Category Archives: Parenting

Crap My Baby Will Never Eat: Frozen Pizza Bites

05/30/2014 R.C. Liley 6 Comments

Are we all so desperate that we have to rely on frozen processed food to feed our kids and ourselves? There are many products I can (and most likely will) speak on for being unhealthy snack options, but today I’m focusing on the ever popular frozen pizza rolls/bites. Mainly, Bagel Bites (H.J. Heinz) and Totino’s (General Mills).

Have you seen the Totino’s commercial with a mom on the phone with her hungry kids? I first saw it about a year and a half ago, but I’m sure there’s still something similar playing now.

The kids are looking for something in the freezer and are saying there’s nothing to eat, but of course Totino’s is right in front of their face. Apparently her kids are too dumb to see the bright yellow packaging until she tell them the exact location. Then they are all happy and the kids go off to make their food-like substance pizza rolls.

Here is the nutrition info for their basic cheese party pizza…

….and that’s the one with the least ingredients!

The seemingly most popular pepperoni pizza rolls look even worse….

….and you know being little bites that it’s easy to go over the standard serving size.

Bagel Bites are the lesser of evils here, but still have no place being called real food. They even pit themselves against Totino’s in an ad trying to make us (the consumer) feel like the are the better (and only) option. No thanks to either.

And really? Are they assuming we’re stupid and only eating cheese? NO! Here are the rest of Bagel Bites’ ingredients:

“Bleached Wheat Flour, Water, Mozzarella Cheese (Milk, Cultures, Salt, Enzymes)Tomato Puree (Tomato Paste, Water)Pepperoni (Pork, Beef, Salt, Spices, Water, Dextrose, Seasonings [Oleoresin of Paprika, Natural Spice Extractives, BHA, BHT, Citric Acid]Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Sodium Nitrate)2% or Less of: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Modified Cornstarch, Salt, Soybean Oil, Yeast, Whey Protein Concentrate (Milk)Nonfat Milk, Flavor Enhancer (Potassium Chloride, Ammonium Chloride, Yeast Extract, Maltodextrin [Corn]Lactic Acid, Citric Acid, Calcium Lactate, Natural Flavor)Methylcellulose, Citric Acid, Red Pepper, Natural Flavor, Dough Conditioner (Ascorbic Acid)Enzymes.”

Unfortunately, I am guilty of having these years ago and sure, they tasted good. But, I was also fat and out of shape. Now I make plenty of delicious snacks that taste great and offer wholesome nutrition I feel good about.

Right now we’re just starting to get Avery into eating solids through baby-led weaning, but soon she’ll be helping daddy cook in the kitchen and I can’t wait to teach her the benefits of real food. I will show her the frozen non-food “food” when we shop and explain how and why they are not a good food option.

Some, okay, a lot of people might call me anal when it comes to food, but why shouldn’t I be? You don’t know what you’re getting when someone is preparing food for you and I’m not okay with that. I am more at peace when I make everything myself and know exactly what goes into my meals.

The few times I do go out, it is rare to actually get what I order via special request. I don’t get why, because it’s usually asking to do less than the original menu item. If I get a salad, I ask for no dressing, cheese, croutons, and oils on the side. Sometimes that salad arrives with a seemingly extra amount of each!

I could make a full post over this (maybe I will), but for now my message is that I will not succumb to feeding our beautiful girl any processed junk. I realize many parents face time constraints, but obtaining healthier options is not that difficult.

This is why I’m working to start Avery on healthy veggies now and trying to put off the sweeter foods like bananas and other fruits. I will definitely share the joys of sweet fruits, but it’s veggies first. My mode of thinking is that she will grow up only knowing these nutritious foods and not craving something she can just throw in the microwave and mindless munch on while watching TV.

There will be more of these posts as Avery grows and I hope I am able to help parents strive to offer better, nutritious food for their little ones and themselves! I am already nervous about how I can keep her from having anything containing the worst ingredients in processed food when at a friend’s home or at school, but luckily, I have some time.

Back to the pizza rolls/bites; you can quickly make your own that can be frozen or cooked as needed with simple ingredients. Here are a few easy and healthy recipes to try with whole grain tortillas:

Tortilla Pizza

No-Bake Spinach Pizza Rolls

Another Easy Pizza Roll for the Road

What do you think about these types of foods?

Any tips on how to keep your little ones eating healthy when you aren’t with them?

Am I crazy?

Life, Parenting

If My Baby Could Tweet and Use Hashtags

05/29/2014 R.C. Liley 5 Comments

It’s the coolest thing lately, using hashtags for everything! Every show has its name in hashtag at the top of the screen and people even talk in hashtag; me included.

I used to make fun of hashtag use and seriously got annoyed because I’ve always know it as a pound sign. Mainly because, IT IS!

When you get an automated voice on the phone, it doesn’t say “Please enter your password followed by the hashtag”. Not yet at least.

But, I have succumbed to its use and do it daily. #igiveup

See?

So I started to wonder what my 6 month old daughter, Avery, would say in hashtag if she knew how. And thus, my post was born! Here’s my attempt to put hashtag words in Avery’s mouth for some of our recent pictures.

Enjoy!

Dad called the hashtag a pound sign! #WTF

#SomebodyPayAttentionToMe

#Damn

And picture number 1,033 for the day….#StopDad

I’m still here. #PhotoBomber

Go ahead, cat, make the first move. #KittyCompetition

I didn’t actually mean for you to make a move! #GiveMeTheRedDot

I have to feed myself with this?! #BringBackBoob

Just doin what I do. #RaspberrySelfie

It stinks. #WhoFarted

It was me. #BroccoliMadeMe

What, another picture session? #DontLookDontLookDontLook

Those stupid waving fingers always get me. #Crap

I think I just have to fart…..oops. #ChangeMyDiaper

Not all toys are fun. #IMissTheRedDot

Yeah mom, I love the bow. #Ppthhhppthhhppththpptthh

Go ahead, ask me another question you already know I can’t answer. #BabyProblems

Now that I use hashtags on a daily basis, I get how useful they are for social media and business, but there will always be a part of me that questions how and why the ever originated. But, like most things with technology, you just have to go with the flow.

What are your thoughts on using hashtags?

Any personal stories?

Don’t you call it the pound sign?

Life, Parenting

What Was It Like Before Baby Monitors?

05/28/2014 R.C. Liley 4 Comments

Sunday night, the night before my Memorial Day 10k, we ran into a little problem, the baby monitor broke! Well, kinda, the video worked but there was no sound.

The thought never crossed my mind on what we’d do sans baby monitor, but here we were with mounting anxiety over not being able to hear our baby. Actually, that’s not true, we spend a lot of the night in our living room and can hear Avery’s wails just fine without a device, but it still got to us. Plus, I was planning on going to bed a little earlier to get a good rest before waking up to run.

That night, we slept slightly longer on the couch than usual, and finally migrated to bed where I am sure we were both wondering if Avery was crying or not. Thankfully G-Ma was staying the night and her room is right next to Avery’s, so that helped comfort us a little.

Avery never woke up crying that night (or maybe we did and we didn’t hear), but we felt it urgently necessary to find a replacement. A lot of times, when something breaks, we try to figure out some way of being able to return the faulty product in exchange for a new one. Since we bought our monitor online and didn’t know of any stores that carried it, that option was out the window.

The next day, when we arrived home from the race, I thought I’d tinker around with the device to see if I could “fix” it. My tinkering entailed lightly hitting it and blowing into the speaker holes as if they were an Original NES Nintendo cartridge. Going Mom joked that you know you’re an 80’s baby when you do this, and it’s true!

source: http://blog.logitech.com/2013/10/08/six-gaming-myths-every-gamer-should-know/

Did you know that blowing into the cartridge was actually part of the problem? Apparently every time we did blew, some of our saliva would coat the game which made it hard for the system to read. There, learned something new today…unless you already “knew” that.

Back to the monitor, blowing into it and hitting didn’t work, obviously, so I did the next best thing; try pressing all of the buttons. Lo and behold, this actually fixed the freakin’ thing!

Backtrack to Sunday morning, when the monitor still worked, Kelley and I were laying in bed listening to Avery blow raspberries in her crib. C’mon, I know other parents do this, right? Kelley was about to get up to feed her, but we thought we’d have a little fun and talk to her through the monitor. Cheap entertainment at it’s best!

That stare is kind of creepy, in a cute sort of way. Well, we had our fun and went about our day, but I guess that button stuck for whatever reason. I’m actually surprised we didn’t wake her while talking that night when we thought it was just broken.

So, after pressing the button to speak to your baby again, it reset and all was well in the world again! Phew, I was worried we were going to have to come up with a really good story to tell the store if we tried to return it.

While we were slowly going crazy when the monitor was still “broken”, my mom (G-Ma) mentioned how all she had for me was audio. She’d have to peak into the nursery any time she wanted to actually see me; crazy, huh?

Being able to hear your baby rustling around but unsure if they are just readjusting themselves or fully awake would drive me nuts! And what about before there were any monitors, how did parents do it?

Okay, I know monitors aren’t necessary, but I sure do feel spoiled after considering how little our parents and grandparents had when raising us. Now we can watch our babies through video on the internet and be on the other side of the world!

It was nice having our monitor with sound and video again, and I hope to never have to experience a time without the monitor when we’re home. Ha, I just realized we actually do this when we spend the night at G-Ma’s house! But that’s only a day, and we can still hear Avery from anywhere in the house, so I’m not counting then!

Have you ever been without a baby monitor or do you even use one?

If you do use one, any stories of a time when you couldn’t?