Morgan Manages Mommyhood - Page 108 of 110

Easy MSPI Friendly Maple Brown Sugar Granola

May 16, 2015 By Morgan Last Updated: December 5, 2020

When I found out that Ryan was MSPI, I realized I was in trouble. I LOVE dairy. I LOVE ice cream, and cheese, and milk products. Oh, and soy? It’s in EVERYTHING. And lucky me, Ryan is in the minority with his soy sensitivity in that he is bothered by soy oil in addition to other forms of soy.

After Ryan was born and I was breastfeeding, I realized that the days of my stomach being full in three seconds due to a baby pushing on it were over, and the days of being constantly hungry were on. Snacks are a complete necessity in order for me to make it to the next meal without being the biggest grump ever. The first two weeks or so, I’d go for either some cheese and crackers, a bowl of yogurt and fruit, or a bowl of oatmeal with a big ol’ pat of butter. See? Dairy is my thaaaanng.

After the MSPI diagnosis, I realized that if I didn’t figure out something to snack on that fit my new diet, I’d be screwed. So I hit the interwebs and found some things that would be safe that I could totally get into. And since I knew I’d be home and needed to be saving money (IE not running through a whole box of Special K in a day and a half..) I figured I’d work on making some of them myself. I’m already a pro a hummus (I’ll share my recipe once I get more tahini!) but I wanted something I could just grab a handful of while nursing or rocking Ryan to sleep.

When Alex suggested making granola, I was hesitant. Yes, oatmeal is great for nursing moms, and yes, you can pack it with healthy bits, but I hate crumbled up granola where there’s just a box or bowl of individual oat grains. But with some googling and test batches, I found my perfect recipe for granola!

Toasty and crunchy with big clumps of deliciousness, this granola is perfect by the handful or as a cereal. If you use pecans, they get super buttery in the oven which is only made better with the maple brown sugar coating. An egg white added to the wet ingredients allows the granola to be broken into larger chunks and clusters, perfect for snacking on the go. Using olive oil makes this granola both MSPI friendly and gives it a bit of a fruity undertone, while dried cranberries added after baking give a great contrast of texture and tartness that really brings the granola together.

Omit nuts and substitute seeds (a mix of pumpkin and sunflower would be great!) to make nut free, use GF oats to make gluten free. This recipe is very flexible, so have fun with it! Let me know of any variations you make!

Easy Maple Brown Sugar Granola

3 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup of nuts (I used chopped pecans)
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 egg white
2-3 tbs. brown sugar
1/3 cup(ish) maple syrup (you could probably sub or honey, but we’re a maple syrup household)
1/4 cup of oil + 1 tsp. for the pan (I use olive. It gives it a really nice flavor, and it’s MSPI safe – most vegetable oils have soy in them. You could definitely use vegetable, canola, coconut.. whatever you have on hand.)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup of dried fruit (I’ve been using dried cranberries, but I bet a mix of different kinds would be awesome – just make sure that whatever you use you chop into smaller pieces.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl combine the first 3 ingredients. If using pecans or another whole, large nut, I suggest breaking up any large pieces/ halves so that they will be more evenly dispersed throughout the granola and clusters. Measure and combine the rest of the ingredients except the cranberries, whisking with a fork to break up the brown sugar and incorporate the egg white. If you like things really sweet, go on the higher end of the sugar and maple syrup. If you like less sweet granola, opt for less brown sugar and maple syrup.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix, mix, mix. If it looks a little too wet, (excess sugar mixture on the bottom of the bowl) throw in a handful more oats. Once combined, pour the oats onto a baking sheet rubbed with the tsp. of remaining oil. You can also use a Silpat or parchment paper. Push the granola down into one tight layer all the way to the edge of the pan. (using a spatula to press and smush it tightly is really helpful)

Put the pan in the oven on the second to highest rack. This is very important if you have a super hot electric oven with the heating element on the bottom. If you put the rack in too low, the bottom will burn and that is no good.

Bake for 30-45 minutes. The edge will start to brown first, but don’t worry. Those will be for your snacking pleasure. To check if your granola’s done, take a spoon and take a spoonful out of the center of your pan. Put it on your counter and cool for a second. Test it out. Is it crunchy? Your granola is done. A bit chewy? Throw it back in the oven for 5 more minutes and check again.

Let the whole pan cool completely and gently remove the granola by wedging a fork under it to break up the sheet. Sprinkle the cranberries on top, put into container, and enjoy!

Milk-Soy Protein Intolerance and Breastfeeding

MSPI Friendly Birthday Cake

MSPI Friendly Restaurants

What Is Your Plan?

May 14, 2015 By Morgan Last Updated: December 5, 2020

When I was a senior in high school, I took a sociology class and one of our projects was to make a presentation of what our lives would look like. We all got poster paper and made a timeline using magazine cutouts of how we pictured our lives. What will our future jobs be? When will we get married? How old will we be when we have our first child? How many children will we have? When will we die?

It was fun, and one of the easiest projects of the year. What senior doesn’t want to plan their lives? So we constructed our timelines, and presented to our class our future lives. We oohed and ahhed over what our classmates would be doing in 10 years, laughed at the inevitable guy who says he won’t get married, but have a harem, and roll our eyes at the girl who says she would be marrying Ben Affleck.

Presentations went on for a week, and on Friday our teacher, one of those teachers everyone loves and can relate to, told us not a single one of us did the project correctly. We were shocked. He’d assigned us with the task of making a timeline of our lives. How was what we did wrong?

Because, he told us, you can’t plan your life. You will have to job that you earn. You will get married when you meet the love of your life. You will have a child when you get pregnant with a child. You will have as many or as little children as you are meant to have. You will die when you expire.

We all have plans for our lives. When I was in high school, I was going to graduate college, join a big PR firm in a big city and work my way up, and get married at 25. We would have our first child at 28, after we’d had time as a married couple to buy our dream home, build our careers, and make sure that we were meant to be. I look back at this and LAUGH.

After I graduated college, I continued to work for the non-profit that I interned for and got married exactly a month later at the age of 22. Three months later I was pregnant and had my first child at 23. Now I am a stay-at-home-mom.

I love my life. It is not as expected, but my God, it’s amazing and messy and beautiful. If I saw this coming for me at 17, I would have been terrified. I would have said there was no way that was me. I might have tried to run. I would have fought it. Maybe that’s why we have the unconscious desire to plan and imagine our futures. It gives us the security we need to live life the way it is supposed to be, live so that our really plan unfolds the way it should and needs to.

When I was in high school, I was taught the most important lesson I could have learned. Live your life. Stop making expectations. The most wonderful things will happen to you once you stop worrying about when and how things need to happen. If there is a single lesson I hope to instill in my son, it is to live your life without fear or worry and let things come your way how they are meant to. There is a plan somewhere for each of our lives, we just haven’t been told what it is.

Linking up with Running With Spoons‘ Thinking Out Loud this week!

When you were in high school, where did you see your life going? Did you follow that path? Let me know in the comments!

-Morgan

What I Ate Wednesday: Baby and Me

May 13, 2015 By Morgan Last Updated: December 5, 2020

I am loving these What I Ate Wednesday posts, and I’m especially loving adding Ryan’s eats in to the mix. This is actually what I ate on Monday, but heeeere we go!

Breakfast: Ryan – Leftover veggies and fruit from last nights dinner, PB&J pancakes after a snack of a banana cookie. Ryan’s breakfast is usually pretty consistent. Momma – Banana, spinach, blueberry smoothie with a side of baby and yellow dog. I only drank half because I was about to go run and I haven’t been very hungry in the mornings, maybe due to my new oil pulling obsession. (coming soon!) Also, this picture is basically my day to day life in a nutshell.

Snack: Large iced coffee from Panera. With too much delicious 2% milk by accident. Reminded me of high school when I weighed the same as I did 9 months pregnant and lived of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, light and extra sweet. PSA: if you have a My Panera card, check to see if you have a reward this month of free coffee all month! I got this coffee fo’ free because I found out the day before I had the reward. BOOM. (If you check the bottom of your receipt after using your card, it will tell you what rewards you currently have and how many trips until your next reward)

Snack 2: I try to eat when Ryan is awake, but he slept napped super late so I snacked on 2 chicken chunks from Friday’s leftover Greek kabobs to tide me over until he woke up.

Lunch: Ryan – Egg squares, kiwi, apple, and assorted steamed vegetables I had in the fridge. (I go grocery shopping Tuesdays, so I try to clear things out on Monday to get an idea of what we have) Momma – Overnight oats I prepped earlier that morning with leftover yogurt from Friday’s tzatziki adventure. Coconut milk, PB, flax seeds and a later added chopped apple were also present.

Snack: I’d planned to eat a Larabar as a snack, but I got caught up in testing recipes and before I knew it it was too close to dinner, so I ate the rest of those chicken chunks from earlier, and Ryan chomped some apple slices.

Dinner: Chicken, eggs, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans. A half an apple chopped up after 2/3 of this went to the dog. Fridge salad for momma (random bits from my fridge: salad mix, chicken and onion caramelized in bacon fat, red onion, banana peppers, spanish olives, feta cheese, and a dollop of leftover tzatziki. Weird but tasty.)

Dessert: A delicious Larabar to end the night. Chocolate chip cookie dough Larabars are my new addiction.

Linking up with Peas and Crayons for What I Ate Wednesday!

Do you make combinations to empty out your fridge, or does everything in your fridge have a meal assigned to it? Do you have a mypanera card? (you SHOULD.) What’s your favorite bar du jour? Let me know in the comments!

Baby Led Weaning: Step 2

May 12, 2015 By Morgan Last Updated: December 5, 2020

If you’re just starting out with your Baby Led Weaning Journey, check out this post where I outline Step 1, and the post on why we chose BLW!

So, you’ve made it this far. It’s going well, you’ve found out your kid loves a few things and is still skeptical of a few others. And then you hit some bumps. What else should you be giving him? Why is he doing THAT? The next steps are even more fun than the first, but as with all things baby, they are even more confusing. Here is how we proceeded with BLW our son after the first few months.

PLEASE NOTE, I am not a pediatrician, nutritionist, doctor, or any combo there of. I am simply a mom who fell in love with baby led weaning while trying it with her own son and wants to share her experience with others. The intention of this post is not to give rules or even instruction, but to give another example of the possibilities and ease of this amazing method to other parents. Please always talk to your child’s pediatrician before trying anything with your child to see his or her opinion on it.

The following guidelines are things I noted and tried with Ryan starting at around months 8 or 9.

Keep on introducing more foods! – I think this is the most exciting part of baby led weaning – seeing what your child gravitates to, what they like and dislike (for now) and sharing your favorites with them. Food is my language of love so to me it’s been such a bonding experience to cook for Ryan and show him what I love. To make this easy and stress free on myself, once we had a good base of tasty things already tried, I try to introduce something new at least once a week. This week was olives (olives are salty, and there are recommended guidelines on salt in the first year. Ryan’s very close to one year, I bought low salt olives, and I didn’t give him many, but do what feels right for you!) and he LOVED them. Sometimes I pre-plan on my calendar what I want to pick up at the store for him to try, sometimes I wing it by just seeing what looks good or fun, and other times I just give him something I’m eating. This happens most often when I’m making salads, as things are already being cut small. If your child doesn’t like something, DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED! Research shows that it can take 7 – 15 exposures (awesome article about feeding children!) before a child makes a decision on whether they like something. Don’t assume your kid hates something because the first few times it was ignored.

Decide on meals – There are so many opinions on this throughout the internet. Until our 9 month appointment at the pediatrician, Ryan was getting a lunch and dinner of solids and nursing the rest of the time. After his 9 month checkup, Ryan’s doctor suggested 3 meals and 2 snacks. We haven’t necessarily gotten the entire 2 snacks since he is still nursing a good amount, but he gets breakfast, lunch and dinner each day and usually at least 1 snack. But as with all things baby, this is going to change as he gets older.

Figure out what schedule works for you – In the same vein, you should figure out what times your meals will be served. While this is beneficial for your baby to give him a sense of what comes next, I find it most beneficial for me, so I can schedule my day a little easier. Ryan is NOT on a nap schedule (awesome.) but this is what our day looks like. All of these times are VERY VERY VERY loose, but we do try to stick to meals 1 hour after he wakes up:

7:00 – Wake up, nurse and snack 1 of a banana cookie or freeze-dried apple.
8:00 – Breakfast, usually 2 steamed veggies, breast milk pancakes, and a fruit.
10/11:00 – Nap (nursed to sleep)
12:00 – Wake up, nurse (occasionally at this point) and play
1:00 – Lunch, usually egg squares, 2-3 veggies, and a fruit
2:30 – Depending on nap time, wake up time, and mood, snack 2 of freeze-dried fruit or raw apple slices
3/4:00 – Nap (nursed to sleep)
5:00 – Wake up, nurse (occasionally at this point) and play
6:00 – Dinner, usually poached or shredded chicken, 2-3 veggies, sweet potato and fruit
7:30/8:00 – Bed

Work on that pincer grip! – Around 9 months I noticed Ryan looking at broken off chunks of things with interest, so I gave him peas. Within a week he was picking up the peas with ease (I couldn’t resist, guys.) having honed his pincer grip. Slowly I started to move all of his foods from stick form to smaller bites. I actually found that he started to prefer the little pieces that he could just shove on in there. A better developed pincer grip as well as improved hand-eye coordination from learning how to feed themselves is one the benefits of BLW and people are always shocked at how great Ryan’s is for his age. I attribute it 100% to BLW.

Add in water – (This is a HORRENDOUS picture, but the only one I could find with a sippy? I swore I had more..) At 8 months we gave Ryan this sippy cup filled with water. After every few bites, I would pick up the water and bring the spout to his mouth, tipping so that he understood that water came from it. It probably took a month or so for him to get the point that if he sucked, something came out (it might be quicker for children who took to a bottle, but Ryan didn’t – this is just my own experience!) but now he gulps it down. We also cut out the little piece that makes sucking required after we saw Ryan biting it to get water out faster at around 10 months. He hasn’t picked up the concept (by that I mean, has no interest and no patience) of drinking out of a straw yet, but we’re working on it.

Don’t stress out – If I could teach you anything through this, it would be this: don’t stress out. If your kid isn’t eating a ton, she might not be hungry. If your son isn’t picking up the concept of a water cup, he might just need some time. If one day he only wants to eat apples and is throwing the rest of the food while resisting being strapped into the highchair, he may be getting a tooth. (Not that that ever stressed me out of anything. Nope. Not me. Never.) Here’s an experience from our own journey.

We’ve quickly learned that, surprisingly, Alex is the worry wart when it comes to Ryan. I think this is due to my being with him all day long so I know his limits. But anyway, around month 8, when Ryan really started to get into food, he had about 2 or 3 weeks where he would put something in his mouth, chew once, put in something else, chew again and repeat until his entire mouth was full and would gag until he spit it out. I knew to just let him learn that it wasn’t cool to do that, but Alex would freak out and stress out. He would try to take the food out of his mouth or take his food away until he was done.

Thing is, the times Ryan ate with his dad around during these weeks, he would gag more, spit more, and cough more. Ryan felt Alex’s stress and wasn’t being allowed to learn when to stop putting in more food, since Alex would manually take the food out of his mouth. Long story short, to compromise we both brushed up on the baby Heimlich and CPR, I showed Alex a few articles on choking versus gagging, and when feeding Ryan I would only give him one piece of each thing at a time. Eventually, Ryan learned that chipmunking his food was no fun and got over it. Just use your intuition! Eating is a natural concept for a human, but the mechanics of it must be learned, like any skill.

Now go enjoy showing your little one the joy of food! I hope this helps clear up the mysterious BLW a little bit more. Below are a few different links you may find helpful during this stage!

Choking versus Gagging
Infant CPR
Infant Heimlich
Pincer Grip

And if you’re still in the beginning stages of BLW, here are my first 2 posts on the subject:
BLW Stage 1
Why We Chose BLW

Did you introduce solids with BLW? Do you plan on doing so? What do you think of the process? Let me know in the comments!

The Things I Already Miss

May 7, 2015 By Morgan Last Updated: September 18, 2020

In less than a month, my son will turn one year old. It has been one hell of year. A year of learning to be a mother, of trial and error, of tears and of joy. The years to come are years filled with events and memories I look forward to making: learning about cars from his mechanic daddy, watching my father teach him to ski as he did with me and my brother, going on family vacations, hearing his opinions, watching him grow into a little man. But all of this can wait.

As I count down the days until he has his first birthday cake, I find myself begging for time to slow down. The phrase I was so tired of hearing just a year ago is one I myself keep saying: It goes so fast. I am now attempting to soak in all of the little quirks this little boy has. Soaking in all the little moments. The moments I already miss.

It seems silly to miss things that I have right now. But how can I not mourn the things that I know will be gone soon, the things I will never see from this little boy ever again. Granted, some things will still be here for a while. None of them will magically leave the day he turns one. It’s just that noting that an entire year has passed brings to light how quickly time flies and makes the reality that your baby will one day grow up all the more real.

So here are the things I already miss about my little boy. The things that when they happen, I drop everything and breath them in a little deeper, trying to hold on to them a little tighter in hopes that they will stay a little longer.

The way his little hand curls around mine when I’m nursing him.
The way he still, at 11 months, needs me, and only me, to rock him to sleep.
The squeal that shatters my ears when our dog nudges his belly.
The proud face he makes when he stands up on something, looking around to see who else saw.
The way he sings along to the radio in the car, going, “BAAABAAABAAAA!”
How he gets shy and rubs he face in the crook of my neck when a stranger talks to him.
The way he pulls hard on his own hair when he’s starting to fall asleep.
The excited face he makes when you walk into his room after he wakes up and sees you.
The way he would rather play with an empty plastic cup rather than one of his plethora of toys.
The way he tugs at my face when I’m trying to get him to sleep, shoving tiny fingers into my nose.
The way he slams his hands on his highchair when he wants food.
The way his hair curls on either side of his head, giving him horns.
His laugh, his yawn, his grumpy face, his smile, his chubby legs, his round belly, his tiny feet, his scrunchy nose, his soft, curly hair, his bright blue eyes.

My baby.

These are the things that I am taking mental pictures and videos of. These are the things I hope are burned into my mind forever. These are the things I already miss.

Linking up this week for Thinking Out Loud with Running With Spoons!

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