What if...

...your stay-at-home mom job was an actual paid job and your child was your boss??  Let's see how the day would go:


8 am: 
 Wake up not by alarm clock, but by one of the following, depending on the phases of the moon:
           a) Kisses all over your face
           b) Your covers being thrown off
           c) Being dusted by an entire container of cake flour (It has happened.)

8:01 am: 
Boss: "I want fruit loops! I want fruit loops! I waaaaaaant fruit loooooops!"

8:05 am:
Assist boss with going potty after much screaming and threatening that there will be no fruit loops if there is no tee-tee in the potty.

8:30 am:
Arrive at work still in your pajamas, having not gone to the bathroom yourself, or brushed your hair.  Begin to fix boss's breakfast.

8:30 am:
Boss:  "I want fruit loops in my giant bowl.  My gy--o? bowl? My gyroooo bowl? Gyro bowl.  And milk in my purple baking-thing cup."


"Whaa? What baking-thing cup?  Oh, your purple cupcakes cup?  Ok.  You will get that with milk and fruit loops in your gyro bowl if you sit down at the table and wait patiently."

9:00 am:
You now get to eat your breakfast even though boss has gone to her "office" and emptied all of its contents onto the floor.

9:45 am:
Boss: I bored.  I want to listen to Michael Jackson! (Boss shakes hips to emphasize)

**Boss procedes to listen to entire "Thriller" album on cassette tape (yeah, they still exist!) and requests it again.  And again.

11:00 am:
Decide Boss needs something else to do since you are fully aware that "Billie Jean is not his lover" and make some lunch.

11:00 and thirty seconds am:

Boss screams, "I want a egg! I want a egg! I waaaaaant a egg....and some peanut butter on my plate, please."


11:10 am:
Place hard boiled egg on Boss's plate, only to accidentally have it touch the peanut butter and be deemed inedible.  Boss hurls herself to the floor, kicking and screaming for 10 minutes until she suddenly realizes the egg is ok after all.

Noon:
Lunch is over after many stories of "Yesternight we went to see Papa and I wore my pink shirt with the monkey on it and I jumped up to say Boo and I scared Papa and he giggled and we saw houses with flowers and I didn't like the horse-thing 'cuz it scared me and I really liked that time, yesterweek."

12:30 pm:
Boss has been entertaining herself with Silly Putty while the kitchen is being cleaned.  Hands gun-looking object over for inspection saying, "Look, I made a shrink ray, COOL!!"  Decide that the "Despicable Me" viewings need to stop for awhile...

1-2 pm:
Take an hour long walk outside (50% for exercise/ 50% for child restrained in stroller with wind blowing in face can't have a screaming fit on the ground) 

2 pm:
Assist Boss with going potty before taking a nap and read 3 more books than what you said you would before finally turning off the light and walking out.

2:45 pm:
Finally achieve hot shower and new change of clothes.  Victory!

4 pm:
"Blissful" hour of doing laundry, washing dishes and listening to radio interrupted by tiny knock from Boss's door..."Mommaaaa!! I need to go pooooop!"

4:01 pm:
Open door to let Boss go to the bathroom only to find the deed is already done...."Holy %^*^$&%, what happened in here?????"  

4:10 pm:
Boss sits in bathtub while I clean poop off the carpet and bookshelf and throw away 10 books.  Boss receives bath after this, concentrating especially on the sh*^ under her fingernails.

5:30 pm:
Boss watches dinner preparations and states, "I want to be a pig when I grew up."  Boss's daddy informs her that she is a little girl and will grow up to be "a beautiful woman like her momma."  Boss looks over at me, thinks, and states, "No, I wanna be a pig instead."

6 pm:
While the Boss's daddy and I enjoy homemade curry, the Boss indulges in 8 slices of pickled beets, applesauce with purple sprinkles, a bite of baby carrot, and a cup of brown rice which somehow quadruples in size and explodes all over the dining room floor.

7 pm:
The bedtime "plan" begins.  Potty, brush teeth, sip of water, books, bed.


7:45 pm:
Somehow still only on phase 3 of plan...


8 pm:
Plan is complete.  Sweet Boss gives hugs and kisses and says, "I had a good day today!"  and repeats bedtime mantra of "Goodnight, I love you, sleep good, sweet dreams, see you in the morning, God bless you, I love you!"

......4 am:
Bedroom door thrown open, accompanied by the sound of tiny feet running...
"Momma!  The gnomes outside in the garden waked up and are ALIVE and I scared!!!"

Why do I always do this to myself?

I get home from working the weekend and surf blogs and find the most heart-breaking stories which I spend hours crying over until I finally go to bed at 3 am.  And then Gaga wakes me up at 7:30 am and I groan...

Usually I find blogs about sweet little babies with leukemia or other horrible diseases that no child should have to deal with.  But tonight, I was searching foodgawker and wondered why there were so many peanut butter pie recipes.  Upon searching a few blogs, I found out about a woman named Jennie who had lost her husband, Mikey last Friday to a sudden heart attack.  Jennie somehow managed to write a blog asking readers to make a "Creamy Peanut Butter Pie" in his honor that day since she would never be able to make it for him again.  I sat there with tears streaming down my face thinking of my sweet loves and how devastated I would be to lose them. 

How I complain that no laundry was done while I was at work...and yet, he gave Lily a bath tonight and told me all about how they danced and snuggled together.

How they were loud Sunday morning when I was trying to sleep...but woke me up with kisses and excitement over watching the movie "Tangled." 

All of the silly things people stress about don't really matter.  What matters is showing your child how amazing the world is and showing your husband that you love him more than anything else.  Even chocolate.  :)

I have read stories about 4 month old children undergoing chemotherapy and think, "How can I possibly justify complaining about the Homeowner's Association when this sweet baby is getting port-a-caths implanted and bone marrow biopsies done?"  It's just ridiculous to even compare.

So here I sit.  2 am and feeling so blessed to have a job that was not that hard this weekend.  I had several patients who made me laugh out loud and coworkers whom I love. 

I have a beautiful daughter who is so smart and so adorably quirky and who makes me laugh constantly. 

And I have a man whom I have loved since I was 16.  Who told me he loved me after 3 weeks of dating and who talked about marriage after a mere 3 months of dating.  Who cried with me as I walked down the aisle to marry him and said a happy "Oh My!" when I told him I was pregnant.  Who thanks me almost daily for raising our daughter and cooking him a wonderful dinner.  And who rubs my back in the morning before he gets out of bed. 

I love you Lillian Grace and David Christopher. 
You are what is important.

Browned Butter Brownies-what every drunk nerd needs :)

Last weekend, my husband and his good friend from college went over to a co-worker's house to hang out and play Axis and Allies for 7 hours.  Yes...7...hours...

Anyways, I offered to make some treats for them to take since they would be fed dinner at the party.  I found the recipe for browned butter brownies originally from Bon Appetit magazine, circa Feb. 2011.  I had made these once before and swooned over the smell of browned butter that wafted throughout my house.  Hear that, Scentsy?  Make THAT happen.

Here's the recipe if you, too, want to have a glorious smell in your house:

Browned Butter Brownies

Ingredients:
-10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces
-1 1/4 cups sugar
-3/4 cup cocoa powder
-1 tsp (or just pour a bunch in, like me) vanilla extract
-2 large eggs
-1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
-1 cup lightly chopped nuts (I used candied pecans)
-2 tsp water
1/4 tsp sea salt (or just kosher salt) for batter, another 1/4 tsp to sprinkle on top before baking

How to make 'um:

1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Line 8x8 pan with foil and spray with cooking spray.

2) Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat until butter stops foaming and browned bits form at the bottom of the pan...stirring often, about 5 minutes.
                                  How to Brown Butter 

3) Remove from heat; immediately add sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, 1/4 tsp sea salt, and water; stir to blend.

4) Let cool 5 minutes.

5) Add eggs to mixture 1 at a time, beating by hand until thick and shiny.

6) Add flour to mixture and beat vigorously by hand 60 strokes.  (Yes, very specific.  This is why I typically hate baking)

7) Stir in nuts and pour batter into pan.  Sprinkle remaining 1/4 tsp sea salt over the top.

8) Bake at 325 degrees until toothpick comes out clean--25-30 minutes.

Recipe found at: cocoa-brownies-with-browned-butter-and-walnuts

**So there you have it.  Deliciousness in a pan.  Hideki and his friends gobbled them up pretty quickly, had a few beers and apparently texted me at 1 am to bring more.  Uh, good thing I was asleep guys, or I would have been saying a big "Hell to the No!"

***Disclaimer:  I have nothing against nerds.  Seeing as how I compared my daughter to a Lord of the Rings character in the last post, I think I fall firmly into the "nerd" category myself.  :)



Bon Appetit! (said in my best Julia Child voice)

"What an excellent day for an exorcism"

Ever have a day when your child is doing their best Linda Blair impression?

Not the spewing of green vomit like my husband thought, but the full-on demon possession complete with change in personality and kicking/screaming fits??  I'm not talking about simple little tantrums.  I'm talking about red-faced breath holding until the scream of a thousand ring wraiths hits your ears and possibly deafens you.

No, I wasn't about to link up the Exorcist clips here.  That movie freaks me the hell out.  I should make a video of Gaga one day and compare to the above.  Sigh.

It always seems like children have the uncanny ability to act their worst when you are busy preparing for visitors / getting ready for work / inviting the President over for dinner / defusing a bomb because Bruce Willis was busy that day...Maybe it's because we're not paying the same amount of attention to them or maybe they can sense your anxiety and get stressed out themselves.  I try my best to be calm because I don't want her to have a bad day either, but sometimes enough is enough!

Mmm...M&M's...now I'm better.

"You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only.....three"

My little girl loves to dance.  It started before age 2 with an obsession with Lady Gaga and has expanded to include Katy Perry, Pink, Cee Lo Green and under her daddy's influence, Michael Jackson.

Now, Hideki and I certainly didn't grow up listening to such controversial lyrics.  I listened to a lot of 50's-70's bubblegum/easy listening/Carpenter's type things and quite honestly, still enjoy OCCASIONALLY hearing those songs.  Ha, especially Bread's "I want to make it with you" because my mom tries to convince me it's innocent!  Uh huh, sure.

Hideki listened to 70's hippie rock like Crosby, Stills and Nash, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Kansas.  Actually, now that I think about it....his favorite song when he was 2 was Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls," so I think we found the culprit.

So when our daughter is listening to Cee Lo Green's "Forget You" (the edited version, of course), we cringed when she started repeating the lyrics.  Until we heard this:

"Oh, she's a gold deer, oh yeah, don't ya know, dear?"

Thank god her sweet little mind changed those lyrics because I just KNOW she would be marching around the church nursery screaming them at the top of her lungs every Sunday.  Oh, and telling our pastor about them.  Except she doesn't always pronounce the "th" in his name, so we often hear her calling him "Pastor Naked."  Oh, the horror.

So I would like to show you a video of Little Gaga dancing.  And point out that she dressed herself....and that we NEVER let her watch the music videos of the songs she likes.  And we don't even have cable, so she's not getting her dance moves from somewhere else.  This is all from her little mind. 
Enjoy.

This one's for you, Hideki...

Ooh, look!  Another mommy blogger who talks about food and home life?  She'll need a scandal if she wants to make it popular!

Alright, I'm a 29 yr old stay at home (mostly) mom in the Land of Oz with one 3 yr old child and don't plan on having another one for 2 yrs.

And I sometimes wish I could add a few Depakote sprinkles to her Cheerios...

Talk amongst yourselves.

Anyways...this will mostly be for friends and family for updates on my Little Gaga and a way for me to express myself without using quite as many curse words and chocolate bars.  I may post recipes I've made, talk about our organic vegetable garden, or simply talk about this kooky Hebrew-speaking child I created.

"What do you want to do today, Gaga?"
-"Challah hana habab-ta."
"Ok, I'll take that as a 'I would like to play blocks.' "

Hope you enjoy. :)