Saturday, March 2, 2013

Banana "Pancakes"

Do you ever feel like you spend too much time pinning great ideas on Pinterest...and never getting around to doing them? I do.
So I was super proud of myself for finally trying something...thanks to one of my MOPS friends.
And just because I felt like it, I took pictures of each step, so I could write my own tutorial (so many bloggers do such cool tutorials, so this is my feeble attempt to mimic them ;))...
Okay, this is a super easy, pretty healthy (especially for kids!) recipe. It only requires bananas, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Start with 1 or more banana (over ripe ones are great!). Stick them in a ziplock bag.

Mash the bananas with a rolling pin.

Add eggs in a 2:1 ratio (2 eggs for each banana). Add cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla to taste.

Mush it all up, then clip off a tiny corner of the bag.

Preheat a griddle or a skillet, and grease with nonstick spray or butter. Carefully squirt small globs of "batter" onto the cook surface. When they get all bubbly, flip.
 Whala! Nutritious breakfast that's pretty tasty and fairly easy. Try it and let me know what you think!

February Catch-Up!

Besides sleep training, February has been full of other fun stuff, too! (I just can't believe it's March already... in spite of the weather we're having down here in So Cal making it feel like summer already!)

Jadon's acrobatic skills continue to improve. I really need to enroll him in our local gymnastics program...but we have yet to have 6 weeks in a row that would work out. My next goal is in May. Until then, he continues to find plenty of practice on his trampoline (still don't have a good picture of that)...and other apparatus in our house:

Jadon's imagination is also growing in leaps and bounds, which I love. He loves the Toy Story trilogy, and I think the creative Andy is starting to rub off on him. It isn't the tea parties and orphanages that I remember playing as a little kid, but it is still so cute to play with him as we fight dragons and sharks and "mean fish"! Oh, and Jadon likes to go through the nighttime routine with me in his bed, where he asks me if I want to cuddle with monkeys and then warns me, "Don't get out of bed or I lock the door!" (Hey, we never really locked it...we just told him we would...) This afternoon, as he was closing the door, I said I was lonely, and he told me, "Jesus in your heart." Awww! I'm glad that part sunk in, too! :) 
One of Jadon's favorite imagination stations is our queen bed. Most mornings start off with some sort of battle, usually with Jim leading the way. I love my boys!
For Valentines' Day, I took my first crack at letting Jadon paint with "real" paints (in contrast with the Color Wonder ones that we usually use). I had some fun ideas for making valentines for his MOPS teachers and the grandparents, but Jadon very quickly decided that he much preferred to paint on the newspaper rather than the cute pink paper. Oh well. I think his creativity ended up better than mine!
 

 We have been getting a TON of use out of our 3-month Legoland passes (which expire in a week...sad day!). Earlier in the month, we went with our family friends, the Coddingtons. Jadon LOVES their 2 boys, and they are so great with him...




 We went again with my parents on Valentines' Day, and spent a bit of time at the aquarium. I think my dad was more into it than Jadon was, but he did enjoy seeing the Mr. Potato Head (filled with shrimp) dropped into the tank for the octopus feeding. (Unfortunately, the octopus wasn't hungry that morning...I wonder if that had anything to do with Jadon tapping the glass before we could stop him?...)
 

In addition to frequent Legoland visits, we also discovered a new place called Kidsville thanks to a great deal on Living Social. It's basically an indoor play gym/park, with lots of trampolines and gymnastics equipment and a castle/slide and rope swings and train tables and a princess playhouse with costumes and kitchen and a boys workshop with costumes and tools...and basically a ton of fun stuff to let Jadon run around on. We went with Kristen and Molly, and the kids had a blast.
(In this picture, we thought Jadon and Molly were playing so well together...until I realized that, in typical fashion, Jadon had made a gun out of the duplo blocks and was shooting Molly. She thought it was hilarious. We thought it was something we could work on later... :))

Jadon went to his first hip-hop concert when our friend Nomis performed as a fundraiser at church. All of my pictures of him dancing in the crowd turned out to dark and blurry, but he did like the beats.
I just think this is a cute picture of my boys: :) 

And finally, Jim convinced me to give Jadon a haircut. I love him with short hair, but his little curls were getting so cute!

 (Mom! No more pictures!!!)