The Most Perfect Cornbread Recipe

Seriously. I've tried a bunch, and mostly they were good. But not, you know, The Best Cornbread I Ever Ate. So I took a couple of ok cornbread recipes and modified them until I came up with this:

The Most Perfect Cornbread Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk (I use skim, but pretty much any milk will work I think)
• 5 tbsp. melted butter (~1/3 cup)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium-size mixing bowl with a whisk. Add the milk, melted butter, and beaten egg. Stir with a spoon just until moistened (there will be some lumps, and that's ok). Pour batter into a greased baking dish (I use a glass 2 quart 8x11 casserole dish), and bake for 20-25 minutes depending on the size of your pan and your oven (23 minutes is perfect for me). You could also make corn muffins with this recipe (makes 12 muffins), just bake the muffins for ~15 minutes.

Go ahead, try it. You won't be sorry.

Hello, Sunday

Whatever shall I do with you? Chad is taking the Max to visit the grandparents today, which means that I will be spending my day like this:

• Steam cleaning the furniture and carpets
• Cleaning bathrooms
• Washing a buttload of sheets and towels
• Maybe making hamburger buns for dinner. Or not. I haven't decided yet.
• Spending some quality time with my pilates dvd ('cause Thursday was my birthday, and I've eaten more cake and ice cream than I should admit to eating over the last three days)
• Then eating even more cake, because HELLO, I worked out! (well, not yet, but I will have when the eating of more cake commences)
  
• Catching up on my blog reading
• And maybe, if there is any time left before the men in my life return home, I'll do some actual, you know, work. As in writing that does not involve blogging or Twitter or Facebook.

So let's get to it.

Productive is My Middle Name

Things I've done today:

• Dropped Max off at daycare for his 1st day in the 1 1/2 year old class (more on that later).
• Set up sample extractions with Marissa and Lacy.
• Went to Babies R Us and only spent $30 on new pacifiers (his old ones are getting funky; I ordered some new personalized ones on Friday to send to daycare; today I bought some extras for home), a couple of size 2T and 3T outfits (clearance, yay!), and a pair of shoes (also on clearance; size 7 - my baby has giant feet) for Max.
• Finished editing a chapter and emailed it to Dr. V.
• Vacuumed the bedrooms.
• Baked a batch of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

As you can see, I managed to be both a domestic goddess and a responsible grad student today. *pats self on back*

Now, for the part about Max's new daycare class. I'm wigging out about it, just like I did when he went from Infant 1 to Infant 2. Because this is a big change for him. Max's daycare splits the kids up into roughly 6 month age blocks, so the toddler class is full of kids who are 13-19 months old. Then they move up to the 1 1/2 year old class, then the 2 year old class, then the 2 1/2 year old class, and so on.

So today Max started the 1 1/2 year old class. In this class, there are no cribs. There are little cots for the babies to nap on, and I sent a blanket for Max (daycare provides sheets). They only get one nap after lunch instead of a morning nap and an afternoon nap (I'm actually not worried about that part, because Max has been skipping his morning nap most of the time lately). They've ditched the big 6-kid strollers for outdoor walks and transportation to the little playground outside. Only the big babies and toddlers (well, technically, most of the kids at daycare are still toddlers) get to use those. All the kids over 18 months hold onto this long rope with rings in it (a la Jon & Kate Plus 8, if you've seen the episodes where the sextuplets hold onto the rings on outings) when they go outside. Not sure that's gonna go over well. The Max is a wanderer. He tried to go in the neighbor's yard this morning while I was locking up instead of going to the car in our driveway.

This will also be the first time Max has had structured activities. They do puppets and songs in the morning and art in the afternoon. They also have outdoor play in the little toddler playground (they have a separate one for the preschool-age kids) in the morning and afternoon (if it isn't raining). I'm not necessarily worried about that, it's just that Max is used to free play. I do think he'll really like the art/coloring time, though... when he's not trying to eat the crayons.

Max was very unhappy this morning when I dropped him off. He was fine when we went in, and they were about to have snack, so I thought maybe he'd be ok. But as soon as I put him down, he had a huge meltdown and turned into Super Cling Baby. So one of the teachers took him, and I got his paci, and he calmed down. One of the other kids from the toddler class was wigging out, too (with a pacifier in his mouth). And they had a new baby who was just starting daycare, and he was not happy At All. I guess the teachers are used to it, since their class is a huge adjustment from what every kid who comes in there is used to. But I'm hoping Max had an ok day. He was all right when I left, but Ms. Marija was holding him (plus, he had his trusty paci, which he usually only gets at naptime at daycare. Unless he's having a meltdown).

Hopefully tomorrow morning will go better.