A Day (250) in the Life of... (Captured by Food) Plus Preschool-at-Home Resources

Friday was a whirlwind of a day!  I only had about 4 hours of sleep the night before, but I didn't yawn once that day--I stayed so stimulated by my surroundings (and my 2 large vats of coffee that morning) which really helped me to not feel tired.  For something new and different, I thought I'd capture some of a semi-typical day here at the Dattolos--through food.

5:15 AM--Momma's heading out the door for Group Ride at the gym, but not before eating a banana and grabbing my water and towel. :)

6:40 AM--Back home, the house is quiet.  Time to make breakfast.  It's important to me to be the first one up in the house so I can have some quiet time and get the day started right with a good breakfast and...

...COFFEE!!!

Potatoes in the pan, I am making a potato, bacon, and egg "hash."  The recipe is at the end of this post.

7:30/8:00ish--family's up and it's time for us to eat!  Starting the day off right!

9:00--A friend of mine dropped off her son for me to watch for a little while.  (Though this doesn't happen everyday, we do get together with our kids once or twice a week--literally, and like to "swap" kids occasionally to give each other a mommy-breather.)  I decided to let the kids make their own batch of apple oatmeal cookies--not sure if that qualifies me as crazy or cool... ha!

Noah with a mouthful of flour--nope, that's not sugar, bud!

Tasting their work--the approval of silence is oh, so strong!  And for the record, we did have an actual lunch after this of hot dogs, veggies, and chips--the pictures just weren't as cute as this! (The recipe for the cookies will also be at the end of this post.)

12:30--Craft project after lunch!!  The only way I could get them to not block their faces with the trees was to wave at the camera... didn't think that one all the way through, I guess!

4:30--I put together a barbeque chicken pizza for Randy and the kids' dinner.  Meanwhile, I headed to Lowell for a fab night out with my UMass sophomore cousin!

Mmm... grilled pizza!

And that would be a typical day at the Dattolo house.  Though I don't get up at 5:00 EVERYday (I have a certain schedule I try to stick to), I still like to be the first one up and I try to prepare a decent breakfast most days.  I like to keep baked goods in the house on a regular basis so we bake often.  And most of you already know about my dinners if you read this blog regularly. ;)  We spend a lot of time in the kitchen around here, and we love it!

Recap of our Week of Pre-School

Abby and I started our "apple" unit this week!  "A" is for apple, of course.  Here are some of the projects we did...

Before we started apples, we finished up reviewing our numbers 1-10.  This culminated in reading the book "Big Fat Hen" and practicing the rhyme she's known since she was 1 and a half--you know, "1, 2, buckle my shoe..."  She is tracing the numbers 1-10 here and then will glue feathers on the paper to represent the big, fat hen!

TA-DA!!!

We practice our cutting, too.  Teaching these skills is requiring a lot of patience on my part.  We pray together each day before starting school--mostly for Mommy's patience! :)  She does a good job, though!

Finally--"A" is for "Apple"!  :)  I've been waiting to start this unit!!!  Good job tracing, Abby!

We made a bright, red apple with red pieces of construction paper--much more fun than simply coloring an apple with crayon!  While we worked we sang our new song "Shiny, shiny, apple red"  (to the tune of "Twinkle, twinkle, little star").  So cute!!!

Trying to be ultra-organized for this preschool stuff!  Abby and I BOTH love my construction paper organizer--Abby loves picking any color she wants from the beautiful array and I love how organized and tidy it makes me feel. :)
And don't forget about those fun apple trees we made on Friday!!!  I try to incorporate baking and cooking into our day because that's instruction for her, too.  I love that I get to teach and be Mommy all in one!

Apple Oatmeal Cookies
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsps cinnamon
1 cup oats
1 cup chopped apples

Cream together the sugars and butter.  Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.  Pour in the flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda and stir all ingredients together well.  Fold in the apples and and oats.  Bake at 350* for about 10 minutes.

This upcoming week, Abby and I will finish our unit on apples and transition into "A" is for "animals."  We have another apple pie project to do and I will try to include some downloads of awesome apple worksheets for preschool that we've been doing, also!  Stay tuned!

Recipes from Above:

Potato, Bacon, Egg Hash
4-5 potatoes, peeled and chopped
5-6 slices of bacon, chopped
2-3 scallions, chopped
1 tsp steak seasoning
6-7 eggs, whisked together
1 cup cheddar jack cheese
salt, pepper
vegetable oil

In a large, cast iron skillet, drizzle some vegetable oil and add the chopped potatoes to cook over medium heat.  Preheat the oven to 350*.  Season the potatoes with salt, pepper, and steak seasoning.  When the potatoes have been sizzling for about 7 minutes and the oven is to temperature, put the skillet in the oven and let the potatoes bake for about 10-12 minutes, or until slightly tender. 
Once the potatoes are out of the oven, return them to medium-high stove heat to crisp up the outside of the chunks. Add the bacon to the skillet and let the bacon and potatoes crisp up simultaneously.  Once the bacon is crisp, add the eggs and re-season with salt and pepper to taste.  Add the scallions and half of the cheese and move the eggs around to scramble them.  Once the eggs are cooked, pour the rest of the cheese over the top of the skillet and return it to the oven to melt the cheese on top.  Serve hot.

Barbeque Chicken Pizza
I used my recipe for pizza dough for this pizza.  That recipe makes 2 pizzas worth of dough and I had 1 round left in the freezer so it thawed all day.  I also had leftover barbequed chicken breasts in the fridge so of course I was making barbeque chicken pizza.  I ended up buying the pizza sauce since I haven't had time to make my own sauce since the move.  These ingredients combined with fresh mozzarella cheese made for a great pizza!

More renovations and now we're adding home-school... (Days 224-228)

When you have a choice between buying more gas for the grill and just picking up fast-food, sometimes you just pick up fast-food.  Am I right?!?!  Maybe I should preface that with "When you have no kitchen and just regained use of your bathroom AND you're out of gas for the grill..."  haha!  Welcome to my life.

Well that was Wednesday (Day 227).  We got fast-food.  Who am I?!?!  Okay, I think Wendy's is the lesser of the fast-food evils, and honestly, their new Gouda chicken sandwich is awesome.  So I'm not TOO ashamed.  Sunday, Day 224, I went out to eat with my parents before they graciously took our kids overnight to give us a little break while we were deep in renovations for the long weekend.  The following day (Labor Day) I was on a medical fast and Tuesday was such a crazy day I'm pretty sure we had cereal for supper (Thursday, too).  Wow.  This does not sound like a "food blog" AT ALL.  "Welcome to my Kitchen" indeed!!!  I promise, once I have a functioning kitchen I can't wait to get back at it!  Autumn is my favorite season and I'm getting desperate to start making apple pies, apple crisps, and turnovers and pumpkin-everything else!  Luckily, I have some time.  We keep plugging away, so I'm hopeful the kitchen will be complete in the next few weeks.  That's becoming top priority.  We got the tiles laid for the bathroom over the weekend.  The kitchen and hallway are about ready for tiling but some of the cement board still needs to be laid in small areas before they're completely ready for tile. Randy and I have been laying cement board between his jobs as we can and I'm anxious to see what the weekend brings.  As far as painting goes, I should probably say that I've had the entire upstairs apartment fully painted for about a week, now.  All it needs is the floor finished and a little cleaning up and touching up and it'll be good to go!  For our apartment, I just painted our bedroom which means there are only 2 more rooms that need to be painted before we're done with paint here.  What makes it difficult is the fact that our stuff is in the way.  It was not an easy task moving all of our bedroom furniture to wash the walls, paint the trim, tape, and then finally paint the walls.  Glad it's complete!

The mortar that stuck to my skin made a great exfoliate in the shower that night! ;)

I started home-school with Abby this week, also.  I'm not following any particular curriculum, simply using my knowledge as a former public school teacher and some books I've picked up from here and there to do "school" with her.  Because she's only 2, I didn't feel the need to spend a lot of money on a curriculum when I know I already have the background knowledge to plan and teach her myself.  Before I share how our week went, I feel the need to preface this by saying I do not believe home-school is for everyone.  My husband and I believe it is the right choice for us, but I don't discount anyone who chooses not to home-school.  Also, my daughter is still 2, about to be 3 on October 3rd.  She loves the idea of school and doing arts & crafts.  Not every child is like this.  I can think of one in particular I know very well (ahem, her brother, Noah) who most likely will not take a liking to "school" activities quickly.  I certainly do not think that every 3-year-old needs to be making crafts and tracing letters everyday.  Every child is different and every family is different.  We are doing what works for us and what works for Abby.  If you see something you like and want to try, you're welcome to it!!!

Raccoon MASK (M-word) to go with The Kissing Hand

A lot of formal public schooling starts with getting the students acclimated with the school environment and the fact that they are no longer with their moms or caregivers all day and now will be in school for a better part of the day.  For Abby, a home-schooler, I wanted her to get used to the idea that she and I would "do school" together, at home.  She's very aware of the letters of the alphabet, the numbers, and the fact that "school" means using a pencil, scissors, glue, and crayons.  Because my daughter is so particular, I wanted to incorporate all of these things in the first week as a way of meeting her expectations but also integrating my own standards at the same time.  We started the week talking about the letter "m" (the sound it makes and what it looks like--though I'm not being picky about her printing letters yet--she's too young.  She practices tracing lines first and occasionally traces a letter or two.)  "M" is a great letter to start with because a capital "M" is written with straight lines.  A capital and lower case "m" look very similar, and it always makes the same sound--a sound that is very easy for toddlers to make.  Our theme for the week was that "God made me", "God made Mommy" and "God made everything."  ("Me" & "Mommy" start with "M" and Mommy is her teacher, so it seemed fitting.)  Abby completed an "M" worksheet the first day and made an "M" book.  As a treat, she was allowed to eat as many M&Ms as would make the letter "M."  We also read the book, Are You my Mother?

On another day we read the creation story and Abby completed a coloring sheet stating that "God Made Me."  We read the book, The Kissing Hand and did a fun craft project with it.  Even though she wasn't going off to school like the little raccoon in the book, I thought it would be nice to emphasize the special relationship between a mother and child for her as we begin this fun journey.  We talked about how some kids go away to school but that Abby would do school with me, to which she excitedly responded, "Yeah, I get to do school at home with you!"  If only I could bottle that enthusiasm and keep it for the next 10-12 years. ;)

Shirtless (it was hot!) for crafts--just another benefit of doing school at home! ;)

I look forward to sharing more of our journey with you as time goes on.  And I hope that for my next post I have new recipes and pictures of food for you to try!!!

Noah doesn't want to be left out, but isn't into the whole coloring thing. (Yet!) :)