Caroline turned nine months old last week, but this is the first chance I had to post about it.

Our sweet baby girl has turned nine months. Don’t ask me how it happened so fast! If I had my way, time would pass a lot slower than it does.

At the doctor we found out that our girl is weighing in at 19 lbs. 10 oz. {70 percentile} and 28 3/4 inches {85 percentile}.  Grow, Caroline, grow!

The army crawl is so 8 months, she has moved on to better things—crawling on her hands and knees.

She also started to pull herself up to standing in her crib.  Of course the first time she did it Jeromy was out of town and I was too nervous to leave her in the crib for naps, so she napped on me in the Ergo.  As soon as he got home we lowered the mattress.  She can still stand up but she can’t really reach far over the rail.

Breastfeeding continues to go well, I’ve cut down how often I pump from four times a day to three and it has not yet affected my supply.  Caroline is a bit more aware, I think, of nursing as she now tries to move my shirt when she’s hungry.  She also wraps her legs around my arm when she’s nursing, it’s pretty cute.  I’m not sure just when I’m going to start weaning her, at least not until her first birthday.  She has moved on to eating mostly finger foods.  She loves feeding herself and is getting better and better at putting all of the food in her mouth. {I’ll tell you more about the food and our method of feeding Caroline next week—we’ve taken a hybrid baby lead weaning and puree approach.}  She also began drinking out of a straw cup instead of a spout!

Dixie continues to amuse Caroline to no end, eliciting lots of smiles, shrieks and giggles. Now that she’s mobile, she crawls after the cat.  Dixie has become pretty good at avoiding being grabbed by Caroline.

Caroline has always loved having a book read to her but now she enjoys getting her hands on the books herself.  We go through a lot of board books every day!

It’s amazing to see how Caroline learns things.  She’ll watch us do something once or twice then she’ll do it herself.  Peek-a-boo, for example.  Now when she wants to play she’ll hold a blanket in front of her face and bring it down and look at us to say something, then start laughing hysterically.  It’s incredible.  We’ve also learned that she really doesn’t have any fear as she has started moving around—she will go after anything and throw herself anywhere.  This is both wonderful and terrifying to me.

My sweet baby girl, time is going by in the blink of an eye and you are growing and changing every day.  Your daddy and I feel so very lucky to be a part of your life and will do everything we can to make sure you grow up knowing just how much you are loved, every single day.

It’s no secret that I love Greek yogurt.  By far, my favorite brand to use when cooking and baking {or just eating with a spoon!} is Chobani.  So I was really excited when I received an invitation from Chobani to attend their inaugural blogger dinner this past Saturday night at The Federalist in DC.

Group photo courtesy of Sara!

Jackie and Emily {crouching next to me} were our fantastic hosts from Chobani.  It was really interesting to hear about the history of the company and how it’s grown in just a few years.  From listening to how Emily and Jackie talked about Chobani, it was obvious that they love the product and the company. 

Greeting us when we sat down were these awesome canvas bags full of swag. Since this was my first official blogging event hosted by a company, this is also my first swag bag. I was excited. It’s the little things.

Chef Harper McClure created a menu to highlight the use of Chobani in each course.  And he did not disappoint!

{I normally do not take photos of my food in restaurants but since I was at an event specifically for food bloggers, I made an exception.}

After we put in our orders, baskets of fresh bread were served to the table.  Naturally, I had to eat one of each: a piece of cornbread and a piece of baguette, slathered in butter.

The appetizer was amazing.

White Gazpacho
Poached Laughing Bird Shrimp, Minted Yogurt

The gazpacho was so creamy and delicious.  I loved the green grape garnish and the shrimp were absolutely perfect.  I liked it so much that I commented to Jackie that if I weren’t sitting in a restaurant I would have licked my bowl clean. She encouraged me to do it anyway, but I remembered my manners and refrained.

For my entrée I went with the lamb.

Slow Cooked Spring Lamb
Gin Soaked Cucumbers, Spring Herb Salad, Espelette-Yogurt Emulsion
Suggested Pairing: Coeur de Terre Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, Oregon

I was torn between choosing the yogurt poached halibut, because I thought poaching fish in yogurt sounded intriguing, but I went with the lamb because it was paired with a pinot noir. I am a sucker for pinot noir.  Let me tell you, the lamb was incredible.  It was done two ways, as shown above, and I cleaned that plate too.

Family Style Sides

Roasted Heirloom Cauliflower

Fricassee of Wild Mushrooms

Confession: I had two servings of the cauliflower. It was that good.  It was buttery, crunchy, slightly sweet, salty and smothered in herbs.  If you don’t like cauliflower, I think this dish will make a believer out of you.

Oddly enough for me, I wasn’t super excited about dessert because I didn’t think I liked panna cotta.  I was wrong.

Greek Yogurt Panna Cotta
Strawberry Preserves, Shortbread Cookies, Long Pepper Sauce

This panna cotta made a believer out of me.  It was so velvety smooth.  I ate each bite with a piece of shortbread, some preserves and the peppery sauce for as long as it lasted.  Another plate cleaned!

I had a great time talking with other DC area bloggers, Jackie and Emily.  As a working mom, I choose to spend the majority of my free time with my husband and our baby girl but it was fun to get out on my own for a night. I even met up with a friend after dinner for a quick drink before heading home and collapsing into bed way past my bedtime.  Too bad Caroline doesn’t understand the concept of sleeping in just yet .

As for what was in the swag bag…..

a lunch bag, a water bottle, recipe cards and recipe card holder and Chobani recipes.  How fun!

Thank you again to Chobani for inviting me to this really fun event!

It has been years since I ran a race.  Literally, years.  The last race I participated in was the New Jersey State Triathlon in July 2009.

Now that I’m running again, I really wanted a race to work towards.  In the DC area we have more than enough races to choose from ranging from 5Ks to marathons.  There are 3 ten milers in the area that are very popular: The Cherry Blossom, The GW Parkway Classic and The Army Ten Miler.  I would love to complete all three of these hometown races.  I ran The Cherry Blossom in 2006.  The GW Parkway Classic just happened in April.  The Army Ten Miler is coming up in October.  Registration opened today.

So what did I do? I signed up for The Army Ten Miler! I am really excited that I have a race to work towards.  Granted, the race is in October, it’s only May and I won’t start training for it until August, but I am still excited.  Having been away from the racing scene for almost three years seems crazy to me and I can’t wait to get back into it.

In the mean time, I’m going to keep running with Caroline, fitting in fitness wherever I can and run a few shorter races before October.

Who else is running the Army Ten Miler? 

I think I’ll plan a meet up for bloggers and readers participating in the race, please send me an e-mail at thesplatteredapron {at} gmail {dot} com if you want to be included!

If there is one thing we love in this house, it’s risotto.  If there’s another thing we love in this house, it would be lemon.  Why it took me so long to put the two together, I have no idea.

While flipping through a copy of Food Network Magazine at my parents’ house, I discovered a method of cooking risotto that takes it from an occasional fancy treat to an easy weeknight meal.  It can also be the perfect one pot meal.  Do you need another reason to try this recipe?

While this was good, I think that subbing asparagus for edamame would make it great.

I absolutely love this cooking method too—it practically guarantees creamy risotto without the need to stand over a hot stove and stir a pot continuously for upwards of 45 minutes.

Lemon zest could easily be one of my most favorite ingredients.  A little bit goes a long way to develop flavor.

As a main dish or a side, this is a winner.  I could see it pairing very nicely with a simply grilled or poached salmon.

It makes me smile to think that two of the main flavors in this dish come from ingredients grown right in my backyard: lemon and tarragon.

Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Real Simple.

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If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I’m now a FitFluential Ambassador! I am so excited to be a part of this fantastic community and can’t wait to share fitness related content with you!

Saturday morning at the park after the farmer’s market. {Wearing my Mother’s Day present a day early!}

Dixie found a cool spot outside.

Dinner with Chobani {details to come!}

Woke up to this sweet face on Mother’s Day.

Treated to brunch with my two favorite people.

Playing in the shade.

While we planted the garden.

Jeromy and I keep telling each other how much we loved this weekend.  Here’s hoping to many more just like it.

How was your weekend?

I don’t think I understood what my mom’s life has been like until I became a mom.

My parents didn’t go on vacation so that my sister and I could go to summer camp.

My mom would pack an extra snack and change to call home on field trip days, just in case the bus broke down. {I know what you’re thinking. I never ate the snack. Unless the bus broke down.}

My mom put notes in my lunch on the first day of school every year. 

My parents dropped me off at college, drove 1.5 hours home only to drive back the next day with stuff that I needed.  Despite the fact that they were coming back down 5 days later for my birthday.

My mom baked my favorite apple pie, then wrapped it up and shipped it overnight to me. To this day, she continues to do little things to make sure I know how much she loves me.

My mom always supports my dreams, even when they are crazy.

My mom taught me how to give my newborn daughter a bath. 

She and my dad were here for the first two weeks of Caroline’s life, to take care of me and Jeromy while we took care of our sweet baby girl.

Now that I am a mom, I understand the love that my mom has for me and how, every day, even when I was a horrible brat, she still made sure that I knew how loved I am.

My mom showed me how to be the very best mom that I can be. To me, that’s the greatest gift she has ever given me.

Thank you, Mom, I love you!

All of my life, I’ve had a serious thing for cereal.  We weren’t allowed to have sugar cereals so I grew up eating Grape-Nuts, Cheerios and Rice Krispies.  One day when I was really young, we were almost out of all three so my mom mixed them together for me.  Let me tell you, those three are meant to be together.  First pour in the Grape-Nuts, then the Cheerios and top with the Rice Krispies.  You’ll never eat a regular bowl of cereal again.

Recently, Attune Foods offered to send me samples of their cereals.  After months of religiously eating oatmeal for breakfast, I was excited to get back to my first love: cereal with cold milk.

From Attune’s site:

What matters most is what’s inside

What’s inside the box:
Simple, pure ingredients that help you feel your best every day.
What’s inside you:
Something different in each of us – something worth celebrating.
What’s inside our company:
A team dedicated to improving the way we eat at home, in our local community,
in our nation and someday worldwide.

Sounds great to me.

I poured myself a bowl immediately after pulled these out of the box.  All three of them together, naturally.

I doused the cereal in milk and dug right in.  Happily, the cereal stayed crisp and maintained it’s texture.  I don’t know why I was expected the cereal to be sweet, it wasn’t at all and I liked it that way.

Usually when I eat cereal for breakfast I’ll be hungry an hour or two later.  This cereal kept me full until lunchtime—just as long as oatmeal. Win! 

Over the next week or two I kept eating a bowl over and over again and saying to myself, I’ll use this in a recipe soon.  Like all good things, one day I ran out of cereal. 

I was sad because I didn’t get to create a recipe.  As luck would have it, my local Safeway stocks Uncle Sam’s cereal! I guess I can make that recipe after all.

Thanks very much to Attune Foods for allowing me to give their products a try. I hope you will too!

Attune Foods provided me with three boxes of cereal.  I did not receive any compensation for writing this post.

Whenever I use a Bundt cake pan, I can’t help but think of that scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

As a girl from a half Greek and half Lebanese family, I can very much identify with the characters in this movie.  The first time I saw it, I fell off my seat in the movie theater because I was laughing so hard.  I really did, ask my mom.

Anyways, last month there was a water leak in my office and three floors of people were displaced for three weeks while it was cleaned up and remediated.  My entire team was spread throughout the building and some of us worked from home for the duration.  I wanted to bake something for my coworkers to celebrate being back on our floor all together and seeing as my team is kind of obsessed with chocolate and tea, this cake seemed like the perfect thing.

The cake seemed like it would be very rich, so I added a sweet glaze to cut the richness. It worked, but I would have liked to add orange zest to the glaze and I would have liked to make it a little thicker. Next time!

It’s funny, I’ve always thought that chocolate cake was okay, preferring to get my chocolate fix from brownies, cookies or straight up chocolate, but after being pregnant, I discovered a love for chocolate cake that I didn’t even know existed.

This cake? This cake is good.  I mean really, really good.  I love that the spiciness of the earl grey tea subtly plays against the chocolate and is enhanced by the orange glaze.

I was glad to have my team at work to share this with, otherwise Jeromy and I would have been in some serious trouble. In a face off, I am pretty sure this cake would win.

Make this cake. Serve it with milk.  Your coworkers will thank you.

And remember, it’s a BuuuunndT.

Recipe adapted, just barely, from Real Simple.

Not pictured: the farmer’s market, our cinco de mayo party and piles of food.  Another great weekend!

Before I became a parent, there were days that I would think that I was just too busy to go to the gym or go for a run. I didn’t have enough time in the day to do everything.  Now I wonder, what in the world was I doing with my time?? I had no idea what busy was until I became a working mom.

Since I know that fitness is a priority and that my time is limited, I have to find ways to make working out count in shorter amounts of time.  For me that means multi-tasking.

When I take Caroline running with me in the stroller, I seek out hills.  Why would I want to push a 24 pound stroller carrying a 17+ pound baby up a hill? Because when I get to the top, my triceps burn.  My quads are on fire and my core has been working hard.

Sometimes I know that the only chance I’ll have to get in a weights workout is in the morning, especially on days that I work from home and don’t have to commute.  On those mornings I’ll set my alarm and get up ready to work out.  More often than not, my little sidekick decides she wants to get up then too.  Instead of letting her derail my plans to work out, I take her downstairs with me.  Conveniently, her playroom and the space where I workout are the same.  I count the reps out loud for Caroline and she laughs hysterically at some of the ridiculous moves I do while also jumping around in her jumperoo.  It’s like we’re working out together.  And I love every minute of it.

Caroline may not yet understand what it is I’m doing as I involve her in some of my workouts, but someday she will.  Someday I hope she’ll know that it was as important to me to spend time with her as it was to lead a healthy lifestyle and this was how I tried to accomplish both of those things.

How do you sneak fitness into your day?