Photoshoot in Tulsa

While we were in Oklahoma, we along with my sisters, their families, and my mom (Grandma Peggy) got to have a 'lil Sears photoshoot to capture cousins Ellie, Bram, and Daniel this holiday season. I have to say that both babies and the toddler were super serious almost the entire shoot. But it was fun to capture the moment in time to look back on in future years.

 This is one of the only shots where Bram is smiling!

 Julie, Patrick, and baby Ellie

 Sarah, Andy, and baby Daniel

 Mom and her three girls

 The serious cousins

Bram is not too sure about this pose and Ellie can't get enough of the blanket

Bram says, "I've had enough guys."

Oil Cleanse

So, a friend posted on Facebook that she cleans and moisturizes her face with a combination of castor oil and olive oil. Sounds crazy, right? Well, after reading this blog post I'm thoroughly intrigued! After reading, I already used olive oil to moisturize my dry forehead yesterday morning, and my skin is still nice and soft, and it's now Sunday night. I think I may also add a few drops of tea tree oil as well because I already have it on hand. I'll let you know how it goes!

Praise Baby

Before my motherhood adventure began, I was a bit skeptical about baby movies. You see, my husband and I aren't huge TV people. We do enjoy relaxing together in front of a movie or the most recent episode of an exceptional PBS Masterpiece show (Sherlock, Downton Abbey, and Call The Midwife have all been great!). My husband watches big sports matches as they are aired on local TV, as we don't pay for cable. But we also enjoy reading before bed, or just going to bed after the house is picked up (having a baby will do that to you!).

But,

We love Praise Baby DVDs!



(Seriously no one asked me to write this...this is from my heart.)

This past weekend of sickness among our family confirmed my gratitude for these little 30 minute long gems, but here are some additional reasons why I'm thankful for Praise Baby:

• The movies capture the attention of infants and toddlers younger than 2 years old, which not many movies can do.
• There is no plot line, but lots of images and clips of kids and animals and shapes being shown to Christian music. It's surprisingly not annoying to listen to (and, you can turn off the vocals if you so desire, and just have the music).
• He's still into the same episodes, even now being over a year older than when we first introduced him to the movies.
• Bram was colicky, and he would watch these starting at around 4 or 5 months old. It was the only way I could get a shower or make lunch sometimes because he also hardly napped during the day as an infant. And that was well worth it to me, after having taken many showers listening to his screams!
• For some reason, we have been a very mobile family since having our son and have taken many flights. On one trip I flew solo with Bram. Having the PB movies on my iPhone to watch in the airport or on the flight itself was a lifesaver.
•  Most recently, all three of us were sick. And when Mama has a headache, she's pretty useless. Couple that with a clingy, fussy toddler who is also sick. Well, PB movies came to the rescue yet again. It was one of those compromise weekends where we just had to do what we had to do to survive. And so I was so thankful he loves watching Praise Baby. 

 A few other thoughts:

• We don't have Bram watch Praise Baby every day. Many times, he goes weeks without watching it. But sometimes it has felt so necessary, that I am glad we have had these movies around.
•  I'm not saying that TV is great for children. I don't think it would necessarily be wise for me to introduce Bram to tons of shows just to get him to watch more TV. Right now Praise Baby and a few Baby Einstein movies are all he knows of TV. And we use them sparingly and wisely as we see the need arising.
• I'm definitely not saying that every infant and toddler needs Praise Baby. Definitely not! But for me in that first year of motherhood, and still to this day actually, but not as much, Praise Baby dvds have been more helpful than I ever thought they would be. My skeptical pre-mom self would probably have never anticipated that I would one day soon write such glowing (and lengthy) remarks about a baby DVD, but like I said earlier, sometimes - having a baby will do that to you!

Mid-day Meal Mystery: Solved?

We are stuck in ruts over here. Ruts about what to eat for lunch. I'm the go-to person in the house for food. It's not a bad job to have and many times, it's quite fun to cook great tasting and (hopefully) healthy food for my family. But other times, I let meal planning (or lack thereof) stress me out, and it's usually over the issue of LUNCH. Here are the complicating factors (at least in my mind):

• Hubby needs something that will fill him up (no cheese quesadillas I'm afraid)
• Son needs something nutritious (protein, carb, fruit, and green veggie is the goal)
• Mama needs this to be economical (easy on the pocket book)
• Everybody needs variety 
• We have fallen out of love with peanut butter (I want kind from the Oklahoma peanut farm that I used to get...sad day)
•  Mama needs there to be some crossover so that I'm not preparing completely different lunch menus for hubby and son
• Mama needs this to be on the easier side so that I can have adequate time to prep for dinner, and other regular tasks such as bake bread, make tortillas, make applesauce or whatever else kitchen-related I'm considering a priority at the time.
• Wife needs this to be predicable so that I don't just drop the ball and leave my husband scrambling in the morning to make a lunch with no bread, tortillas, cheese, or fruit, and be able to catch his bus to work (not that this has happened...much)

All that to say...the question of lunch has been a challenge to me throughout all last semester (with a hubby working at a university, we still live according to the academic calendar)! However, recently I took some time to try and come up with a workable plan. We will call it: Weekly Rotations. Then, maybe, possibly, if I get this under my belt we can expand this weekly idea and have more variety. But this, this is for starters. Behold:

Week A: Chicken Salad on bread or tortillas
Week B: Bean burritos/Juevos rancheros on tortillas with homemade refried beans
Week C: Barbecue pulled pork sandwhiches/wraps
Week D: Red Beans and Rice
Weeks E-whatever: in progress

Isn't that amazing? I know, I'm a genius. Just kidding. But it's a plan! We will use these courses as a base for our lunches for the week. If Abram and I want to, we can have cheese quesadillas or cheesy bread or macaroni and cheese if we want. Sometimes my husband has special events at work and lunch is provided. And sometimes we have enough leftovers from dinner that we can have it for lunch. So I'm thinking this rotation schedule will get us going for the week and we can depart from it for variety during the week whenever we want. And I'm hoping it will help me know what to buy from the store when I'm planning my weekly grocery trip instead of "winging it" for lunch every day for the three of us.

Variety? Enough for us. Filling? Yes, each main dish has either meat or beans. Economical? As long as we keep some weeks without meat, I think it will be. Easy? Enough: Chicken salad just means I need to de-bone some chicken, hard boil some eggs, and throw it together on Sunday night. Refried beans and pulled pork are made in the slow cooker, and Red Beans and Rice cooks slowly on the stove and needs little maintenance until it's done. Crowd pleasers? I think husband and son will eat all these dishes with no complaint. And me? Well, I don't care what's for lunch, just that everyone has food and stays relatively happy!

So there you have it: our Lunch Eats Resolution for the year. 

Please, please, leave a comment with ideas about what you cook for your family's lunches! As you can see above, I need more ideas, and I'd love to hear how you handle the lunch time crunch.

Back in Maryland

Well, our little family enjoyed the two and a half weeks we spent in Oklahoma with family for Christmas, but I'd have to agree with Pa in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (a series I'm currently reading for the first time) that, "Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." We came back with sniffles and coughs, but we've all slept so deeply on our beds the past three nights.  I've noticed even one-year-olds know when they are home. Bram cheered up as soon as we walked in the door and has had few night wakings since we've been back.

Eight Things Worth Mentioning To Summarize Our Trip

1. My husband and I had three (!!!) dates while we were in Oklahoma. That's equivalent to the number of dates we had in the previous year. During one we saw The Hobbit and loved it. During another we ate at Ted's Escondido Cafe (and now I'm drooling for great tex-mex). And our last date we spent four hours with some dear friends over dinner and dessert. Four hours! Both of us couples had family watching our kids. Thank you, Aunt Sarah, Grammy, Uncle Grant, and Uncle Mark for watching Bram for us during any one of those times!

2. I got the stomach flu on Christmas Eve. Not necessarily the way I intended to practice self control with holiday food, but I recovered quickly.

3. I was able to meet my nephew Daniel in person, and see my niece Ellie for the 3rd time.

4. I spent Christmas with both of my sisters, which hadn't happened in five years! And we went shopping together. It was great fun! They were good sports and watching me try on jeans (which was the shopping goal for the morning)...and they were so complimentary!

5. Bram won everyone's hearts with his cheery greetings ("Hi!" and "Happy!") several times a day.

6. Bram pretty much vetoed vegetables while we were on our trip but somehow we kept him regular. The growing independence of our toddler is evident!

7. To spare me insomnia, my sister-in-law let us put Abram down for bed in her room nearly every single night. And she also got up with him if he cried in the night! There's not much I dread more than the thought of sharing a room with my child at night. Every time he rolls over, coughs, murmurs...I hear it. And I spend all night trying to be 'quiet' as I turn in my own bed or air-mattress. In the morning its as if I spent all night with one ear open and sleeping on eggshells. Thanks for the blessing of your service, Aunt Sarah!

8. My husband and I got some good giggles out of taking my older niece and nephew to see a Christmas light show. It was so cute how they belted out a song about Daniel's dream set to funny vocals and background music while we drove to the show. And nearly every house we passed on the way with Christmas lights turned on just maybe was "Toby Keys house". We did actually drive by country singer Toby Keith's house, and the lights were indeed impressive. And upon return to my sister-in-laws house we found out that a clicking sound we kept hearing while driving in the car was actually part of the unused carseat's strap hanging out of the closed car door. During the drive Justice had suspected the noise was caused by coyotes, but Anna had soon comforted him by surmising that the sound was just rocks hitting the car. I'm glad neither of those things turned out to be true!

There's much, much more I could say, but the dishes in my kitchen and By The Shores of Silver Lake beckon me away from my blog tonight. I hope you all are enjoying the first weekend of 2013!

Contemplating Christmas

 I strangely feel torn this December. On the one hand, I am bombarded on the internet and in every store and in pictures people post on Facebook with the materialism and secularization that seems to define the modern American Christmas. These images combined with the practicality that we are spending half of December in Oklahoma have led me this year not to decorate quite like I have in years past. I am rethinking the Christmas tree and the stockings and the themes in the holiday music, though definitely not forsaking them completely. It is almost like we are taking a "year off" from the traditional decorations. No tree up, no stockings. We do have a wreath on the door, we put lights on the tree in the front yard, and I moved our nativity figurine from our mantel where it stays year round to the center of our table (and even added a few poinsettias for a seasonal touch).

Shortly after we put lights on this tree, Bram added the word "tree" to his vocabulary 

(I'm sure it wasn't a coincidence, because he loves walking over the the tree to touch the lights).

Though, at this point it does sound more like "twee". 

So as one part of me is choosing this year to downplay some of the aspects of the traditional Christmas (for practical reasons, yes, but also for personal examination), another part of me knows that as a Christian I have the best reason to throw a big party. I want to loudly proclaim to everyone around me the joy of the incarnation of Christ! It truly is "good news of great joy" that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not because of the sentimentality bound up in Baby Jesus or because he would grow up to be a great moral teacher, but because he would one day pay for my sins on the cross. And the fact he would die on the cross is no mere footnote in his life but that is the entire theme and purpose of his life on earth. As stated in my favorite hymn, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, "Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!...Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth. Born to give them second birth." And consider the following quote from pastor John Donne, author of The Book of Uncommon Prayers:

"The whole of Christ's life was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day. From the creche to the cross is an inseparable line. Christmas only points forward to Good Friday and Easter. It can have no meaning apart from that, where the Son of God displayed his glory by his death." 

-John Donne, "Christmas Day, 1626" in Sermons of John Donne, as quoted by Joseph "Skip" Ryan in Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus

So all that to say, I am feeling some internal conflict. I am kind of enjoying a tree-less Christmas but at the same time, I do not want this season to pass me by. I want to greatly celebrate my Lord and Savior, the God-man. But I do not want the tree and the stockings to define the way I must celebrate Christmas, though in future years they may very well be part of our family tradition. That being said, I do not yet know what Christmas traditions I want to start for our little family. Next year when Bram is two, I want to be intentional about celebrating the incarnation in a big way in our house. I just don't know the means I want to celebrate with yet. It's kind of a Christmas Paraphernalia Incubation Period for me. I would like to end this post saying, "I am probably over thinking this", but yet, as this is over-and-above-everything-else a spiritual and Christian holiday, I can't say that. I want to take "every thought captive to Christ", and at the same time I realize that celebrating the incarnation of Christ is more about my heart attitude toward God in this season than whether we have a tree or not.

In what way have you chosen to celebrate this season with your family? As a mom, I'm realizing more and more that I have the opportunity to establish the way we do holidays around here. That is a big responsibility! How have you moms directed your family's celebration of Christmas?

You Know You Are Old/A Parent/Sleep Deprived When...

...you and your husband have a look of shock and confusion on your faces as you pull up to the bank drive-thru on Saturday morning only to find out it is closed. I think one of us even audibly scoffed.

Banks are always open on Saturday mornings! What's the deal?

We look down at the clock. It's 8:36am. ON A SATURDAY. Of course the banks don't open until 9am.

...

I think it just felt later to us, because we got up and at 'em around 6am. Made breakfast, ate it, cleaned it up, got dressed, headed out the door, mailed a letter, and made it to the bank precisely 24 minutes before it opened for business.

And yes, our beloved toddler is the very reason we were up at 'em that early. Old. Parents. Sleep Deprived. Went To Bed At 9pm.

That's us right now. :)