rock'm sock'm chili

Lately we've been eating a lot of rock'm sock'm chili based on a recipe from the barleyfoods website. (http://www.barleyfoods.org/) I've added some ingredients to add more flavor and some ingredients to help with milk supply. Like the lactation granola bites, the additions of brewer's yeast and flax seed can be left out, but are healthy additions even if you aren't working on your milk supply.

Rock'm Sock'm Chili

• 2 tsps olive oil



• 1 lb. lean ground meat (we usually use turkey)



• 1 cup chopped onion



• 1/2 cup pearl barley



• 1 28oz can diced tomatoes



• 1 cup water



• 2 Tbs chili powder



• 1 tsp cumin



• 1/2 tsp salt



• 1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne



• 4 Tbs brewer's yeast



• 3 Tbs milled flax seed



• 2 15oz cans of beans (recipe calls for pinto and/or red - i usually do one of black beans)



• optional garnish suggestions: cheese, sour cream, avocado

heat oil in a pot. cook the meat and onion. add everything else except the beans and garnishes. cover and cook 30 min over medium-low heat. add undrained beans (when using black beans i drain and rinse them) and cook 15-20 more minutes. serve in bowls with desired garnishes.

SUPER easy meal!

lactation granola bites

since alice was tongue tied and had a tough time removing milk and i have supply issues to begin with, i've been trying to eat lots of things to help up my supply. some of them are yummy - like this recipe - and some not so much (fennel/barley water - ew.) i was thinking about making lactation cookies, but every time i thought about the 2 cups of sugar that most recipes call for and my complete lack of self control around cookies*, i decided to try something different. this recipe was adapted from shutterbean's peanut butter granola ball recipe that became an instant favorite of mine. i think i made it the very same day she blogged about it, and have been making it for meetings and classes and such that i'm supposed to take food to. so i just added the brewer's yeast and flax seed that is in most lactation cookies and - tada!

lactation granola bites

• 1/3 cup honey / agave nectar


• 1/3 cup natural peanut butter (crunchy, please!)


• 2 Tbs. butter


• 3 Tbs. brewer's yeast (i'm going to try 4 next time)


• 3 Tbs. milled flax seed


• 1 cup oats


• 1 cup crispy rice cereal


• 1/3 cup dried fruit (mmm raisins - heaping 1/3 cup for me)

melt together the butter, honey/agave, and peanut butter on the stove or in the microwave. stir in everything else. this time dumped it all in at once - next time i might stir in the brewer's yeast and flax seed first. scoop out tablespoon fulls and put them in mini muffin papers (or use a little ice cream scoop if you have one - i wish i did!) refrigerate until they firm up a bit and then enjoy!

*i dont really have much self control around these granola bites either.. but they are at least a bit healthier!

tongue tied

so it turned out that alice (like oscar before her) was born tongue tied. i knew from birth we were having issues with latch, but when i looked at her tongue (apparently not closely enough) while we were in the hospital, it didnt have the heart shape that oscar's had when he was born. so 8 weeks later she was finally diagnosed. and this time around i knew of an excellent dr that specializes in breastfeeding medicine, so off we went! (oscar is still tongue tied - when i asked the dr in town about clipping it when oscar was a baby (because we were having so many breastfeeding issues) he scoffed at me and told me that people dont do that anymore!) here are some photos from alice's frenotomy-

here is a before

and another before picture - can you see how the tongue goes down in the center instead of lifting up?

and here you can see the frenulum

and just a quick snip snip - which takes less than a minute

and then back to nursing, which helps control any bleeding. oscar took these last 3 pictures for me

she still had to re-learn how to nurse, and STILL doesnt latch on right sometimes, but we're getting better at it every day!

alice handled it like a champ and it didnt seem to bother her. i expected there to be at least some extra grumpiness, but she maintained her normal amount of grumpiness!

the ladies at the mississippi breastfeeding medicine clinic were wonderful! i'm so glad i knew about them this time around. head on over to facebook and like their page for great breastfeeding info!

baby shower

a couple weeks before christmas, we had our christmas party/district meeting and my wonderful coworkers threw me a baby shower! when i arrived for the meeting i got locked out of the room so they could finish setting up, and i teared up when i saw all the work they put into it. it was so sweet! i know michelle must have spent a lot of time pulling it all together, she's got the biggest heart ever.

busy crafting!

here is a little craft i did for handing out at the health department yesterday. since i'm working on a handmade holiday, i've been super busy sewing, gluing, painting and crafting. unfortunately i cant show anything i've done so far because i would ruin lots of christmas surprises! so i thought i'd go ahead and share the candy cane thing and let you know that i'll have lots of things to post about on december 26th!

LLL Picnic

we had a wonderful World Breastfeeding Week Picnic this year at Maynor Creek Water Park. as with every outdoor charity event i've participated in this year, it rained (and i really thought it wouldn't!! only 20% chance of rain). but it didn't rain until near the end of the picnic!

left to right: lexi, michelle, christy holding shepard, monicah and chrimson, scotie, me and oscar, denise, melissa, patrick and kristen

top photo is me and michelle, bottom photo is me and denise. i love these LLLadies! michelle was a huge help with the picnic and denise is just so sweet and crazy!

i did some face painting - pretty much just butterflies and batmans (i totally love that chrimson wanted the batman face - coolest little girl ever - am i right?) here is patrick with a batman face and scotie with a butterfly

top photo: christy, shepard and monicah

bottom photo: aunt janie, oscar and nana

had lots of fun just hanging out and visiting - sorry i didn't get more pictures!

manly men

....or not

oscar and aaron have been getting in touch with their feminine side by carrying babies in their tummies (aaron uses the giraffe because we only have one baby - i think we'll have to get another)

and oscar was breastfeeding his baby. someday i'll have to explain to him that usually mommy breastfeeds the babies, but right now it's just too darn cute.


i'm not sure if this is still breastfeeding or not

and this is oscar using his bug grabbers to pluck daddy's eyebrows..

gold standard

had a great time at breastfeeding: the gold standard conference! i learned so much new information and had tons and tons of fun! here we are playing in new orleans:


now i'm in high gear to get everything ready for the world breastfeeding week picnic! one of our fundraisers is a cash drawing - chances are $2 per ticket and the winner gets half of the ticket money! the other half goes to la leche league (with most of it staying in waynesboro!). if anyone wants to buy a ticket just send a check or use paypal and i'll put your name in the drawing.

Retreat!

had a great time at the LLL retreat this weekend! met some nice ladies and had lots of fun!

view from the room


a boat parade!

oh my! have you seen my desk?!

i was originally going to post this picture to show you how busy i've been.. but really it just shows how messy i've been!

my wall is being taken over by post it notes. oh! but look at that HUGE stack of books! that is the beginning of my la leche league library! the lovely ladies at the hattiesburg la leche league gave me all their older books. now i just have to become a leader and get a group going in waynesboro....

shirt design

kristen and i stopped at cato's last week and picked out shirts to iron a design on and wear for our breastfeeding classes. we got caught up in the fun of shopping and i didnt keep in mind that i was going to have to design something to iron on these shirts (in a pretty pumpkin color)...

this is what i've come up with. i'm hoping it will look alright on the shirts, but i'm scared! i've got two iron-ons and two shirts, so i've only got one shot at it.. it was fun to get out the watercolors and paint something though!

Class Invitations

(i posted this on the breastfeeding ideas blog, but robyn thought i should also post it on here)

This afternoon I finished up work on our class invitations. We are planning a special extra fun class for August and so we wanted special invitations. They're ready to be addressed, stamped and mailed.

I printed the invitations on the front and back of card stock and cut them out.

Then added a little insert with some information about this year's WBW theme. I plan to use the back of these to write notes to a few moms on. I can email a .pdf of this if anyone wants to print some for WBW, there are four per page (just let me know if you want color or black and white).

Overlapped the flaps and sealed with "Breastfeeding does a world of good" stickers from noodle soup!

I think it would be fun to have a game that would show moms the advantages of breastfeeding during emergency situations (especially hurricanes), but I haven't come up with any specifics yet. Any ideas anyone?

baby blog

kristen and i were talking about how to share ideas with other people in our district and she suggested doing a blog.. of course i was all over that and had one started two minutes later! we're hoping that everyone from our district will become authors and contribute to the blog. so far, it's just me.. so if you want to see some work things i've been doing, head on over!

apron making

tonight i finished up an apron i'd been working on.. it turned out pretty good, but right as i was finishing it i remembered i wanted to make straps that criss cross in the back instead of having the loop around the neck.

it can be reversible.. the backside is a patchwork of whatever i could find in my stash. i saw they still had lots of that fabric on the sale table at walmart, so i might get more and try again. there is a la leche league picnic on august 1st and they're looking for things to sell in a silent auction... i was thinking about just donating this. i'm not sure how much they could get for it.. maybe $15?

breastfeeding classes

i finally remembered to take my camera to one of our breastfeeding classes...

here is kristen (wayne county's lactation specialist) with our snacks. i made a batch of boobie cupcakes. i think we need to start serving healthier snacks at our classes.. i think maybe i'll make muffins next time... any suggestions for healthy goodies?

and here are the tables set up and kristen with aiden. we found aiden at walmart in a mangled box with the bottle ripped out of the packaging. since we didn't want the bottle anyway, kristen asked if we could get a discount on him and i bought him for $8. i made him a new outfit. now that i'm thinking about it, it'd be nice to have a baby doll for each person to use so we could do the positions together...

i like this table setup.. we can fit 9 people (plus us) at the tables and it's informal and good for group discussion. for our game at this class we had a box with all sorts of different things in it. we passed the box around and each person would pull something out and tell how they thought it related to breastfeeding. (such as: play money = saves money, syringe = breastmilk provides baby's 1st immunization against disease, garbage bag = breastfeeding leaves a cleaner environment.) it was lots of fun and they came up with some really good answers that i hadn't even thought of.

since world breastfeeding week is in august and our next class is in august, i'm trying to come up with some extra fun ideas for that class. we usually give a tshirt as a prize for our game, so i ordered this one.

something for skylar

my favorite client had her baby 10 weeks early and i wanted to do something to help out, so i made him a little preemie kimono using this pattern from care wear. it has velcro on the sleeves and shoulders to make it easier to put on with tubes and IVs and such in the way. there's an owl for her and an owl for her husband so that they can watch skylar even when they have to be away from him.

she also likes to write things down a lot, so i got a little notebook and added some cuteness to it.

and a little envelope to put little things in. i also put in the patriotic booties i made awhile ago and some stickers and such from noodle soup.

breastfeeding: the gold standard

a little bit about the gold standard conference i attended last wednesday thru friday

the two main speakers were dr jack newman and catherine watson genna. they covered a ton of information and were both great speakers.. (there were other speakers as well...) if i didn't miss oscar and jeremy so much i would have gladly stayed for a month. i'm already excited to go back next year!

kristen and i stopped at an a&w/long john silvers for lunch on the way to the conference. i got a pirate hat for oscar and some root beer for me!

jeremy hid a few love-post-its in my luggage.. this one was wrapped around my toothbrush.

out for dinner at someplace i can't remember the name of.. clockwise: sherry (our district coordinator), peggy, katrina, michele, cherie, denise, melissa, melissa's sons (i just blanked on their names, but my booby cupcakes had them blushing at the christmas party!), sheree, kristen, my empty seat, and lori (who was my peer counselor while i breastfed oscar!). we almost had the whole district, we were just missing christy, sirlene, cindy and anglia.

oscar stayed up late to greet me and get his pirate hat souvenir!

things on my to do list

since i had the week off of babysitting, i made a list of things i wanted to try to get done. on my list i had 3+ pairs of booties, and i got them done....

the two pairs of girl booties got wrapped up in tissue paper and mailed to acouple of my breastfeeding moms. i didnt want to put ribbon on them when i wrapped them because it would get smashed, so i went here and downloaded some scrapbook border that matched my tissue paper. i printed it and wrapped it around as ribbon, but forgot to take a picture.

i also had a lot of things to get done for our april 20th breastfeeding class.. here are some questionnaire's that we give out at the end of the class... and my little perforator tool.. it is so fun to perforate things.. i wish i had more things that needed perforations, but i dont...

also on the list was bubble blowing with oscar.. i wish i had taken the camera, but here he is in his fire fighter hat instead...

success!

the breastfeeding class was wonderful! we were worried there would be no people, and then we were also worried there would be more people than we'd prepared for.. we had 5 (which was perfect). we played breastfeeding bingo and gave away the i heart breastmilk tshirt. we munched on cheese ball, muffins and cookies. we sipped pineapple punch. we gave out questionnaires for them to fill out so that we would know how we did and got wonderful responses. i feel like i helped people and that was why i wanted the job in the first place. now i'm trying to talk kristen into adding another hour after the class to have a support group and invite breastfeeding mom's to come chit chat. maybe if we had done that i wouldn't have a billion cookies and muffins left...

i forgot to take my camera with me - boo! so the only picture i have is of the muffins. i bought a mini muffin pan, because mini muffins are just so darn cute.

i've got mail

last week i ordered a few things from noodle soup and they showed up at my door today! now i've got stickers, buttons and a few magnets that i can give to my favorite breastfeeding clients. the tshirt is going to be a prize at our breastfeeding class on the 16th. we'll be handing out folders with information in them, and one will have this cute little shirt in it.