Lance is a punk.

This is Lance's "creative" way of telling me I have too many shoes out and that they need to be put away.

Whatever Lance. You are annoying.

Rhubarb-Lemon Coffee Cake Recipe

I'm not keen on rhubarb. In fact I think that rhubarb is weird. It's a fruit, yet there's no physical "fruit"

that is produced. You eat the stalk. It's really bitter. It's kind of stringy. Yes, I can safely say that rhubarb is weird. This is the first rhubarb item I've ever made. I knew so little about this plant, that I had to call my mom to ask her how to harvest the darn stuff or even to know what to pick. (side note: I robbed this from our neighbor's yard at 9 pm with a flashlight in hand. Lance called me a creeper.) Now my mom thinks that I've turned over a new leaf (pun intended!) and has offered me her rhubarb cobbler recipe. I'm not sure that I'm ready for that- baby steps mom!

I will be honest and admit that sometimes I still have issues trying something that I think that I don't like. Such is the case with this coffee cake. My friend Noelle made this coffee cake one time for Sunday school. Lance had offered to get me some and I tried it without knowing there was rhubarb in it. It's a good thing that I made this mistake because I now know that not all rhubarb should be abhorred :) This coffee cake is especially tasty. It has a slight zing to it, which can be attributed to both the lemon and the rhubarb. But the zippyness is tempered by the crumb topping and glaze. My general rule of thumb is that coffee cake shouldn't have both a crumb topping and a glaze. Too much sugar and too many extra steps in my opinion. But since I had already had it with both, I knew that both items were inherent to the success of the cake.

So, if you have reservations about rhubarb, this is a good place to start. And if you already like rhubarb, you should try this recipe!

Rhubarb-Lemon Coffee Cake Recipe

Ingredients

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, melted
2/3 cup vanilla yogurt
2 eggs
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 cup chopped fresh or frozen rhubarb
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

STREUSEL:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons cold butter

GLAZE:
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, whisk the butter, yogurt, eggs, lemon juice and lemon peel. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

Coat a 9-in. springform pan with cooking spray and sprinkle with flour. Spread half the batter into prepared pan. Add rhubarb to within 1/2 in. of the edges. Sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg. Top with remaining batter.

For streusel, combine the flour, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl; cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over batter. Bake at 350° for 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes.

For glaze, in a small bowl combine confectioners' sugar and lemon juice. Drizzle over warm cake. Cool for 1 hour.

A "special" brown Mother's Day gift

Lucan decided to give me a very special Mother's Day gift!

Yes, that's right. My Mother's Day gift was a brown turd on my bathroom floor. This just goes to show that if you turn your back on your diaperless-child for one minute, he will poop on your floor.

Thank you dear, sweet child of mine, for if anything, instilling a sense of humor in my life.

Nap time is fun time

Lance is infinitely the more fun parent. Lu and Lance have lots of daddy-baby games they like to play - helicopter, falling through the air, peeking over the top of the stairs, hanging off the back of the couch.

Here's a sneak peek into their newest game.

This daddy baby game involves Lance crawling on his hands and knees into the nursery and then Lance popping up in front of his crib.

Surprise! Daddy's here!

Where did you come from?





Life with daddy is fun and full of surprises :)

Lucan: 11 months

Like I said previously, Lucan has hand/foot/mouth disease. It sucks. I just wanted my poor little boy to go a whole month of being perfectly healthy. Maybe next month. We've had a bad run of it though. For Easter, Lucan was really sick with a double ear infection so we didn't go back to our parents' houses. This past weekend we were supposed to go back for our cousin's first birthday party. But Lucan is contagious, so we stayed put in central Iowa. Maybe we'll be able to go back for our niece's birthday! Really though, the timing of Lucan to get a massively contagious disease couldn't be better. My regular daycare is on vacation this week, so my parents are here filling in. They get to put up with my infectious child :)

• I love that Lucan waves. Yesterday morning we were watching The Today Show and they panned the audience out in Rockefeller Center. Of course there were people waving to the cameras so Lucan waved back. It was precious. But he's really good at it and will wave to people he loves.
• In the past couple of days, Lucan has really started pulling himself up and standing. Now I fear that our EXPENSIVE tv stands in peril of being pulled down on top of himself. 
• He really needs to work on his stealth mode. When he's frantically trying to catch Fire, Lucan is quite noisy with his crawling. And shrieking :) Lucan is a pet lover.  
• Lucan has FINALLY gotten the hang of feeding himself. At least puffs. I praise and praise him and he just smiles and smiles. He knows that he's doing something pretty cool.
• When Lucan gets excited, he swings his feet wildly. Happy feet!
• I'm still making all of Lucan's food. His newest combo is a blueberry/peach/strawberry fruit combo. I mix about 2 ounces of fruit with some vanilla yogurt.
• We've been giving Lucan probiotics daily. It really helps his digestive tract.
• OMG. Lucan figured out how to open the fridge. Do they make fridge stoppers for babies?
• When Lance brought Lu in to get checked out for hand/foot/mouth, the pediatrician said that Lucan will be getting his 12 month molars in any day. More teeth ... Yay. We are sitting at 6 presently - 4 on top and 2 on bottom.
• Lucan really enjoys knocking over towers. Anything higher than 3 blocks, needs to be toppled.  All boy, this one.
• When we go out for walks, Lucan likes to put his feet up on the stroller. It's like he's kicking back and relaxing.
• Shredding. Everything paper related needs to be ripped into tiny pieces. Yay for mommy.
• Still having slight problems with separation anxiety. For the most part, I can walk out of a room and leave Lucan on his own. But he has his flip out moments where his parents are the most precious people in the entire world. On well, I suppose that's not a bad thing :)

All smiles at 11 months.

Hi! Are we done yet?

Heck yes, I love Des Moines! (This one is for you Rae Rae!)

Roaw! I'm the Easter bunny!

Number of days without injury: 0

I'm beginning to feel like one of those signs they hang at factories showing how long it's been since someone got hurt. Except my count is number of months we've went without having to take Lucan out of daycare. Which is ZERO. The last two months its been ear infections and colds and May is ushering in Hand/Foot/Mouth disease! Yay! We just want our little guy to be healthy. His poor immune system has been through the ringer in the past couple of months.
So rather than leave you with uber disturbing google image searches of hand/foot/mouth, I will post two super cute pictures of Lucan and one of Lance and I two years ago in Oregon. I do not suggest googling hand/foot/mouth disease images while eating. Poor choice Kara, poor choice.