Sloppy Joes

Today is a double post day! We've been making fantastic dinners all week, and I thought I'd share. Last night was chicken parm on a bun and the night before was beef stroganoff. I'll share those recipes later, but tonight's is sloppy joes. These are no manwiches, they're homemade and delicious! Try it out sometime!

1Tbls oil ( I don't use the oil)
1 Large chopped onion
1 garlic clove minced
1 tsp chili powder
1 lb ground beef
2 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 1/2 cups tomato puree
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tbls Worcestershire sauce ( we omit this because I don't own any)
1/2 cup water
1/2-2 tsp Tabasco sauce ( I also omit this because I don't own any)
dash of cayenne pepper

1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until lightly browned, anout five minutes. Add the garlic and chili powder, cook for 1 minute.

2. Add beef, brown sugar, salt and pepper. reduce heat to medium and cook.

3. Stir in tomato puree, ketchup, water, Worcestershire sauce and cayenne pepper.

4. Reduce heat to low, Simmer until slightly thickened. serve on a bun :)

Now I think this is slightly backwards, so we brown the beef first, drain it then add the onion and continue on with the instructions. Mmmm I can't wait for dinner tonight! everything this week makes great leftovers, that is, if there is any left over!

Sophie's Quilt

I realize that the lighting isn't very good in these pictures, but here it is, my first quilt. Made for my niece, Sophie, for her first birthday.

An EC update

I realize that it has been quite sometime since I've updated my blog, so I'd like you to know that I haven't forgotten about you! Husband, daughter and i were in Ontario for a week for my niece's first birthday party. I did manage to finish her quilt before we left, and was more or less pleased with the outcome. I have pictures, but I'll save that for a later post. Today's post is about our small encouraging successes with Elimination Communication.

The first one I'd like to share with you is actually a BIG success, I was very proud of our little girl. It started the Saturday morning when we were leaving the hotel room in Edmonton to catch our flight. It was around 5 am, and we were up having breakfast, after another dry diaper night. (They're becoming more frequent now)I put Katie back in a diaper in case of a miss, I don't think the hotel staff would appreciate pee on their carpet, then we heard a little grunting. I took off her diaper, which had a small pre-poop pee in it, and sat her on the potty, where she happily did her business. After her poop, on went a clean diaper and we tidied up and headed for the airport. At the airport, Katie went for a pee in a bathroom toilet. On the plane, Katie went for a pee in the airplane toilet. At the restaurant in the Hamilton airport, Katie went for a pee in the bathroom toilet.  I did get a few funny looks, but also had a discussion with the flight attendants about cloth diaper brands and ECing. They like Katie so much that they gave her 8 packs of cookies...I still have some. Once we arrived at my parents house, I tried taking Katie for a pee, but she was distracted and so wouldn't go. She peed in her diaper shortly after. So, In total, Katie stayed in the same dry diaper from our hotel room that morning, all the way to my parents house that afternoon. And people say that EC doesn't work.

Another small success was yesterday when Katie and I went for a walk to the library and returned in a dry diaper, which was removed and she was placed on her potty where she happily went for a long pee.

It seems to me that we have more successes while out and about. Katie seems to hold her pee longer, and is more likely to wait for me to give her an opportunity. While at home or just out playing, she still wants nothing to do with potty-tunities. So I have a bit of a hard time trying to keep her entertained long enough to stay on her potty sometimes.

Nighttime was starting to look up. She was feeding two or three times a night and would normally pee at each feed, leaving her in a dry diaper all night. Lately however, she has been waking more often, not necessarily to feed, and peeing in her bucket less and in her diaper more. This I'm sure is due to her and I being sick, but it's annoying, because now she doesn't like sleeping wet, so if she wets her diaper, she isn't likely to stay asleep for very long, until you change it. Of course there's nights when we get lazy and just feed her and hope she goes back to sleep, but then we get ticked off because she's not sleeping well, which means neither of us are sleeping well. Then we change her diaper, and magically she snuggles herself  down and back to sleep.

So overall things are going well, I'm really hoping that  we are either diaper free or mostly diaper free by December, so that we can start ECing with our baby as soon as he or she is born. I doubt she'll regress back into diapers with a new baby around, since the new baby will hardly be in diapers. oh, by the way, baby number two is due on December 30th! which makes me 9 weeks now :)

Shhh it's a secret!

So i'm pretty sure that none of my aunts, uncles or cousins go on here... anyways, we got some great news on tuesday...

WE'RE EXPECTING!!! But shhh it's a secret until May the 11th, when we have our dating ultrasound, then it will be official news. So keep it off facebook until i make a post about it. We've decided to wait until then because Mother nature hasn't paid me a visit since November of 2009, which means we have no idea how far along we are. It would just be silly to call everyone now and explain our situation when we could just wait two weeks and know for sure. Anyways, that's our big news and if by chance one of my ( or Elijah's) aunts, uncles or cousins does visit my blog. Please don't tell anyone. It's only two weeks, I'm sure you can wait that long to hear the news from our parents. I'm am SO excited about this baby, it seems like everyone else was preggers, except for me...but now I am, and I cheated mother nature HAHAHAHAHA. I am so in love already. I can't wait to meet you my little one.

Mama made quilt

 

 I was feeling a bit sad that I had been making quilts, but hadn't made one for Katie yet. So far I had made Two crib quilts, one for Sophie and one for Ravyn ( is that spelled right?) and I'm making a twin sized quilt for Sophie's birthday. Katie's quilt has been put off until I finish Sophie's. Recently, Katie was moved from her crib to her twin mattress on the floor in our room. It seems to be working out a lot better. We had a stack of old jeans that I had been planning to make a quilt out of, so we went to Walmart and bought a twin flat sheet to back it with ( seen in the bottom picture) and went to work cutting out as many 6 inch squares as we could, and stitching them together. While making the quilt, i went through three needles on my sewing machine. However, it's done and it's I like it. It was simple to make and only took two or three days to finish. the top row is mostly made out of pockets form the jeans, both top corners look the same. The brown patches are from Elijah's front pockets. We ended up being just a few squares short, so our neighbors donated a pair of jeans to us. Here is the finished product spread out on our queen sized bed. It looks big, but when it drapes over the sides of the mattress it's not THAT big...okay, maybe it is. but I love it. And I love that now Katie has her own mama made quilt ♥

Feeling adventurous today

So after having done research on goats milk, we decided to give it a try with Katie, just to find out that it cost 3.40 per liter. Needless to say, we bought a one liter carton of whole cows milk for her to try instead. We gave it to her straight without complaint. While out doing groceries and looking for the goats milk, we went to sobeys, no frills and then finally walmart. after we paid for the milk at walmart, I took Katie to the bathroom to see if she had peed, she was still dry so i took her for a pee in the toilet, and she went! Today marks our first time taking her for a pee while out shopping.

Snack Time

 Little Girl was enjoying eating Ritz crackers for the first time today.

 Jojo and China were on crumb duty, but Katie cleaned up pretty well after herself.

I think she really enjoyed them ♥ Love you little girl. I'm glad you got to enjoy snack time with daddy and I. It sure was nice having him home today.