Exersaucer

Isn't it funny how the exersaucer always seems to be more fun from the outside?

When he's placed in it he yells and screams at us.  He won't touch the toys.

But, when he's not in the exersaucer he will crawl over to play with it.  He even moves around to play with the different toys.

Of course, the flash tipped him off that I was there with the camera and he needed to get a closer look.

And since I am sharing pictures of Lex excited to see the camera; check out this series.

The tongue sticking out while working hard is said to be an Onines Family trait.

Cavell Update

We made an unconscious decision to spare our reading public from the horrors of Cavell's face for a while.  It may have been out of sensitivity or it may have been because I got put in charge of the update and just never got around to actually doing the work.

Meanwhile, Cavell has continued his slow but miraculous healing process.  The swelling has gone down on his forehead but is still present.  The bruising has gradually worked it's way down his face, but still leaves a shadow.  Below is a series of photographs we took over the last month as he progressed.

Once the black bruising left his face, the red seems so much more violent.  While Cavell was in this condition, I took him and the rest of the brood to watch Stacy finish her half marathon.  At one point during our wait, it started raining, leaving puddles of water on the ground.  Cavell, being a boy, decided he needed to jump in the puddles.  Cavell, being a 3 year old boy is a little clumsy and he skinned his knee.  So there I am, in the rain with three kids wearing shorts and t-shirts.  Lex is crying because it suddenly got cold and wet.  Alayna is crying because she is done waiting for mom and wants to go home.  Cavell, my obviously abused son, is jumping in puddles, soaking wet, with copious amounts of blood running down his leg.  I have no idea how we didn't get picked up by the cops.

Satisfied with himself

That blood red eye was pretty disturbing

Aren't they cute?

The two scabs in the middle of his forehead remind me of a snake bite.

OK, which one is cuter?  Tough decision, right?

When the deep red coloring started to fade, we were left with this dirty, shadowy, mix of colors.  People knew that something painful had happened, but really didn't get the full effect at this point.

It just started to look like he had a really dirty face.

By Thanksgiving, the bruising had finally faded enough that it just looks like he has dark bags under his eyes.  As pale as his skin is already, he looks a bit overworked, malnourished, and in dire need of a nap. 

Of course, through it all,Cavell has remained his positive and upbeat self.  Part of that is due to his total lack of understanding of just how much he could have milked this opportunity, and part of it is just the kind of kid he is.

Thanksgiving Dessert

I know, most people have pie, pie and more pie for dessert on Thanksgiving.  We are the Jensen Family.  There are only four of us eating.  We can't eat a lot of dessert, so we pick one dessert to have after our Thanksgiving Feast. The Head Baker of the Family is not a big pie fan.  We can't even buy a ready made pie to satisfy the big pie fan of the family.  Instead, we have adhered to an Onines Family Tradition and indulged in Pumpkin Cheesecake every year.  I now admit to adapting the recipe  many years ago, and not just to be gluten free.  But wait!  This year, The Head Baker of the Family cannot consume such large amounts of dairy (thanks to the beloved, new addition to the family).  Why would I spend the time and energy making a delicious treat that I cannot enjoy?

During Family Home Evening a few weeks ago, the whole family helped to make the menu for our Thanksgiving Feast.  Alayna requested carrot cupcakes.  The Head Baker of the Family is not a big fan of carrot cake either.  We have a recipe; I've made it; the family has enjoyed it.  I didn't want that as the finale to our Thanksgiving meal.  Luckily for Alayna, I had just read about a Brazilian carrot cake the day before.  She just needed to accept that it would not be in cupcake form.  When she saw the Bundt pan we would be using instead, she stopped pouting.

Bolo de cenoura
(from Glutenfearless)

Ingredients
Cake
1-1/3 C  Rice Flour
6 Tbs + 2 tsp Potato Starch
3 Tbs + 1 tsp Tapioca Starch
1Tbs + 1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp salt
1½ tsp Xanthan Gum
½ t. Cinnamon (optional)

3 C Carrots, grated (rougly 4 medium or 8 slender carrots)
3 Eggs
1 3/4 C Sugar
½ C Oil
1 tsp Vanilla

Glaze
2T cocoa powder
2T butter
5T milk
8T sugar

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350° grease and flour a 10" Bundt pan
• In a bowl combine flours, baking powder, salt, xanthan gum, and cinnamon.
• In your blender purée remaining 5 ingredients until smooth.
• Pour the blender concoction into the dry ingredients and stir together until everything is well mixed and very orange.
• Pour cake batter into prepared Bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 40-50 minutes.
• While still warm, invert the cake onto the serving platter.
• While stirring, gradually heat glaze ingredients in a small saucepan.  When the icing bubbles, keep stirring for another minute.  Pour hot glaze over the cake while the cake is warm.

Notes/Verdict  Boy, did we all enjoy this cake!  Moist, fluffy, sweet . . . and the glaze, Wow!  Not only is it yummy, it is fun to make . . . in the blender.  It went from layers of ingredients to this bright orange slurry.  It became a lovely orange batter when mixed into the flours.

Thanksgiving Breakfast

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls
(adapted from cinnamon rolls in  The Gluten Free Kitchen by Roben Ryberg found here)
Ingredients
Rolls
2 Tbs Butter
1/4 Cup Sugar
2/3 Cup Milk, warmed (~105*)
1 Tbs Yeast
1 Egg
1/4 C Pumpkin Puree
1/2 C Potato Starch
1 C Corn Starch
1/4 Tsp Baking Soda
2 1/2 Tsps Xantham Gum
2 Tsps Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Vanilla Flavoring

Filling
1/2 C sugar
1/3 C brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice or cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
4 Tbs chilled butter, cut into small pieces
Mix dry, cut in butter to form crumbs and spread over rolled out dough

Glaze
½ C powdered sugar
1 Tbs Pumpkin puree

Directions
Add yeast to milk. Whisk well to fully dissolve.  Cream butter and sugar.  Add milk/yeast to sugar mixture. Add remaining ingredients. Mix very well, being sure to remove all lumps. Dough will be quite soft

Roll dough out between plastic wrap.  Cover with filling, leaving a filling-free edge for sugar to spill over onto.  Roll into a log and trim ends.  Slice (with thread) into 8 or 9 pieces (roughly 1½ inches).  Place in greased pie pan.

You can bake them now, or cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge overnight.

Remove rolls from fridge and bring to room temperature.  Preheat oven to 375°.  Remove plastic wrap and cover with aluminum foil.  Bake for 20 minutes.  Uncover and bake an additional 10 minutes and make glaze.  Remove from oven. top with glaze and enjoy!

Notes/Verdict
I took them out of the fridge while the oven preheated this morning.  I think they should be room temp before putting in the oven.  I didn't get enough glaze, so I added another 1/4 C powdered sugar, the rest of my pumpkin puree (maybe 2 tsp), and a splash (maybe a T) of almond milk.  Paul thinks we need to adjust even more to increase the pumpkin (hard) and spice (easy) flavours.  We all LOVED these!  They are all gone.

Chocolate Waffle Pillows

This treat was the most anticipated recipe from the Mrs Fields book.  I think that is because my kids KNOW waffles.  We make waffles almost every week.  We use our waffles as sandwich bread almost every day.  Cavell calls them "Goggles."  By 'them' I am referring to the waffles AND the sandwiches.  I have recently convinced him that the meal is called lunch, NOT waffles.  Just yesterday while playing with Alayna, he named the puppet he was characterizing, Goggles . . . I mean Waffles.  The kids were extremely excited for Chocolate Waffle Pillows.

Chocolate Waffle Pillows
(adapted from Mrs. Fields Best Ever Cookie Book!)
yield 2 dozen

Ingredients
2/3 cup Rice Flour
3 Tbls Potato Starch
2 Tbls Tapioca Starch
1/2 tsp Xanthum Gum
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 cup Cocoa Powder
1/2 tsp salt (because I use unsalted butter)
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
1 cup Sugar
2-1/2 Eggs*
1 tsp Vanilla

Directions

• Combine flours, xanthum gum, baking powder, cocoa and salt.  Set aside.
• Cream butter and sugar.  Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Slowly add flour mixture until just combined.
• Drop by rounded Tablespoons onto each section of a hot, greased waffle iron.  Cook approximately 1 minute (or more) and carefully transfer to a cooling rack.
• Serve with any yummy topping(s), like powdered sugar, cocoa powder, raspberries, or whipped cream.  We used chocolate syrup.

Notes/Verdict
Because I halved the recipe I needed 2-1/2 eggs.  I beat 5 eggs together, weighed them and used half for the waffles and half for an omelet in the morning.  I don't think they need as much xanthum gum as I used; they might even work with none.  I liked these better off of our small squared waffle iron than from our larger/deeper, not quite Belgian, waffle iron.

These were easy to make.  I feel bad that it took as long as it did to get around to making them.  The kids LOVED them.  Paul did not like them.  I thought they were fine.  I would describe them as a brownie that is almost on the fudge-y side, but isn't cake-y  This might be because they were thin.  They were a bit better as a warm dessert than as "cookies" in the cookie jar.  If the kids think to ask for these again I would be willing make them, but I would suggest other treats instead.  I might try "baking" a few other types of cookies this way, just to experiment.

Moving Down and Up

It took me a moment to understand what happened to the Paddington Bears.

I think when the baby is able to sit up and pull his mobile down it is time to lower the crib.

Not a day too soon.  After I took the pictures of the fallen bears and adjusted the crib down, I caught Lex pulling UP for the first time!

Pecans

While waiting to pick Alayna up from school today, Cavell and I noticed one of the moms picking something up from the ground . . . and eating it!  When Alayna came to the van, and I went to buckle in Cavell, I realized there were pecans on the ground.  We gathered some.  10 of them.

Not all 10 are pictured.

We got to cracking.

and cracked some more.

Then we went to work peeling . . .

. . . and peeling . . .

 



. . . and peeled some more.

This took a lot more work than expected.  Cavell kept throwing the cracked shells into the nut bowl, some did still have the nut in them.  Alayna wasn't able to get any big pieces because she kept cracking her shell, and the nut, more to try and get them out.  Not that I was able to get many big pieces either.

A bit of toasting and we had pecans for snack time.

We saved some for Papa.

Yummy!

That was a lot of work for such a small treat, but we enjoyed the experience together.

We'll Give AB Another Try.

Do you remember when we gave Alton Brown's gluten free, chocolate chip cookies a try?  We weren't impressed enough to try them again.  But last week, I caught the middle of a Good Eats episode using leftover oatmeal (Oat Cuisine II). I have oatmeal for breakfast every morning.  Dark chocolate oatmeal with strawberries, blueberries and almond milk.  Yumm.  The things he was making sounded good, except he was still adding flour.  I was ready to turn it off until he said, "Hey kids, riddle me this, what the heck is wheat doing in an oatmeal cookie?"  (the segment starts at 2:26-6:36) While deciding which treat to make today, Paul requested we try these cookies.

Oatiest Oatmeal Cookies
(Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown)
about 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

• 16 ounces old fashioned rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Pinch kosher salt
• 10 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 6 ounces dark brown sugar
• 3 1/2 ounces granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 ounces raisins, optional

Directions
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Spread the oats into a single layer on a half sheet pan. Bake until lightly toasted, about 20 minutes. Cool the oats in the pan for 2 to 3 minutes.

Grind 8 ounces of the toasted oats in a food processor until the consistency of whole-wheat flour, about 3 minutes. Add the baking powder, cinnamon, and salt to the food processor and pulse 2 to 3 times to combine. Set aside.

Combine the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer, and mix on medium speed using the paddle attachment until light in color about 3 minutes. Stop once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Reduce mixer speed to the lowest speed and add the egg and vanilla extract. Mix to combine. Slowly add the flour mixture until just combined. Stop once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining toasted oats and the raisins. Stir to combine.

Scoop the dough with a 1 1/2-ounce disher or server onto parchment-lined half sheet pans, leaving 2 inches between each mound. Bake until the cookies begin to brown around the edges, about 12 to 14 minutes. Rotate the pan halfway through the cooking time. Cool the cookies on the pans for 2 minutes, then remove them to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Verdict/Notes
We really like these cookies!  Next time, we will toast more oats.  The leftovers make great oatmeal, and then we will still have the full weight of oats after toasting (they lost a surprising amount of water weight!).  We only had light brown sugar; I will try adding molasses to substitute for dark brown sugar.  Instead of my tiny pinch of salt I used 1/4 tsp salt.  We love the cinnamon flavour, but want to make it stronger.  Next time I will double the cinnamon, and maybe add some nutmeg.  I forgot to plump/hydrate the raisins.  I will remember next time, and increase the amount we add.  We made one dozen using two scoops each of our #50 disher, baked for 12 minutes.  We also made 1-1/2 dozen using single scoops baked for 10 minutes.  It is not even the end of the day, and these cookies are more than halfway gone!

Taggies

When I was expecting Alayna, our new cousin, Tara, gave us a Taggies book.

Very sweet

I had also been reading a lot about Taggies blankets.  The idea was that an "infant was often more interested in the satin tags on toys and clothing than the object itself."  Other mothers I was talking with said how much their little ones LOVED their Taggies.  I didn't understand why someone would spend money when they could make their own with scraps.  Except, I didn't have such scraps.  On my first visit home with the new baby (Alayna) I raided my mother's ribbon scraps and fleece.  Mom and I made a tagged blanket . . . and Alayna couldn't care less about it.  I thought, maybe she was too young.  No, she never cared for tags.  She liked when I would read her the book, but she didn't bother with the tags.  Soon, the book and blanket where packed away with the baby things.

Cavell is born and all baby toys are pulled out again.  Alayna loves all of the baby toys, but still no interest in the tag items.  Cavell never cared about the tags either.  When he outgrew the baby toys I debated whether I should bother packing the blanket and book with the others, or just pass them on.

As Lex has been developing I have been pulling out different toys that I think he would enjoy (and trying to keep them away from the siblings).  The tags were not among those brought out.  Then I started noticing that when Lex is done eating and rolls over, he was always grabbing the tags on my Boppy Pillow.  I have pulled out my tagged blanket and finally have a baby that appreciates what he has.

This is also a good picture to share that, not only can Lex sit unsupported, he can sit himself up from crawling position.

1/2 Marathon Report

In January I had a Sunday School lesson on goals and resolutions.  Mine was to run a half marathon by the end of the year.  I knew the Rock n' Roll San Antonio would be in November.  After Lex was born I found a local Marathon and Half Marathon that was scheduled for their inaugural year when Lex would be 6 months old.  The local Half Marathon was chosen based on the ease of accomplishing the logistics of feeding Lex and completing a race.  Running a small race close to home would be a much better experience for the family and would still offer me the same challenges of running a larger race that adds two hours of driving time to the mix.  So six weeks after Lex was born, the practice and preparation began. 

Race Day!!  I finished my 1/2 in 2:17:30.  That is a PR by 30 minutes compared to my time last year.  My training plan projection said I should do it in 2:15, and I am amazed that I was that close.  I wanted to finish faster, and my training runs said I could.  But there were some crazy hills, and I did not train on hills quite that size (or that many).

Note the sweaty armpits BEFORE the race started.  Why do I run races on the hottest, most humid days of the year?

My friend, Brooke, and I were actually in the port-a-potties when the race started.  We still crossed the start only 2 minutes "late".  Very different from the Rock n' Roll last year.  35,000+ runners there compared to 1,200 at this race.

I did well through the pack on the up hills in the first 3 miles.  After that the race said the course was fairly flat.  HA!  As I was coasting down some of the hills during the 4-6 miles, I knew I would have to try and run back up on the way back.  I managed to get to the turnaround/half-way point in 63 minutes, which was smack on the pace I wanted.  But, those hills between miles 7-9 were as tough as I expected talked myself into them being.  It didn't help that the only mile mark I saw on the way back was for mile 8.  I know I slowed down . . . a lot.

Just after the 10 mile point Brooke passed me.  I was feeling rough.  But, positive thinking kept her in sight the rest of the race.  Even if it didn't give me a big push, it kept me from really hitting a wall.  I knew I wouldn't hit my goal time, but after seeing the 3 mile marker again, I realized I could make my training time if I didn't wuss out.  It helped that I could coast down some hills after that, even though my calf's hurt.  Towards the very end there were still some little hills that felt much bigger now that I was running them again.  I have a new appreciation for the stories of going, "uphill both ways" now.  With about 1/2 mile to go I had to walk; roughly a block, about .1 or .2 miles.  I finished at a jog.  I went a little faster through the finish chute, but I was not able to sprint in strong.

This is when I mess up my races.  After a training run I sip my leftover HEED and walk about a mile and feel good and recover well.  At the race, I picked up my medal and a cold water bottle.  Then, I STOPPED and GUZZLED the whole bottle of water.  Next my body rebels and tells me what a bad idea it is to break my post-run habit.  My legs cramped up so I grabbed a chunk of ice from the water trough and began icing my legs.  I hurt so much I couldn't decide to stand or sit, so I sat down and got up and then repeated for about ten minutes. All the while, guzzling MORE water, refusing the electrolyte drink that is offered and then arguing with Paul over whether I should take the last electrolyte pill. I was well on my way to hyponatremia, (water intoxication that kills distance runners and others who drink too much water resulting in an electrolyte imbalance), and didn't even know it.  And I hurt more and continued to feel sick to my stomach.  All the while we are chatting with friends, including Brooke who says she hurts, but seems just fine.

After 20 minutes of this Paul (who had all 3 kids) made me get up and walk across the parking lot to get my bag (where I downed my recovery drink and felt even more sick).  I tried to sit down again at this point and was severely reprimanded by Paul.  It was time to stop the self-destructive behaviors and start listening to Paul.  He made me walk with him the 1/2 mile up a crazy hill to get to the van and come home.  He even gave me dirty looks when I walked too slow.  It hurt.  But then I felt better.  Strangely enough, I needed to walk up that last hill at a decent pace in order to stop the pain.  I would probably still be sprawled out on the asphalt in cramped up tears if Paul hadn't gotten me up and walking again. 

So, no post race pics or entertainment; I didn't even check my "official" time and rank.  But, with a little flexing and message for my cramping foot I felt normal before the 10 minute drive is over.  Then I had to feed Lex, because he refuses a bottle and was starving after a 5 hour fast. I don't realize how full I can get during that time.  I think I am using everything my body has for me on my run, but this was an interesting reminder that my body is still built for caring for a baby.

Paul (kindly) laughs at my bad race habit.  He gets to since he saved me from it.  He also says I like to pick the races on the most humid, warm days.  Yes, our cool weather left us and I was running on the warmest, muggy day we have had in 3 weeks (temps in the 70's and humidity at least 80%).