Recipe Thursday - Beef Stew!

So I decided I'm going to dedicate Thursdays to posting some of my Favorite recipes! If you need to find one later you can go to my "Recipes" page at the top of my blog.

Here is the best Beef Stew recipe EVER! This is from a diabetic cookbook so it is healthy.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp flour
1 lb. boneless lean beef stew meat, trimmed of all fat
2 tbsp olive oil
3 large shallots, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
3 cups beef stock - reduced sodium
1/2 cup red wine
6 carrots cut into one-inch chunks
6 medium red potatoes cut into one-inch chunks
18 small boiling onions, halved OR 1 cup chopped onions
3 large portabello mushrooms, brushed clean and cut into one-inch chunks
1 cup celery cut into one-inch chunks
1/3 cup chopped parsley

step 1: Place flour on a plate. Dredge meat in flour. In a large sauce pan, heat the oil and add the beef. Brown on all sides and then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

step 2: Add shallots to the pan and saute till soft and golden. Add salt, half the pepper, thyme and bay leaf. Saute for one minute. Return the beef to the pan and add the stock and wine. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to low. Simmer covered about 30-40 minutes.

step 3: Add the carrots, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, and celery. Cover and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until veggies are tender (about another 30 minutes). Stir in the parsley and remaining pepper. Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Wordless Wednesday 10/27

A look back at my Chenda's shenanigans! I can't believe this was just over a year ago, she looks like a little baby here! (Of course I'll be saying that in a year about her most recent pics I'm sure!)

Birthday season is beginning!!

So I always say my mom's birthday marks the start of "Birthday Season" in my family. In just about a 6 weeks period we have about 6 birthdays in just my immediate family. It's a fun time!


Chan and I decided to kick of the kids' birtday "season" by taking Chenda out on a VERY special dinner date with Mommy and Daddy. It's a few weeks early but given the amount of dinners and birthday parties that will be happening in the month we figured there's no better time. Plus it was very overdue as I'm pretty sure that she has been feeling a bit like she needed some time with just us without little sister. She does love her very much but sometimes you just need the one on one time. I knew it was time because the day our dinner was planned she just came up and sat on my lap and just started crying. I felt so bad! I try to be the best mom I can be to BOTH my kids equally, but Kali is still quite clingy to me and so I know Chenda can feel left out even when I am giving her attention, because I almost always have the baby on my hip, or attaching herself to my leg haha!





Anyway, our dinner was at Red Robin and she did SO GOOD! She didn't even try to get down from the table once! We ordred her chicken and fries and a very special birthday sprite. Then they came out and sang to her and she was a bit shy but still loved it. She even had to take her balloons to the bath with her when we got home.

I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to make my sweet little Chenda's day!!

Wordless Wednesday 10/20

Today's wordless Wednesday photo is a funny one!




Dont worry the dog cage was clean!! She actually had her locked in there but I couldn't get to my camera before she decided to let her out!

Wordless Wednesday....

So a big thing on Blogs is to do "wordless Wednesday". I will just post a picture and a caption (or no caption), the jist of it is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and therefore there is no big long post required with the photo.
*I am aware that those are words above, but I felt the need to explain**

MOMMY AND BABY

Bedtime Antics...

Ok so, night time has been a bit hairy around here lately. A lot of NON sleeping going on by both me and the kids (and daddy too most nights). Not sure what is going on, but they are each getting up several times a night, leaving me on 3 hours or less a night of sleep for a few weeks now. Needless to say I'm suuuuuuper tired!

So a friend let me borrow her book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". Aside from being the most boring book I have ever read, it does have some good tips and points. One being that overtired kids have more trouble getting to sleep and staying to sleep at night. I know Chenda is overtired. The poor thing hasn't had an afternoon nap in who knows how long and rarely goes to sleep before 10pm. Not by my choice in that I WANT her up like that, but it's a relentless fight to get her to sleep. On top of all this getting up at night, just GETTING Chenda to sleep is a fight in itself involving a lot of screaming and crying (and not just by me!! HAHA!) causing a lot of stress on everyone and probably just exadurating the issue. I always figured that she just wasn't tired and would fall asleep when she was.

I know now that I was wrong. She can't sleep because she is SO tired and her body is pumping out adrenaline and other hyper hormones in order to fight fatigue. Thus causing hyper alertness, fussiness, and higher levels of agitation (hence constant fits through the day). *This is all according to the book, but fits her like a T"...So in light of being fed up with no sleep and really not wanting to do any permanent damage to her (according to the book, these kinds of sleep habits usually develop into ADHD and insomnia as they grow), I have decided to implement a new sleep schedule.

After dinner, we will begin our night schedule with a bed time (for now for the sake of easing her into it) of 8:30-9, and wake up time of 8am (eventually I will be making bedtime 8pm and get up no sooner then 7am but no later then 8am), nap time at 1 or 2 and on and on. Of course the baby gets one extra nap in the morning around 11am which she pretty much already takes anyway.

And that puts us where we are now. Chenda is currently up in my room hollering because I am making her take a nap. I promised myself I wouldn't go in there till 3pm to check on her. Because then if she is awake she can come downstairs and we will do bed time earlier, or I will let her sleep till 4pm if she is sleeping. We'll see what happens. I'm glad the baby is easy to get down at this point!!

Growing up!

I realize that I am wayyyyy overdue for an update here. My apologies, but I figure it's OK. A lot has gone on in the last couple months, and has kept me quite busy from blogging, and really doing much of anything.

The kids are growing in leaps and bounds here. Kali is officially mobile and expect she will be walking in the next couple of months. She is already trying to walk from one thing to the other, but the balance isn't there yet so she just lets go and falls. She's really giving it some good tries though!! She is now eating mostly table foods, so I haven't made her baby food in a long time. She really doesn't like the purees much and prefers mashed soft fruits and veggies that she can pick up and eat herself. This is quite a surprise for me, since Chenda was on the purees for a long time and didn't have a lot of interest in table foods until she was slightly older.

I tell you, once you think you have parenting figured out you have another kid! They are so different but similar at the same time!!

On top of the table foods, Kali also has a taste for anything laying on the floor. I am constantly vacuuming/chasing her around digging something out of her mouth before she chokes on it. This is one of the things she is just like her big sister on. Chenda did her fair share of choking on stuff off the floor when she was a baby, and Kali is no different! So I am whipping out the vacuum about 3 times a day and sucking up everything i can.

Still a boobie monster, Kali loves to nurse. I think this is great, although at night she is waking up several times wanting to "comfort nurse" which is making me very tired. I talked to the pediatrician about it and hoping to implement some of her ideas soon. Another thing I don't like so much is TEETH!! AHHH! Well, of course I like that she has teeth but not while she is nursing and, well, you get the picture.

We are also going through some (OK major) separation anxiety with her too. Perhaps because I wasn't nursing Chenda at this age she was never really like that. Chenda would literally shut the door in my face when I dropped her off somewhere to go to work. Kali doesn't want anyone but me. Even Chan can't hold her if I am in the same room. It's definitely different and taking some getting used to since I can hardly leave the room to go to the bathroom without a little one chasing after me crying! But I do love that she wants to be around me so much and I will definitely miss it when she is OK with me not being around when she is older.


Speaking of going to the bathroom....Potty training Chenda is still underway, but getting better. She's got the #1s down but the poos are a bit more difficult. I am trying to convince her that squatting in the backyard isn't where we do that, we need to go in the potty, but it's really not sticking too well. I'm sure she'll figure it out soon though! I can't wait for the day we aren't spending money on pull ups for her!

Chenda is getting great at counting, and ABCs and all that! She can count to five in English, Khmer and Spanish and can say please, more, and *we are working on* thank you in sign language. Kali can also say "more" in sign language too. Chenda loves to play mommy to her dolls and baby sister too! Sometimes she tries to discipline her baby sister, which kind of makes me laugh because she's not doing anything to hurt her but I have to tell her no because I don't want her to think it's OK to give her sister a spank!

My babies are growing up so fast! I will try to not make it so long before my next post, but as you can tell I'm sure things are nuts around here!