Pandemic Baking

Well after not napping hardly at all yesterday (and with two short-lived, middle-of-the-night wake-ups), my girl was sound asleep when I woke up naturally, with no alarm, and without hearing a chatterbox toddler, at 7:45am. I have no idea that last time I woke up like that!

So before she could wake up, I scrambled to the kitchen to get started on some chocolate chip banana muffins. Like I said last night, everyone in the world is apparently baking their way through this global pandemic, and I seem to be hopping right on that bandwagon as well! (I already have two other recipes I want to attempt, if I can get my hands on some shortening.)

I got this muffin recipe from one of my favorite book & recipe blogs, Everyday Reading. (She’s also the one who wrote the recipe for coconut curry noodle soup that we love so much, and also her easy Indian Butter Chicken.) Baking these muffins was also on my to-do list from last weekend, so I got to cross off another thing today!

By the time I got them in the oven around 8:15, Emerson was awake and just sweetly singing and babbling in the crib in her room. I brought her out to show her what was in the oven, and she was sooo excited about the muffins! I mean, look at that face when I first pulled them out of the oven!

And you guys, they are delicious. Highly recommend this recipe. I was never the kind of wife/woman/grown-up to keep “pantry staples” on hand for random baking, but that has changed in the last year or so, and I’m honestly really proud of myself, because I already had everything I needed in my cabinets.

Last night, Emerson and I got started on a homemade loaf of bread, and left the dough to sit overnight. After getting the muffins going, I put the bread dough from last night into a greased and floured bread pan, and covered with this cute skillet bread cotton towel from the Laurel Mercantile, to rise for an hour. And then I popped that in the oven, for my second baked-good of the day! (Heads up – these are the two other bread recipes I want to try next, for biscuits & cornbread, made in the cast iron skillet. Yum!)

After breakfast, we did a lot more of the same playing we did yesterday, but we also added in arts & crafts time, and painted a tiny Frozen canvas on the kitchen floor. (It came in a 3-pack I got her at Christmas, so we saved the other ones for another day.)

Below, she was saying, “It’s a dinosaurrrr, roooooaaarrrr!!!”

And 45 minutes later, the bread was perfect and smelling sooooo good! She wanted a piece immediately (and of course so did I), and it was torture waiting for it to cool down before slicing into it.

But by lunchtime, it was perfectly cool and perfectly ready to slice into, and Emerson ate an entire piece of Mama’s homemade bread and butter with her cheese noodles.

I had given her an earlier lunch today, so that we could get started on an earlier nap time, so that I could be there for it, since I left that up to Daddy yesterday. And it went really well today. She was easy to put down, and put up no fights, and I got out the door exactly on time. And I had myself another glass of iced coffee to-go! (And I put polka dots on my nails late last night.)

Well, Emerson took another short nap today, and was awake and singing only 30-40 minutes later. Jeff went back in there and got her settled down and put her back in the bed, but he’s not sure she actually slept anymore, but just quietly played with the stuffed animals in her bed. But at least she was quietly resting, if not actually sleeping! But then they had some afternoon movie-rest time while it was storming outside, and she did some playing, and they had a good time.

Work was relatively calm, and I got some stuff accomplished, and once again stayed until 6pm, making up just one extra hour of leave. And since I stayed late, Jeff pre-heated the oven, and we just had a frozen pizza for dinner, which was easy peasy and yummy. And even though I’ve shared before, it’s worth repeating. This is hands down the best frozen pizza out there. We recently got Publix brand and it was $1 more, and significantly not at good. Go Walmart!

Emerson ate some of her own waffle & peaches for dinner, and then decided she wanted some of my pizza too, even after she told me she didn’t like pizza and didn’t want any. And since we miss our people, tonight we had a video call with Grammy, Papa & Grandmommie. And she was just the cutest talking to them!

She was also super cute all cuddled up and loving on Daddy before bedtime. She was very tired, and in no time at all she was out like a light.

We crossed off two more things on the list today – Jeff washed our sheets this afternoon, and I finally cleaned the living room tonight after getting Emmie down. I then lit my favorite Laurel candle, and now the room smells soooo good.

This corner under my arch lamp is my favorite spot to sit, so I’m going to go grab my jar of ice water and wrap up in my blankie.

Then we’re going to watch an episode of Jeopardy, followed by an episode or two of the newest season of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” both of which are one Hulu. (We sometimes forget we have Hulu & mostly watch Netflix, so we’re trying to spread the love to both of the streaming services we pay for 😉 )

Oh, and we found out earlier today that daycare will be opening back up on Monday, and that lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders! The results from the exposed parents’ test still hasn’t come back yet, but as of this coming Friday, the 14-day quarantine for that parent will end, and so they’ll open back up Monday regardless of the results. So we’ll keep this half-day schedule for the rest of the week that we’ve done yesterday and today, and then things will go back to mostly normal next week.

As much as it stinks to have to use my annual leave this week since the school is closed, it’s been great getting extra time at home with my girl, and doing fun projects together, and baking yummy things together. It makes me really wish I only had to work part-time! So I’ll cherish the next three mornings with my little while I have them, because I know next Monday, it’ll be hard to be away from her for an entire day!