From our family to yours, we wish you a very blessed Christmas. I hope you spend yours with the ones you love and all of us mommas are able to focus on making memories- loud and imperfect ones! 😉
See you next week!
Before Thanksgiving, our PTA put on a big ‘Ladies Night Bingo’ event. Tables and tables of moms came with snacks and drinks to play lots of rounds of bingo and win fun prizes. The grand prize for the last game of blackout bingo was $250! I have never won bingo in my life (and that streak still stands!) but I had a great time catching up with other moms at my table in Eli’s preschool class. One of the mamas brought this amazing Caramel Cinnamon Chex mix which really might have been the best part of the night. I had to consciously keep stopping myself from grabbing more.
I begged her for the recipe for the chex mix and decided to make it a little more festive for the this time of year with caramel holiday m&ms and chocolate dipped ‘Santa hats’. This is the perfect treat to bring to holiday get togethers or to make for your family to enjoy with a cozy Christmas movie! I made this for my Advent small group study last week and went home with a completely empty bowl. 😉
It’s easy enough to make on a weeknight and my kids loved helping mix the Chex mix together and dipping the Santa hats!
Make this soon! It’s seriously yummy.
You need:
9 cups of Chex cereal
1 cup of packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup light corn syrup (spray the measuring cup with cooking spray before you put in the corn syrup so it doesn’t get stuck!)
1 cup of sugar
3 tsp. of cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Measure cereal into a large bowl. Over medium heat, heat brown sugar, butter and corn syrup until the mixture comes to a boil. Let it boil for one minute while stirring constantly, then remove from heat. Add to the bowl of cereal and gently mix well until the cereal is coated.
Combine sugar and cinnamon. Pour half of it over the cereal and mix well.
Pour the cereal onto a greased cookie sheet and sprinkle the rest of the sugar/cinnamon on top. Bake for 5 mins then flip and bake for another 3. Remove from the oven and let cool. Then break apart and mix with the rest of the ingredients!
You need:
Bugels
Wilton red candy melts (OR White chocolate + red GEL food coloring)
mini marshmallows
Melt the candy/chocolate. Dip 25-30 bugels with a fork into your chocolate and place on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper or parchment paper. (It would not be a problem if more bugels than this were made. 😉 This was everyone’s favorite part of the mix!)
Place bugels in the fridge for 10 mins to let set. Once set, remelt the chocolate if necessary and dip just the tops of the bugels into the chocolate. Place a mini marshmallow on the end. Let dry!
Mix together Caramel Cinnamon Chex Mix, a 10 oz bag of holiday caramel m&ms and your Santa hats! Store in an airtight container until ready to serve.
You better pull some out for your family because if you take this anywhere, I bet you come home with an empty bowl too!
I’m sharing a big piece of my heart today that I hope many mommas can relate to.
From the moment we found out we were expecting our sweet second child, Eli has turned what I thought I knew about motherhood completely upside down. We found out I was pregnant with Eli when first baby was just over a year old. Right when things were starting to get a little easier and I felt like I had my life under control again. 😉 While Caleb was born two weeks early, Eli arrived in his own time. Three days after his due date, two days after Christmas. My doctor was so sure that he would be early, that I bought him Christmas outfits that were never worn. I didn’t know it then, but that initial stubborn streak was our first clue to what our sweet boy had in store for us.
When I worried about loving a second child the way I loved my first, Eli changed that the moment I laid eyes on him. When I worried about balancing a career and two very young children at home, my maternity leave with Eli brought me such immense joy that I knew my career had taken a backseat and for the first time, I was perfectly okay with that. When I worried about how Caleb would feel about another tiny human coming into our family, Eli made it impossible for us all not to completely fall in love with him and forget what life was like before.
My sweet go with the flow baby, slowly grew into a very opinionated, affectionate, and strong-willed toddler. Eli showed us (and our pediatrician) that he absolutely could meet milestones at the traditional times, however he wouldn’t until he decided he was ready to.
I attempted to parent my second child the same way that I parented my first. I struggled to find a way to encourage him to do things like I thought he should. I heard so much talk about a ‘strong willed child’ but assured myself that was not what we were dealing with. That term sounded so negative and my sweet boy was anything but. At some point I reached such a level of frustration that I wasn’t getting through to him that I read article after article about how to parent a ‘strong willed child’. I thought about him and worried about him all the time.
At a Church picnic one day, I was talking to a fellow mama of four born close together and we were commiserating over our ‘difficult child’. The one we struggle with and stay up late at night worrying about. She said that she thought she and her child butted heads often because they are so much alike. I realized then that I think the reason I struggle sometimes with being the mother Eli needs is because we are so different. Caleb and I are so much the same that I understand his feelings, his disappointments and what he needs from me. Eli thinks and feels differently than I do and I don’t innately know how to relate to him.
He’s stubborn like his Daddy. He is enthusiastic about everything and finds great joy in the tiny things. He loves SO fiercely. He is so independent that he scares me and I think his biggest wish in the world is that he would wake up tomorrow the same age as his older brother. He acts and speaks without thinking and goes a million miles an hour at all times. He’s joyful and loud and leaves a trail of toys and goldfish wherever he goes. He jumps into new things without a second thought or worry about the unknown. In other words, he is NOTHING like me.
I finally realized (in an Oprah-type lightbulb moment) that it wasn’t him that needed to change – it was me. He’s not only nothing like me, he is nothing like his big brother. He’s uniquely Eli. As it should be! From that moment on, I tried to try to be the mother that Eli needed and I stepped back and let him be who he is. And you know what? I don’t think it changed him but it absolutely changed me.
Eli has taught me to to let go. That’s it’s okay to lose control in every sense of the phrase – from dancing crazy in the kitchen after dinner and letting those dirty dishes sit to not needing to micromanage every piece of our lives. That you need to pick your battles and trust God that you are picking the right ones to let slide and the right ones to fight. That life doesn’t need to be so serious and moments of pure unfiltered joy should be experienced daily. That sometimes you just need to jump and experience and enjoy – and not think so darn much about it all the time.
It took me awhile to realize that my job as his mother wasn’t to try to change him to fit the mold. Yes there are things I have to put my foot down on. We have to wear pants when we leave the house (we just do!), his feet can in fact walk and not run at times, there are times we can be loud and crazy and there are times we need to slow down and listen, AND one cannot sustain themselves on goldfish and blueberries alone. My job as his mother is to encourage and nurture and accept the parts that don’t fit the mold. And I started to be excited that he doesn’t fit, because that is Eli. The things he will do in his life will be amazing and THAT is something I’m sure of.
I will always love him unconditionally but I’m also learning to love him for who he is right now not who I think he should be. He has the biggest smile that lights up his whole face. He is the first one (and sometimes only one) of my children to notice when I’ve done my hair or put on a real shirt and makes sure to tell me I’m beautiful every. single. time. He is full of such joy that his enthusiasm can break through your hardest day.
Hardly ever do we get to really see God’s whole plan for us or can even attempt to understand it. He knew what our family needed when we didn’t and I think Eli was the one I most NEEDED. For me to become the mother He knew I could be. Each of my four children need different things from me and I learn different things from each of them. But my beautiful, strong willed, sweet, ‘most difficult’ child? Eli has taught me the most.
What has been the most valuable lesson that your children have taught you?
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I’m here to share one of our favorite quick dinner recipes. We love any kind of quesadillas in our house but this kind is one of our favorites. My kids love pretty much anything they can dip in ketchup so this one is always a winner with them!
Cheeseburger Quesadillas
Makes 6 quesadillas
We usually serve ours with a big salad and/or a veggie. My kindergartner always requests leftovers in his lunch so they are good warmed up as leftovers or packed cold.
I am a hard core donut lover. A trait which I have lovingly passed on to my boys. We have a tiny little local place that makes the best donuts in all the land but I will say I have never met a donut I didn’t like. As much as I wish I could have one every morning, it is definitely not budget or health friendly to do that! I received these donut pans for my birthday a couple years ago and they are amazing. They may taste different than the traditional kind but my boys love them and are just as excited for any kind of donuts!
These donuts have all the moist goodness of banana muffins in donut form with a cream cheese frosting. They have to bake and then cool completely before being dipped in the frosting so for us they are more of a weekend breakfast treat rather than adding to the craziness of our weekday mornings.
Baked Banana Donuts with cream cheese frosting
Makes 12 donuts in standard donut pans
For the frosting:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Add the vinegar to your 1/4 cup milk and set aside. Â Cream your butter and sugar together. Add in your egg and mix. Add your salt, baking soda, flour and milk mixture. Mix thoroughly. Add in your bananas. (If you use a hand or stand mixer to make the donuts, I usually break the bananas in half and let the mixer do the mashing. If you are mixing by hand, mash your bananas before you add them in.)
Add batter to a cake decorating bag or a ziploc bag with corner cut off to fill the donut pans easily. The donuts don’t rise very much so fill the donut forms almost to the top. Bake for 15 minutes or until just golden brown. Dump onto a cooling rack after about 10 minutes and let cool completely.
Dip tops into frosting, let set for a moment and enjoy! Keep any leftover donuts in the fridge.
As you may have noticed Loving Our Messy got a brand new look and website! Excuse the delay as I get all the old posts and links moved over from Blogger!
Thanks for stopping by!
My twins are the third and fourth babies I have nursed, so I have had a lot of experience with different nursing pillows. When they say the OneZ pillow is unlike anything else on the market, they are totally right. When Josh and I took a breastfeeding class before our first son was born, they stressed the importance of comfort for the nursing mother for proper latch and also relaxation hormones that help milk production. I used a boppy with my first two babies but always felt like I had to arch my back forward to comfortably feed my baby. After awhile, my back started hurting all the time from sitting that way! I love snuggling my babies after they eat and was having to constantly readjust trying to stay comfortable. The back support built into the OneZ pillow solved that problem for me.The back support puts your body in a great nursing position and it is the perfect size to rest baby and your arms on it to nurse and snuggle comfortably for as long as you want to.
I have their new waterproof fabric on mine (in the multicolored bird pattern) and I love it. My babies spit up fairly frequently so I love that I don’t have to strip the pillow every time to wash the cover!
The OneZ would also be good to comfortably bottle feed your baby or for a place for them to rest or play. Love this pillow and this company!
Finally. Finally.
Reid was able to come home yesterday after spending 10 days in the NICU. By sheer luck, my parents were up yesterday morning to watch our big boys so Josh and could actually go visit Reid together. (Our hospital was amazing and always allowed us to bring Luke with us when we visited Reid. I know that is not typical of all hospitals so we were very lucky they allowed us to do that.) During morning rounds, one of the doctors unexpectedly said that she felt like Reid was eating, breathing and maintaining his temperature well enough to go home that day as long as we brought him to our next doctors appointment for Luke on Monday so she could check them both out. Reid passed his car seat test required for NICU babies with flying colors and we were discharged to go home! It was such an amazing day.
It felt so sudden and nonchalant that they said we could take Reid home so we didn’t waste any time! We had one of our nurses snap a couple pictures, loaded them in their car seats and practically ran for the exit before anyone could change their minds.
The going home outfits I had bought them were 0-3 months and they were gigantic but I absolutely did not care. We worked hard for this moment!
We came home to some beautiful driveway art from my aunt and sister and a warm welcome by our wonderful neighbors. We brought them home on an unseasonably warm October day so we took them for their first mini walk lead by their proud big brothers of course.
Last night was our first night all home together and it went better than we expected. Obviously taking care of two babies is not easy but we managed to each get some chunks of sleep. The babies are only about 37 weeks gestation at this point so they are still pretty sleepy. We have to wake them to nurse every 2-3 hours and then they were more than ready to go back to sleep. I know this won’t last forever so we will take it while we can!
Knowing that we don’t have to run back and forth to the NICU anymore is a feeling I cannot even describe. I hope I can let a little of that stress go now and actually help my body start healing from my c-section. Josh has about a week left on his paternity leave and I am so grateful that he will be here to help get us adjusted before he has to head back to work.
Our greatest adventure begins now! Life with 4 boys 4 years and under! Wish us luck and excuse the blog silence as we settle in!
Last week we welcomed our two newest, beautiful blessings into the world.
We proudly introduce:
Luke Henry   6 lbs 6 ounces, 19.3 inches long
and
Reid Joshua   6 lbs 13 ounces, 20 inches long
Yep. That’s right. I am now the proud momma of FOUR beautiful boys. How wonderfully God has blessed us.
The boys were born at 35w5d when I went into labor and even though they were really good sized babies, they have had some complications typical of twins born prematurely.
Luke had to stay in the NICU for one additional night after I was released because he was struggling to maintain his temperature. Now he is home with us but he is having problems gaining weight which can be serious in premature babies. He is under the care of an amazing pediatrician and we are doing everything we can to keep him from being admitted back to the hospital.
Our sweet Reid is still in the NICU and having more complications than his brother. When they were born, he had trouble breathing and was immediately taken to the NICU. Thankfully, he has steadily improved and was taken off the ventilator the day after they were born. He is now working on weaning off all oxygen and learning to eat/breathe at the same time. We don’t know when he will be able to come home but we pray it is soon.
We would appreciate your prayers during this difficult time for our family. We are struggling to try to navigate this new path no one could really be prepared for! I am having a difficult recovery from an unplanned c-section while trying to balance being home with my two older boys who are searching for normalcy, one newborn at home and trying to be at the NICU as often as we possibly can with our other newborn.
We hope to all be at home together very soon and are overall so thankful for our new family of 6.
Thirty. Five. Weeks. I can’t even believe it. During one of my 8 trips to the bathroom last night (yes 8 is the real number- that is no exaggeration) I looked at the clock and saw it was just after midnight which officially meant we had made it to 35 weeks. It seems surreal.Â
In my opinion, anyone who makes it to 35 weeks (and beyond I can only imagine) carrying twins and pretends they aren’t fairly miserable is a big lying liar. I am ecstatic that I am still pregnant. I hope to continue to be for 14 more days at least. With that said, everything hurts and I can’t wait for it to be October. Like everything. All the time. This is physically the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life.
Going on walks or to the store or out to eat has become near impossible because my hips and back hurt so bad. These sweet babies are so low that I’m pretty sure I walk like a sumo wrestler. I’m still working my normal half day hours and counting down the minutes! Â The plan is to stop at 37 weeks even if these babies haven’t come yet- a week off to rest before delivering twins really doesn’t sound so terrible. Â This picture is an extremely accurate depiction of how I’m feeling and looking right now I must say.
My husband seriously continues to be amazing. Picking up all the slack around the house and with the kids without batting an eye. A few weeks ago we started binge watching White Collar on Netflix and are totally loving it. It’s so well written- fast paced and suspenseful that it’s taking my mind off all the aches and pains every night and gives me something to look forward to for making it through another day!
This weekend we finally did some last minute things to help me feel more prepared – if that is possible. We got out the new car seats, put together the double stroller, packed our hospital bags and washed the very last of the baby laundry. Seeing two car seats sitting side by side in our living room was totally crazy!
I’m pretty excited about the idea that we are past the 35 week mark which means that there is at least a decent chance of the babies coming home with us when they are born instead of needing to stay longer. Every day they stay in that chance goes up and that makes me a very happy Mommy.Â
We have a doctors appointment this week to check them and also start non-stress tests. I had a million when I was pregnant with Caleb because of the knots in his cord, but certainly never with 4 belts to measure two babies. I loved sitting and listening to his heartbeat in the comfy chairs and I’m honestly looking forward to that again.Â
Can’t wait to snuggle these monkeys!