Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Mothering Moments: "I wanta be a friends mama"

Those were the words thrown out by my 3 year old this morning after I somewhat harshly told him to stop jumping on me while I vacuumed. 

Eluwhoo was busy doing dishes, Gman was busy picking up books, and Cbelle was ... hmmm, playing in her room? 
Wyatt was without a job and therefore, wanted to "play" with me while I finished the vacuuming. 

I'm thrusting the dirt eater around the living room and every 5 seconds there's this 32lb stringy beast landing on my legs and clinging to my waist. 
Child, off! 
Is what I'm thinking. 

I said a few:
Superwy, no.
Superwy, stop. 
No, son. 

So then there was: 
SON! Stop jumping on me! 

Tears. 
Sadness. 
A boy, sucking his thumb on the stairs, cuddling his blanket. 

A few minutes pass and I hear:
"Mama, I wanta huuuug.
I wanta be a friends mama."

I actually laugh when I hear him.
I responded with, 
"We are friends, son."
And then I'm sad. 

I realize there are a couple things in what my little superman said. 
The first is that our children want our friendship and they will push us to give it to them. If we give in and give them friendship without parenting, it will be to their detriment. 
I am not called to be my child's friend, I am called to be his mother. 
A mother first, always. 

So many parents now seem to think that they can be their child's best friend and focus on that relationship more than the relationship of the parent to child. 
We are our children's parents for a reason.
God designed the family system for a reason and with a purpose. 
A big part of that purpose, I believe, is to provide our children with an environment where mom and dad teach them, train them, discipline them, and disciple them. 
Not be their best friend. 

The second thing is that I realized in that moment that my child was calling out for relationship with me.
Right then. At that moment. 
That calling out didn't mean that I needed to rush to him and apologize up and down and just hug him, though it's easy to think that. 
Just like we cannot be friends without parenting, we cannot parent without relationship. 
So what this moment meant was that I needed to go to him, hug him, apologize for being harsh, and then explain to him why he needed to stop jumping on me. 
I needed to restore the mother-child relationship. 

So we did that. And then I asked him to obey, and he did. 
So often, we move from one task to the next and disregard the need to repair the relationship with our children. 
I could have easily finished vacuuming, moved on to dishes, and then on to blanket time without taking a moment. 
I could have responded with my,
"We are friends, son." 
And just left it there. 
But what would that have accomplished and what would I have missed and messed? 

Don't let yourself only be a friend to your child without being their parent and don't parent your children without a healthy parent-child relationship. 
Spend time building a healthy relationship with your children even when it's easier to do the opposite. You will win their heart and will be able to turn that heart right back to Christ. 
What a beautiful thing! 

I'll be trying right along with you because heaven knows, I need to keep trying. 

Sunday, January 01, 2012

Eat: Pancakes here! Come and get your pancakes!

We love pancakes in this house.
Pumpkin pancakes, chocolate pancakes, cinnamon pancakes, banana bread pancakes, oatmeal pancakes, plain pancakes ... ohhhh pancakes. 

So over the last two weeks we tried 2 new pancake recipes that were both huge successes and tonight I'm going to share those recipes with you! 
Lucky, lucky you. 

First up, chocolate brownie pancakes. 
If that name itself doesn't send you into a tizzy, I don't know what will. 
What makes this even better?
Oh, their clean eats! 
The original recipe is actually a waffle recipe but since we don't have a waffle maker I took her recipe and made pancakes instead. 


Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat  flour
1/2 cup raw cacao powder
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. real salt
1/4 cup wheat germ (I used raw wheat germ, but any kind will work)
1 3/4 cups almond milk (you can also use non-fat or low-fat milk)
2 ripe bananas
2 whole eggs
2 tbsp. coconut oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 tbsp. honey

Directions:
Step 1 – Place a flour sifter in a large mixing bowl, and place all your dry ingredients, except for the wheat germ, into the sifter and sift. 
Disclaimer: I didn't sift my ingredients because I don't have a sifter. Oh, snap! 
They turned out great nonetheless.

Step 2 – Add your wheat germ to the bowl and blend well with a whisk. 

Step 3 – In a separate bowl, mix all your wet ingredients. I used a hand blender to blend everything into a smooth liquid.

Step 4 – Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients, and blend with a whisk. Don’t over mix, but do get out any clumps you see.

Step 5 – For waffles: pour a little in at a time. Use a spatula to help it spread. You don’t want to go to heavy, or you’ll end up like me with batter oozing out the sides. Less is more here. Trust me.
For pancakes: same rules apply, less is more. I used a 1/4 C measuring cup to pour the batter onto the griddle. 

Eat and Enjoy!

My children each ate 3 and asked for more and I had to cut them off! They would have eaten all 19. 

. . . 

Alright, so the next morning, after your delicious brownie pancakes, you may want lighter ones.
These cinnamon pancakes with cinnamon honey butter will be just right! 



Cinnamon Pancakes:
Ingredients:
2 1/2 C Flour
3 Tb. Cinnamon
1 tsp. Baking powder
1/4 tsp. Salt
2 Eggs, beaten
1 tsp. Vanilla
2/3 C Honey
1 1/2 C Almond milk
1/4 C Coconut oil 

Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, mix the first 4 ingredients. In a medium bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients; mix well. Using a 1/4 C measuring cup, pour batter on hot, greased griddle or frying pan. 
Flip. 
Top with cinnamon honey butter. 
Eat. 
Swoon. 
Repeat. 


Cinnamon Honey Syrup:
Ingredients:
3/4 C Honey
1/2 C Butter
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon (you could do more. I would have liked it better with about 1tsp.)

Heat all ingredients until combined. Serve warm. 
Droooooool. 


I wanted to eat all 16 of these pancakes. They were to die for.