This year, Mother’s Day has taken on a whole new meaning for me.  When I became a mom on Halloween, I never thought I could love someone as much as deeply as I loved my child.  I would lay my life down for this kid, who honestly, isn’t capable of doing much more than sleeping, pooping and crying right now, yet, I would go to the ends of the earth for her.  And that’s when I was humbled by the realization that that’s how exactly how my mom feels about me.  I’m so blessed to have a mom who truly lives and breathes for my happiness.

To my mom:  Thank you for showing me what it means to be the ultimate mother.  I have never felt more gratitude towards you than I have this past year.  Since becoming a mom myself,  I have a new deeper appreciation and understanding of the love and sacrifices you made for me and my siblings.  My hope is that I can be as good of a mother to Zoey as you are to me. I love you!

To my daughter: Thank you for making my dreams come true and making me a mom this year.   You are the daughter that I’ve  been praying for and I still can’t believe I get the privilege of being your mom.  You make my heart soar with joy and pride. I love you!

And a special salute to all the new mommies celebrating their first Mother’s Day!

___

ps. Thank you for all the kind comments this past week!  You bolstered my spirits and reminded me that there are so many kind people out there. I have the best readers. Thank you!

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On negative comments:  One comment left on my last blog entry about sleep training really stung.  Believe it or not, mean comments hurt my feelings.  They get me down and they make me want to stop blogging.  I find as a new mom that I face  a surprising amount of judgement on the choices that I make for me and my family. (Sadly, fellow moms seem to be the harshest critics, too.)  People seem to have an opinion on everything: working vs. being a stay at home mom, epidural vs. no epidural, breastfeeding vs. formula, homemade vs. store-bought baby food, private vs. public schooling, discipline vs. permissive parenting styles… the judgement never ends!   Parenting is hard enough as it is without people looking down on you, especially anonymous commenters who don’t know you at all.  Thank you to readers who left supportive comments and messages, I really appreciated that.  I’ve always felt that the people who follow my blog are the nicest audience and I mentioned before that it’s one of the main reasons why I continue to write.  Let’s continue to lift each other up and encourage each other because we parents are doing our best to raise our kids in a world that is harsh enough as it is.   Hurtful comments are not welcomed here!

And now onto a less controversial topic… Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies!!! Hopefully this recipe will spark far less debate.  Everyone’s gotta love cookies, right?  Especially when the perfect duo of PB and chocolate are combined into one chewy, highly addictive cookie!

These cookies are great if you like chewy cookies. Peanut butter already makes the dough chewy but the addition of corn syrup makes it even chewier.  (You can also substitute honey for the corn syrup if you don’t have corn syrup.)

Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (original recipe from here)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup (or honey)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups chopped semisweet chocolate or chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the corn syrup, water, and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture. Fold in chocolate chunks. Drop by 1/4 cupfuls 3 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets.
3. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Allow cookies to cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet before removing to wire racks to cool completely.

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Since a few readers asked last week how we managed to sleep train Zoey, I thought I’d write about our experience in hopes that it may encourage other sleep-deprived parents out there.  I am in no way an expert in this area, but I can share how Jeff and I managed it and what we found helpful.

We decided to sleep train Zoey at the 5.5 month old mark.  At that point, she was waking up 10-20 times a night (no joke) and had to be swaddled with her right hand in her mouth in order to fall asleep. She had always slept in her bassinet near my bed and would not sleep in her crib, even for naps.  I would wake up wrecked each day, every morning more tired than the night before.  I was so sleep deprived, I was having trouble formulating complete sentences (which explains my lack of blogging the past few months). I was desperate to sleep train her earlier but we were traveling in March and we had a slew of overnight guests in April whom I didn’t want to subject to her crying, so the night that our last house guest left was the night that we started sleep training.  I’ve already decided that my next child will be sleep trained at the 3 month mark.

The goal for us was to teach Zoey how to soothe herself to sleep in her own crib without any assistance from us. The month before we started sleep training, I read up on a bunch of different books on the subject –  On Becoming Baby Wise, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby, The No Cry Sleep Solution and Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. (I was able to check the books out from the local library or borrow them from friends so I didn’t have to purchase any of them)  I know parents have strong opinions on what method is best (sleep training and breastfeeding seem to be the two topics that spark the most judgement from people!) but every parent has to decide what they feel more comfortable with and what is best for their child.  We ultimately went with the Ferber method (aka “Cry It Out” or progressive waiting method) because a lot of our friends swore by it and we thought it’d be most effective.  I know it gets a bad rap but its not as cruel as it sounds. You do not let your child crying alone endlessly all night but rather you calm her at timed intervals and gradually increase the intervals until she learns to soothe herself. Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems details this method step-by-step (you can also read a summary here) so I won’t go into detail how to do it here.  If you choose to Ferberize your child, I would definitely recommend reading Richard Ferber’s entire book first because its helpful to know all about the body’s basic sleep patterns.  The first night of sleep training was the roughest, but we were prepared for that. We kept a sleep log and she woke up crying 17 times that first night with the longest crying period being 45 minutes.  Each subsequent night, as she learned that we weren’t going to come in and pick her up, she slowly learned to self-soothe and put herself to sleep.  The next night, despite a late night fire alarm that almost foiled everything, Zoey woke up 12 times.  The 3rd night, Zoey work up only 5 times.  By the fourth night, she “got it” and she slept through the whole night!  It was a miracle!!!  I cannot tell you how freeing it was to be able to put her down in her crib in her room and not have to get her until the next morning. It truly is life changing!!!

• Before we started sleep training, we actually took some gradual steps to get Zoey ready for the ordeal.  We first had to get her comfortable sleeping in her own crib so a couple weeks beforehand, we had her start sleeping in her crib in her room while I slept next to her on a futon.  Then, we had to get her used to sleeping unswaddled, so we started unswaddling her left arm and kept her right arm swaddled tightly with her right hand in her mouth.  After she adjusted to that, I needed to eliminate her night feedings (at that point she was getting up around 4am every morning to feed) so whenever she woke up for her usual night feeding, I did whatever I could to soothe her back to sleep in hopes of stretching out her feeding period to 12 hours.  The next step was to introduce a “lovey” in her crib so that she would have something comforting to calm her when she is alone at night.  I started placing the lovey in her hands whenever she napped and when she was in her carseat so that she would get used to it. Lastly, since the Ferber method does not allow you to pick up your baby to soothe her, I started just patting her whenever she cried at night instead of picking her up unless she was hysterical and inconsolable (which then I would pick her up as the last resort).   After we did all these steps, we  felt that she was finally ready to be sleep trained. I don’t think we could have done it “cold turkey”, but because we sort of gradually started the process, we felt comfortable the first night knowing that we prepared Zoey the best that we could.

•  I know a lot of parents feel guilt while they are sleep training their children; it never feels good to hear your child crying out for you. I had to keep reminding myself that I was teaching Zoey to learn good sleeping habits early and sleeping well at night will make her a happier and healthier baby during the day.  Also, she would benefit much more by having happy, well-rested mother than one that was sleep-deprived, frustrated, resentful and grumpy with disheveled hair.  In retrospect, it only took us three nights for her to learn, and yes, those three nights were long and difficult but totally worth what I gained out of it: my sanity back.

• It was really helpful for me that Jeff was on board with everything because you really need the support of your partner the first few nights.  It’s heart wrenching to hear your child cry for long periods of times, so I was really glad that Jeff was there for encouragement. He kept me from  abandoning the whole thing, running back into her bedroom, swooping her in my arms and yelling “I’m so sorry!! Mommy will never let go of you again!”

• Now that Zoey is sleeping about 10 hrs a night, it doesn’t mean that I also sleep straight through the night now. I wish!! I still wake up every few hours to check on her and to pump milk.  I also wake up at the slightest sound of her stirring through our baby monitor so even though the baby is sleeping soundly, I still haven’t gotten a whole night where I’ve slept through peacefully!!  She also now wakes up at 5am every morning (sometimes as early as 4:30am) so days are still really tiring! But I’m not complaining, I’ll take it!

•  And even though she is sleeping through the night, her naps are a whole different story. Naptimes are still a struggle and I have no idea what to do. The girl will not sleep for more than 15 minutes chunks and that is usually preceded by a half hour of crying.   Sigh. You win some, you lose some.  We are also traveling again this week to LA so I’m sure any gains that we have made this past month will all be undone and we will have to sleep train her all over again.   And I’m sure as luck will have it, the moment I publish this post, Zoey will wake up and cry the rest of the night. If there is one thing I learned from parenting is that the moment you *think* you got something figured out, you don’t. Its quite humbling.

• As I was reading through the ”Sleepy Child” section of Dr. Ferber’s book, I realized that Jeff actually suffers from so many of the sleep disorders that were described!!!  If you know my husband at all, you know what I am talking about.  His sleep talking, night terrors, extremely loud snoring, obstructive sleep apea and narcolepsy make him the WORST bedmate. The guy has also started “sleep yelling” recently in the middle of the night.  He has terrible sleeping habits!  Now my next mission is to SLEEP TRAIN JEFF!! HA!!

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We’ve made it to half a year!! Our sweet baby girl is now 6 months old!

Our  little pumpkin continues to grow and flourish, much to our amazement.  I guess we are doing something right!  We just had our 6 month well baby checkup and Zoey now measures 25.5 inches long and 15.5 lbs.  She is 50% percentile in height, weight and head size.  Overall, we are extremely lucky that she’s a really happy and healthy baby.  She continues to bring Jeff and I so much joy. I can’t believe she’s only been in our lives for half a year because I can’t imagine life without her now.

Our biggest accomplishment this past month is that Zoey is now sleep trained!  Hallelujah!!!  She goes down to bed around 7pm and wakes up at 5am-ish in the morning now.  And she sleeps in her own crib. In her own room.  Unswaddled. Miracle.  Gone are the nights where I’ve had to sleep an arms length from her and wake up 15 times (not joking) to soothe/swaddle/feed/rock her back to sleep.  Sleep training was no small feat.  I’m doing the happy dance because I still can’t believe we did it!  Having her sleep through the night has been life-changing.  I can now get more than a 2 hr chunk of sleep and I’m starting to feel back to my normal self again.  Why didn’t we sleep train her sooner?!

Other milestones this past month:

• Started eating solid foods. Loves: bananas, pears, sweet potato. Hates: rice cereal, avocado
• Can sit up by herself
• Loves sucking on her toes
• Returns smiles
• Laughs and laughs, especially at Daddy
• Drinks water out of a sippy cup, sometimes even out of a regular cup
• Stands and can take a few steps if someone is hold ing her hands
• Now wearing size 6 – 9 month clothes
• Loves being around other kids
• Enjoys storytime at the library
• Endured 15 minutes by herself at the church nursery
• Loves the exersaucer and jumperoo
• Sleeps on her left side with her lovey

Happy 6 months birthday, my little Zosie bear!!! I love you more and more now than ever!!

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Boston – baby Zoey and I are cheering you on this week!

Sending my former city lots of love, prayer and hugs.  You’re in our hearts. Go Beantown!

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Hello, friends!! Zoey would like to wish you all a very Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Oh, and she turns 5 months old today!

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My friend Lynn introduced me to the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.  She makes these all the time for our small group and they are heavenly.  I asked her for the recipe and she said its an America’s Test Kitchen recipe! It’s their perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.  The secret behind these? BROWN BUTTER.  Brown butter makes everything taste so good!  It adds so much more flavor to the cookie and makes it even chewier.  I can’t tell you enough how much I love brown butter, it seriously makes a huge difference in the taste.  It changes everything!  It adds a deeper, nuttier taste to the cookie.  I blogged how even normal Rice Krispie treats taste even better after browning the butter first!  After having these cookies, you won’t ever go back to a normal chocolate chip cookie. I promise.

I got the recipe from this blog.  You know what’s cool about these chocolate chip cookies? You don’t need a kitchen aid mixer! So this recipe is perfect for those of you who don’t own a mixer, all you need is a regular ‘ol whisk.  Instead of  creaming the butter and sugars together in a stand mixer so you get a light, fluffy dough like you would with regular cookies, you mix the melted brown butter and sugars together with a whisk so you get this thick, gooey paste:

Then mix in the dry ingredients and chocolate chips, so you get this aromatic, delicious dough that is hard to resist eating by the spoonful:

Then you drop 3 tablespoons of dough onto your cookie sheet so you get really large cookies!  The large cookie size makes for a higher crispy edge to chewy center ratio:

You also bake the cookies at a slightly higher temperature at 375 degrees instead of the normal 350 degrees. The end result? Perfection.

Baby is napping, I’m off to bake another batch! Actually, make that a double batch. And a batch of brown butter rice krispies, too!!  YUM!!!

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Days around around here are pretty simple for Zoey and me. It usually goes like this for her:  sleep, eat, change diaper, play, repeat.   We do this every two hours.   While its nice when your day is basically boiled down to this simple routine, its not always described as “easy”.  Imagine lots of crying, an occasional diaper blowout, more crying, unplanned baths and maybe a milk throw up on the carpet peppered in that cycle every once in awhile.   That’s one of the reasons why I made this huge sign:

It’s a nice reminder that everyday is a beautiful day!  Things don’t seem so bad when I sing this phrase over and over in my head.  Plus, Jeff and I love U2.  This song was one of the songs we played during the recessional at our wedding, we just love it!   So I decided to paint these lyrics on a HUGE canvas as a nod to our wedding and a reminder to carpe diem!

I actually decided to upcycle a canvas that I had painted earlier. I had originally painted a huge version of the tandem bike that was on our wedding invitation on a big 4 feet by 2 feet canvas.  I spent a few nights drawing and painting the tandem bike, hung it up on our wall and liked it for oh about 2 minutes.  Then I decided that I hated it and took it down.  Half a year later, I decided to try to paint over it for this new project.  Five coats of white paint later and you could still see the tandem bike peeking through the paint:

Boo.  Plan B was to cover it with fabric.  I found gray broadcloth at Joanns Fabric and went to work.  Broadcloth is thick like canvas and pretty cheap, I believe it was about $7/yard.  I didn’t trust myself to freehand the letters, so I used the freezer paper stencil technique. See my tutorial here.  I first picked out fonts and designed it in Adobe Illustrator, then I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the letters on freezer paper. You don’t need to have a Silhouette machine to do this. You can also just print out the letters on regular paper and trace over it with freezer paper and use scissors to cut out your stencil.  I laid out the letters as straight as I could on the broadcloth:

It’s hard to tell how big this canvas is in the pictures, but its huge! 4 feet long by 2 feet wide is really cumbersome to work with.  I had to push all my furniture aside and lay everything out on the floor.

Iron on the freezer paper:

Paint over the stencil and peel off the freezer paper:

Voila!  The result looks like this:

Then I wrapped the broadcloth around the canvas frame as tightly as I could and stapled it into the wood frame with a regular stapler:

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Jeff and I have been obsessed with pesto pasta lately.  Ever since I made it for Jeff this past fall, its become his new favorite meal. We like pesto sauce with fresh pasta, chicken, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, pine nuts and parmesan cheese.  We make it once a week in our household.  Back when we had our own garden in Cambridge, MA, I used to grow tons and tons of fresh basil in our backyard.  I would start in the spring after the last frost by planting seeds in pots on our balcony and then transplant the seedlings to the ground when they got bigger.  We would grow so much basil it would take over the backyard and we didn’t know what to do with it all.

Homemade pesto was the perfect way to use  up all the extra basil.  Nowadays, since we live in a high-rise in the middle of a big city, I don’t have the luxury of having our own garden so making pesto is a little more pricey than it used to be.  But fresh pesto is sooo much better than the store bought kind and ends up being about the same cost per cup so its totally worth it!  It’s easy to make the pesto in big batches and then freeze what you don’t use in 1 cup quantities in the freezer so that you can use them later.

Ingredients (I usually will double or triple this recipe and make a huge batch at once)

• 3 cups packed fresh basil leaves
• 4-8  cloves garlic
• 3 /4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

I like our pesto spicy so I use a lot of garlic for an extra kick. Use less if you like it more mild. Also make sure you toast the pine nuts before adding them in, it makes a BIG difference in the taste.  I know some people add lemon or parsley to their recipes, too, so those are options as well. All you have to do is combine all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until its smooth:

Perfect pesto for your pasta and sandwiches!

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I am obsessed with brussel sprouts.  I love them!  My husband, however, does not and he will not eat them unless I cook them like this:  in “chip” form. Sort of like how he won’t eat my other favorite veggie, kale, unless I make them taste like potato chips.

This is my favorite way to make brussel sprouts.  Cut  off the stems and tear apart the individual leaves:

Spread on a cookie sheet and spray with olive oil.  Then sprinkle with lemon juice, salt and pepper:

Bake at 400 degrees in the oven for 8-10 minutes or until the edges start to brown like this:

Take out and serve! They should be light and crispy.  These make a great snack!  So easy and quick!

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