Mel's Baby Shower (and Planning a Party for Someone Who Can Hardly Eat Anything)

Confession: In the past, I always thought of people with food allergies as being kind of high-maintenance-types, akin to picky eaters.  (Yes, I recognize that this was terribly judgmental of me.)  Then my beloved sister developed intolerances to dairy, gluten, soy, peanuts, sunflower seeds, most tree nuts, and shellfish.  Most of the time, I'm able to alter recipes so that I don't poison her, but this became even more challenging when I wanted to throw her a baby shower.  Given her allergies plus the added food restrictions of pregnancy (no deli meats, sushi, alcohol, raw sprouts, etc.) and I stepped into a veritable culinary minefield.

After an undue amount of recipe searching and deliberation, my mom, sisters and I pieced together this menu that is friendly to the majority of food allergies.

Food
Cowboy Caviar and tortilla chips
Zeek's Wild Green Salad with Balsamic Dressing - cashews and gorgonzola (aka poisons) on the side
Veggie platter and hummus

Lumpia with sweet chili sauce - this is just an example of a recipe, not the actual recipe.  In fact, there is no recipe.  Mom is just magical like that.
Mom's pancit - Again, I won't even bother with a recipe because NOBODY can make pancit like my mom.

Gluten and Dairy-Free Chocolate Layer Cake - I skipped the coffee and instead made the frosting chocolate, then garnished with toasted coconut, which covered a multitude of frosting sins.  I'm really bad at frosting cakes.

Beverages
Spa Water
Seahawks Punch in honor of the Superbowl, which immediately followed the baby shower (Yes, there was Hawaiian Punch in it. Don't judge.)

Party Favors
Coconut Macaroons - I substituted all-purpose gluten-free flour for the white flour and vanilla extract for the almond extract.

Decorations
Lucky for me, the mom-to-be's friend also named Mel handled decorations with the theme of kites and clouds in teal and orange.

Games
I spent way too much time searching for ideas on Pinterest but eventually settled on two games.  One, based loosely off the Newlywed game, I entitled "What Would Nathan Say?"  This is where we learned that Nathan thinks newborns use an average of 3 diapers a day, and yet he still thinks Mel will change most of them.  The next game I entitled "Mel or Nathan," where guests had to guess who played with toilet water at 10 months, who hit his/her baby sister, and who ate a jade plant, requiring a call to poison control (Mel, Mel, and Mel).  Yup, that's my sister!

The Starting Lineup (with yet more crocheted Seahawks hats)

Last week I introduced you to my favorite superfan, Mom, and today I'd like to introduce you to the rest of team Chow and our Seahawks hats.  That's right, we sported a team uniform to watch the Superbowl.  After seeing my mom's hat and the girls' hats, the rest of the family wanted in on the action, too.  So I whipped together a few more beanies so we could watch the game in style.  Chow-style, that is.

Announcing the starting lineup:

Dad: The Psychic Swearing Superfan

In addition to knowing the minutiae of every rule in every sport, Dad possesses the uncanny knack of predicting exactly what is going to happen in each play.  Before the ball is even snapped, he can call an interception, a fumble, or a play-action fake.  This skill is countered only by his inability to hold back expletives in the presence of children.  Final Superbowl tally: accurate predictions 6, swear words 4.  Good thing the Seahawks won, or his stats would've been much, much worse.

For the big game, Dad sported a double crochet beanie based off this pattern.

Mom: The Dancing Superfan

True to form, Mom led the family in a rousing half-time dance party.

See the making of Mom's hat here.

Ata: The Pregnant Superfan

Ata didn't let her bun-in-the-oven status keep her from busting a move during the half-time dance party, nor did it keep her from walking 3 miles and standing 4 hours in 20 degree weather to watch the Seahawks parade three days later.  Now that's one tough cookie.  Pass the woman some chips, please.

Ata & Nathan's baby: The Superfan-to-be

He got his own little hat, too.  Gotta train them up early.

Becky: The Superfan to Rule All Superfans

This girl knows the players, the rules, the stats, and the standings.  She even knows the refs by name.  And let me tell you, she puts the heck in heckle.

Since Becky has enough gear to put a team store to shame, she required something a little different for gameday and sported a  newsboy-style hat in Seahawks blue and green.

Jenny: The Softer-Side Superfan

Her job as a Nike engineer wins her insider knowledge of the players' gear, but her true strength lies in her knowledge of players' lives off the field, especially those traits that endear them to sentimental folk like us.  Because we don't cheer for mean people.  Jenny fills us in on details crucial to our enjoyment of the game, such as who collects teddy bears and who establishes a foundation to rescue sick kitties in developing nations.

Like Becky, she donned a newsboy-style hat to cheer on the Hawks.

Rob & Jeff: The Keep-Em-Laughing Superfans

If these superfans were to have a superpower, it would be their ability to keep my family cheerful in any sporting circumstance.  That's no easy feat considering how the rest of us are all terrible losers.  In fact, Jeff once made us sign a "sportsmanship agreement" before he would play board games with us.

In lieu of a superhero cape, I crocheted like a crazy person to finish Rob's hat during the Superbowl, leading to more than one remark: "Sew, very old one.  Sew like the wind!" (Mega bonus points for recognizing that movie reference)

Poor Jeff didn't get a picture.  Or a hat.  Sorry, babe, you're up next.

Anna: The Sensitive Superfan

The first time I watched a football game with Anna, I kept scaring her with my yelling, so I had to come up with new ways to, how shall we say, express disappointment when the opponents make a good play.  Apparently I didn't tone it down quite enough, when on the day after the 49ers game, Anna looked up with a troubled expression from her smiley-face pancake and asked, "Mama, why didn't you want that guy to be happy?"  Confused, I asked her what she meant.  She explained, "You know, when you said you wanted to wipe that smile off his (Kaepernick's) face?"

Tess: The Fashionista Superfan

Regarding all of our hats: "They would be nicer with a pom pom."

Miri: The Hungry Superfan

Enough said.

Top 10 Reasons to Watch Sports with My Mom (and her crocheted Seahawks Beanie)

Many adjectives might spring to mind when looking at this picture of my mom.  Super cute- yes!  Warm and hospitable- better believe it!  Gourmet chef- you betcha!  But crazy, die-hard sports fan?  Perhaps not the first thing to come to mind.  But let me tell you, she's more than meets the eye.  Under her warm and fuzzy exterior lies an ultra-competitive, raging, veritable sports fanatic.

She may not know all the stats, standings, or heck, even all the rules, but she definitely wins the award for most entertaining fan.

So in honor of this wonderful woman, here are the top ten reasons to watch sports with my mom.

10. She makes great grub.  Did I mention she's a Filipino grandmother?  'Nuff said.

9. She sometimes forgets which team is which and cheers for the wrong team.

8. When the game gets too intense, rather than freaking out like the rest of us, she goes into the kitchen and cooks (hence reason #10).  In the 1998 NBA championship nailbiter, Bulls v. Jazz, Michael Jordan hit a clutch jump shot with 5 seconds to go, giving the Bulls the lead and clinching the title.  Where was Mom?  In the kitchen, chopping vegetables.

7. She knows the height of all major sports figures and preferentially cheers for the short ones.

6. When the Mariners blow a big play (which is often), she yells what we can only presume to be expletives in Tagalog.

5. She never cheers for mean sports stars.

4. She gets up at 3AM to check the Australian Open matches because she just can't wait until morning. On a similar note, she has to play tennis matches against people half her age, since the "old people" are too easy to beat.

3. She practices Zumba and Tae Bo moves during particularly slow or boring games.

2. After good games, she leaves noteworthy voicemails.  My all time favorite, in its entirety: "Yankees lost!  Yankees lost!  Love you.  Mom."

1. She makes great grub.  Yes, I mentioned this already, but if you know my mom and have eaten her food, you know this bears repeating.

So when my sweet mom saw the girls' new Seahawks hats and asked for one for herself, how could I say no?  This is the woman who taught us to yell "sack him!" right around the time we were learning to say "mama" and "dada".  Mom requested a hat with a folding brim and no earflaps, so I threw together a a quick double-crochet beanie in Seahawks blue and green, roughly based off this pattern.  With a pom pom, of course.

The best part?  I get to watch the Superbowl with this cute superfan!  Go Hawks!

Raising Sports Fanatics: Crocheted Seahawks Beanies

Sports fanaticism runs deep in my family's heritage.  It's right up there with the love of a good bargain, a predilection to eat anything made of shrimp, and a genetic mis-wiring of the brain's signals for feeling hungry and feeling angry (aka "hangry").  Let's just say you don't want to be in the car with my family on the way TO a restaurant, but that's a discussion for another time.

Anyway, back to sport fanaticism.  You might wonder how a family of four girls inherited such a love of sports.  Well, it wasn't from my dad.  My sisters and I were lucky enough to grow up in Chicago in the era of the Bears, and one of my earliest memories is of my petite mother pounding the ground in front of the TV yelling, "Sack him!  Sack him!"  As toddler girls in 1985, we danced the Superbowl Shuffle right alongside Jim McMahon and Refrigerator Perry (on VHS, of course).

Fast forward a few years, and we reveled in the era of Da Bulls and Michael Jordan's dynasty.  Over the years we found other teams to love: our own high school Bears, the Mariners, Huskies, Storm, Seahawks.

As fans, we were no strangers to body paint.

cheering on a high school basketball game

Or electrical tape.

My big sis is the U; I'm the apostrophe

My little sister even once made a sign protesting the sale of the Seattle Storm and Sonics to Oklahoma, landing herself on the front page of the Seattle Times and every other major paper in Western Washington.  She also achieved the highest level of superfan-dom: making it on ESPN.  Now THAT's a fan.

Now I have the high calling of grooming my own three girls into proper sports fans.  Like any other parent, I want to raise them to recognize good and evil, to root for the right team and boo for the Yankees of the world.  Or in this particular case, to cheer for the Seahawks and cry out for the downfall of the 49ers.  For my girls who unfortunately love dress-up and tutus more than TV and sports, the initiation into becoming a fan requires more than a bowl of chips and a TV remote.  For them, the road to fan-dom requires froofy clothes.  So I picked up some yarn and went to town with this earflap hat pattern.  After their initial rejection of the hats, we went into fierce contract negotiation, eventually coming to a deal:  they would wear the hats, give up all photo rights and royalties, not to mention a future first-round draft pick, if, and only if, I added a pom pom.  Done.

Go Seahawks!

Crocheted Flower Hat 2: the baby sister version

I wrote this post several months ago, but I forgot to post it with all of the craziness of buying and selling a house plus travel and work.  Then all of a sudden it was summer and fuzzy winter hats and mittens were replaced by sunhats and sunscreen!  Alas, it was hard to let go, but we are full-on into cold weather again.  Once I made it through the denial stage, I realized that I truly do love fall, with its autumn leaves, hot drinks, hearty soups, and of course, warm fuzzy clothes:




At 9 months of age, baby Tess (above) almost had as much hair as Anna had at birth (below).  Almost.



But it's not quite enough to keep that little noggin warm in these cold, breezy days.  So with the leftover yarn from Anna's hat, I whipped together a little matching beanie for Tess.  I used a spiral pattern rather than crocheting in rounds and joining with a slip stitch, since I wanted to avoid the subtle "seam" that comes with crocheting in rounds.  I modified this pattern to make a hat that had some room for Tess to grow.  The spiral pattern gets a little funky where I start and end the border, but a well-placed flower motif hides that bit.



I couldn't get a good shot of the hat before Tess would pull it off, so I borrowed Anna's bear for a close-up.  Hold still, Baby Grandma Bear:

Crocheted Flower Hat

Right up there with broccoli and Kleenex, aversion to cold weather gear seems to be an inherent and deeply rooted trait of all kids. For a time, we could trick Anna into bundling up ("Would you like to wear the hat and gloves, or just the hat?") but she was extremely picky about her attire.  No tight or bunchy sleeves, no constraining collars, and definitely no rain boots. This season, when the chilly winter days arrived, I purchased a cute pink fleece hat for Anna.  It was just like the one she wore last winter and the winter before, only in a larger size, so I assumed she would love it like she did its predecessors.  Seems logical, right?  Silly me.

After the rejection of pink hat #2, I didn't want to spend more money on another hat that might suffer the same fate, so I set out to make my own.  For a few dollars of yarn and a couple hours of crocheting by the fire, it was a low risk proposal.  I used this pattern for the hat and this for the flower, producing the hat seen above.

I had envisioned the flower worn off to the side like a normal person would, but Anna usually insists on wearing it front and center.   My sister suggested crocheting a unicorn horn next time instead of a flower, which is really not a bad idea.   But we wouldn't do that to our daughter, would we?  (insert evil laughter here)

Halloween 2011: Cow and Sheep Costumes

When Halloween rolls around, I am ever so thankful for my husband's hoarding ways, as it provides rich fodder for any number of make-it-yourself costumes.   Our do-it-yourself attitude about costumes stems not from any skills in sewing or pride in making unique and amazing creations, but perhaps just from cheapness and laziness :)  We can't bring ourselves to shell out a lot of money for an outfit worn for a few short hours (wait, that sounds a lot like wedding attire!).   And I already mentioned my aversion to trips to the fabric store.   So we created this year's costumes solely from materials we had lying around.  Now I'll be the first to admit that our outfits might be a little ghetto, but you can't beat free!

My mother bought the kids' costumes at garage sales, so all we needed were complementary costumes for Jeff & me.  It's almost embarrassing to post instructions on how to make these costumes, because they are so simple, but here goes.

Sheep Costume

I got the idea here but of course no grown-up in a sheep costume can compare with a baby dressed as a lamb.   Nonetheless, we went for it, improvising with the supplies below:

• large white t-shirt


• old pillow


• white hat


• black and white paper


• needle, thread, scissors, paper glue

Instructions:

Cut open the pillow and pull apart the stuffing into a couple large sheets for the front and back of the sheep

Sew the stuffing/batting onto the shirt using large, running stitches.  I did this in a somewhat random pattern, bunching up the stuffing to make it fluffier.

Cut out an ear-shaped piece out of black paper and a smaller piece out of white paper and glue them together.  Crease length-wise, and attach to the hat.  (I used safety pins since this is my regular winter hat, and I'd like to wear it around afterward without sheep ears attached)

Wear over a black shirt and black leggings.

Cow Costume

This is another testimony to J saving random stuff that later comes in handy.  See the bodysuit he is wearing?  That is the surgical garb he wore into the OR during my C-section.  The spots?  Old worn dress socks that he couldn't bring himself to throw away.  The ears?  A cereal box cut up and wrapped in tissue paper from our gift wrapping re-use stash.

Supplies:

• white shirt, pants, and hat (or a surgical coverall, if you're lucky enough to have one handy)


• black fabric


• lightweight cardboard


• white and pink tissue paper


• needle and thread, fabric glue, or other adhesive of choice

Instructions:

Cut random shapes out of the black material and affix it to the white clothes.  I am sad to report that, despite its ease of use, duct tape will not suffice.  We tried this for this year's first Halloween party at Bethany Community Church, but J arrived home with far fewer spots than he left with.  Oops.

For the ears, cut out the shape in cardboard and wrap it in white tissue paper.  Cut a smaller shape out of pink tissue paper and glue to one side.  Curl the ear into a circle, secure it with tape, and pin it to the hat.

Butterfly Pacifier Clip

Can you spot the difference between these pictures?

Aside from the fact that baby #1 on the left was our winter baby and baby #2 was our summer baby, another key addition can be seen on baby #2: the pacifier clip!

We spent a lot of time picking up and washing baby #1’s dropped binkies.  I had heard of pacifier clips, but I never bought one because (a) I had heard they were a strangulation hazard and (b) is it really worth $8 for a little piece of ribbon attached to a clip?   With baby #2, we lowered our standards wisened up.  The whole strangulation issue is solved by making sure the ribbon is short, and as far as the cost, I found that I could make my own for free with supplies already on hand.  Lots of do-it-yourself pacifier clip instructions on the web start with suspender clips that you can buy at a fabric store for $5.  But for $5, plus the cost of gas, plus the emotional cost of rounding up the kids to drive 10 miles to the nearest fabric store, I would rather just shell out the $8 and order a binkie clip online.  I was sure there must be an easier way.

So I turned to the hubby (aka hoarder of “raw materials”) and asked if he had anything like a suspender clip.  And, boy, he did not disappoint.  He pulled out a bag of dozens of little nametag clips that he had saved over years of business trips and conferences.  With one of these clips, a bit of yarn, and a crochet hook, I fashioned a little something that saves me at least a dozen binkie washes a day.



Supplies:

• Nametag clip


• Yarn of any gauge


• Crochet hook, any size


• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Cut the clip off a nametag


2. Crochet about 12 inches of chain stitches and tie off, leaving ends long.


3. Fold in half and tie ends to the nametag clip.


4. Crochet a butterfly as seen here.


5. Fasten the butterfly to the nametag clip and trip off ends.

You can substitute anything for the butterfly, like a flower or heart.   Crochet-able boy-themed motifs are harder to come by, so I won't worry about it unless we ever have a baby #3 and he happens to be a boy (unlikely).   Though, for 3rd borns, I’m told that you don’t need binkie clips because you don't even worry about binkies falling on the ground any more.   You just pick 'em up, dust 'em off, and stick 'em right back in.