A True Eating Hybrid

Emberlie has now been enjoying the world of solid food for about three months.  It has been a real highlight to get to introduce her to new flavors and textures and to watch her responses to to these experiences.  

Her first solid was the traditional rice cereal and milk and involved a lot of funny faces (Thanks Meemaw for providing the video - despite the laughing!).  From that point, Jon and I have been making Emberlie's baby food and we've tried many exciting new flavors, many from the book "The Baby and Toddler Cookbook: Fresh, Homemade Foods for a Healthy Start" by Karen Ansel (Thanks Uncle Brandon and Auntie Amanda!).  I recommend this book as it does a really nice job providing a timeline for introducing foods, as well as provides ways to take a simple recipe and add different ingredients (or spices) to change it up.  

Making baby food requires a lot steaming, roasting, blending (via the Magic Bullet) and freezing during a weekend.  An hour or two of work will make food for a few weeks.  I use silicon ice cube trays to freeze the food, which provides easy serving of about 2 tablespoons.  In a recent food making session, I learned how to make veggie broth (carrots, leeks, yams and potatoes), pureed the veggies for one meal and use the broth to make another meal of brown rice and lentils for some protein.  And the while the extra yams and potatoes were being roasted for adult dinner, asparagus was steamed and pureed for a final green vegetable!

All in all, the delicious food is good for Emberlie and saves money and packaging.  The only challenge I've had so far is pureed meat.  Emberlie didn't really seem to like pureed chicken or turkey.  Mixing it with applesauce or a veggie seems to help.  She seems to really like to eat so she must be a Malcos/Heyer hybrid!

End of Summer Fun - Part 2

I'm finally wrapping up our recap of the "End of Summer Fun" for this August.  After our visit with Auntie Cort and Uncle Scott in Hillsborough, we headed to Wilimington to spend the rest of the week with Meemaw and Grandpa Heyer, Uncle Brandon and Aunt Amanda.  Emberlie had lots of good laughs with everyone, especially Meemaw and her bunny.

Everyday, we did some work at the house in the morning.  Jon and Dad tiled the kitchen floor and Mom and I worked in the craft room organizing.  Then spent the afternoon enjoying the sun and the ocean.  Emberlie was unsure about the ocean at first, but then decided it was fun to hang out in the surf with the family.

Meemaw got a great big beach umbrella to lounge under that helped keep us all cool and made a place for us to sneak a nap.

While visiting, one of the highlights was our "all-you-can-eat" trip for some delicious sushi!  We spend a nice evening chowing down on a variety of sushi rolls and appetizers.  Two of the favorites were the "Catepillar" (as shown by Jon) and the" Rainbow".  It was quite entertaining the see the receipt after all the damage the Heyer/Malcos clan inflicted at that meal (note - Amanda's expression in the background).

Emberlie also got to try her first rice cereal!  Now she's a great eater and its all because we got her started on vacation.  I'm not quite sure she knew what to do with her tongue in the very beginning.

Thanks for our first family trip to the beach.  We are excited to have many more down vacations down in North Carolina at our new "summer home"!

End of Summer Fun - Part 1

During the month of August, we got to take our first trip down "south" to North Carolina.  For the first part of the trip we visited Auntie Cort and Uncle Scott in Hillsborough.  Cortney and I did some great outlet shopping (super sale at the Columbia Outlet and I found silicon ice cube trays for baby food) on the first day.  Then we all took a trip to visit Duke (where Scott works) and UNC - Chapel Hill (where Cortney works).  At Duke, we walked through the beautiful Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

There were quite a few nice attractions, including a huge koi pond and Asiatic arboretum.  It looked small on a map, but it was a great walk and we spent at least an hour exploring. 

We also got to walk through Scott's lab, the student center and the Duke Chapel.  I even got an "I Visited Duke" sticker finagled from a tour guide!

We had a delicious lunch at the Mediterranean Deli on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill.  It was a smorgasbord of lamb, olives, hummus and other goodies.  Jon had a fatayer, a Middle Eastern version of a calzone.  Yum!

 At UNC, Jon and Scott had some fun on the Tar Heel's field.  Yes, it was just open for fans to walk in and enjoy.  Very different compared to Happy Valley's Beaver Stadium.  Unfortunately, we were locked out of Cortney's lab, so we will have to save that tour for our next trip. 

Thanks for the fun weekend, Auntie Cort and Uncle Scott.  Can't wait to come back for another visit sometime soon!

   

A Niagara Experience

Last month Emberlie visited her first Wonder of the World - Niagara Falls, NY.  We took a trip with Jon's whole family to the American side of the Falls and even rode the Maid of the Mist (Emberlie hung out with Mimi and Uncle Matt at the top).  Addi and I ventured up the stairs to get closer to the Falls after the boat ride.  

Then we walked around Goat Island to get a better view of the Falls.  It had been 9 years since my last trip to Niagara Falls, so it was fun to get to see the sights again.

On the next day Emberlie got to meet her friend Liam, Aimee (my college roommates) baby boy.  He's about six weeks younger than Emberlie, but close in size!

We also had the best chicken wing...EVER...at the Village Inn on Grand Island.  Unfortunately, I ate them before getting a picture!  And visited Vidler's Five and Dime in East Aurora, a huge drugstore from the 1930's.  I found a cool direction manual on Celtic Tatting by Rozella Linden, another project for me.  

 Fun with Auntie Terry and the cousins!

  

Lean on Me

Our basement project is almost done!  One of the the features is a picture ledge on the staircase landing on the way down.  The idea was inspired by some picture ledges we saw on a trip to Ikea:

Here's our version of the picture ledges made from Lowe's oak lumber, some nails (from my husband's nail gun) and white paint.  They are hung by using double end screws - one end drilled into the drywall/studs and the other gently "persuaded" into drilled holes on the ledges (holes were slightly smaller than the screw).  This did involve a rubberized sledgehammer, but eliminated the need for brackets.

I found a great selection of inexpensive frames form Ollie's (Good Stuff Cheap!) and the Reedsville Flea Market.  There's also some artwork from my brother and Arts Fest this year.  Now I just need to get more photos printed to finish up the project!  It's a really nice touch to the basement, right behind the beautiful glass door that Jon installed from scratch.

I'm A Lean, Mean Running Machine

Happy 4th of July.  We celebrated Emberlie's first 4th with lots of fun activities.  We started the day by participating in the annual Firecracker 4K.  Jon and I ran this in 2006 (where he totally beat an 11 year-old girl) and this year we raced with Emberlie and her speedy stroller.

It was a hot day and there were a large number of participants (over 1,000).  Jon wants to install  wheel spikes like a chariot for the next race.  The Handleys came to cheer us on and Elin wanted to run with us each time we passed her.

 
Our time was somewhere are 24 minutes; we are still waiting for the official results.  We then hit up the Waffle Shop for some delicious breakfast followed by a family naptime.   

  
Afterwards we parked on the top floor of a garage downtown to watch the fireworks.  Of course, we had to have dinner first and then walk around 4thFest.  Jon consumed a 600 calorie cinnamon roll with extra frosting and I found some cotton candy.  All in all it was a great holiday!

Fantastic First Father's Day

Earlier this month was Jon's first Fathers' Day!  We celebrated the day and great weather with Emberlie's first hike.

It was a 2 mile hike at Shingletown Gap, just outside of State College.  Although Emberlie slept through most of it, I'm pretty sure that she enjoyed it.

After the hike, we went to Deb and Richard's house for some swimming.  This was also Emberlie's first dip in a pool.  It was still a little cool, so I don't think she really enjoyed it and only lasted about two minutes, but we did it!

The last bit of fun was some delicious paella prepared by Deb and Richard, which included chicken, shrimp, calamari, clams and mussels.  And, of course, the most important step of allowing the paella to "get to know itself" after its done cooking.  There were also some killer mojitos made with chocolate mint.  What a great meal!