fun recipes

In the neverending quest to find new things that Sophia will either eat or be entertained by (sometimes the two aren't so far apart!), I came across two great recipes in the last few days that were moderate successes - so here they are!

Play-Doh

2 c. flour
1 c. salt
4 tsp. cream of tartar
2 c. water
2 Tbsp. oil
food coloring

Mix dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and whisk until well blended. In a heavy skillet or saucepan, cook on med. low for 2-3 minutes until thick. Knead until smooth.

Mine needed exactly 13 minutes of cooking to get to play-doh consistency, so I'm not sure how 2-3 minutes is possible, but that's what the original calls for. I'm actually not sure where I got this recipe - I remember finding it online when I taught at Magnolia, and it was a big hit with the kiddos. I had forgotten about it until I made an awful play-doh recipe my pediatrician gave me the other day (half a cup of oil! you can imagine the mess...), and thankfully I still had a copy of the recipe for the good stuff. Of course, Sophia was totally sketched out by the feel of it, but I bet your little bitties (and you! you know you love the stuff. :) ) will have a grand ole time with it. She has been completely enamored with the plastic spoons and straws we dug out to use with the play-doh, so that's been a nice plus for this afternoon! :D

Loafer's Loaf

(from Feed Me, I'm Yours, a cookbook from the 70's lovingly passed along from Julia)

1 lb. ground beef
1 1/4 cup oatmeal, uncooked
1/2 tsp. celery salt
1 cup milk
2/3 cup chopped tomatoes
1/4 cup minced onion
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup grated American cheese

Combine all ingredients. Pack into a greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hr. 10 min.

I actually followed a suggestion the cookbook had on a different page - make mini-loaves in a muffin tin! I have no idea how long I baked them (20-30 min? It was a bit bonkers that particular night, and I was just peeking and checking til they looked done.) I also didn't have celery salt (who does?), so I just used regular old salt. Bonus? Josh loved these!! He spread ketchup on them and asked that they be added to our dinner rotation. :) Sophia liked the few bites she took (yes, only a few bites....the meds aren't doing jack at this point), but today she's rejected them outright. Ahh, toddlerhood.

I've been to Richmond and back since the last post, and I'll see if I can get some pictures up of Jonathan and Joel's graduation. (Mine came out sadly blurry.) I also had a fabulous, short, and slightly chaotic visit with Julia - needless to say, neither of us had any free hands for picture-taking! Other than that, our summer routine has been just that - fairly routine! We're in the midst of transitioning from two naps to one....whew! That's another post entirely - I'll probably wait til I can put a good positive "hindsight is 20/20" kind of slant on that. ;)

lifestyle changes

Well, after many months (almost 6!) of trying to figure out why our otherwise healthy toddler generally isn't interested in eating or gaining any kind of weight, we finally have some answers. Hallelujah! May 23rd was Sophia's gastric emptying scan, which we had been dreading/praying about for some months, mainly because it involved her drinking a couple ounces out of a sippy cup in 10 minutes (which she usually was not interested in) and lying totally still for an hour, unsedated (umm...is that even possible for anyone under the age of 12?).

But sure enough, she gulped the 3 oz. of milk mixed with something radioactive, so it must have been as tasteless as they promised. (It definitely helped that she hadn't had anything to eat or drink yet since she had gotten up a few hours earlier.) She was pretty upset at the nurse who taped her torso down to the scanning table, but after a few minutes, she was chill as could be. Know why? They dimmed the lights, rolled up a little TV cart, and popped in some Blue's Clues. Sophia was MESMERIZED. She's not really a TV watcher yet, and this must have been the coolest thing she'd ever seen. It was nice too - the scanning was being done from underneath her, so we could sit on either side of her, reach over top of her - whatever needed to be done. It was more painless than getting her weighed or measured at the pediatrician!! I mean, the child did not move a muscle for the straight hour. I think she might have twitched a finger in the last ten minutes, but that was it. The nurses were flabbergasted - they'd definitely never seen any kid her age be that still for the whole time. Miraculous!!

And...they called us a few days later (also miraculous) to let us know that she's got moderate reflux and delayed gastric emptying (which means food hangs out in her stomach too long making her not hungry). Some morning Prevacid for the reflux and 3x daily low dose erythromyacin to make her stomach empty out, and we might see some results in the nearish future! She ate like a horse the first night we started the meds, and I got all excited about it, but she hasn't done that since, so I think that was just a fluke. (Darn!) She doesn't love getting the meds squirted in her mouth, but we manage to get them down without too much drama. I'll keep you posted if she suddenly chunks up! :)

The other lifestyle change? Daily SPF 30 now goes on Josh's head. Yep, a visit to our dermatologist this morning confirmed that the two spots on his head that seemed like they were always in process of healing were actually precancerous! Whoa. Fortunately, Dr. Webster froze them off right then and there. So if you have any spots/moles/anything that make you nervous at all, don't hesitate to get them checked out! (PSA over now. :D )