Weekend recipe: Chai tea

Baby, it's cold outside. And also iced over. And that's why we haven't gone past the front door in three straight days. Aghhhh...
Thank you for humoring my temporary freak out. Anyway, as I was saying, it's down right cold.
To combat the chill, I've taken to coffee, cocoa and my most favorite warm beverage: tea. And my favoritest of favorites is chai.
It's soothing and milky. It has a slight caffeine kick. It's spicy. It pretty much gets me through this rough patch of cabin fever. Fevah!
So while this is not a recipe for babies or toddlers, an occasional recipe for mommies and daddies is important, too. After all, it's rather hard to feed Josie if Mommy's all cross-eyed and itchy from being stuck indoors for 72 consecutive hours.

Chai tea
Time
About 20 minutes
Ingredients and Equipment
- 4 to 6 cups of water
- 3 to 4 bags of black tea (Don't used flavored black tea; just plain like assam or darjeeling or pekoe. And truthfully, plain old Lipton's is the best.)
- whole milk
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 6 whole cloves
- 6 green whole cardamom pods
- a dozen whole black peppercorns

- 1/2 to 1 cup white sugar (optional)

- saucepot
- ladle
- sieve
Directions
- Bring water to a boil in the saucepot and drop in the tea bags. Make sure to add enough bags to brew a strong, very dark tea.
- Also drop in the whole spices, though you should crush the cardamom pods in your hands before adding to the mix.
-Stir in the sugar. (Alternatively, you can leave the sugar out and sweeten my the mugful or leave it plain.)
- Turn the heat down to the lowest setting and cover with a lid. Let the tea and spices steep for 10 minutes.
- Turn the heat up just slightly and add several splashes of whole milk.
- Serve warm. (Place the sieve over a mug and ladle the chai into the sieve to strain out the whole spices.)

It's a Christmas miracle

For the last two days, Josie has had only milk. Formula at night and she's taking her milk out of bottles. But still, it's progress. We're on the road to free-wheelin' weandom.

And the winner of the $35 CSN Stores voucher is......NOODLES!
Random number generator picked 2, and that's you my dear.
I'll message you later today with the one-time promotional code that you can use at any of CSN's Web sites. Happy shopping!

Dear Santa

Since you are magic and can do anything, the following is what I'd like for Christmas.
WARNING: This is gonna be a toughie.
1. For Josie to embrace her sippy cup. Or at least, for your elves to invent one that she actually likes.
Sure, she enjoys them in so much as they are liquid-filled missiles. But to drink out of, not so much. Girl likes her bottle. What can I say? She get it from her mama.
I've heard from several mommy mentors that often it takes several different kinds before the "right one" is found. But dang, yo! That gets expensive. Do I really have to invest $80 dollars in sippy cups? Or does the trial of various kinds just pass enough time for her to warm up to the idea in general?
Help a good girl out. I can't keep calling her sippy cup "ba-ba" and thinking I'm gonna fool her.
2. For Josie to embrace milk. Or at least, for your elves to find a cow that makes milk Josie will drink.
Man, when Josie finally decided she liked formula, she committed. She's tolerating the half and half bottles (half formula/half whole milk), but she's flat out rejecting the just milk bottles. Even when we warm the milk. Short of dunking some Oreos in there, how else can I get her to make the switch? Haven't I been nice?
That's all. You made Artie on Glee walk. This should be doable, too.
I'm counting on you, Santa.

Ain't no thing

As we prepare to move two states away, start new jobs and find new routines, we're also preparing to wean Josie now from bottles to sippy cups and from formula to whole milk. Great timing, no?

Most docs/officials/smart people recommend switching baby to whole milk at a year old, and we hope to do that. But we may delay the big switch for a few weeks depending on how quickly Josie adapts to her new home and schedule. 

Josie has done so well with all the other transitions we've asked her to make. Still, this is the first time we've asked her to make such big ones so close together. I don't want to yank the bottle out from under her, so to speak.

As usual, the rationale side of me knows this will be difficult at first but still harder for me than for Josie. And the worry side of me is saying "Ah! Ah! Ah!"

The rationale side will win, and the worry side will remember this:

Out of sheer curiosity on Saturday, I let Josie try milk. 

Did she like it? Dunno. She didn't not like it. 

I poured the milk in a sippy cup because I don't want Josie associating her new beverage-of-choice with bottles since that would defeat the weaning goal. And I didn't heat it up because I want her to take milk straight from the refrigerator. 

When we weaned her from breast to formula bottle, we heated her bottles to make the transition easier and more appealing. But now, she expects warm bottles all the time. When the bottles go, I'll be done with the tedious heating routine.

Any way, Josie took a few sips of milk. And then a few more. She never broke her concentration on the alphabet magnets she was rearranging on the fridge. She took more sips and carried on carrying on.

Basically, her whole demeanor said, "Ain't no thing."

I am encouraged. Now, if we can only cut down on the number of bottle feedings each day and get her to eat more table food....

Hopefully, by January, I'll be able to look back and say "Ain't no thing."