Recipes

When Eric and I were first married, he was the cook in our house. If you have ever enjoyed Eric's cooking you know that he has a knack for making really yummy food. It wasn't until after Josh was born and Emma's dinner time became a 5:00 event instead of the normal 7:30 Eric and I had always been used to, that I started taking over the cooking.

At first I started with the usual easy meals to make like tacos, spaghetti, and chicken. Slowly I have built up a selection of recipes I have gotten pretty good at making. Recently though, I have become tired of the usuals and started searching high and low for new tasty meals. I stumbled upon the website, allrecipes.com a few weeks ago looking for good pulled pork recipe and now get daily e-mails with new recipes to try. So far, I have tried a number of them and they are pretty decent.

On Monday, I tried the teriyaki chicken recipe and even though it smelt really good, it wasn't. Of course Emma told me it was bad but she doesn't count because of her aversion to anything with chicken but I truly knew it was no good when Josh (the human garbage disposal) wouldn't eat it either. After trying desperately to coax both into eating it, I tried a bite and it was so bland. Honestly, there was no flavor! With a ton of doctoring I was able to salvage it over the next few days for my lunch (I am so cheap that I won't throw away blah food and force myself to eat it).

Tomorrow is the pulled pork and I am hoping for a win because my cooking ego can't take two bad meals in a row. Especially when Eric made his famous enchiladas last night and even Emma ate two!

Hardest Job

I can't tell you how many time in the past few weeks I have been told that being a stay at home mom is the hardest job. Obviously these people haven't tried being a part time stay at home mom and a working mom.

I am not by any means saying that being a stay at home mom is easy but at least there is some flexibility to it. When I am home during my breaks, we mill around the house in our PJ's and get ready as the day goes, there is no reason to rush unless we have plans. On the days I work, I have to get myself ready and out the door by 7-7:30 plus trying to spend a few minutes with the kids and help Eric get them ready for the day. On days that I am off, I have plenty of time to clean, play with the kids, workout, and get dinner started. When I work, I get home and have 2 and a half hours to accomplish playing with the kids, making dinner, feeding the kids, bath time, and putting Josh down. Half an hour later when Emma goes to bed, I clean and workout. There is truly no flexibility to my working days.

So please stop telling me stay at home moms have the hardest job, because I think that my line of work it just as hard if not harder (but that is my opinion and I am not going to start spouting it off to every mother I meet!).

On hold

Emma and I had a great time in North Carolina and I want to blog before I forget all that we did. Unfortunately the pictures of our trip are still there and won't come home until my parents do on Monday. Guess that's what I get for not taking any photos myself and leaving it up to Uncle Kevin to do for me.

Clever

Sunday night we celebrated Emma's fourth birthday with our families and the kids godparents. Since we had the party on Sunday night Emma understood it to mean that it was her birthday. We tried getting her to understand that it was just the day of the party and that Wednesday (today) was her actual birthday. We gave up trying to explain, determining she is too little for the concept of an actual birth day yet and that it didn't really matter anyway.

Last night while having dinner Emma asked how many pieces of ham she had to eat from her bowl of soup. I responded by asking her how old she was. Emma quickly replied 4 and my response back was, then you have to eat 4 pieces of ham. As my clever daughter looked down at her soup bowl, the wheels began turning ( I swear I could see her thinking at that moment) and she looked up at me smiling. She replied (and I quote) but you and daddy said that my birthday is tomorrow and I am still 3 so I only have to eat 3 bites.

Holy cow, the girl played me! How could I argue with that, it was the truth. Emma Grace 1, Mom 0.

Icky Picky

If you ever read the Ramona books as a child you might remember that Icky Picky was the name of the Quimby's cat. The name Icky Picky came from the fact that the cat did not like anyone or anything. Here at the Hildwine house we have our own Icky Picky, otherwise known as Emma Grace.

Emma is not entirely like Icky Picky the cat because she really does like most things. The thing Emma is most icky picky about is food. As a baby Emma was a good eater but as the terrible twos loomed she became a very picky eater. I was told that it was normal for toddlers to be picky and to let her eat what she wanted, so I did just that. For two plus years, I have catered to Emma's picky eating in hopes of her growing out of it (which I was told they do). Not anymore, I am offically putting my foot down! Tomorrow Emma turns four, she is in preschool, and I am tired of accommodating icky picky.

For the past several weeks Emma has been served what the rest of the family eats for dinner. If she doesn't like it, she goes to bed hungry. Sounds rough I know but I have learned some amazing things from this. First, if Emma doesn't like the way something looks she convinces herself it tastes yucky. Second, she eats a terrific breakfast the next morning when she doesn't eat dinner (something we always had a hard time getting her to do). Third, Emma will eat when left at the table by herself and the rest of us are playing or taking a bath. Fourth, Emma thinks she hates every kind of meat except turkey so if you tell her that she is eating turkey, down it goes. Fifth and most important, Emma does not hate the taste of the foods she refuses to eat, she is just stubborn.

This girl is obviously my daughter and likes having a battle of wills, too bad she didn't realize who she was going head to head with. Good luck Emma, your days of picky eating are numbered!

Hooray for October

It's October! I love the month of October! During this month we celebrate Emma's birthday and Halloween. We get October Break at school (even if its just a small one for my school) and the weather finally starts to become beautiful around here again. October means my birthday and the holidays are just around the corner. It also means that sweater weather is around the corner too! I am also excited for this October because in one week Emma and I leave for North Carolina to visit Dani and Kevin. We are so excited for our vacation and all the fun things Aunt Dani has planned for us. October is a fantastic month and just what I needed to snap me out of my funk.

Moody Me

Do you ever have those days where everything makes you angry? That has definitely been my day today. I hate these days, when I just can't snap out of my pissy mood. People make me mad, TV makes me mad, my hair makes me mad, messes make me mad, you name it and it would probably tick me off today. These are the days I wish I had a punching bag but I guess a large Golden Spoon with fudge will have to do.