Archive for April, 2010

By Working Mommy

Summer is just around the corner, and hopefully you’ve all been working on getting your body bathing suit ready!! What, you haven’t?? That is quite alright (I haven’t either)! If you’re in the market for a new bathing suit, though, then you’ve come to the right place. Below are some great suggestions for Summer 2010 – ready or not!

One-Piece

When I think VS – I don’t think of a tankini bathing suit…but this is a (semi) family show… so I made an exception (just this once)! Mama is allowed to be sexy too… I know, I know… I said the “S” word! It is true, though… don’t sell yourself short, ladies! My favorite thing about the VS two-piece suits is that you purchase each piece separately. That is good for someone like me with a size 8 ba-donk-a-donk and a size 6 chest!!
Victoria’s Secret – $44.50 (top – regular & long available); $28.50 (scoop bottom shown – other styles available)

Cover-Up

This cute white hoodie comes with orange or blue stripes.The great thing about this piece is that it can be worn on the beach – as a cover-up with that new bathing suit you bought (above) – or as a light jacket with a tank top and jeans.
GAP – $39.50

Comfort

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What was that, you say?? You were invited to a Miami-inspired par-tay and you don’t have an outfit?! Okay…don’t panic!!! I SAID DON’T PANIC!! This outfit is PERFECT for such a party…or if you’re just hanging out with the family on the weekend. While it is pictured as off-the-shoulder, it can be worn on-the-shoulder as well! You’ll be asking for a drink with an umbrella and a pool boy to fan you wearing this great outfit!
Venus Swimwear – $25 (top); $33 (bottom)

Are you a one-piece, tankini, bikini, or cover up type of girl?

 

Think life has handed you some lessons? Just wait until you hear what Working Mommy has to say! You can read her personal blog over at Lessons Learned!

By Stephanie

I like to make all my readers feel comfortable. Which is why I’d like to talk to you about Jesus.

Alright. Not really. But in the spirit of the Savior, I have decided to try my hand at writing some commandments of my own. I know I won’t do as well as the original, and they’re being typed on a computer screen, not engraved on stone tablets, but I think society would only benefit if they were posted in every gym in the United States. Because, seriously, people. We’ve lost touch with what’s appropriate vis-a-vis the rowing machine. Mr. Fatty McButter Pants in the bright yellow spandex hot pants? I’m looking at you.

And so, my lovely ladies, while I’m sure none of you are guilty of these infractions, ahem, perhaps you can present them to the powers that be in your local gym. In this way we can effect some change.

THE TEN NINE COMMANDMENTS OF GYM MEMBERSHIP

Commandment I
If thou seeist a neighbor on the treadmill, and there is more than one treadmill available for thy use, thou shalt never choose the treadmill right next to thy neighbor.

Commandment II
If thou is not a 105 pound twenty something, thou shalt never, under any circumstance, wear spandex or short shorts.

Commandment III
If thou refuses to wipe thy body soil from the machines when finished exercising, thou accepts full responsibility for a well deserved throat punch and waives any right to complaint about said throat punch.

Commandment IV
Thou shalt never ever lift one leg in the public shower and proceed to shave parts of thy person which never see the light of day. Ever.

Commandment V
Thou shalt recognize there is not enough Lysol on Planet Earth to justify sitting down on the wooden benches in front of the lockers without your drawers.

Commandment VI
Thou shalt exert every effort not to make constipation faces whilst thy is weight lifting. Thou shalt realize how disturbing such a thing is, and shalt make every effort to spare thy neighbors such a sight.

Commandment VII Remembering the spirit of Commandment VI, thou shalt also refrain from making inappropriate noises whilst weight training. Because, ew.

Commandment VIII
Thou shalt not leave your wet, dirty, stinky towels on the floor. Seriously. That’s just rude. And unsanitary.

Commandment IX
Thou shalt refrain from talking to me for any reason. In the gym, I am not thy friend, but thine enemy. There is nothing we have to speak about whilst both of us are red faced and panting.

I mean really, they’re just common sense, people. And if people actually started following them, I might get this oversized hind end back into a gym so I can work a little bit on shrinking it.

What are your rules to live by at the gym?

Stephanie is a stay at home mom to Joshua and Ella. She writes daily at Mama Still Wears Gucci,where she discusses everything from a radical obsession with vacuuming the draperies to vying (peacefully of course) for total world domination.

By Julia

Expecting my first child.  Excited, nervous, anxious, scared, overwhelmed. But I did what any first time mom would do.  Read everything.  From “What To Expect” to “Pregnancy Fit” magazine and every website in between.  I joined forums and online groups, getting advice, listening to others’ stories and coming up with my own realization of what mommyhood would be like and how to prepare.
 
(If only I knew…)
 
I had several recommendations to read a certain book (that gets a bad reputation) that deals greatly with getting your newborn on a schedule and most of all, understanding how a newborn’s body and mind operate.  And every person I talked to said it made a world of difference.  I started reading it a few weeks before Hannah was born, but didn’t get far. 
 
She was born. I was overwhelmed.
 
I remember sitting in the rocking chair at midnight one night, in tears, because I couldn’t get her to fall asleep.  I, myself, was beyond exhausted and while I handed my wailing newborn over to my husband, I still found myself deeply wanting to hold her and comfort her.  Afterall, I was now “Mom” and should somehow have all the baby directions memorized.  I wanted to be that mom.
 
I immediately finished reading that book the next day. 
 
I immediately began utilizing some of the concepts and ideas outlined in the book.
 
I immediately felt a sense of peace, control and sanity.
 
While I’m certainly not here to discuss the book, I will tell you some of the things I learned that I believe every parent should know and understand.  And by doing so, just might save your sanity.
 
One of the biggest things that helped me understand my newborn was knowing their bodies ability to stay awake (or lack thereof).  A newborn can usually only stay awake for 20-30 minutes. Knowing this helped me understand that when she was awake for an hour or (heaven forbid) two, I knew she was tired.  I could snuggle, rock, lay her down and know that sleep was what she needed.  As she got older, her wake time would slowly increase.  By 3 months, it was 45-60 minutes and by 6 months it was 90-120 minutes.
 
To go along with understanding her wake time, I had to understand her sleep needs.  We all know newborns sleep.  A lot. But did you realize that they sleep in cycles of (typically) 45 minutes? When an infant wakes up after 45 minutes of napping, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are done sleeping.  Many times the baby will cry, making the parent think that she’s had enough rest.  And while you can attend to your baby when they cry, I found that trying to get them back to sleep was really important.  Most infants need 2-3 hours of sleep at a time. And by rocking, snuggling or letting her fuss herself back to sleep you can “train” her to get back to sleep on her own when she does wake up at 45 minutes.
 
The other aspect to a new baby is the feedings.  Oh, the feedings.  Now, I’m gonna lay this out there… I was not a feed-on-demand parent. Everytime my newborn cried, whimpered, fussed or cooed, I did not nurse her.  If I had just fed her at noon, put her down for a nap and she is up crying at 12:45, I did not feed her.  An infant’s stomach is only the size of a marble.  A marble.  How in the world could I put more in there?  And with many babies already having gastrointestinal issues (my daughter had lots of gas), I wasn’t about to upset it anymore with more milk.  I typically kept an eye on the clock for a 3 hour feeding schedule.  If after 2 hours, she was awake, fussing and her cues were pointing to hunger, then yes, I would absolutely feed her.  I think many parents (especially people who criticize this book) think that we (I) are depriving our child of milk solely for the sake of schedule.  And of course, that is absolutely not true. 
 
When you put everything together and understand wake times, sleep times and feedings, it creates a natural “schedule”. One that saved my sanity, allowed me to keep track of my newborn’s activities and also helped me better plan my days.  Most newborns typically fall in a 3-hour schedule. Nursing for 20 minutes, staying awake for another 20 minutes, then sleeping for approximately 2 hours. As they get older, the wake time extends, but the sleep time stays relatively the same.  How does that happen? Well, around 4-6 months babies can typically go longer between feedings. So by that point, they are now nursing, staying awake for 60 minutes, then napping for 2.5 hours.  That equals a 4 hour cycle.
 
As we all know, some days are bad and some days are good. In fact, I was just talking a friend the other night about her 8 week old and how her little girl naps well for 3 days in a row, then has 1 bad day of poor naps.
 
It’s ok.  It’s ok if you have to feed your baby before the 3 hour cycle. It’s ok if your baby wakes up early.  It’s ok if you have to wake her up to go to a doctor appointment.  It’s OK. 
 
But having a general schedule really helped me understand my babies needs.  So when she wasn’t napping well, I didn’t freak out, nursing her every 30 minutes wondering if she was hungry. It allowed me to rest while she rested, get stuff done around the house and enjoy her time awake.

What were your coping strategies when your children were babies?

 

With 2 toddlers attached to her hip and hair thrown in a ponytail on an almost daily basis, Julia blogs at Work, Wife, Mom… Life. She’s a full-time working mom who tries to balance it all with her faith holding her together.

By Megan @ Life As We Know It

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My mom once told me, “You can learn a lot about a person by looking at their checkbook.”

Think about it. The way we spend money reflects our values, desires, and our current stage in life. If you glanced in my checkbook here’s what you’d learn:

As I examine how we spend our money, I am more and more aware of the person I am…. and the person I long to be. It’s a process, but I want to share with you a few changes that I’ve made. Here goes:

So, dear friends, if I could glance into your checkbook, what would it tell me about you?

Are you ready for some change? Start an envelope… let’s go on this journey together!

What are some ways you save money?

Megan is mom who wants kids to come with a user’s manual. You can read about her journey in life and motherhood on her personal blog, Life As We Know It.

By Michaela

I’m not much of a cook… or a baker for that matter. It’s not that I can’t bake, it’s just that it usually takes longer than I have time for and let’s face it… I don’t like having to clean up the mess… and I make a big mess when I bake!

There are exceptions to the rule though and there are occasions when I actually like to bake and don’t mind the mess. Birthdays are one of those occasions.

It was my husband’s birthday the week after Abby was born. Since she decided to grace us with her presence earlier than expected, I wasn’t able to go out and buy him his gift like I had intended. Yes, I procrastinate… shoot me! Soooo, in addition to buying him a gift online, I busted out a box of Betty Crocker Yellow Cake mix and got a little domestic (yeah I took the easy way… you didn’t expect me to bake one from scratch did you?).

There was just one problem though… we had no frosting in the house!! I don’t keep any here for one simple reason… it would never survive long enough to make it on top of a cake. No, it would die a slow and delicious death… spoonful after glorious spoonful! Soooo… I needed to find a way to get frosting without having to go out to the store… and I needed it fast!

I know that my husband loves buttercream frosting. I thought to myself “How hard can it be to make that?” and started googling recipes. There were hundreds, no thousands of them. Some called for shortening… actually a lot of them did… I could rule them out, since we had none, besides it’s called BUTTERCREAM not shorteningcream. Finally after looking a few different recipes, I went to the one site I go to time and time again… FoodNetwork.com. I figured they would have something for me and I was not disappointed.

I did do some tweaking to the recipe I was following. That particular recipe was for vanilla frosting and Ray wanted chocolate. I wasn’t very sure of myself or my changes and hoped for the best. Once it finished beating, it was the sweet, buttery, chocolaty goodness that I had been searching for and it was so easy to make!!

It was so good and easy in fact, that I probably will never buy frosting from the tub again. Go ahead, try it out for yourself, I promise you won’t be disappointed!

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

• 1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)
• 3 cups confectioners’ (powdered) sugar
• 1/3 cup Hershey’s Cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons whole milk 

1) In a standing mixer, attach the whisk attachment and mix together the butter, sugar and cocoa powder. Mix on low speed until it is well blended and then increase the speed to medium and beat for 3 minutes.

2) Add the vanilla and milk (I used whole milk, but you could use any milk or even whipping cream) and beat on medium speed for another 3 minutes. You can vary the amount of milk used to change the spreading consistency.

That’s it! Now all you have to do is frost your cake!!

I will admit that this frosting is sweet (it does have 3 cups of powdered sugar in it after all!) so if you’re not big on that, this may not be the right frosting for you. It also makes a lot of frosting! It was enough for me to frost the whole cake and have about a store bought tubs worth left over for later use (or in my case to be eaten by the spoonful throughout the following week). It passed the test in my house though and it is one that I will definitely be making again… and again… and again! Enjoy!

Don’t forget to add your favorite recipes to today’s Meal Planning Menu! Seven will be featured next week!

 

Michaela is a student, a wife and the mama of a rambunctious toddler and a newborn. She posts regularly at her blog Mama Michie’s Musings, where she writes about her family, her life and her inability to be more like June Cleaver!