I wish it didn’t involve using so many dishes; the way I have it written, you bake the chicken in a pan, boil the pasta in a pot, and cook the pesto and tomato mixture in yet another pot. I decided to cook the frozen veggies in a strainer in the pasta water to save yet ANOTHER pot.

You could pan-saute the chicken, then add the garlic, pesto, and tomatoes to the pan with the chicken. That would save a pan and save having to turn on the oven. I might try it that way next time.

Anyway, this would be just as good without chicken, I think.

Chicken Broccoli Pasta
Serves 4

2 teaspoons canola or grapeseed oil
2 chicken breasts
salt and pepper to taste
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons pesto
2 medium tomatoes (or 1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained)
8 ounces spaghetti or linguine pasta, broken in half
1 cup frozen broccoli florets
1 cup frozen cut green beans
Parmesan cheese
Crushed red pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Spread 1 teaspoon oil in a 8″x8″ glass baking dish. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Place chicken in baking dish. Drizzle 1 teaspoon oil on top, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake 15-20 minutes, until chicken is cooked through.

Remove chicken from baking dish. Pour any oil and drippings from dish into a saucepan over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, add garlic; cook 30 seconds. Add pesto and tomatoes; cook 1 minute longer. Turn off heat.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in boiling salted water in a 2-quart saucepan, according to package directions, until al dente. About 2 minutes before pasta is done, place frozen broccoli and green beans into a mesh strainer and place on top of the saucepan so veggies are submerged in the water. Let water return to a boil and cook for about 2 minutes longer.

Remove mesh strainer and drain vegetables. Add vegetables to garlic-pesto-tomato mixture. Drain pasta and add it to the vegetable mixture.

Slice chicken into 1/4″ slices and add to pasta. Toss until combined.

Serve hot with Parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper.

… to a snow-covered backyard.

Snow!

2.5 inches of it, to be precise.

The most wonderfully magical part about it was that I had no idea it was supposed to snow. Normally I am very diligent about following the weather forecast. I like to know what’s coming. Parenthood has not exactly taken that interest away, but it’s definitely left me with far less time and energy to check in on the weather every day. So when I opened the curtains to an unexpected field of sparkling white, it was quite a thrill!

We all got up and put on our shoes and coats and headed out to the backyard. Jamie wasn’t quite sure what to make of the snow. Last time he experienced it was on Christmas Eve and it didn’t really seem to register at that point.

He spent a little time mucking about and poking at it with his fingers. I had to leave for work soon, so we went inside and had breakfast.

It continued to snow all day long. My office closed at 3:00 because it didn’t seem to be letting up, and people in Texas freak out when there is any kind of winter precipitation, even in the tiniest amount.

The snow continued all afternoon and into the evening. We took Jamie outside for a while and this time, he was pretty excited about it. He stomped around and laughed and sat down and tasted the snow and generally had a great time.

Later in the evening, the snow was still coming down, and it was a really wet heavy snow. The branches of our crape myrtle trees were bowed down almost to the ground, so we went outside and tried to shake off as much snow as we could with a rake to try to prevent them from breaking. Doc did that several more times throughout the night. I think he saved the trees by doing that. There were so many tree branches down all over town by the next morning.

Work was cancelled for me (although I did a lot of work from home during the day) on Friday. The official snowfall total was 12.5 inches, an all-time record for our area, and making this the second snowiest year on record, to date. I measured 11 inches at our house. We were very lucky that we didn’t lose power and that our neighbor’s live oak tree didn’t drop any branches onto our cars parked underneath. Some of our friends had damage to house and cars from branches, and many more were without power for hours or days.

The amount was astounding. I have never seen this much snow in my life outside of a mountaintop.

You can click on any of the photos below to view a slideshow of the photos and video we took.

The endoscopy and colonoscopy in early January revealed eosiniphils in his esophagus, a type of cell that indicates the presence of allergic reactions. Oddly, there was no inflammation in either his colon or his esophagus. The extent of the eosinophils puts him right on the border between reflux and eosinophilic esophagitis, which is much more serious.

He is now taking Prevacid daily to control the reflux. This is the same medication that he was on when he was 2 months old. We didn’t think it really did much to help back then, but of course he had undiagnosed food allergies in addition to colic, so any improvement due to the medication was probably being masked by his other problems. This time around, it seems to be helping a great deal.

Next, we went to see an allergist. She talked to us extensively about his symptoms, then performed a skin scratch test (which was SO much fun, let me tell you — try keeping a naked unhappy toddler lying still on his stomach for 20 minutes so he doesn’t disturb the itchy itchy allergens on his back). The results, which have up to a 50% false positive rate, indicate that he is likely allergic to eggs, milk, and wheat.

I think that we could fairly easily avoid eggs and milk, but the wheat thing is going to be really difficult. Wheat, or byproducts thereof, is in EVERYTHING. Just think: bread, rolls, tortillas, bagels, muffins, pancakes, crackers, pretzels, pizza, pasta, cereal, soy sauce, MSG, cookies, cake, breading on baked or fried items, …. the list goes on and on.

Luckily he is likely NOT allergic to oats, corn, rice, soy, dust, mold, or cats. I’m very pleased that he handles soy OK. We have thought that he was sensitive to it since May of last year; and perhaps he was, but has outgrown it. Soy is another ingredient that’s in absolutely everything.

The allergist recommended we see a nutritionist to help us formulate a diet plan for Jamie, since we were at a loss for what we could safely feed him and still be sure he gets all the nutrients he needs. When the nutritionist weighed him, it seemed that he had lost a little bit of weight over the past couple of weeks. Of course every doctor’s scale is different, but it raised some alarm bells. She wanted us to get more calories into him each day (a baby his age and size needs about 1200) in order to keep his weight up and maintain proper nutrition. So we’ve thickened his formula by 50% and we are trying at every opportunity to stuff food into him.

He is rather resistant to this idea, though. I suppose a lifetime of food equals pain means that it’s going to take some time for him to learn to like food. We have an enormously difficult time getting him to eat much of anything at mealtimes or as snacks. Occasionally he’ll seem hungry and eat a whole serving of oatmeal or fruit or veggie puree, but usually it’s a struggle to get him to eat more than 2 or 3 bites.

It turns out that he likes bananas (and isn’t acutely reacting to them like he did last summer) but hates mashed potatoes. We were counting on potatoes to be a star of his diet, since they are nutrient-rich, starchy, and full of calories, especially with the soy margarine we added to them. We’re going to keep offering them to him, though, in hopes that he’ll change his mind.

And now, actually, he seems to be off his banana kick too. So we keep trying to find things that he likes.

Next week, he goes back to the allergist for more extensive testing. They’ll put actual food samples on his back, and seal it up with a bandage. He keeps it on for two days, after which they check daily to see how he’s reacted. This is supposedly a more accurate test.

The good news is, he does not seem to be in nearly as much pain anymore. He still occasionally has gas or is just generally fussy in an I-don’t-feel-well kind of way, but it’s much better than it used to be. And he sleeps better as well. He still wakes up at least twice per night, usually three times, and wants formula, but he’s generally easy to get back to sleep. It is probably helping that we’ve put a mattress on the floor of his room and are letting him “put himself to sleep” there, with one of us lying next to him. He seems to prefer that to being held and rocked. Once he’s asleep we transfer him to the crib, but are considering alternative options to that now.

I adapted this casserole from the Moosewood Cookbook. It is delicious. Sadly, Jamie did not seem to think so. But it was a very different taste and texture from anything he’s used to. Maybe next time he’ll give it another chance.

Spinach-Rice Casserole with Beef

2 cups water
2 cups Minute Rice (or use regular white or brown rice, and cook it according to package directions)
1/2 pound ground beef, 85% lean
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 pound frozen chopped spinach
2 teaspoons garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
Sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Cook rice according to package directions (for Minute Rice, boil 2 cups of water, add rice, stir, cover, remove from heat, and let sit for 5 minutes). In a medium saucepan or Dutch oven, cook ground beef over medium-high heat until browned. Add onion and spinach; cook 5 minutes. Add seasonings and sunflower seeds.

Top with shredded sharp cheddar cheese, for the non-allergic. Vegans can leave out the ground beef and still have a tasty nutritious meal.

First I must admit that I have not been paying too much attention to the product, its features, the keynote address, or the hoopla surrounding its release. My 14-month-old ball of wiggle and scream has been taking up the spare brain cells, time, and energy that I normally would have devoted to a new Apple product release.

My first thought was that it is really just a giant iPhone without the phone part — and what’s the point of that? After a while, though, I realized that there are definitely good uses for it. For instance, I have my iPhone with me pretty much 24/7, but I can count on one hand the number of phone calls I make in a typical week. I use it for social networking, email, games, reading news, keeping our home calendar, storing grocery and to-do lists, showing off photos of Jamie, listening to podcasts, music, and radio, looking at webpages, calculating tips, …. oh, the list goes on and on and on. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do that stuff on a screen that is bigger than 2″x3″?

YES. Yes, it would. There is a lot that I DON’T do with my iPhone, because typing on it is such a pain in the butt. Not that the iPhone’s keyboard interface is bad; rather, I am about ten times faster typing on a full-sized keyboard than I am typing on a tiny pad with my thumbs. So having a large screen with a closer-to-full-sized keyboard would be fantastic.

Secondly, reading text would be SO MUCH EASIER.

But I love my iPhone’s ease of portability. The darn thing fits in my pocket, purse, and on my nightstand. No way the iPad will. Also no way to surreptitiously pull out the iPad in a meeting to check email or Facebook.

But I’m talking like the iPad is supposed to be a replacement for the iPhone. It’s not.

I guess I’m still trying to reconcile the fact that I have an iPhone, and I have a MacBook Pro. Where would an iPad fit into my life? Maybe it wouldn’t. Not yet, anyway.

On another note, here are some of the best jokes about the name that I have heard:

• Are the apps cardboard or plastic?
• Are you there, God? It’s me, marketing.
• The iPad is the best-ever Apple product. Period.
• iPad: 30% thicker, for your heaviest computer usage days.
• Yes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it?

But according to CNN,

Andy Ihnatko, a tech columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, said Apple could call its new gadget a “mangled baby duck” and people would still buy it, both because Apple has sex appeal and because the iPad is a good product. “With the right device, marketing doesn’t really matter,” he said.

We served it with broiled salmon fillets last night. It’s also dirt-cheap! The recipe below makes enough for six generous servings, and costs about 35 cents per serving.

1 quart water, or veggie or chicken broth
1 cup brown lentils
1 cup white long-grain rice
2 teaspoons canola oil
1 small yellow onion, sliced
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Boil water or broth. Add lentils and cook for about 15 minutes, covered. Add rice and stir. Cover and cook until rice is tender, 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add sliced onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is browned, about 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle with cider vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. Stir again and remove from heat.

When lentils and rice are done, add onion mixture, cumin, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine and serve.

The pediatrician (whom we just love; Dr. Michael Brown with Pediatric Associates of Dallas, in case you’re in the market for one) asked if we’d made any progress with his food sensitivities and eczema. Doc told him that things were overall pretty much the same, but that the past few nights had been really bad, with Jamie waking up between 6 and 8 times per night in pain. Dr. Brown asked what Dr. Whitney, our gastroenterologist, was doing to treat it — and had she done an endoscopy yet? (No.) We hadn’t seen her in a while but were due to a few days later, and he asked us to have her give him a call so they could discuss Jamie’s case. Now maybe doctors wanting to work together like that is common practice, I don’t know. But it’s a really good feeling to know that our current doctors actually care enough to try to solve our son’s problem, rather than just telling us that there’s nothing wrong or that WE need to work harder to eliminate his food allergies through diet.

We saw Dr. Whitney last Thursday. I told her right off the bat that we were at a point where we felt we needed to try something different. Controlling his symptoms through diet just has not been working well enough. She immediately suggested that the next course of action should probably be that endoscopy that Dr. Brown had mentioned, plus a colonoscopy and biopsies. She had hoped that he would grow out of his sensitivities, but since he was now a year old and still having difficulties, this is the next step in the quest to solve his problems.

So Jamie goes in on Wednesday for surgery. :(

I’m not sure if “surgery” is the best term; they’re not going to cut him open or anything but he will be under general anaesthesia. They’ll stick cameras up his butt and down his throat (Doc hopes that they don’t just rinse off the one camera between uses) to look for inflammation as well as the presence of certain types of cells that would indicate allergic reactions. And they’ll take biopsies of his intestines and esophagus (I think).

And after that, they’ll be able to recommend treatment. There’s a possibility that he’ll go on allergy medication, which will have an added benefit (if you choose to see it that way) of making him drowsy at night. He may also go to see an allergist for a skin scratch test.

I’m a little bit worried about the anaesthesia part of things, but I really think that this is the right thing to do. I’m not sure what else we can do at this point. Life really hasn’t been fair to Jamie. He  just doesn’t feel well most of the time. I hope that we can find some answers and he can begin to feel good and be able to get some quality sleep.

And with the Infant Commander’s newfound mobility comes a promotion and new title: Lord Emperor Toddler.

He’s not too terribly excited about walking yet; he doesn’t do it all the time by any means. But when we do ask him to walk and he manages to go a few feet, he is all smiles and SO proud of himself.

He’s been having a particularly rough time of it really since Thankgiving or a little before. We went through a stretch of a week or so where he seemed more relaxed and was only waking once in the night instead of his up-till-then usual twice. The norm since then has been three to four wakings, until the past few days when it’s been six to eight times a night.

Last night his nose was very clogged and he was having trouble breathing, and that woke him up numerous times. And of course, his usual problems with gas and intestinal pain kept waking him up too. He’s been bolting awake from a sound sleep, shrieking and arching his back and stiffening his legs. It takes a long time to get him back to sleep, and we haven’t been able to set him back down in the crib; he’ll wake up the instant you put him down. So he’s been sleeping (if you can call it that) next to us instead.

Which means, of course, that we don’t sleep well either. He moves and twitches constantly throughout the night, and if we do manage to fall asleep ourselves, it’s fitful since we’re so attuned to his every movement.

We are getting desperate for answers. A one year old not sleeping through the night, EVER, is somewhat unusual, but a one year old who wakes up screaming in pain multiple times throughout the night… well, there’s definitely something wrong there.

His pediatrician is very interested in getting this problem fixed, whatever it may be. We go to see the gastroenterologist again on Thursday, and the pediatrician wants to talk to her about what’s going on. I’m so tired of hearing “he’ll outgrow his food sensitivities” and that we just have to wait it out and continue to try to control his pain through diet. I mean, if that’s the only answer then that’s the only answer and we’ll deal with it, but it seems like it doesn’t matter what he eats, EVERYTHING causes him pain. There’s got to be SOMETHING we can do… isn’t there?

*****

More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

That’s enough, Nickelback.

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

How are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

Was learning cursive really necessary?

Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front.

MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

“Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.