Chocolate for breakfast

Yep, we had chocolate for breakfast this morning and I am completely guilt free! Ok, so it wasn't just straight chocolate, we had banana spice muffins with mini chocolate chips in them. Want to know the whole scoop on why I don't have any guilt? There was a lot of hidden nutrition in our breakfast this morning!

Secrets revealed:

Banana spice muffins:

• Made with fresh milled flour. This adds about 23 more nutrients than regular all-purpose flour.
• I used sucanat rather than white or brown sugar. The recipe called for 3/4 cup of each, so I just put in 1 1/2 cups of sucanat.
• I accidently left out the eggs. That makes them lower in cholesterol, right?

Smoothies:

• 3 handfuls of spinach
• 1 c raw milk
• about 1 cup yogurt
• handful frozen strawberries
• handful frozen pineapple
• banana
• 1-2 T raw honey

The littles had no idea they were getting so many nutrients in their tasty breakfast. They have been very adverse to just about everything besides bread and fruit. Dinner is a constant battle to just eat the tiny bit of food that I put on their plates. And veggies, let's not go there! I have been semi-desperate to get something besides sugar into their little bodies. A while ago a friend posted about green smoothies, so I started putting spinach in ours. You can't even taste it! My littles don't know what a "regular" smoothie should look like, so they don't have any trouble with green and they slurp it down. To make our smoothies a little more fun I saved the huge straws from P.anera Bread, cut two of them in half and they are the perfect size for our I.KEA smoothie cups!

Another friend recently loaned and taught me how to use her juicer. I may seem as though I am from the dark ages, but I had never heard of juicing before. So I was a little nervous. L juices only veggies for her family. Everyone drinks 1/4 cup or more each morning and then she doesn't have to stress over them not finishing their veggies later in the day. Yesterday I snuck this one in on my littles. I have to admit that I was very nervous about juicing. I didn't have a recipe to start with and I just couldn't imagine the flavors and what they would taste like together. I had the juicer sitting on my counter for over a week before I tried it, the result wasn't too bad though. The tip L gave me was "If you don't like the flavor, add another apple." OK, so here's what I did:

- 7 carrots

- 1 apple

- 3 radishes

All L gave me to go on was that she uses carrots and whatever other veggies she wants. I never eat radishes, so for some reason I thought this would be a great way to get their nutrients into my body. I couldn't taste them at all. I think I'll use more next time though since three radishes equaled about .6 radish per person. I don't think that's a serving! :) Later yesterday I found some recipes and I am really excited to try one of them tomorrow.

My plan (written in pencil) is to juice on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and to make smoothies Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. This may change to all juicing as cooler weather comes. We won't always have the smoothies with breakfast, but they are a great way to fill our bellies and have an energy boost.

Another food adventure I plan to take soon is these Lactation cookies. Have you ever heard of them? I was checking out at E.vermans on Sunday, wearing CJ in my sling, and the lady in front of me asked if I was nursing and if I'd ever heard of these cookies. I looked them up that evening and I will be picking up the ingredients the next time I am shopping. I have had to work to keep my milk supply up with the last three from about 5 months on, I'll keep you posted on if they work or not!

Homeschooling

We are just wrapping up our 9th week of homeschool pre-school so I thought I'd give you an idea of what it is looking like for us.

This year we are using S.onlight. I used their P3/4 program last year and we LOVED the books. I started last year just to start giving some structure to our day and to start initiating myself into how I would homeschool and accomplish everything else during the day. This program is very laid back. The stories are broken down into trimesters and every story has an optional activity to go along with it. As an excited first time homeschool mom, I immediately went through the books and marked each story with an orange, pink or blue piece of post-it so that I could quickly tell which trimester the story was meant for. The stories became longer and had fewer pictures as the trimesters came. C loved the stories and the handful of activities that we did.

So we have moved up to the P4/5 program for this year. C just turned 4, so we could use either program. I was looking for a little more structure and just wanted to move forward. Also, I have been debating (in my mind) since C was born when I would start him in school. Will I start him when he first turns 5 or wait until he turns 6? Will it be better for him to be 17 when he graduates or almost 19? I am still not sure about this. I can see the benefit of both. Thus, we are homeschooling and I have the flexibility to start Kindergarten work and drag it out as long as we need to or cover the material twice or whatever he needs. I am excited about being able to teach him as he is ready and move at the right pace for him. Timing for Kindergarten is the number one reason I ordered the P3/4 and P4/5 programs. I want to get a good feel for C's willingness to sit and listen to stories and answer questions about them. So far things are going great!

We started right after the 4th of July and our only "vacation" was the first full week after I came home from the hospital with CJ. My goal was to get a good schedule going and have a bit of school done before baby came so that I could take off as much time as I needed and not have to mirror up school years. So far we have completed a complete weeks worth of school each week (minus 1). We have gone into Saturday a time or two and this week we did 2adays for 2 days because of Albert being home on Monday and MOPS on Tuesday. So I guess that's an admittance of my need to work on our schedule, but here is roughly what our week looks like:

Monday and Wednesday: Bible, story books, science, activity work page and math.

Tuesday and Thursday: Bible, story books, science and activity work page. I have been going grocery shopping on Tuesdays as well. Now that CJ is here we have been enlisting the help of friends to make the shopping a bit less crazy. This can't go on forever, so I am trying to figure out how I can get it all done.

Friday: one story book, social studies, activity page and math. This is our light day. If we are going to play with friends, this is the day. If I am going to clean the house, this is the day.

Here is a V.E.R.Y. rough idea of what a typical Monday looks like:

7:00-8:00 Breakfast

8:00-9:00 dress, brush teeth, pick up rooms, unload dishwasher, start laundry or switch the loads over. If there is still time I'll squeeze in another chore, getting dressed shouldn't take us a full hour, but it's amazing how slow we move!

9:00-10:00 O plays in her room and we tackle school. She's been crawling up on her bed and taking a nap, so I make sure to wake her up at 10! My big goal here is to get math done while she is occupied, we just can't seem to focus when she's walking around.

11:00-12:00 Free play or craft time. Yesterday we finger painted but that is a whole post on it's own!

12:00-1:00 Lunch (again, this shouldn't take a full hour, but we are slow on the transition and very slow to eat)

1:00-3:00 Mandatory nap time

I am not claiming to have things down to a science, but I am really happy with how everything is going. It would probably be nice for me to work dusting, cleaning the bathrooms and scrubbing the kitchen floor in there somewhere, but I will squeeze those in on Friday mornings for now.

Labor Day

In anticipation of Labor Day, I have been calculating my hours and weight for the last few days. I wish I could say this was an original idea, but it's not. I read it somewhere last year on or around Labor Day. I love it though! So, here are my stats:

I have labored for 19.5 hours.

Delivered 30 lbs 14 oz worth of baby.

So, how about you? What are your stats for this Labor Day 2010?

C: 9 lbs Labored for 6 hours before he was born via c-section.

B: 7 lbs 2 oz Labor: 4.5 hrs

O: 7 lbs 9 oz Labor: 4.5 hrs

CJ: 7 lbs 3 oz Labor: 4.5 hrs