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.

Aveda Institue - LivingSocial Deal

I love going to the Aveda Institue. Facials, pedicures, it's wonderful. Especially pedicures because you get to keep the nail polish, which is OPI.

Check out today's Living Social Deal to get a $60 voucher for $30!

How I came to love $22 lip balm

$22.50 is an extreme amount to pay for lip balm. I realize this. But Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment is more than lip balm. This lip balm is glorious stuff. It's super smooth and has a fantastic scent. I sort of want to eat it. Which is not at all healthy and sort of pica like.

But if you don't want to pay $22.50 for lip balm (and no one in my income bracket does or can) sign-up to be a beauty insider with Sephora. It doesn't cost anything. It's more of a points/freebie tracking system. The last couple of years they've had really great birthday gifts. Last year it was Happy Birthday shower gel from Philosophy and this year's birthday gift (drum roll please ...) is a duo of Fresh Sugar Lip Balms - clear and rose.

If anyone has an extra $22.50 burning a hole in their pocket and wants to buy me something, look no further :)

Lemon Tree Photography

These are a few of Lucan's 10 month pictures that were taken by Cristi of Lemon Tree Photography. This is the first time since our wedding that we've had professional pictures taken by someone other than one of our friends. Last Mother's Day I won a gift card from Lemon Tree and I figured it was time to get it used. You can tell that Cristi loves what she is doing and is a total pro. She made us feel right at ease and it was a really fun shoot. She definitely has a gift! We did a combo location, we started out at her in-home studio in Des Moines and then we finished up at Water Works park. Lu did pretty well, despite having a double ear infection and being totally distracted by the cars and bikers at the park.

For more pictures from the shoot, click on to Lemon Tree's website!

Lucan: 10 month update, almost a month late

Lance, the husband, who likes to say that blogging isn't the best use of my time, told me that my blog sucks because it's been so long since I've posted. SO SORRY LANCE. :)

Month 10 has been one of the most challenging months to date. Not because Lucan has suddenly started getting mouthy or turned into a kung-fu ninja, but because he has been sick. I know that it sounds trite to be complaining about such infantile things like ear infections and colds, but they have kicked our butts in this household.

Around the end of March, we noticed one night that Lucan was coughing some. Not a lot, but any coughing from Lucan is a sign of concern. At the beginning I wasn't too worried, I figured it was just a cold. No biggie, all kiddos get colds. But then my spidey-mom sense kicked in and I started wondering if Lu had an ear infection. I didn't really want to take him to the doctor or have him go back on antibiotics. I probably waited too long, but with Lucan it is hard to know when he's sick enough to go to the doctor. He typically doesn't have nighttime sleep issues, run a temp, or get overly crabby when he is sick. So I held off taking him in. Then by the time he did go in, Lu had a full blown double ear infection. Round one of antibiotics. 10 days late and 1 visit to the chiropractor too, still no signs of improvement. Lu was still coughing, periodically throwing up and still tugging on his ears. And OMG my sweet, easy going child turned into the most high strung crabby version of my child. Cue round two of antibiotics. Still no real signs of improvement and he was still coughing quite a bit. Second chiropractic visit and another trip to the pediatrician. Ears are "better" but Lu was still coughing and throwing up. So the ped put him on predisone - a steroid that has a tendency to make babies edgy and crabby. Just great. We did the full five days of predisone and thought he was doing better. But then he spiked a temp again (and was still coughing), so Lance took him back to the doctor. They said that his ears looked good ... No more meds. But Lu is still coughing and the other day spiked another temp and threw up all over himself mid-day. I haven't taken him back to the ped, but we are going to the chiropractor one more time. We'll see. Lu lu, feel better.

That being said, illness and crabbiness aside, Lucan has made some progress this last month!

• Crawling! Lucan started army crawling mid-March. He has been in hot pursuit of Fire ever since :) L doesn't really get up on his knees and crawl, which I would think would be easier than pulling himself around by his arms.
• With the start of crawing, we finally put up a baby gate. With much nashing of the teeth, we put up a gate that installs right into the wall. Oh, and the nashing of the teeth- that was Lance. My friend Jessica pretty much laid down the law one day when we were babysitting her daughter and told Lance that we had to put a permanent one in, not just a pressure gate. Apparently the information coming from a disinterested third party parent, had more of an impact than me. Whateve.
• Waving! This is recent, just in the last week has Lucan starting waving with his right hand. It's pretty adorable.
• Being sick, Lucan hasn't really put on much weight. In fact, I'm a little concerned he might have lost some.
• Total teeth count: 4 on top, 2 on the bottom.
• No movement on the sippy cup front. Lu is pretty stubborn about his beverages. I tried to give him Pedilite when he was sick and he would have none of it. Not even out of a bottle. I wonder where he gets his stubbornness ... probably Lance.
• We are still nursing. It really seems to soothe and settle him.
• At the end of the month, Lucan got his third haircut. Man, this kid has hair!
• One of L's favorite games is to remove everything from outlets. Nightlights, air fresheners, cords ... You name it, Lucan will remove it.
• Second favorite game: playing with the spiral spring door stoppers. I remember liking these too. But my parents wouldn't let me play with these. But I let Lu, I'm not really seeing the harm in it.
• Going to the doctor's office so much, L also discovered his love for shredding the tissue paper on the exam room table. I've often found myself being embarrassed about the mess Lucan makes of the tissue paper. But don't worry, I always clean it up. I'm not one of those parents :)
• His favorite toy are the stackable rings. It's an oldie, but a goodie.
• When he was sick, we went on a lot of walks. Distractions helped Mr. Crabby Pants. Except for the time L fell asleep in his stroller and then woke up when I was resting on a park bench (it was an hour and a half walk, I got tired!). L seemed to be of the opinion that I had tricked him into napping and was ticked at this.
• Ugh. Lucan has started intermittently grinding his teeth. It's a horrid noise. Absolutely horrid.
• We've taken a break on introducing new and table foods. With so much vomiting and crabbiness, it seemed to be the best idea.
• During his sick period, we had some issues with separation anxiety. Meaning, if we set him down and walked into the kitchen, Lucan would freak out and start crying hysterically. Fortunately, I think the worst of it has passed.
• We started putting a blanket in Lucan's crib with him. He adores his blanket. Lucan's face just lights up when I spread it over him.
• Lucan has also discovered that he can make noises with his lips. Lots of fun watching him motor boat about.
• Lu also loves playing with the cords on his blinds. I know, not safe.
• We had 9/10 month professional pictures done at the end of March. They are pretty much awesome. But then again, I'm totally biased that my son is the most ADORABLE baby ever.

And in other news, I started a new job at the beginning of the month. Same company, different department. The major bonus has been my new 30 hour work week. One day a week I stay home with Lucan and we chill together. I'm looking forward to when he's healthy and back to his old cheerful self!

Did someone say I was crabby? I don't believe it!

Reach for the stars outlaw!

I am solemn and serious. I am giving you all sorts of model face. I'm America's Next Top Baby Model - male edition