Answers, and Questions

We took PB for a second opinion about her head. She had a CT scan, and her bones are all open, nothing is fused. Most people would probably say that she must not have had craniosynostosis to start with. We say it's a miracle, God's gift of healing shown in an unexplainable, yet tangible way. Why?
Well, both a nurse practitioner and a neurosurgeon diagnosed the craniosynostosis within about 30 seconds of seeing her. We could see it too, we could feel the ridging along the fused suture, and we saw her head get worse over time. Like I said the last time I posted about it, I was incredibly discouraged by it, and was struggling with depression and asking God a lot of "why me" questions.
One of my worst days happened to be a Sunday, a Sunday when PH was gone hunting and I was left alone with all three kids to get ready for church. After the service, I told our pastor what was going on and asked for prayer. He laid his hand on her head and prayed for healing. She cried while he was praying, as if she was in pain. She was happy and smiling before and immediately after he prayed. A friend caught me on the way out of church, and could tell there was something wrong. I explained again what was going on. She laid her hand on PB's head and prayed again for healing, for the bones to move and for everything to be normal. AGAIN, PB cried like she was in pain during the prayer, despite being just fine before and after.
That was the Sunday before we went for the second opinion. The second opinion doctor didn't immediately say that she thought PB had craniosynostosis when she saw her. Instead, she said that she wanted to wait until she saw a CT scan, and explained what the plan would be if the CT showed that she did have it. The way that she talked though, it sounded like she didn't think PB had it... We saw her on a Friday. The CT was the next Monday. That Sunday, we got prayer for her again, this time praying specifically that the CT would be clear and normal.
Right after the CT, we went to see the neurosurgeon again, so she could look at the CT and tell us what she saw. She looked at every single suture. Every single suture was open. No craniosynostosis!
That miracle was so wonderful and has boosted my spirits immensely. NOTHING is impossible with God. I know that in a very real way now. Which has been a blessing, especially with the latest news.
Remember how I said the UTI was kind of a big deal because of how young PB is? She had to get some testing done to check her kidneys and the whole urinary tract (which includes kidneys, ureters, bladder, and urethra). We found out on Wednesday that her parts aren't put together quite right.
Normally, the kidneys make the pee, the pee goes down the ureters into the bladder, the bladder fills up, which closes off the openings to the ureters, and the pee comes out. PB has a condition called Vesicoureteral Reflux (VUR), which in short means that the pee goes from the kidneys, down the ureters, into the bladder, and then back up the ureters and into the kidneys. This is problematic, because if bacteria gets into the kidneys, it can cause infections and scarring.
The doctor says she has about a 30-40% chance of outgrowing it, so for now she's on antibiotics every day to hopefully prevent another UTI, and as long as she doesn't have more infections in the meantime, she'll have the testing done again in 6 months to see if it's gotten any better. If not, we'll discuss what our options are at that point. Oh, and the other thing? It is a hereditary condition, and there is a 1 in 3 chance that PK2 has it too, since she's also had at least one UTI. So she has to have the same testing done. As if she hasn't been through enough already...
Still though, I'm surprisingly calm and unconcerned by this diagnosis. My biggest worry is that PB will have an infection and we won't know it, because it can be really hard to tell when a baby has a UTI. And that PK2 will be traumatized by the testing to find out if she has it too... she's been through a ton, including some really awful procedures through which I've had the displeasure of holding her down. But she's never been old enough to remember. She's never been old enough to look at me with distrust or resentment for holding her down. She just turned three. The test involves a catheter. How do you reassure a three year old that it's ok while you're holding her down so a nurse she has never met can stick a tube up her you-know-what?
On top of all of that, PK1 has been asking about PB's condition. I don't know what other parents would do, but we are pretty open with medical stuff, especially with PK1, because he's already had to witness PK2's struggles. So, we explained PB's VUR to him. And he's had some really hard questions to answer. This morning, on the way to church, he asked if PB was better yet. Of course, I told him no... then he asked why she has VUR. The only answer I had was that it's just the way God made her... Can you guess the next question?
Yep, he asked WHY God would make her that way. I was pretty much stumped, and the only answer I could give was that I don't know. How do you answer that one?? Luckily, "I don't know" satisfied him, and he just replied that he'd have to ask God when he gets to heaven. I talked to a couple of the kids' ministry leaders after church, and asked what they would say if faced with that question, and they had some good advice.
We talked about it some more on the way home, and I reminded him how God had made PK2 special, and how God has been able to use PK2's journey to help other people with kids like her. I told him that God has a purpose for everything, that God doesn't make mistakes. I told him that we don't always know God's purpose, but that there is ALWAYS a purpose. And I told him that I am sure that there is a purpose, a reason that God made PB the way he did.
I am really glad that this issue is one that can be fixed. It doesn't involve major surgery, it isn't life-threatening. In comparison to the other things we've been through, this is pretty much no big deal. And you know what? I think I am actually a little bit *thankful*. It's opening up a dialogue, a line of communication between us and PK1 that I think is going to strengthen not only his faith in God and His plan, but ours too. It's making me contemplate things in a totally different way, and bringing out a childlike faith and trust in God's goodness. I am actually looking forward, in a way, to seeing where this journey will take us all in our faith.

Easy CrockPot Meat & Veggie Lasagna

Most people probably don't think of lasagna as "easy", or a meal they'd make on a weeknight. With this recipe, though, you can have lasagna whenever you want! As usual, I've added a bunch of extra veggies to increase the nutritional value and make it more of a complete meal (there are 3 1/2 cups of veggies, not including the sauce!). You can use the veggies my recipe calls for, or whatever veggies you want. Feel free to substitute a different kind of meat (Italian sausage would be yummy, but any kind of ground meat will work well), or leave the meat out to make it vegetarian. You can also make this recipe in the oven, if you're like me and take too long running errands, so by the time you start assembling your lasagna it's too late to do it in the CrockPot... just assemble it in a 9x13" pan instead and bake at 350 for an hour (40 minutes covered, then sprinkle cheese on top and bake another 20 minutes).

Meat & Veggie CrockPot Lasagna
1 lb ground beef
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced bell pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced (I use a garlic press)
1/2 cup celery
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup shredded zucchini
1 cup frozen chopped spinach
3 cups homemade spaghetti sauce (or a 24 oz jar)
1/2 cup water
15 oz ricotta cheese (sometimes if I don't have this, I will put cottage cheese in the food processor and use that instead)
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp Italian seasoning
lasagna noodles (I used whole wheat no-boil noodles, and I used 12 for my 9x13" pan)

In a large frying pan, brown your ground beef. Add onions, peppers, and celery. Drain the excess fat, then add garlic, carrots, zucchini, spinach, spaghetti sauce, and water, and simmer.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix ricotta cheese, egg, 1 1/2 cups of the mozzarella cheese, 1/4 cup of the parmesan cheese, and the Italian seasoning.
Spoon about 1 cup of the meat-sauce mixture into the bottom of your large (4-6 qt) CrockPot. Layer your uncooked noodles over the sauce, breaking them to fit the pan as needed. Spoon on half of the cheese mixture and spread evenly. Spread a layer of sauce over the cheese, then top with another layer of noodles. Repeat these layers one more time, ending with a layer of noodles covered with sauce. Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours, until the noodles are tender.
Once the noodles are cooked, sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of parmesan over the top and put the lid back so that the cheese can melt. Serve with Italian bread, if desired.

Meal Plans

To save myself some time (and sanity), I've decided to post my monthly meal plans on a specific page. They're still organized by week, in case you don't want to think about a month's worth of meals at once, although if you can get yourself to the point of planning a month of meals in one sitting, you'll save both time and money!
You'll find them on the Meal Plans page:
http://poorwiferichlife.blogspot.com/p/meal-plans.html

Upside down

Just when you start to get comfortable and think everything is going fairly well, something comes up. A couple of weeks ago, PB had a fever. Since she's still pretty new, I ended up taking her in to the Children's Hospital urgent care. Turns out she had a UTI, which is kind of a big deal on its own for a baby as little as she is, but it wasn't the only thing we found out.
One of the first things the doctor said when she came into the room pretty much changed everything for us... "Has anyone ever said anything about her head?" Um, no. We thought her head was shaped a little funny, but no one ever said anything about it, so we figured it was just the way it was going to be, everyone has different shaped heads, you know? Well, the doctor went on to say that we should really follow up with a neurosurgeon, because there's this *rare* thing where the bones in the head fuse before they are supposed to. "But it's probably not that, because that's really rare."
This rare condition is called craniosynostosis. It occurs in approximately 1 in 2200 births. Just about the same frequency as the birth defect PK2 had. And yep, PB has it. What are the odds of that? What it means is that PB's sagittal suture is prematurely fused, so her head is growing mostly front to back, rather than around. She's also getting a bit of a point to her head at the top. And it will only get worse, as her brain continues to grow.
What's it mean? Well, she will most likely need to have surgery to remove a portion of her skull along the suture line. That way her head can re-shape and grow the way it is supposed to. Surgery. Something we never thought we'd have to do again with one of our kids. There is a slight chance that she won't need surgery, but because of how her condition has progressed so far, we are pretty pessimistic about the likelihood of that.
The good news is that, thanks to the wonder of the internet, there's a good bit of support available for families going through this. There wasn't nearly as much support around when we were going through our gastroschisis journey (although there is now, thanks to Avery's Angels), so I am really grateful for this. The other good news? We've already been down a road like this before. We've gotten really experienced at dealing with doctors and hospitals and surgery and all of it. We've already gotten her in to see the neurosurgeons at one of the local hospitals, and she has an appointment soon to see the doctors at the other local hospital for a second opinion.
We're dealing with a lot of discouragement right now... the idea that a few weeks ago, we had a normal, perfectly healthy baby, and now we have another baby with a birth defect is a difficult one to come to terms with. I know that I am struggling with why God chose us to go through this, and why it seems like God always chooses us for bad things to happen to... not that good things don't happen to us, but it definitely seems like we get more than our share of bad. That could be a whole post on its own though...

CrockPot Sloppy Joes

I realized today that I never posted my meal plan for this week... I think I have a different plan for posting the meal plan, that I think will work better. Anyway, today is Wednesday, which means it's CrockPot day, and today's meal is Sloppy Joes. (Cue Adam Sandler singing the Lunch Lady song... we never make it through a meal of Sloppy Joes without someone breaking into song!)
Just for kicks, I did a quick Google search looking for recipes for CrockPot Sloppy Joes (to see if there were recipes that sounded better than mine), and I was surprised to find that pretty much every recipe I found called for browning the meat and then putting it in the CrockPot. I don't know about you, but to me that pretty much defeats the purpose of the CrockPot entirely! If I'm going to dirty a pan to brown the meat, then I'm just going to make the sauce in the same pan and be done with it... And I know that you can brown meat in the CrockPot, because I just did it a couple of weeks ago with a big 5lb thing of ground beef that I bought...
So anyway, I'm making lazy CrockPot Sloppy Joes- no extra pans needed. I'm also hiding a bunch of veggies in it, because it's easy to do and makes me feel like it's a little bit healthier than doing them the regular way. It also stretches the recipe a good bit, so the pound of meat goes further. The trick to hiding veggies in this recipe is to cut them as small as you can.

CrockPot Sloppy Joes

1 lb ground meat
1/2 cup finely grated carrots
1 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup finely chopped bell pepper
1/2 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach
2 cloves minced garlic (or 1/2 tsp garlic powder, if you're like me and never remember to buy fresh garlic at the store)
1/2 cup ketchup (look for one that's organic or at least doesn't have high fructose corn syrup)
2 cups tomato sauce
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp agave nectar
salt and pepper, to taste
whole wheat (or gluten-free) hamburger buns

Put the ground beef (or whatever meat you're using) into your CrockPot, cover and cook on low for about 2-3 hours or until it's cooked through. Drain off any grease, and break up the meat. I tilt the inside of my CrockPot and use a ladle to scoop out the grease (while wearing an oven mitt), and then I use a wooden spatula for breaking up the meat. I don't break the meat up until I have drained off the grease, so that I don't have to worry about pieces of meat going with the grease.
After your meat is drained and broken up, add your veggies and sauce ingredients, stir well to mix everything, and cover. Your dinner is pretty much done, just cook it until the veggies are all cooked and you are ready to eat. Serve on whole grain buns.

I usually serve meals like this with fries of some kind... I will admit that I buy big bags of frozen french fries and tater tots to serve with meals like this. I figure that since I have so many veggies in the sandwiches, I can get away with being lazy on the side. When I'm feeling extra motivated though, I'll do homemade zucchini fries, butternut squash fries, or sweet potato fries. Tonight, we're having frozen tater tots.

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread Pudding with Cider Cream Cheese Sauce

It's finally starting to feel like fall here, so fall baking has started. This week I made carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to take to PK1's school for a teacher appreciation dinner during parent-teacher conferences, and 2 loaves of pumpkin cranberry bread (using hubbard squash in place of the pumpkin). Unfortunately, the bread pans weren't greased well enough, and both loaves broke in the process of coming out of the pans. After the disappointment of not having 2 beautiful loaves of bread wore off, I started to brainstorm what I could do with broken, crumbled pumpkin cranberry bread.

My first thought was bread pudding, but I had never had it so I was a little unsure. My next thought was baked french toast, but since the bread was all broken, I didn't think that would work out that well. I started looking at bread pudding recipes, and I realized that bread pudding is a lot like baked french toast, but the bread is in chunks instead of slices. It sounded perfect!

The first time we ate it as dessert, fresh from the oven. The next morning as I re-warmed it, I thought it would be good with some kind of a cream cheese sauce, so I made one up. It turned out delicious, I am excited to share the recipe! I think it would be perfect to make for a big family holiday breakfast/brunch.
This recipe could be made gluten- and dairy-free if you used a GF/DF pumpkin cranberry bread recipe, and substituted your favorite non-dairy milk in the pudding recipe, and soy cream cheese in the sauce recipe. (I have a recipe for GF/DF pumpkin cranberry bread for anyone interested!)

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread Pudding with Cider Cream Cheese Sauce

Bread Pudding:
2 loaves pumpkin cranberry bread, cut or broken into chunks (it should be somewhat dry, so leave it out for a day or so before you make this)
1/4 cup melted margarine or butter
6 eggs
3/4 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
3 c hot milk
2 tbsp turbinado or brown sugar 
pumpkin pie spice
Sauce:
1/2 c apple cider
2 oz cream cheese
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 c powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix bread chunks and melted margarine in a large bowl, then transfer to a buttered 9x13" baking pan.
In same bowl, beat eggs, and stir in sugar, vanilla, and salt until dissolved. Meanwhile, warm milk in microwave, watching to be sure it doesn't boil (I heated it for about 4 minutes, 2 minutes on 50% power, 2 minutes on full power).
Whisk a small amount of hot milk at a time into egg mixture, going slowly to temper the eggs. (If you put too much hot milk in at once, you will scramble the eggs. I had PH slowly pour the hot milk in as I whisked the egg mixture.)
Pour the egg-milk custard mixture over the bread, then sprinkle with turbinado sugar and pumpkin pie spice. Let it sit until the bread has soaked up most of the liquid, about 5 minutes.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean.
While the bread pudding is baking, make the sauce:
In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the sauce ingredients. Heat, stirring often (I used a whisk to help the cream cheese incorporate better) until the mixture boils and thickens slightly. Transfer to a glass measuring cup or other spouted container, if desired, and pour sauce over individual slices of bread pudding.

"Take a picture of my food, Mommy!"

Creamy Green Chile Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Tonight's dinner on my meal plan was Chicken Enchilada Casserole, using some chicken I had already cooked in the freezer. Pretty much a blank slate for me to play with. Since I cooked up some dry black beans yesterday for the burgers that weren't, I added those and some corn. Then I thought of the jar of yummy green chile I had in the fridge (inspired by this recipe), that I made with some Hatch chiles I roasted on the grill, and I decided to try doing creamy green enchilada casserole this time, since I usually do the same old red sauce. Then I added an extra nutritional boost by hiding some kale both in the filling and the sauce. Next time I'll use spinach in place of the kale... it doesn't really provide a noticeable flavor, but the texture of the spinach would be better, I think.
(Crappy photo disclaimer: we don't have a fancy camera. In fact, the camera we have isn't even ours... PK2 lost ours sometime around Thanksgiving last year. I'm pretty sure we probably inadvertently threw it away, since she enjoys stashing things in random plastic bags. Someday, I hope to have a fancy camera. Until then, you'll have to suffer through my crappy recipe pictures, and just trust me that the food is good. If the crappy pictures bother you, you could always make the recipe and take a good picture for me...)

Creamy Green Chile Chicken, Black Bean, and Corn Enchilada Casserole

I am convinced that casseroles are just NOT photogenic...

Filling:
2 cups cooked chicken, cut into chunks
1/2 cup prepared green chile sauce
1 tbsp cumin
1 cup frozen corn
2 cups black beans
1 cup frozen chopped kale (or spinach)
1/2 a medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup sliced black olives
8 oz fat free cream cheese, softened and cut into chunks
corn tortillas (enough to make 3 layers covering a glass baking dish)
Sauce:
3/4 cup prepared green chile sauce
1 tbsp cumin
1 1/2 cups plain lowfat yogurt (I used my homemade yogurt, you could probably also use a combination of sour cream and milk)
1 cup frozen kale (spinach would actually probably work better)
Shredded cheese to top

In a large pan, combine filling ingredients and cook until cream cheese is melted. (Taste your filling and see if you like how it tastes... if you didn't use just the same ingredients I did, it won't taste the same as mine, and since my green chile sauce was homemade chances are yours will be different. If you don't like how the filling tastes, play with it until you do, since it is the basis of the meal!) Set aside filling. 
In a small saucepan, combine sauce ingredients and heat through. Transfer to a blender, blend until smooth.
Spread a small amount of sauce into the bottom of a 9x13" baking dish. Cover the bottom of the dish with corn tortillas, tearing tortillas in half to line the edges and filling in the center with whole tortillas (if you just fold the tortilla in half, it breaks). Spread half of the filling evenly over tortillas, top with sauce and shredded cheese. Repeat for another layer, then finish by covering with corn tortillas, sauce, and cheese. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes, until cheese is melted and starting to brown a bit. Serve with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole, if desired.
 *Note* This meal is gluten-free, and could easily be made dairy-free... just substitute your favorite non-dairy versions of the dairy ingredients. I make no promises about how it will taste... I am just grateful that I'm tolerating dairy again and don't have to worry about it anymore!