Teeth and Hips

When we thought he couldn't get any more teeth, Stephen is getting another tooth, his 13th. (his cuspids) He's very dentally advanced. :) And on another note, I'm going into surgery on Wednesday, February 25th at the Carrell Clinic. We're excited to get this done and over with.

At the Beach

Here's Stephen at the Beach in Florida with his putter that he carried around with him the entire weekend. He had so much fun in the sand as you can see.

Future Olympian

We are in Florida visiting my family here. I'll have more pictures when we return, but here's a preview of how much fun we are having with Stephen. We've gone to the beach, pool, playground, and Stephen loves his plastic golf clubs.

Best of Bath Time

We tried to extend bed time a little last night, so we took a long bath and got some really great shots of him being himself and playing.

On the Farm

Cousin Kate just alerted me, in the comments to my post, "Granola" to the fact that the Kirkpatricks were just way ahead of the game and already had what would have been called an organic farm in Lewisville, Texas in the '70's.  How awesome.  I just read today in the Freakonomics blog that dairy cows who are named produce more milk...Uncle Harry would be proud that his naming every living thing was actually beneficial to the farm.  Unfortunately I can't find my excellent memory book of him to provide examples of the newsletters he produced for the farm.  I would have liked to think that the cows were very happy with Uncle Harry, except I think there was one that jumped in the pool?  I'm not sure he was happy, but he was sure "free range"

Granola Muffin Recipe

(adapted, but not copied from Alton Brown of the Food Network)

2 c. rolled oats

1/4 c. wheat germ

1/3 c. finely chopped nuts of choice (I used about 1/3 c. each of walnuts and pecans)

1/3 c. total of finely chopped dried fruit (I chose prunes, apricots, and cranberries because that's what I do have on hand and I feed these to Stephen regularly)

1 T. butter

1/3 c. honey

1/4. cup packed brown sugar

2 T. maple syrup

Preheat oven to 350.  Put oats, wheat germ, and nuts on sheet pan and toast for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  While that's going on, heat the butter, honey, brown sugar, and maple syrup in a pan on medium heat until the sugar and the butter are dissolved and the sauce comes together, then turn off heat.  When toasting is done, turn oven down to 300.  Mix all the ingredients together.  Immediately spoon out in non stick muffin pans, but don't press down too much if at all.  The more you press down the crunchier (and less chewy) the resulting granola muffin will be.  Cook in the 300 degree oven for 25 minutes.  Cool in muffin tin and then pry out with fork.  Store in zip lock bag.  My result was wonderful.  I just had one for lunch. Made 8 muffins, but may make more or less depending on how much you compress the granola

Granola

I'm in the middle of reading Omnivore's Delimma, which Sean read and then gave to me. It really is a wonderful book, but it made me realize how much high frutose corn syrup was in the stuff I was feeding Stephen, mainly granola bars. Granola bars are a great convenience food for us. This evening I made granola bars, although shaped by a muffin pan so as to make them much easier to get out. They were really quite easy and turned out quite well. I could add what I wanted to them, so I added dried fruit so as to up the nutritional value. We'll see if he'll eat them. I will. As a whole, Sean and I eat very healthy...I cook most of our meals and I make Sean lunch etc. We eat whole grains and the like, but we didn't acknowledge how much artificial stuff is in the stuff we do eat, like artificial sweetners. Sean is also on a kick to try to buy a side of beef from a Texas cattleman who grass feeds cattle--more natural as well as economical.