Monday, March 10, 2014

7 months

Sophia 7 months
My chunky little cherub is 7 months old! Oh my...where has the time gone? I have first hand experience with just how quickly time flies when you're raising kids now that I have a twelve year old and an almost ten year old, but this third time around is moving at warp speed...and I just want it to slow down!
I remember with my boys, I was always anxiously awaiting the next milestone. When they could sit up, I couldn't wait for them to crawl. When they crawled, I couldn't wait for them to walk. When they could walk, I couldn't wait for them to talk. Then one day I opened my eyes and my round little boys were long and tall, and suddenly acting like mini grown-ups. I regretted all the rushing to the next milestone I did, and longed for the days when they'd sleep in between my husband and I, waking us up on a Sunday morning demanding to be cuddled.
I recently had a conversation with my sister, who's in the throws of that stage now - wondering if she'll ever have her bed to herself, but also enjoying the closeness she has with her girls. I told her that it had been years since my boys came crawling into our bed in the middle of the night. Years. Realizing that, in that moment, was so heartbreaking to me. You can't get that time back, but how blessed am I to get to start all over? It's like I've been granted the opportunity to hit the reset button and I'm loving every minute of it!
People are always asking me what it's like to "start over". To have to go back to diapers, sleepless nights, bottle washing, hauling around twenty tons of crap. They seem to expect me to be exasperated at having to give up my freedom again, after only recently getting it back in many ways. But I couldn't be more happy about it. Of course, it helps that my baby is simply the most perfect, happy and delightful baby that ever lived, but even at the rough moments, I couldn't be happier. At seven months old, Sophia is still not crawling yet, and I'm totally okay with that!

Saturday, March 8, 2014

The Best Banana Bread

The Best Banana Bread | The Parsley Thief
I found this recipe a little over a year ago, buried deep within the February 2013 issue of Bon Appetit. It was such a tiny article that if you blinked, you'd miss it. But somehow I managed to spot the "Julia's Banana Bread" title and something about how it was the world's best banana bread. I tore the recipe out, intent on making it as soon as possible.
Since then, I've probably made it a dozen times. My whole family loves this bread cake...I mean, they really love it. When that banana bread smell creeps out of the kitchen and begins permeating the house, I hear, "Mom, you're making that banana bread again?!".
Dry Ingredients
The thing is, the deliciousness of this banana bread isn't the only reason I love making it. It's one of those perfectly easy and practical recipes. The kind, like a family pancake recipe, that you can easily memorize after only a few times making it, and it's ingredient list contains items you most likely always have on hand. Including the bain of my existence - those two lonely and bruised bananas that inevitably end up in the bottom of the fruit bowl every week, and look too beat up for anyone to bother eating. Sometimes they end up sliced and frozen for adding to a smoothie bag. Other times, they end up being baby food. But the best is when they end up in this bread!
Mashed Banana