How We Can Help

I recently posted about my friend Brian, who lost his daughter, Olivia Engel, last week in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. So many people have been touched by this event, because we all know that this very easily could have been anyone's child. We all hurt because of this reality.

But as much as it could have been anyone's child, it wasn't. 

If anyone reading this has been personally touched by Olivia's story and would like to help in some way, here are some ideas:

1. Send your thoughts and prayers to Olivia's family by posting words of support on a Facebook page that some of my friends set up for this purpose. It can be found by clicking here. 

2. Make a Paypal donation that will go directly to Shannon & Brian Engel, Olivia's parents, to help with the burden of funeral costs, as well as a potential memorial for Olivia and all the victims. I can personally vouch for this PayPal account (if that helps at all??) because I know the people who set this account up for the Engels. You can make a donation here.

3. Mail a card, a letter, a prayer, a care package, Christmas presents for Olivia's 3-year-old brother or anything else heartfelt to the Engel family at the following address:

P.O. Box 697
Botsford, CT 06404

If you would like to send a donation this way, please make your check out to The Engel Family.

4. As you may have heard, the children who attend Sandy Hook Elementary will not be returning to that location for quite awhile, if ever. An available elementary school one town over in Monroe, Connecticut is being prepared for these students to return to their classes in January. 

To welcome the students back to school, and to help them know they are in a safe, loving and happy environment, there is a campaign to create a Winter Wonderland with thousands of paper snowflakes. This Snowflake Drive is being coordinated by the PTAs for the Newtown Schools. If you would like to contribute your snowflakes, please mail them to the following address by January 12th, 2013 to:

Connecticut PTSA
60 Connolly Parkway
Building 12, Suite 103
Hamden, CT 06514

5. An independent family photographer who does not know the victims personally but has been touched very deeply by Olivia's passing has created in her memory The Olivia Act to be passed among other photographers. 

Because our memories of our children should be documented through beautiful photographs, this photographer (who wants their name left out of this) will be donating a family photo package to a family who might otherwise not be able to afford such an opportunity. This person is encouraging other photographers to do the same and help Olivia's memory live on!

Please let me know if there are other ways to help that I can add to the list above. Please help these childrens' memories live on.

In Honor of Olivia

Right now we are all trying to understand how it is that this world we live in is home to people who are capable of purposefully taking the lives of innocent children. The Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy that just occurred in Newtown, Connecticut will never be forgotten, because somehow we all have got to find a way to honor the 20 beautiful children and 6 heroic adults whose lives were selfishly cut short in a matter of mere minutes.

Like everyone, and as a mother, I am deeply affected by the thought of my child being taken from me in any way, let alone in such a violent, permanent way. But what I am having the most difficulty with is coming to terms with who this happened to. I was very good high school friends with Olivia Engel's father Brian. Due to life moving so fast it has been years since I have talked to Brian, but my heart has been repeatedly breaking for him and his wife Shannon since I learned of how personally they have been affected by this.

It is a shame that this nightmare is what brings me to get caught up on his family. But what I have learned about Olivia in the past few days has given me insight into what is surely a bright light that has joined the other angels in heaven. An energetic yet polite 6-year-old, Olivia was a heavily involved little girl who loved everything from math to tennis to music. She loved to go boating with her family. She also loved her little brother Brayden, who somehow has to understand that his own personal hero will no longer be there to show him how to do things as he grows up.

I ache for my friend, who somehow has to process seeing his family's face on CNN, seeing his daughter's name on the front page of the New York Times and on an episode of The Voice, and even meeting the President of the United States, all while carrying the weight of this loss on his shoulders. It's all the world can do to honor Olivia's memory and help the family to know that the entire world is grieving and praying for them.

My hope is that Olivia will be remembered for the light she clearly was, and that she will live on in her brother, her parents, in the love that every parent has for their own children, and in humanity, which has to do a better job in protecting each other from such darkness that tried to takeover on Friday, December 14th, 2012. We all have to BE better.

Back to Normal

Well, apparently being back to "normal" - and that means basically being primarily home in Texas for us - means that we are a lot busier! So the downtime for typing up some thoughts, observations, or projects has been few and far between!

We just completed quite a bit of travel for Thanksgiving, and survived Bugga's First Birthday Party! This means I can finally relax and enjoy the rest of this year's holidays...which seems weird but I think will require less planning, at least for this year.

I have several posts ready to go that are overdue for sharing, so keep an eye out if you are out there in internet-land keeping up with us!

Recipe: Baby's Banana Mini Muffins

I had a few bananas that were ripening faster than we could eat them so I started looking into recipes online for baby-friendly banana bread. Instead I found several variations on banana bread muffins and landed on a combination of several, along with some substitutions that a) worked with what I had in my kitchen and b) catered to my baby's health.

The result? A delish banana apple mini muffin that is SUGAR-FREE, EGG-FREE, ORGANIC and IRON-FORTIFIED...so pretty much a great go-to snack. One quick comment on my organic approach: I am trying to feed my child (and in turn, the family as a whole) as many organic foods as possible. Now that we are back in our full-time home (versus our hiatus in Alaska) I am slowly turning over everything I can in my pantry to organic items. Obviously organic is interchangeable with inorganic, and it is a personal choice, as these things are typically more expensive and do not last as long as conventional ingredients. 

I plan on freezing whatever we don't plan on eating in the next couple days, and then pulling out one or two at a time and reheating in the microwave under a paper towel. Enjoy!

Baby's Banana Mini Muffins

Ingredients
2 Cups of Earth's Best Whole Grain Oatmeal (you can substitute any kind of flour or blended oats)

1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t ground organic cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1/4 t nutmeg (ok all I had was allspice and cloves so I went with cloves :-)...need to put that on the grocery list...)
3 very ripe organic bananas
1/4 Cup organic apple puree (just popped a few cubes out of a ziploc in the freezer!)

1/4 Cup unsalted butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a mini muffin tin with cooking spray.
2. Mix most of dry ingredients together in a large bowl: 2 Cups of oatmeal, 1 t baking powder, 1/2 t baking soda (half of what you'll need), 1/2 t of salt, and the 1/4 nutmeg/ allspice/ cloves/ whatever. Set aside.
3. Peel and mash bananas in a medium bowl. Add the apple puree and the other 1/2 t of baking soda.
4. Combine the banana mixture with the dry mixture, adding in the melted butter. Stir thoroughly. This will be pretty lumpy.
5. Add heaping teaspoons into each muffin spot in your tin. Bake in oven for 15 minutes.

One quick comment: Not sure if it is my wonky oven (we have been trying to get to know each other since we bought the house in June and still aren't seeing eye to eye) or the recipe, but the muffins do not really rise and instead sink a little bit. The upside I see to this is they are perfect for a small scoop of vanilla ice cream on top if grown ups are eating these (Bugga is not eating dairy yet).

Because they didn't rise, I was sure I screwed something up (still not positive I didn't??) but they are actually delicious. I hope there are some left by the time Bugga gets up from her nap!

Transition

We spent the last several months temporarily relocated to Anchorage, Alaska from Houston, Texas for my husband's current project at work. If you know anything about geography, that's a huge difference in our way of life. Off the bat is the weather - this week it was 90 degrees in Houston while it was a sweaty 12 degrees in Anchorage. (!!!) Also, as much as Anchorage is considered "urban" by Alaskans, it is far smaller than Houston. Because of the size difference of the two cities, we had different options for baby activities each day and had to get creative sometimes.

Well, we are back in Texas, where everything is just as we left it...particularly all the moving boxes we still hadn't unpacked since we bought our house here in June. So as much as we were always in hot pursuit of baby activities in Anchorage, now they are competing with getting this house organized before the holiday season that now includes one very special holiday: Bugga's Birthday!

What I'm trying to say is that I am a little busy right now (aside from my husband still traveling quite a bit) so my posts have not been as frequent as I like, but I promise we haven't gone too far!

Parenting Support #19

Could no one have been straight with me about how hard parenting is?

You should have asked me. Notice I have ONE child.

Read more support. 

What is this about?

Learning About Food from my Infant

Like anyone else, there are foods I love to eat, and foods I don't care much for. For instance, there are several fruits and vegetables I have either tried and not really liked, or just didn't bother trying since they have zero allure, are rarely available, or are too complicated to prepare.

Cooking healthy food for my daughter has given me an opportunity to learn things I never knew about food. We are still going through the vast list of produce and I have already learned some things.

Squash

There are several different kinds of squash - summer, butternut, winter, acorn, and others. I've never been fond of the standard "squash" side dish you might be offered in a restaurant. Boring, blah, no thanks. Then I baked and pureed a butternut squash for Bugga. She LOVES it. And I tried it - and it's not that bad. It is a great simple sauce for pasta, mixes well with chicken, and has a nice sweet taste. I need to find some recipes to incorporate this into meals for the whole family.

Beets

Beets have always been a mystery to me. They are all the rage on salads in trendy restaurants but I've been too chicken to try them. And now I have a reason: they taste like dirt. But they are pretty, and at least now I have something to back up my distaste for them.





Sweet Potatoes

The first time I had sweet potato was in fry form. And as a lover of all condiments, I tried to eat them with ketchup. Gross. The sweet and savory combination is not my bag. My child, on the other hand, LOVES them - just like squash. They are also as flexible as squash as far as how to use them. And the other night I also revisited the fry concept, but this time just baked them in the oven with olive oil and cinnamon - they were delish!

Pumpkin

I love pumpkin in every shape and form. In my coffee, in bread, in pancakes and of course most importantly...IN PIE!!! But I had never gotten my puree straight from the gourd until now. I am shocked how much pulp is usable from a single sugar pumpkin. I might never buy the stuff from the can ever again. The baby might also be eating pumpkin oatmeal every morning for breakfast for the rest of October as well! And guess what - she loves this too.

Still left to explore: kiwi, eggplant, lentils, parsnips, zucchini...