Crabby Housewife

10 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Becoming a Parent

March 25, 2016 October 22, 2015 By Crabby Housewife Leave a Comment

There is a moment in most women’s lives where they hold a baby, see a cute child, and they suddenly want a child of their own more than anything else in the world. I like to call it baby fever. Who doesn’t love a sweet little newborn? Even when they are squalling, they are so tiny and cute.

What no one tells you, however, is that the 7 pound newborn turns into a full fledged monster as a teenager. No one warns you of a few of the things that are not so great about parenting. Below are ten things I wish I’d known before becoming a parent.

1. Babies are a 24/7 job

Yes, they are definitely cute and sweet and all that, but they are also work. A LOT of work. Between changing diapers, 2-3 hour feedings, laundering the clothes the baby spit up on, washing the baby because she also spit up all over herself, and trying to get the baby to rest, you will get very little sleep those first months.

2. You will be grossed out

At some point, and likely a lot o points, you’ll be so grossed out that you’ll want to hurl. Think diapers that explode out the back and all the way up into your baby’s hair. You’ll have to launder clothes and sheets and bathe baby, all the while choking back your urge to throw up.

3. You’ll spend many sleepless nights

Whether it is a child who is ill and calls for you every few minutes, or it is a teenager saying out past his curfew, you will lose out on a lot of sleep. This isn’t just for the first month or two, but an ongoing thing that goes on even after your child is grown.

4. Everyone you know will offer you advice, whether you ask for it or not

Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether or not your baby should be on a schedule, what schedule, what you should feed your baby, if you should let your baby cry and a million other topics. The truth is that you simply have to learn to trust your own parental instincts and do what is best for you and your baby. Relatives and friends may mean well but ultimately this is your child and you are the one raising him.

5. You’re not going to look hot and you won’t care

The days of spending three hours getting ready to go out are gone. Even if you do somehow manage to find an hour to primp, the baby will just spit up on you as you head out the door. Instead, go for classic looks, simple to put together pieces, and opt for a simple hairstyle, such as short or wear long hair up in a loose chignon.

6. You’ll love your child, but you won’t always like her

Just like us, children aren’t perfect people. Your child will lie to you, make huge messes, back talk when she hits her preteen years, do at least one rotten thing as a teenager and even aggravate you as an adult. Do your best to address the behavior while validating the person and it will all turn out okay in the end.

7. That cute baby turns into a teenager

The adorable little baby will turn into a teenager one day. The bear hugs she gives you today will turn into “don’t touch me” comments and she will fight fiercely for her independence. My husband and I used to teach youth. We’ve raised two daughters. Our niece lived with us for a while. I can assure you that every teen alive does something at some point that is rotten and will infuriate you.

Use these situations as learning opportunities. Let your child suffer the consequences. If she stayed out until 3 a.m., take her car away for two weeks and make her ride the school bus. If she got drunk at a party and you found out from another mother, ground her from attending parties.

The one exception I had with my daughters was that if she was drunk and needed a ride home, she should call me and I would not lecture or punish her. We might talk about it the next day. However, I really felt she needed that safety net if she found herself in a situation she didn’t know how to get out of.

Then, there are the moments of heartbreak. There is nothing worse than seeing your child heartbroken and knowing all you can do is offer a hug – if she’ll even let you.

8. You’ll make more trips to school than you thought possible

Especially if you stay at home and work or just stay at home (that’s work, too, btw!), your child can and will call multiple times a week with tasks. “Mom, I forgot my field trip money.”, “Mom, I sat in chocolate, can you bring me new pants?”, “Mom, please bring me lunch. I hate this food.”

You’ll grow weary of making these trips, but go ahead and make them as you’re able. This time passes so very quickly and then you’ll miss being on a first-name basis with the school secretary.

9. That teenager grows up

Then, one day you blink and your child is graduating from high school and headed off to college. Suddenly, this little being you’ve watched out for since she was in your womb is going out into the world alone. You have no control, very little input, and all you can do is pray and hope that she learned what you tried to teach her.

10. It is all worth it

In the end, being a parent is the greatest journey you’ll ever take. You’ll look back on it and remember moments of joy, tears of pain, and you’ll realize that you had a hand in shaping this amazing adult that baby has become.

I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. My life would have been incomplete without my daughters. I can’t imagine a world where they don’t exist. So, despite sleepless nights, trips to school, moments of heartbreak, I am so blessed I got to experience it all.

Make Ahead Grilled Chicken for the Week (freezer meals, too!)

February 16, 2018 October 21, 2015 By Crabby Housewife Leave a Comment

Grilled chicken is such a versatile and healthy food to have on hand. One of the things I love about chicken is that when cooked correctly you can keep it in the freezer or fridge to have the basis for quite a number of quick meals you can throw together on the run. Here are some ideas:

Microwaveable brown rice, chicken, cabbage, soy sauce (heat it all up in a skillet). So good!
Cabbage and grilled chicken chunks. I like with soy sauce and some onions.
Chicken soft tacos. Use low carb or whole wheat tortillas, add toppings like shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, shredded cheese and sour cream.
Grilled chicken salad with bagged salad and chunks of grilled chicken. We love to throw in some berries for added nutrients or even have fresh spinach as the base.
Grilled chicken by itself with any side.
Grilled chicken breasts with Monterey cheddar, diced tomatoes and bacon pieces on top.

If the chicken is precooked, I can have most of these meals together in under 10 minutes. Example, pull diced chicken from fridge, nuke frozen rice, throw rice, chicken, cabbage and soy sauce in skillet and heat through. Or, nuke precooked bacon for 1 minute or so until crispy. Add Monterey cheddar to top and nuke for a minute or so to melt cheese and heat chicken while you dice tomato. Add bacon and tomato to top. Dinner is ready!

Make Ahead Grilled Chicken Recipe

Author: Crabby Housewife

Ingredients

Chicken breasts with visible fat removed.
Garlic powder
Paprika
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Parchment paper

Instructions

Although you can grill this chicken on a grill or stove top, I actually prefer to bake it for the most part so it stays moister and tender when freezing, reheating, etc.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Grab a sheet of parchment paper and line as many baking sheets as you'll need depending on how many chicken breasts you are cooking. Keep in mind that juices will escape, so you want something with sides.
Trim the fat from the breasts.
Place side by side on top of parchment paper.
Brush on olive oil to both sides.
Sprinkle on salt, pepper, garlic powder (wait on paprika as it tends to take on a burnt quality in skillet).
Now, preheat a large family size skillet on the stove top.
You'll likely need to cook the breasts in batches, so start with your first batch.
Grill each side of each breast for about two minutes or until the outside is browned.
Transfer that first batch back to the parchment paper and start second batch of breasts to brown.
While the second batch is browning, sprinkle on just a bit of paprika to add color.
Cook breasts for 20 minutes in oven. Since you're cooking in batches, you may have them coming out at different times. You want an internal temperature of 165 degrees according to FoodSafety.gov.
You can also cut through the center of the thickest breast and make sure there is no pink. Chicken has a flaky texture when cooked through. It should not be smooth or shiny.
Allow to cool for about 30 minutes and then refrigerate, freeze or predice for salads and dishes.

Healthier Popcorn in a Snap

February 16, 2018 October 20, 2015 By Crabby Housewife Leave a Comment

One of my favorite foods is popcorn. There is something about the taste that takes me right back to family nights as a child. My mom would pop a big batch of pop corn on the stove, melt some butter of it, salt it and we’d have a treat to eat while we waited for The Muppets to come on. Can you believe this show is back on the air all these years later?

However, we’re all busy these days. Creating a batch of popcorn on the stove is time consuming and I also don’t want to mess up my Pampered Chef pot by cooking popping corn in it. Microwave popcorn is fast and simple but I worry about the chemicals in it and I don’t particularly like the taste of any of the microwave popcorn brands out there. They have that weird chemical taste that tells me it isn’t so good for me.

For years now, I’ve made my own microwave popcorn bags and as I popped up a small batch tonight, I realized I should share this trick with all of you. You may or may not have tried this yet. It is so simple, you will be amazed, and the taste is just like stove top popped popcorn.

As an added bonus, you can use healthier fats, such as the super high quality olive oil I’ve been using that my parents brought me back from their trip to Spain. You can also use real butter for a topping, which is healthier than margarine (it’s real, folks; margarine is not). It’s better for the environment as the paper bags are biodegradable.

Healthier Popcorn in a Snap

Author: Crabby Housewife

Ingredients

1/4 Cup Popcorn Kernels
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil or oil of your choice - coconut, canola
1 Pinch of Salt
1 Brown Paper Lunch Bag

Instructions

Open the lunch bag and place kernels in the bottom.
Add the oil, drizzling over all the kernels.
Hold the top closed and give the bag a little shake to distribute the oil.
Sprinkle on salt.
Fold the top of the bag over several tips. I also like to just give it a tight squeeze.
Microwave for 3-4 minutes (listen for the kernel popping to slow almost to a stop and you'll know it is ready).

A Few Proven Tips

As I said before, this is a recipe I’ve been using for many years. Over time, you start to pick up ways to get a better bag of popcorn. Here are some of my favorite tips:

The most expensive popcorn isn’t always the best. I have tried this recipe with Orville Redenbacher popcorn. You’d think that would pop better since it’s expensive. It doesn’t. I’ve also tried it with the white popcorn, etc. I find the best popcorn is Kroger brand (or store brand) yellow popcorn. That’s right. The cheapest bag you can find. It pops just as well, has less kernels when finished, and tastes great.
Butter is a wonderful topping, but you can also add some cinnamon and sugar for a sweet treat or some Parmesan cheese for a savory dish of goodness. I sometimes purchase the powdered white cheddar and add that, too, but again you are essentially sprinkling on processed crap. Still, sometimes we need the processed junk or our taste buds, right? Okay, maybe not, but I do it sometimes anyway.
Don’t stop the microwave when the popping slows, but when it almost stops. If you stop it too soon, it will not pop all the way and you’ll wind up with a tiny handful of popcorn. Not the end of the world, though. Just pop another bag if this happens to you.

These paper bag popcorns are the perfect size for one person. If you are serving a family, let everyone pop their own and then transfer to another paper bag for eating as the initial bag will be drenched in oil. Hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

Pumpkin Pie Dip Sugar Free Gluten Free and Good

December 23, 2016 October 19, 2015 By Crabby Housewife Leave a Comment

As a frugal mom, avid couponer and cheapskate queen, I have a handful of sites I visit on a daily basis to see what is on sale, etc. One of those sites is Hip2Save. When I popped on there today, I saw this yummy looking recipe for Pumpkin Pie Dip.

You make this dip with just three simple ingredients and serve with vanilla wafers. This would be a tasty treat to take to a church gathering, serve at a get together or just for everyday yumminess.

However, right now I’m trying to limit my carbs and it had just too much sugar in it for me. The good thing? This recipe would be so very easy to make low carb.

Instead of regular Cool Whip, sub sugar free or make your own heavy whipping cream from scratch (I like the taste of Cool Whip for recipes like this, though).
Pumpkin is great for you. It is full of fiber and while it does have carbs, they are healthy carbs. You don’t need to change this ingredient at all.
Instead of regular instant pudding, sub sugar free instant vanilla pudding.
Instead of regular vanilla wafers, purchase sugar free ones or better yet use some sliced up apples or make your own gluten/sugar free cookies.

Colin, over at Hip2Save suggests adding a pinch of pumpkin spice to the mixture. You can see this is a very simple recipe. Thanks for another fabulous post, Hip2Save. Keep up the good work and we’d love to see more recipes. By the way, if you haven’t checked out that site, it is definitely worth a visit, or two, or three.

Why You Should Never Give a Friend the Cold Shoulder

March 25, 2016 October 16, 2015 By Crabby Housewife Leave a Comment

I had a very good friend all through high school. We spent nearly every day and most weekend events together. While she wasn’t my best friend, she was a very good friend and someone I cared very much about. We ran in the same friend group, and I really liked her as a person. Then, things changed.

The Friendship Ends

She went away to school, broke up with her boyfriend (who was still a friend of ours) and met someone new. We tried to maintain our friendship, but frankly her new boyfriend seemed like an arrogant jerk to me. Although I thought I covered my thoughts of him, maybe I didn’t. Perhaps there were other factors, such as the awkwardness of the break up. Whatever the case and circumstances, she broke off our communication and I never really knew the reasons why.

I wrote her a long letter telling her if I’d done anything I was sorry and how much I cared about her and our friendship and she never responded. I can take a hint, so I dropped it, but I was hurt. I was deeply hurt and couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t at least tell me what I’d done to merit being dropped as a friend without so much as a goodbye.

Looking on the other side of things, I realize there were other factors at play. An ex-boyfriend who still wanted her back, a new boyfriend who she wanted to please, and her propensity to be a people pleaser. Over the years, I would sometimes think about her when looking at old photos or eating somewhere we’d hung out as teens. I was still pretty mad at her. She’d gone against the girl code. She’d chosen a guy over one of her best friends.

Bumping into Her

A few more years passed and I heard she’d gotten married and had a couple of boys. I had two girls and one day was at Kings Island with my family. My husband bumped into her and brought her over, all excited (he forgets any bad thing anyone ever does to him or to me, which is probably a blessing). She stood in front of me and all I could think about was how angry I was at her. I was so mad, girls. I can’t even tell you how angry I was. I had always been a good friend to her. I didn’t deserve the way she’d treated me.

So, I did what us women can be so good at. I gave her that polite, but cold shoulder greeting. The hug that tells her you don’t really want to hug her. The questions that tell her you don’t really care. “Oh, are these your boys?”, “How have you been?” Women know exactly what you are doing when you treat them that way. It is a signal and they know it and so do you.

I was very cool but very polite, because a southern lady must be polite, right? Well, I am here to tell you that I was wrong and that I was about to learn a big life lesson about forgiveness.

I have always struggled with forgiveness. It’s hard for me. I will let a lot of little things go, but if you wound me deeply, I never forget it. It is definitely a weakness of mine and one I have worked on and am still working on. I suspect I will always struggle in this area.

More years went by and I thought to myself a couple of times that she’d deserved the cold shoulder I’d given her. I also felt if she really cared, she would have reached out after seeing how hurt I still was (like she was a mind reader, right?). I pushed away the memories of good times we’d had together, how easy she was to get along with, and what she’d been through that likely led her to cut us out of her life that way. I sort of smugly congratulated myself on being polite but letting her know what I thought of her.

Aren’t I nice a person? You see, I might have been polite on the outside, but inside I was having the ugliest, most hateful thoughts you could imagine.

A Big Lesson for Me

These days, there is a group on Facebook of alumni from high school. You can keep up with what people are doing, see pictures of their kids when you friend them. It’s a lot of fun, right?

It is until your husband tells you that person you so smugly gave the cold shoulder passed away. That the dear friend you shared your deepest secrets with, stayed up all night telling your future dreams, and who always had your back is gone. That she suffered and you never had a chance to even offer the least bit of comfort to her. There is no more chance to make it right. No chance to bump into her and greet her warmly and with love and kindness instead of that smug cold shoulder.

What I would give to go back to that day and throw my arms around her and tell her how glad I was to see her. To have spent a few more minutes talking to her and to have embraced forgiveness instead of bitterness.

Who are you holding a grudge against right now? Who has hurt you and you haven’t forgiven them? Is there someone you need to make things right with? Don’t wait until it’s too late.