I love sleeping with my baby

Jedidiah whimpers in his sleep. We are already lying on our sides, facing each other, so I barely rouse myself and reach for him, un-clipping my nursing tank. I pull him toward me and he swivels his head slightly, homing in on the right spot to put his mouth. We nestle together, my left arm above his head, my right arm holding him close, his legs fitting into my lap, with one leg resting on my thigh.

I feel the gentle pulling of his sucking and my milk starts to flow. The peace of the night and the white noise of the air conditioner are enlivened with his tiny swallowing noises. Without waking up, without crying, he is comforted.

My right hand touches his silky hair, the solid curve of his skull. His delicate, intricate ears, his soft, padded cheeks. Down his back my hand goes to his full, chubby thighs and his toes, pushed up against the joint of my thigh and pelvis.

I am comforted too, and sleep comes to us both.

Sweet Potato Hummus

I adapted this recipe of Sweet Potato Hummus from  this recipe I found online. My recipe makes quite a lot, but somehow between the two of us and through sharing it with friends, it always seems to disappear! It is a good dish to take to parties. You could halve the recipe if you don't want a large quantity on your hands. Another note about the recipe is that homemade hummus requires a food processor. I have tried making hummus in an ordinary blender in the past, and blenders don't seem to handle it well. Perhaps one of the fancy blender brands such as Vitamix could handle it. The measurements in the recipe are not exact. I usually eyeball them, so adjust to taste!

Ingredients

•  1 lb. dry chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• 2 large sweet potatoes (or 3 medium), in large cubes
• 4 medium lemons, juiced
• 6 tablespoon tahini
• 6 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 jalapenos, tops cut off and de-seeded
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon coriander
• salt
• pepper
• chile powder

Suggested accompaniments

• pita
• crackers or chips
• cucumber
• carrot
• jicama
• red bell pepper
• tomato 
• celery
• cilantro
• lettuce or spinach
• avocado or guacamole
• use your imagination

Steps

1.  Soak the chickpeas for several hours in water. (This can be sped up by soaking them in hot water for less time.) Add the sweet potatoes, making sure water just covers the sweet potatoes. Add 1 teaspoon salt. Boil until the chickpeas are done, approximately 30-40 minutes. Let cool. (Do not throw out the cooking water.)
2. As the chickpeas cool, prepare the other ingredients. With a slotted spoon, ladle half of the chickpea mixture into the food processor.  Add roughly half of the other ingredients. Process, adding the cooking liquid until desired consistency and smoothness is reached. Err on the side of slightly more liquid, since the hummus will thicken with time. Adjust flavors by adding more salt, more lemon juice, salt or chile powder etc. Repeat with the other half of the ingredients.
3. Serve warm or chilled with cut up vegetables and pita.

Have You Tried Homemade Laundry Detergent?

Today I made homemade laundry detergent for the first time. This post has nothing that the blogosphere does not already contain. It is simply my record of what I've figured out from reading multiple sites. If you google "homemade laundry detergent" you'll come up with oodles of recipes.

By all accounts, the concoction works well, even for cloth diapers. It is more eco-friendly than regular detergent with its various chemicals and big plastic containers, and more cost-friendly than the fancy eco-friendly detergent you find in stores.

The tricky part was wading through all the different recipes. They all have borax, washing soda (by the same Arm and Hammer company that makes baking soda) and laundry soap such as Fels-Naptha, Zote, or Dr. Bronner's soap in them. The simplest recipe had two parts of the borax, two parts washing soda, and one part grated soap.

Fanicer recipes add Oxi-clean, baking soda, Purex crystals, or essential oils. I ended up following this one from askannamoseley.com. I liked how she reviewed the different cleaning powers of the ingredients.

I didn't follow her recipe exactly, since from seeing all the blogosphere variations I concluded that is not too important. I used less baking soda and Oxi-clean. I would prefer using less Oxi-clean anyway, since it is not a natural ingredient, though it is much nicer than bleach.

• 1 box borax
• 1 box washing soda
• 1 14.5 oz bar of Zote laundry soap
• 1 lb. baking soda
• 1 lb. Oxi-clean (or actually Clorox' Oxy-Magic). 

By mistake I thought I needed two big bars of Zote soap. Actually, I would have needed two small bars of it. One big bar was enough, so now I have one left over for next time.

I plan on using 1-2 Tablespoons per load, depending on the size of the load and since my apartment doesn't have a High Efficiency washer.

I'm excited to do the laundry and see how it turns out, especially for the diapers!

Five Minute Friday: Broken

Broken

I used to live under the illusion that I was shielded from brokenness. Sure, I was a sinner and had acknowledged that and believed in Jesus and been forgiven, but --thank God-- I was not from a "broken family."

I lived under that illusion until my family broke.

It was not divorce between my parents, thankfully, but conflict and acrimony and confusion and bitterness appeared and I had no idea what to do with them. And it happened because of me. I fell in love with and came to admire and trust a man. And my father did not. Conflict is a sure sign of brokenness.

And brokenness began to trail after me like a tail. It appeared in my inability to fall asleep at night, worrying and wondering what I had done wrong and what I could do to fix the brokenness between Baba and me. It appeared in my ready tears, whenever a friend asked seriously what was going on. It appeared in the deep confusion of my heart. The story is too complicated for five minutes to tell.

I despaired of fixing the situation, and instead I broke out of it and married my husband. Condemnation sometimes says I did the wrong thing, that the holy thing would have been to commit myself to obeying and fixing no matter the cost to myself and my sweetheart, even though that might have broken our relationship.

I taste the confusion again, just by thinking about it. So easily the wounds reappear.

The mornings in the days before my wedding I would sit at my hotel window, with a view of the Organ mountains and the hospital where I was born, and pray. And I felt the assurance of my heavenly Father and Jesus Christ's love. That amidst my sin and the perplexing confusing mess of brokenness, he loved me. My marriage would not be cursed because of the brokenness it emerged out of. My marriage might have its own forms of brokenness. There is no guarantee against it. But God was surrounding me and my husband with his own Father's blessing.

My Father's love is the raft on that can carry me through the valley of the shadow of death and sin. It is the blanket that hugged me when I writhed on my bed in tears. It is the only thing in life that can never break.

Not the most lovely photo of the Organs,
but that tall building is the hospital where I was born
so that's why I chose it.

Five Minute Friday (on Monday): Belong

I have been seeing the Five Minute Friday challenge recently, from one of my favorite bloggers Ali, who lives on a Mercy Ship of the coast of Africa, and from Jen, who is in the Peace Corps in South Africa.

So however un-eloquent this may be, here it is:

Belong:

When I first saw this writing prompt, I thought something vague, true, and probably cliched about how I belong to a family, and belong to God.

It took me a couple days to getting around to write. Yesterday at church, I had a new visual aid about belonging. I was helping in the nursery and Jedidiah (now 9.5 mo old) was with me. A friend brought in her 8 month old son, who was a bit fussy. When I tried to hold Canaan, Jedidiah got such a look of jealousy and worry on his face. How dare I hold Canaan! I belong to him, to Jedidiah!

It is a sweet thing to have a baby, but one problem is that I don't belong to myself anymore, as far as he is concerned! I know it is not really true that I belong to him. And I have every right to hold a different baby once in a while! But on the other hand my impression, that he belongs to me, is my baby, isn't so true either. He belongs to God, and is a gift from God to me, to care for as I must steward all God's blessings to me.

I started to think about other misconceptions that I have about belonging. Is it possible that I think, in an illogical, babyish instinct that is far away from my grown-up mind, and yet truer to what I really believe, that God belongs to me? There is a bit of panic inside me when I think that God might do something I don't like - like allow me or my loved ones to suffer or potentially take away someone dear to me. Or what if I feel God "favors" someone else above me, just as Jedidiah thought I was favoring Canaan? God might give a blessing to a friend, that he does not give to me. Uh oh, I can't control God! And do I hold on to God's blessings in a way that would lead to acute "separation anxiety" if they are taken away?

I pray that I can grow up. That I can get more and more mature in my mind and spirit to trust my heavenly Papa.  He will work all things for good to me because I love him. Even though twinges of fear easily strike my heart when I wonder if he might take away earthly blessings from me, I want to know deeply that he will never leave me or forsake me. Because of Jesus' love for me, I belong to him. My husband and Jedidiah belong to him. And nothing can snatch us out of his hand.

Jedidiah and "his" mommy!
Photo by Stan Kwan at Captivate Images

[now that took a lot longer than 5 minutes. You can't just leave a thought unfinished! but it was fun!]

Elimination Communication Update - 9.5 months old

Jedidiah is now nine and a half months old. I thought I'd give a brief update on his EC progress. At this point, he is reliably pooping in the potty. It helps that, due to his intake of solid foods, his stool is more solid and takes more effort to expel. Sometimes he goes in the morning after waking up. Sometimes he goes right after eating some food. When he starts making his pooping face, I grab him and take him to the potty fast! With the stinkier stools, I'm glad that I don't have to clean them off his bottom and off his cloth diaper.

We took his potty with us on a recent out-of-town visit, and he went in it every morning we were there. That gave us a lot of relief about not having to worry about him pooping while we were out and about.

We are still not worrying about pee. That time will come when he's a bit older. Also for when he's older, I'm starting to use the baby-sign-language sign for "potty." I hope he will learn it.

This article I read recently was very encouraging. It gives five easy tips for those who are interested in helping their child become aware of their moments of elimination, without the heavy-duty commitment of always trying to help the child go on the potty. The author, Elizabeth, says

While elimination communication may not be for everybody, I discovered a lot of practices that very easily can be for everybody, and in fact I believe should be.

The article is titled 5 things you can do with your BABY to make it easier to potty train later .

If you read Elizabeth's article, let me know which of her ideas you think you might give a try.

Lasagne with Bean Sauce

I've been embarking on a personal exploration of the world of beans. I want to educate myself on this yummy, diverse, and cheap source of protein. My mother cooked beans as I grew up, mostly pinto or black beans in soups or refried, occasionally white beans in a baked bean recipe, split pea soup, or green lentil soup. That's already a pretty good repertoire. But I have realized there are so many more kinds of beans and pulses beyond that. As it happens, since my husband is Indian I have a connection to a whole world of beans and pulses of which I had previously no idea. I'll be posting some Indian recipes, but for now here is a Lasagne with Bean Sauce recipe that I have adapted from Jane Brody's Good Food Book, a wonderful healthy cook book that has been around for 27 years and is a good staple in a crunchy kitchen. I need to start using it rather than Pinterest all the time! I served this recipe to some other crunchy friends and they enjoyed it.

This is actually the leftovers-- I forgot to take a pic when it was fresh. You can see a garbanzo on the top.

Some notes about the sauce. You can use a combination of fresh tomato puree or canned tomato sauce. You can also choose to add mushrooms, eggplant, or zucchini in place of or in addition to the beans. I added zucchini, stir-frying it with the onions first. If you plan ahead it is easy enough to soak 1 cup of dried beans in the morning, boil them in the afternoon, and use them in the sauce rather than using canned beans.

Bean Sauce:

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic (3 cloves)
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• optional mushrooms, zucchini,or eggplant
• 2 cups cooked beans (red, brown, or chickpeas, home-cooked or canned), drained and coarsely chopped (or given short pulses in a food processor)
• 4 cups tomato puree or 2 cups tomato sauce and 2 cups puree. You can use canned tomato sauce. Fresh gives the sauce a lighter and fresher flavor.
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• black pepper and salt to taste

Prepare the sauce by heating the oil in a medium saucepan and sauteeing the garlic and onions and any other optional vegetables you may have added. Add the chopped beans and cook and stir for a couple more minutes. Add the tomato puree or sauce with the herbs and pepper. Simmer for 5 minutes (make sure it thickens especially if you used tomato puree, which is more watery.) Salt to taste.

Remaining ingredients:

• 3/4 pound lasagne noodles. Brody recommends quick noodles if you don't want to cook them. I used 16 regular noodles and just soaked them in hot water rather than boiling them.
• 2 cups ricotta or small-curd cottage cheese
• 8 oz. mozarella, grated
• 1/4 c. grated Parmesan

To assemble the lasagne, spread a thin layer of the bean sauce on the bottom of a 9x13-inch baking pan. Arrange a layer of noodles along the bottom of the pan to cover the sauce. (I squeezed in three lengthwise and one horizontally at the bottom.) Cover the noodles with half the ricotta, one-third of the mozzarella, and one third of the remaining sauce. Repeat this layering with the noodles, ricotta, mozarella and sauce. Finish off the third layer with the remaining noodles, sauce, mozarella, and Parmesan on top.

Cover the pan with foil. Bake at 350 for 40-60 minutes or until the pasta is cooked. (On the shorter end if you pre-soaked the noodles.) If there is too much liquid remaining in the pan, remove the foil and bake another 10-15 minutes.