Safe for your baby, safe for your sanity: The Baby Gate

You would think that by now, with our youngest approaching 2 1/2, we would have taken down most of our baby gates.

But you would be mistaken.

You see, we love our baby gates.  I wish all houses that would contain boys would come with built-in ones at every passageway, especially across all entry points into the kitchen (plus alarms on the refrigerator).

In the past, they’ve given us more than just peace of mind.  They’ve kept certain areas of the house clean, limiting the potential of clutter to a hallway or child’s room.  When our early risers are clamoring for oatmeal and wondering if I might have forgotten how they like it after I’ve made it a couple of hundred times, they can be confined to their rooms until breakfast is ready.

Today was kind of a tough day.  I haven’t been eating well dietarily, and it affects me pretty quickly – moody, tired (no, I’m not pregnant!), and I was pretty grumpy most of the morning.  As I was trying to be creative and make “egg pizzas” for lunch, the 2 year old cracked an egg on the counter and the 5 year old flipped out because I had to start over when I realized the frying pan hadn’t been washed from the night before after I had put some eggs in it.

“YOU SHOULD REMEMBER TO WASH THE PANS BEFORE YOU COOK!” he screamed.

And with that, a time-out was instilled and up went the baby gate at their doorway for all three of them after lunch.

You might think I’m mean to do that, but you know what?  All three boys are in their room right now, with a boundary that they can not cross, and they are actually playing happily now.  I threw (I mean, lovingly selected) some toys for them to play with while they were in there, and they have done well so far.

It reminded me of how important boundaries are for children, but also for moms.  I think every now and then when life feels overwhelming, I need a baby gate, not just for those times when I need to keep kids out, but when I need to dial it down a little and do less myself.  Too many choices can be exhausting, even in your own home.

Garden Update May 2013

Wow, with all of the wild swings in weather that we’ve been having in the Midwest, it’s a wonder that anything is growing!  Even though it feels like I obsessively check my garden every day sometimes to find little change that I can see, when I compare pictures taken ten days apart, I can see that growth is happening.  Here is my lasagna bed, planted with spinach and a variety of lettuces, on April 26:

And here it is today, only ten days later:

The chive blossoms are about to open.  This year I’m ready to make chive blossom vinegar when they do.  You just pick the blossoms and soak them in white wine vinegar for a few weeks, and then you have this lovely lavender vinegar.

I also have a little patch of sugar snap peas growing:

I finally got most of the back plot planted with beets, mustard greens, Fordhook Giant and rainbow Swiss chard, Dragon Tongue Bush beans, Uzbek melon, butternut squash, and Musquee de Provence Pumpkin.  I’m also trying to mulch with straw this year to keep the soil a bit softer.

We also tilled a couple of new beds and hand dug another couple.  To the west of our shed, we have a strawberry patch.  It doesn’t get sunlight until 12 pm, but the sun is so strong here in Kansas and lasts in this spot until 7 or 8 pm that I’m hoping it will be enough.  Last year’s experiment in the front planter was short-lived.  Several of the strawberry roots I purchased from Walmart never grew, and in the end, we liked vincas there better, so this year I tried Aldi strawberry roots – 15 for $2.49.  I ended up getting 35 roots out of two packages, and so far, all of them are sprouting leaves, so let’s hope the growth continues!

We also are planting some flowers from seed in plots off the back and front of the house.  It looks pretty bare right now, but I want to show it so that I have something to compare to later on in the season.

Favorite Frugal Recipe: Homemade Sunflower Seed Butter

We are now approaching almost one year since we first figured out that my son had undiagnosed food sensitivities, including wheat, cow’s milk, peanuts, almonds, oranges, and high-sugar-content anything (including even bananas!)  For awhile, I felt like I it was enough to just survive, but lately I have felt like our diet, although it is relatively clean, is also relatively boring.

One of the ways I am trying to spruce up my kids’ diet is to plan out their breakfasts, snacks, and lunches in advance.  It’s a lot easier to provide variety if you can plan for it.  But having options requires having different foods to work with.  It was much simpler back in the days of string cheese, graham crackers, Goldfish, and PB&J on whole wheat.  Sigh.

One big hit around here, though, has been sunflower seed butter, or “Sunbutter.”  For an 18 oz jar at Walmart, you can find it for a mere $6-7 – not easy on our budget at all! Thankfully, we have been blessed to be on an Azure Standard route where we can find sunflower seeds for $2/lb.  After searching on the Internet, it seemed very doable to make my own sunflower seed butter with a food processer and a little oil added in.  The extra oil is necessary because sunflower seeds have a lower fat content than peanuts or almonds, so while peanuts or almonds will break down and release their oils after a few minutes of processing, sunflower seeds won’t.

Here’s what I do to make our own sunflower seed butter for about $2 per jar:

Sunflower Seed Butter

Ingredients

2 cups of roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds (salted is fine too, just omit the additional salt)

1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp honey

2-4 Tbsp oil of choice (I like to use olive or canola)

Equipment:

Food processor

Directions:

1.  Process the sunflower seeds in the food processor for about 2-3 minutes until they look like a very crumbly sand.  They should look somewhat like this:

2.  Scrape down the sides and continue to process for another minute or two.

3.  Scrape down again, re-cover the processor, and while it is running, slowly drizzle in about 2 Tbsp. of the oil and 1 Tbsp. of honey.  At this point, it should begin to ball up a bit and liquify.  If you like your sunflower seed butter runnier, continue to add the oil bit by bit until the consistency is right.

Makes about 1 3/4 cups.

*Note:  The consistency will not be that of the kind you find in the stores, but it still works well for us as a peanut butter substitute.  We have also used it in this no-bake cookie recipe with wonderful results!

**UPDATE:  You may want to check out this video on YouTube as well.  I haven’t tried it yet, but the video shows how to make sunbutter without adding any oil – the trick is to process it for 10 minutes.  I guess I didn’t have enough patience, but will try it myself and see if it helps.