Pineapple Pumpkin Muffins

My friend Summer posted a recipe for some muffins on her blog a while ago and I have been meaning to make them for a while now. I just haven't had time or forgot or something, but when I woke up this morning I found myself wishing for some muffins to go with my coffee. So I got onto her blog, www.sumrlovin.blogspot.com/2009/11/pumpkin-muffin-variation.html, and decided to make up a batch. And boy howdy, let me tell you...amazing! I would highly recommend them! I made them basically the same, except I switched the flour and did 2 cups of whole wheat and only 1/2 cup of regular just to make them a little better for you. I will probably do all wheat flour next time because the regular flour doesn't seem to make a difference. Anyway, the way that they are made (substituting apple sauce for oil & using whole wheat flour), I am thinking that they can't be too bad for you!

Usually Hannah likes to play on the kitchen counter when I am cooking, but I quickly realized that she would make a terrible mess if I let her "help" me. I thought about putting her on the floor, but she gets quite cranky if I leave her on the floor for too long while I am in the kitchen. So I decided, what the heck! She eats pumpkin pretty regularly and doesn't mind pineapple, so I just let her play with that stuff. The kid desperately wants to feed herself, but I am trying to hold off until we get to our new house because, 1.) it is really, really messy when she does feed herself, 2.) our dining room is carpeted with WHITE carpet, 3.) our new house has wood floors in the dining room. So, I figured that since she doesn't get to go to town on her food all that often, that she could try it out this morning. Of course then, I had to take a few pictures.

As you can see here, she is trying to lick the spoon. As you can see, there is pumpkin everywhere, even on the wall! She would scoop a little handful out of the can and shovel it into her mouth. What's funny is that despite how messy she got, she actually was eating!

Just finishing up here and doing some dishes. Hannah of course was not happy with me about this because her "toys" began to disappear one by one. And do I really have to mention that she went straight to the bathtub after this?
The finished product, minus the ones that Hannah and I ate before the picture was taken. Delicious! We will definitely be making this recipe again!

Hannah, all cleaned up, and eating her muffin. Apparently the half eaten one that she had wasn't sufficient, so she was going in the grab another. I snagged a photo just before stopping her from demolishing another one.

Love, Love, Love

We had a good Love Day this year. Jon and I have been alternating "doing" Valentine's Day for each other. This year was my year to do stuff for Jon, so Hannah helped out a bit. She made her Dad a brownie, as seen below, and got him a card. I had decided to take him out for pizza and putt putt golf, although it ended up being cold on Saturday...so we opted for bowling instead. We had a great time just hanging out. Jon was sneaky, even though it wasn't his year, and got up on Sunday morning and made breakfast for "his girls" and got me some flowers. Here's a few photos from our weekend.

Hannah's brownie that she "made" and her card.
The heart-shaped pancakes that Hannah and I enjoyed on Sunday morning.

Us girls out for pizza...Hannah got all decked out for the event.

Out for pizza...Hannah is wearing her bib in this picture because she just finished eating...it says, "my heart belongs to daddy." Isn't that cute?

New Photos for the Faithful

If I don't get pictures up each week, my family starts to get antsy, so I am sure these last few weeks of little blogging have been hard for them...so I am going to try to make up for that today. There's lots of new posts so scroll down!

Hannah practicing climbing up and down the stair.
"Helping" me with the laundry.

She's a great stander these days and often lets go to stand on her own. She's trying to dig in the drawers but is locked out of all but the bottom.

She enjoys digging in the kitchen cabinets.

She's very serious about reading my, I mean her, book.

Always good to be fresh and clean.

Sorry for the bad lighting, but this is Hannah gearing up for the SuperBowl.

Another favorite pastime of hers...playing in/with the dishes in the dishwasher.

We went to Montrose with Jon last week. He was working all day so we tried to get out and see some of the sights. Hannah fell asleep while looking through the pamphlets that I picked up in the hotel lobby.

She's got a bad habit of falling asleep when she's eating and well, I think it's hilarious.

And finally, we leave you with a Happy Hannah!

Two Teeth

I will add more pictures of Hannah soon, but she is starting to wake up from her nap so I don't have time. So until then, I will leave you with a cute and smiling picture of Hannah's teeth, which was stinking hard to get, I want you to know! But here they are in all their glory, both on the bottom. You should be able to click on the picture to see an enlarged version of it. Enjoy!

New House

We are in the process of buying our first home. I have been wishing for some pictures to share with everyone, but always forget when we are there. We had the inspection on Saturday, so I finally had time to take some pictures. The inspection went well, and while there are some things that will need work, it wasn't too bad. We are planning to add a bathroom in the basement at some point and to move the laundry upstairs. We will also (at some point) replace the appliances and the flooring on the main floor, although those things are not critical right now. It is a three story town home with a walk-out basement. So enjoy the tour! Hopefully, you will be able to see it in person sometime soon!

This girl cracks me up! Isn't that face priceless?? She's sitting on the counter in the kitchen which is on the main floor.
Kitchen on the main floor.

Dining room. This will be super nice since Hannah is starting to feed herself. Our current dining room is carpeted, which equals a big mess & stains.

Half bathroom on the main floor.

Living room on the main floor. This, along with the floor in the dining room is what we will probably replace.

Hannah is a big fan of the bare floors because she can move faster. Our house right has maybe 60-70 square feet of not carpet which is not much, so she really enjoys crawling on tile/wood/anything not carpet. Basically she is facing the front door now and you can see the stairs going up. The door behind her is the door to the basement.

Going up! The stairs to the upstairs. Brand new carpet and paint! Sweet!

This will be Hannah's room for now, which she will share with future a future sibling when that becomes an issue.Upstairs bathroom/vanity.

Toilet & bathtub. That's some pretty sweet cedar in the bathroom isn't it? It's like a sauna in there!This is where we hope we will be able to put a stackable washer/dryer. It's in between the two bedrooms on the top floor, otherwise we will have to have it in the basement, which would really stink!The view from what will be our bedroom. It's hard to tell what is it, but that's Pike's Peak! It is snowing up there, so you couldn't see the peak that day, but trust me, it's there!

One of the things that we loved about this particular town home is that there is a lot of open space. We wanted a place that Hannah could play so this was particularly appealing because the land behind has not been developed. Apparently back in the 80's when this complex was developed, there was a housing bust, so the condos behind ours were never built. They had cleared the land already and even made parking, but nothing was every built on the land. So, this is the view of our "backyard," which is directly out our back door. There is a ton of parking, and we can also park our camper there, so we are doubly excited about it!This is the "family room" that is in the basement. The wall straight ahead is where we hope to put a bathroom, and then the room will act as our living room. It will also be our "guest" room, which is where we will put the fold out couch.

One of my favorite things is this, also in the basement. They call it a "wet bar" but basically it's just a sink and cabinets, on tile. We will probably put a fridge down here at some point and will use this area to store kitchen items that are not used regularly, along with snacky foods and drinks! To the right, is the door that leads outside. So there you have it! The tour in completed and I am sure that at some point, if all goes well, then we will be posting more photos of our construction/moving and of the finished product!

She Loves Food

We received the go ahead to start giving Hannah table food at her last doctor's appointment. She basically told us to stay away from nuts and shellfish until she's a year old, but besides that she can eat just about anything. So, we have been enjoying her freedom and testing the waters to see what she will actually eat. We have found that it's pretty much anything! The only thing that she is not crazy about is bigger chunks of food that are slimy. I don't think that it is necessarily a dislike of those foods, but rather that she just doesn't know how to keep them in her mouth to chew them. We'll see because Jon has issues with textures of foods, so it is possible that this will be the case with Hannah. Anyway, we have let her try everything from chips & salsa (a big hit), to Asian food, to Mexican, and even a little gumbo last night (also a big hit, although I didn't get a picture of that). I have tried to get some pictures of things when she is eating them because it's really funny to watch her. So here we go with the tour de Hannah's foods.

Red onion: That's right, she is eating a red onion! Sick me out! Jon and I both hate raw onions so we immediately remove them from dishes that might have them. This particular onion came from one of our salads. We thought, why not let Hannah try it. And she liked it! So much so that she quickly scarfed down almost half of it before we noticed. We took the rest of it away in hopes of saving her from a post-onion-eating-belly ache.
Breakfast for Dinner: Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner?! Well, Jon doesn't usually but he let me make it one night because he wasn't very hungry and pancakes just sounded good. So of course we let the Nanner try some pancakes (no syrup-that's WAY too messy for self-feeding) and sausage. As you can tell from the photo, she's digging it!

Stir-fried Flat Noodles: This was my rendition of it anyway. This is one of my favorite foods to get in Edmond. We all used to go to Cafe de Taipei and if we were eating, I would almost religiously order stir-fried flat noodles with chicken. It's very similar to Pad Thai, except that it has more egg, big flat rice noodles, and oyster sauce. This was my first attempt at cooking this meal and it was a hit, both with Jon and me, and also Hannah. She didn't love the noodles part (noodles are one of the slimy things I was talking about earlier), but ate the egg and bean sprouts. That's right, bean sprouts, which happened to be her favorite part! I kept giving her more and she would immediately put them in her mouth! That's my girl!

More Asian food: Jon went to play racquet ball with a friend one night so Hannah and I were left to fend for ourselves for dinner. Safeway makes some amazing lettuce wrap filling that is frozen, so all you have to do is purchase lettuce and you have this delightful PF Chang's knockoff. Jon doesn't think that the Safeway brand is even close to PF Changs (he's wrong they are soo good), so he refuses to eat them! So, I thought this would be a perfect night to have my lettuce wraps. While I was at the store for lettuce, I also picked up some egg rolls to complete the meal. Hannah was playing in the living room where I was eating, so I decided to get her water and put her in her high chair to join me. By the time I got back, Hannah had snagged one of the eggs rolls off of my chair and this is how I found her. She continued eating her egg roll along with the lettuce wraps while I ate the rest of my dinner. She really does crack me up!

And last, but certainly not least, Mexican food. We went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant near our soon to be new house (see post above), and it was dinner time for Hannah so we pulled out her baby food. She had already tried blacks beans (which she loved) and chips and salsa, so I thought she would enjoy the Mexican restaurant just as much as us, and she did. They had a bowl of salsa and a bowl of refried beans for dipping chips into, so I just gave her a bite of the beans with a spoon. Man did she get after that! She ate a ton of the bean dip stuff, and was anxious to snag a bite here and there of our food. Here she is stealing some rice off of her Daddy's plate! So, needless to say, so far, she loves food and doesn't seem to be too picky about what we give her, which I have to say I really love about her!

One Eventful Week for the Haddenhams

Let me tell you, we have had one ridiculous week or really last five days. First, we have been thinking of and looking for a home to purchase. That has been stressful in and of itself. It is incredibly time consuming, let me tell you! So there's that underlying stress amidst all of this. It all started on on Thursday night. I was excited because I found twenty bucks in my coat pocket that day, so I called Jon after work to tell him that I wanted to go out to dinner. So a few minutes later I get a call from him asking me to pick him up because he has been in a car accident. I picked him up only to find out the next day that our car was totalled. Our new little Versi that we just purchased last July was a goner. Being busy season at Jon's work and all, we had to act quickly on getting a new car because Jon has to drive a lot for work (hence why we bought the car in the first place). So we spent Saturday shopping for a car and ended up getting a great deal in Boulder on our new car! So that was good, but exhausting for all three of us and by the time we got home Hannah was just ready to play and crawled all over the house. Sunday we went to an event at our church, got home for about 45 minutes, and then had an appointment to go look at some properties with our real estate agent. Meanwhile, we had been fighting with the insurance company about our claim, the fact that our car was parked in a place where it could be towed (which we found out on Sunday that the cars had been towed!), etc. We were pretty sure that Hannah was getting a tooth as well due to the extreme drooling and chewing, which we found out was true on Sunday afternoon. We hung out with some friends Sunday evening and I have to say that Hannah was super! Considering the last few days that she had, I certainly expected her to be grumpy. Then I found the tooth and thought that she would be done for, but she did great. She didn't even get grumpy until we got the check for dinner! What a trooper she is! She was seeming a little puny, but I figured it was just because of the tooth. I have heard that most babies get much better once the tooth breaks through the skin, which happened Monday morning, but Hannah seemed to get worse. She also picked up a little cough and began sneezing like crazy. She seemed to be getting more clingy by the minute, but still I chalked it up to the tooth. Finally last night I was convinced that she was sick and it probably wasn't the tooth. She was up nearly all night and would randomly break into coughing/sneezing/nose running fits. I finally decided to take her to the doctor this afternoon and the doctor said she was glad. Hannah seems to be okay right now, but the doctor is worried about her because the croup and RSV (severe respiratory sickness in babies) are both going around right now. I am supposed to give her some steroids that the doctor gave her tonight and tomorrow morning and see how she fares. If she isn't feeling better then she has to go back. The poor girl is just miserable. I am sure that was way too much information for most of you since you are really here to hear about Hannah, but what can you do?! I do have a picture below for you. Hannah is crying because I was putting her in her car seat and I noticed that I had a good shot of her tooth. It's barely there, on the bottom left, but it's there. I no longer have a baby with a big toothless smile! I will try to post some more pictures in the next few days if things calm down a little bit more. Until then, enjoy her tooth!