Our favorite peanut butter balls

Originally posted April 2014

http://themessybakerblog.com/2014/01/16/peanut-butter-oat-balls

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats

1/2 cup flax seed meal

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1/4 cup honey

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Add oats, flax seed meal, and mini chocolate chips to a large bowl. Stir to combine.

Add peanut butter, honey, and vanilla extract. Using a wooden soon or rubber spatula, stir until thoroughly combined. The mixture will be very thick.

Shape the mixture into tablespoon-sized balls. Transfer the balls to an airtight container, separating each layer with wax paper. Store in the refrigerator until ready to eat.

I recommend this recipe, it's easy and my son loves it. I only use 1 cup of oats instead of 1.5 cups, and I use an entire jar of Smucker's Natural peanut butter as well as 1/2 cup of honey (instead of 1/4 cup). I like the Smucker's Natural because the oil softens up the oats a little, which helps bind them so they're not so dry.

A horrible face was the reaction when I showed my preschooler the "cookie" I made with peanut butter and chocolate chips. Normally, she loves both these ingredients but apparently they must be kept separate.

"They're not cookies. Cookies are flat and crumbly."
Do you want some sprinkles?
"No! That'll make it worse!"

Sigh.

Two Carolina stories from today

When she woke up at about 8am, which is about 30-60 minutes later than usual, she was in a very good mood. I went to change her diaper and her clothes, so to keep the good mood going I showed her one of her diapers that has a Sesame Street character on it with apples and bananas. (Yesterday, we were reading a book during dinner and the little girl said she liked Apples, and another page she said she liked Bananas. She also said she likes Cookies and Pizza and Sandwiches, but that's for another time.)

I said to her, "Look, it has apples and BANANAS!" (like it was the most exciting thing ever) And she smiles broadly. So I keep repeating "apples and BANANAS!" and she smiles or giggles. Then I say, "Apples and..." She goes, "anaNAS!"

It was very cute.

Then this morning at the park she was wandering around and more and more little babies started to arrive. (It was around the time just after younger babies wake up from their first morning nap.) She was starting to do things I normally say 'no' to -- so I knew she was starting to get a little tired. I suggested we go to the stroller for "a cookie and juice".

Like usual, she goes, "Cookk! Juze!" (cookk is for cookie)

I say we should go to the stroller to get "snack and juice" and she just runs off. She goes towards the park exit. I said again "The snack and juice is in the stroller. Let's go to the stroller." She's saying, "Juze! Juze!" as she keeps running towards the sidewalk, then takes a right turn and keeps going down the sidewalk.

Apparently she wanted to have snack and juice at home and was heading there as fast as her little running legs could carry her.

I grabbed her, got her in the stroller and headed to the store and then home with cookies and juice!

Lots of fun.

Speaking of food, we've finally gotten her the chewable calcium supplements that she needs. (The liquid one I bought last week was wrong. Sigh...) Still having trouble with milk -- broke out in a face rash last week. And I need a new toddler multivitamin. The one we have is the same as when she was an infant and it's not really all that complete. Any suggestions?

16 months old, what's good to do around here?

Today is Carolina's 16 month "birthday". Hooray!

I took her to a local playgroup in the basement of a church. We did a 'trial' today. It's 2 hours long and starts at about 9.30am. At just around 10.30am, when they just finished singing (for like 10 minutes) and just before they started snacktime, she was tired. Yawning, crying a little and walking for the exit on her own. Yes, she really was.

Snack consisted of a shot of apple juice, a sandwich creme cookie, a cheese doodle, 5-7 cheerios and 2 saltine crackers. I am not joking.

I wasn't going to let her have the cookie, the cheese doodle -- and with her being super tired, I just excused us and we went home. I kept her up for another hour with reading, and watching a little bit of tv since I didn't want another day where she falls asleep for an hour at 10.30am and then is WICKED exhausted by 6pm.

It seems that every day this week she is getting more picky about what she will eat. I know there must be new teeth coming in since she's still really gnawing on a lot of things, and sometimes doing so intensely with yelling, but I can't see any teeth just below the gums. I just go along with it.

Yesterday morning I thought I'd put my foot down and insist she eat her rice cereal with apples. Yeah. That went about as well as you'd expect. I've gone back to relenting to whatever she wants. That consists of hummus, frozen blueberries, puffy "greens" snacks and some Annie's honey crackers. She wants cereal and milk for breakfast, and yesterday was happy with a scrambled egg and a melted slice of American cheese.

Unfortunately she broke out into little pimples on her neck and back shortly after eating the egg, but, I guess, at least she ate it happily and it has stuff she needs.

I even peeled an apple, cut it in half, removed the seeds and center part and she ate it happily. It was like a teething toy AND food. Phew! At least I found something she likes in large size. She won't eat the apple cut into little pieces, but enjoys working on it large size. Ok!

I started reading Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)and I think, besides how it's reminding me of a lot of things I knew and "forgot" in helping me plan my graduate program syllabus, I should use some of it for parenting. Ha!

It's a bummer that the local, but cheap (only $9 per session/week), play group is full of a LOT of toys that are all a little dirty and a little old, and in the basement of a reformed protestant church, but the not-local, need to use 2 metrocard rides, very nice, very clean and very well-maintained play center is very expensive (about $40 per session/week). I suppose you do get what you pay for.

We will probably join the local one for rainy days and on a day of the week we normally don't have anything planned. Registration is by day of the week, and the costs are different for each day.

I should stop complaining, at least we have options. And it's better than keeping her at home and having her insist on watching Dora for an hour. AND at least she gets bored with TV after about an hour and WANTS to run around the apartment. I play hide and seek with her too.

Going to buy some crayons and large size paper. See what kind of artwork she can make at this point. So far it's just been a lot of scratching back and forth by holding the pencil upside down. It's really sweet how she does it.

She's a great dancer, and likes to play with other kids

Two things I learned about Carolina this week are:
1. She likes to dance, and has a good sense of rhythm. She prefers music with a Latin beat. Seriously. (Our first indication was a trip to Vallarta in Feb 2009 before she was born, and we were in the Cuban restaurant where they play really great music. She was kicking me like never before. She was our 'tiny dancer'.) She was rocking out to a Ricky Martin song today at the local Gymboree.

2. She likes to play with other kids. Now I knew this already but I had no idea how much now. We've just started a discount/trial month at a Gymboree on the UES (got it through groupon.com. She's in a play/movement class once a week on an afternoon and we go to the gym when they have 'open' sessions twice a week in the early morning. During today's open gym, she was so very very disappointed when we had to leave. She was playing 'catch' with an older boy by rolling the ball between them. She was very interested in playing with a 4-year-old girl who was running around, throwing herself on the mats, and jumping up and down. Carolina tried to keep up with her for a bit, then looked at me a little confused. I smiled and said "Go ahead. Keep going." And she smiled and kept trying to keep up, but she couldn't.

She climbed on everything and was seemingly very proud of herself for being so independent. I have to say, I was impressed. I try to usually keep back and let her do her own thing when I can. She almost didn't need me at all. Woo hoo!

Food, these days, is another matter. Her pickiness continues. I've been given some very helpful advice to give her what she likes and wants, instead of what I want her to eat. This has turned out to be surprisingly healthy, for the most part. Yesterday she ate her first (whole) navel orange, and today her first (entire) peach.

Today at lunch after her nap was pretty funny. She took a few bites of the cod I was eating, then didn't want that. I gave her a bunch of peeled grapes cut up from her snack before nap and after about 10 of those, she was done. So she was pointing to the blueberry muffins on the table, which are next to the peaches I just bought yesterday. I decided to give her a peach instead of the muffin she wanted. She cried, very loudly, with tears when I put a few small cut up pieces of peach on her high chair tray. Carried on like it was the end of her little life.

At one point she threw her head back and opened her mouth widely while wailing, and I put a piece of peach in there. She closed her mouth as she brought her head down and had no choice but to taste the peach. She stopped crying immediately, made a few contentious noises and then ate it. And grabbed the rest on the tray with gusto. She then pointed to the counter where the rest of the peach was and started to make a fuss that she wanted more. This resulted in her eating the ENTIRE peach.

The crying and carrying on is exhausting for me to listen to but, really, I'm glad we now have more food on her "approved" list, which includes:

1. blueberries
2. hummus
3. spanakopita (Greek spinach pie)
4. raspberries
5. peaches
6. grapes, green ones
7. cherry/grape tomatoes (although they frustrate her since she can't eat the skin but she loves the taste and that they are juicy in her mouth.)
8. rice crackers (the Mum Mum kind)
9. Graham crackers
10. broccoli (sometimes)
11. caesar salad dressing (not a meal but as a topping. I hate giving her this one since it's so salt/fatty so I don't unless I'm desperate.)
12. squash/zucchini (sometimes, and only with something else like spanakopita or hummus)
13. navel oranges
14. strawberries (but they seem to give her less than a handful of  little pimples on her face every time)
15. Berry flavored "fiddlesticks" (rice crackers in a stick form she can easily hold)
16. Cheerios cereal
17. Life cereal


Of course there's cake and apple/cherry/blueberry/orange juices on the list but above is what I can get her to eat. MOSTLY without fuss.

With fuss, recently, there's chicken, fish, beef. I'm working on getting eggs into the list and watching her face breakout/not since earlier in the year she loved eggs but they gave her the same thing that strawberries seemed to. I'll try it again.

And in terms of naps, she's almost solidly a 12pm-2pm girl. Sometimes takes until closer to 12.30 and sometimes only until 1.30pm but I can mostly get her to take her nap on schedule, which is nice. For me.