a quick breakfast to go with his morning coffee.

So, slide on over to ISpeakBeanish for her great recipe (she’s a Houston local, y’all!!) or to RocksInMyDryer for more ideas for dinner tonight and enjoy.  Oh, and then you have to tell me which one YOU did and how it turned out so I can be sure to add it to my list! :)

Baby’s Smile and Your Brain

You know the magical moment…  

The one where you gasp, your heart completely melts, and you’re filled with more joy than you ever thought a human could feel…  

The moment when your baby first smiles at you.

Well, apparently, some super-smart people at Baylor College of Medicine decided to find out exactly what that smile does to a mom.

Here’s what they say:

They found that when the mothers saw their own infants’ faces, key areas of the brain associated with reward lit up during the scans.

“These are areas that have been activated in other experiments associated with drug addiction,” said Strathearn. “It may be that seeing your own baby’s smiling face is like a ‘natural high’”.

Read more about their findings here…  Much can be gleaned from reaction to baby’s smile

What I love is that scientists are just confirming what all mothers around the world already know.  There’s nothing better than your baby’s smile!

Cow Appreciation Day

I just drove through Chick-Fil-A (this is at least a once-a-week occurrence at our house) and in our bag of yummy food there was a cute little coupon.  It says, “Dress like me, git free chikin” and there’s a picture of a cow dressed up in a cow costume.  (Yes.  I said that right.)

Apparently Chic-Fil-A has named July 11th, this year’s “Cow Appreciation Day”.  And if you wear a cow costume to their fine restaurant on that day, you’ll get a free meal.

Now, I’m all about bargains and getting things for free and what-not, but I’m not so sure I’m ready to dress up like a cow for it.  But, for those of you who would, YOU GO, GIRL (or boy)!  :)

I’ll just have to remember to allocate a little extra time to get through the lines on that day since I’m sure they’ll be packed with cows…

What about you?  Will you be one of those cool people that dresses up, or a dork like me that doesn’t?  :P

Story Time at The Rienzi

When I was skimming through all the indoor Houston activites for kiddos on NinaLoca, I ran across some information that just really excited me. There is a mansion in the River Oaks area that has been donated to the Museum of Fine Arts, complete with all of the artwork and collectibles that the Masterson family had acquired over the years. It houses other collections from time to time and you can regularly tour it. But, during the summer time, they offer Rienzi Storytime Tours, every Wednesday in June and July at 10am, for kids ages 4-8, as well as other family activities.

I emailed a friend of mine and we decided to take our kiddos today to check it out. We loved it! They gave us a tour of some of the larger rooms in the home and would stop in each one and have all the kiddos sit down on the floor. The docent then gave a brief piece of information about the room or something specific in the room and then read a children’s book that somehow fit. In the Dining Room, she read “Bear Wants More” about a bear that wakes up from hibernation and wants to eat more and more. In the Drawing Room, the docent read a book about 3 mice who painted (Get it? We were in the Drawing Room?! hee hee ). In the Ball Room, she pointed out some of the Masterson’s collection of Chinese porcelain from the 1700′s and then read a book called “The Empty Pot” about a little boy who was trying to become the new emporer of China.

They have several different docents that rotate each week, and they each have different books that they like to bring and read to the kids. My 5yo absolutely loved getting to hear stories in such a new and exciting place. My 3yo actually paid attention and enjoyed kicking off his flip flops to listen. While my 21mo didn’t exactly listen to the stories, she absolutely loved pointing at all the paintings and statues throughout the house. Obviously the age range of 4-8 is best suited to the tour, but they don’t limit it to that age group.

After the tour was over and all the kiddos hugged our docent, “Ms. Mary”, we went out into the back yard to see the beautiful pool and grounds. We wound up playing hide-n-seek in the shrubs of the side yard until we were too hot and sticky to stay any longer.

All in all, a wonderful experience, and one that Kate is anxious to repeat!

Potty Trained!!!

We finally did it!  The boy is potty trained!!!!!!

(Yes, I meant to put all those exclamation points after that sentence.  That’s how EXCITED I am that he’s finally wearing ‘big boy underwear’.  If you’ve ever potty trained a boy, you understand my elation. )

After months of fighting, pleading, bribing, arguing, and disappointment, I finally found the right combination of things for Ethan to want to potty train.

We had tried bribing him with candy corn (the treat HE picked out at the store for just this purpose) and that wasn’t really working.  We tried putting him in pull-ups and telling him to let us know when he needed to go – yeah, right.  Then, one day, I got so tired of it, I just put ‘big boy underwear’ on him and set the timer.  Every 15-30 minutes the timer would go off and I would say, “Time to go sit on the potty!”  The first few times he fought me on it and didn’t want to do it.  It took a few times, too, before anything happened when we were ON the potty.  When it did, there was HUGE celebration, much clapping and cheering, and candy-giving.  

The few times that he had an ‘accident’, we went immediately in the bathroom and sat on the potty just to see if there was any pee left.  A friend of mine said that sometimes when they have an accident, they stop themselves before they’re completely empty.  This way you have a chance to praise them for going potty in the toilet, even in the midst of an ‘accident’.  (Thanks for that idea, Shannon!)

We also checked out a book from the library called “Time to Pee”.  It’s a great little book about potty training that starts off “If you ever get that funny feeling… don’t PANIC!”  Cracks me up!  I’m not sure if it was the book, the underwear, some cosmic alignment of the planets, or the combination of things, but suddenly it clicked with him!  And now, I don’t even know most of the time when he’s going pee, because he just gets up from where he’s playing, goes into the bathroom, and goes potty!  Yippee!!!  :)

Now, to work on wiping his own bottom.  That’s the part that no one talks about!  :P

How about you?  What were your tricks that helped get your little on to finally potty train?