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How to make around 40 applesauce and oatmeal mini-muffins with a 1½-year-old

Ingredients
  • 1¼ c (112 g) rolled oats
  • 1¼ c (250 g) unsweetened apple sauce
  • ¼ c (50 g) sugar
  • ½ c (118 mL) milk (oat milk works too)
  • 4 T coconut oil (melted butter works too)
  • 1 t vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 c (130 g) whole wheat flour
  • 1 t baking powder
  • ¾ t baking soda
  • 1 t ground cinnamon
  • ¼ t salt
  • ½ c (80 g) raisins or sultanas
Equipment
  • Cooking spray or room-temp butter for greasing the muffin trays
  • Two 24-count non-stick mini-muffin trays
  • Scales or a measuring cup set
  • Measuring spoon set
  • Liquid measurement jug
  • Medium mixing bowl
  • Large mixing bowl
  • Fork
  • Spoon
  • Spatula
  • Learning tower or a sturdy step-stool for the kid to stand on
  • Aprons, ideally

Preheat the oven to 375F (190C).

While the 1½-year-old is playing with their toddler-sized soccer ball at your feet, take all of the ingredients and equipment out of the cupboards and grease the mini-muffin trays. To get started, pour the oats in to a medium sized bowl and pour the “dry” ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) in a bigger bowl.

Let the kid climb up on to the learning tower platform, and immediately recognize that starting with the oats was a mistake because they love oats. Try to prevent them from shoveling dry oats in to their mouth by giving them a spoon to stir with, and then realize that just compounds that mistake since they’ve recently learned how to use a spoon at dinnertime.

Switch the spoon out for your grandma’s 100% flat spatula to confuse and confound them (“…what on earth is this?”) while you measure out and pour the applesauce in to the oats. Let them lick the applesauce spoon, making them doubly excited about the mixture in the medium bowl. Remember almost too late that their Nana recently gave them a very cute apron, and manage to pull that over their head right before a glob of oats and applesauce dribbles off their chin.

Measure out and add the sugar to the oats-applesauce bowl. (That bowl is only becoming more and more exciting to the kid.). Then measure out the milk in to the jug and pour that in. Mix it up a bit to distribute the chill of the milk — because you learned last time that if you throw melted coconut oil directly on top of cold milk, it congeals in to one big lump — and then measure and add the coconut oil.

You could add the vanilla now, or you could forget it entirely because you hid the little bottle behind the fruit bowl away from cute grabby hands.

Add the egg last (adding it last means less likelihood of raw egg making its way into their mouth), then stir the oat mixture together thoroughly. Put the bowl aside, well out of reach.

Open up the raisins and put a handful on the counter to distract the kid. Fluff the dry ingredients in the big bowl together with a fork, and then pour in a half cup of raisins.

Pour the wet ingredients in to the dry ingredients while the kid absolutely houses the rest of the raisins, and then mix it all together with the spatula until combined.

Using the spoon you abandoned earlier, fill as many of the mini-muffin cups as you can. You want them each to be almost full, maybe seven-eighths of the way there. If you have any empty cups, use the kettle that’s always sitting on the stove to pour a little bit of water in them. You do this because someone once told you it protects the tray, but you have no idea if that’s actually true.

Part way through filling the cups, get the kid down from the learning tower because they’re bored and have spotted their ball again. Try to avoid having them step in the spilled oats and flour because it will stick to their feet and track throughout the apartment. Finish up the filling, then put the trays in the oven and bake at 375F for 15 minutes. Remember as soon as you’ve put the trays in that you always mean to put them on a baking sheet since it’s easier to take them out that way, and make a mental note (again) to do it next time.

When they’re done, let them cool momentarily in the tins to “loosen up” and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. Accidentally forget that the kid really loves muffins (why else would you be making them in the first place?) and belatedly realize that you’ve left an actual mountain of one of their favorite things out in plain sight. Blow on one frantically while the kid shouts “MUH-IN!” until it’s cool enough to eat.

Let the rest cool completely before storing them in a gallon-sized Ziplock bag in the freezer. I can’t say how long they keep, since we never keep them all that long.

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Moody tree

A moody, leafless tree on Ilkley Moor with many small branches

We made it up to the northernmost stanza stone with B. He wasn’t thrilled about the whole walk, but he did love squishing his boots in the mud and chowing down on a vegan Greggs sausage roll.

During lunch one day, we heard an insane screeching in front of my sister-in-law’s house. A sparrowhawk had caught a bird not much smaller than itself and was squeezing its talons around it, with its wings fanned out on guard and its head darting around to spot competitors. We wanted to intervene, but it would have been pointless. The sparrowhawk needed to eat (and well done for catching such big prey!), and the other bird seemed likely too injured to survive. It took a long time though.

Photo taken by Sam on his dad’s RICOH GR1v.

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Norovirus postmortem

We all caught norovirus. About 24 hrs of it was probably the worst time we’ve had since B was born, and the rest of the time wasn’t much better.

I won’t go in to the gory details, but here’s a few tips for future me who will inevitably catch it again (because daycare). Apparently noro rips through you so fast that your body doesn’t even have time to build any meaningful immunity. Fun.

  • Have the necessary meds on hand at all times. Once you are sick, there is zero chance you will want to or be able to go get supplies. Even if you could, you should avoid it for the sake of not spreading it any further. A friend or family member could pick stuff up for you, but this is so contagious that I’d be nervous to ask someone. We found that the most useful stuff was Pedialyte for rehydration and acetaminophen (paracetamol) for when the fever and aches kick in. Ibuprofen is way too hard on the stomach when you’re already feeling delicate. If you’re in a tough spot and don’t have the supplies, there are a lot of homemade rehydration fluid recipes online. Here are a few from the UVA Health System, and one from the NHS. Note that nausea suppressants are to be avoided apparently, the whole point is to get whatever is in there out or you’ll keep feeling bad.
  • This thing hits fast. We were first exposed to B’s symptoms in the morning, and we started our bouts in a spectacular fashion almost exactly one and a half days later. It can hit sooner or later, I would imagine that depends on the exact strain, but it’s usually 1-2 days. If you suspect that one of you has norovirus and you don’t have it yet, maybe avoid being far from home. I was at dinner with a friend 45 minutes away. I made it home just barely, but I went from feeling 100% fine and ready for some poke to “oh… OH no…” in about a split second. (Side note: I thought B had just eaten something weird. Would never have gone out if I had any inkling otherwise, both for my and my friend’s sake! Thankfully she seems to be fine, so I’m assuming (hoping) I wasn’t just blindly spreading noro that evening.)
  • Norovirus moves fast. The “active” stage (ew) was basically over after 12 hours. We both felt really bad, like bedridden-bad, for 2 days in total and then had a bit of weakness and rough appetites for maybe two days after that. It doesn’t make the worst of it any better, but at least it doesn’t last that long. They don’t really know concretely how long you can be contagious for, but the advice I’ve seen on the CDC and NHS sites seems to be that you should self-quarantine until you have been symptom-free for 2 days.
  • Totally anecdotal, but it seemed a lot worse for us than it was for B… Which I’m thankful for, but it’s not what I would expect. I asked friends about it and they had similar experiences. Make of that what you will.

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How I thoroughly clean Jellycat stuffed animals

Yesterday was… eventful.

Anyways, I now have a decent technique for thoroughly cleaning Jellycat stuffed animals! Note that the Jellycat cleaning tag specifically says to spot clean only. But that doesn’t cut it if, for example, one happens to get covered in vomit.

I’d probably use this approach for any small-to-medium sized Jellycat-like stuffed animal (no posable arms, no large plastic bits or outfits, relatively straight and short “fur”, very squishy, etc.). If you try it, do so with caution. YMMV.

  1. Prepare: Place stuffed animal in appropriately-sized zippered mesh laundry bag. Before that though, if there are any “chunks” of debris (that is a horrible description, but here we are), brush and rinse them off as reasonably as you can in your sink. If you don’t do this, they will get stuck in your laundry bag and/or the fur of the stuffed animal. 🤢
  2. Wash: Wash on “normal” in cold water. You want to use a setting with a good spin cycle. I would use fragrance-free detergent since scents can be off-putting or actually dangerous for some kids.
  3. Dry: Let the Jellycat air dry, do not use a dryer. Before you let it air dry, go through its “fur” with a wide-toothed comb, and then follow with a fine-toothed comb to break up any mats. This will keep it fluffier for much longer. Don’t be so rough with it that you pull the fur out, just a gentle, thorough once-over will do. If you have a hair dryer, use that on a medium setting while you brush through the fur for more fluffiness.

I used to skip that last brushing step since I just hadn’t thought of it, and one of B’s favorite toys got pretty matted. Happily, brushing it out even now after it has gone through maybe 4-5 washes already has helped revive it a bit. I think it would have been even better if I had done this from the start, though.

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New Kobo, more illness, intentions

  • I am LOVING my new Kobo Clara 2E. Just wild that all of Brooklyn Public Library’s e-books are at my fingertips at the click of a button. I just need to figure out how to get my old Walthamstow Library card set up too…
  • B seems to have become a whole new little person over the course of the week and a half we were visiting family. He has very particular ideas about which lights should be on, which drapes should be open, and whether or not fans are running. Cuddly stuff is, as ever, a favorite. He may or may not think his name is Stu? Two new teeth!
  • Grandpa came down with something in the wee hours of Christmas morning and we had to take him to the ER. He had to have surgery (first time ever, at 99yrs old!) which was scary, but his recuperation has been great. We got to see him before we left which was a relief, I wasn’t sure we would.
  • Never been much of a resolutions person, though I do constantly think about self and improvement. But two basic intentions for 2023 are to cook and read a bit more. Both are things I have always loved, but somehow felt very difficult or fell by the wayside. Reading was a long slow fall (getting a Kindle way back when was a MISTAKE), cooking’s decline was precipitous and very tied to B being born. Will enjoy doing more of both, have already read more books in the past week or so than I had in months.
  • Related to resolutions, see Virginia Woolf’s new year’s resolutions for 1931 shared by Gem. “To have none. Not to be tied.”
  • To read: The Performance Inequality Gap, 2023: When digital is society’s default, slow is exclusionary
  • Been watching a lot of In The Night Garden with B because of travel and since he hasn’t been feeling great. Maka Paka is the best character.
  • “I think we humans can feel we don’t exist if we live unwitnessed.” That phrase really resonated, from this article in Philippa Perry’s “agony aunt” Guardian column. Sharing photos online, gathering followers, collecting likes.
  • I have a cold, yet again. This one has lasted over two weeks, yet again. I think that in addition to all the normal baby stuff that people put on registries, they should add things like economy-sized jars of ibuprofen, NeilMed Sinus Rinse bottles (one for each parent) and a subscription to those saline packets, and roughly 10,000 hankies.

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Thanksgiving 2022 notes

Thanksgiving this year was verrrrry small. We had a few options to celebrate with friends / family, but ended up just sticking to the three of us at home. I’ve been sick for almost two weeks now and was not about to give this to someone else. 💀 Plus that meant we could move it to Friday, which was helpful since I was at least feeling a little better at that point.

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An important memory, gone

A friend of mine is having a baby imminently and asked about my experience having an induction, so I opened up Apple Notes. I spent much of my extremely limited and precious “me” time in those early post-birth days writing a long note about my experience, knowing I would want to be able to refer back to it both for myself and friends. I began writing it early in the induction, late at night on Misoprostol when I couldn’t sleep. I continued it as B was asleep on my chest in the wee hours of the morning after he was born and finished it in the days after when we had caught up with our doula about a few missing details.

Over half of it is gone.

I have no idea what could have happened to it. It ends mid-sentence, with “Eventually things got too intense, so we made”, and then nothing.

Maybe I never finished it? Maybe I just thought I did. A lot is very muddled in my head from those early days after his birth, but this feels so clear. Besides making sure that B was happy and healthy, there is very little that I made an effort to “get done” in late July 2021. Except for this note.

It feels pretty devastating. I tried checking old versions by restoring from a Time Machine backup (Sam found an extremely helpful article), but the closest backup from mid-August 2021 looks the same as my current stunted version.

Then again, when I look at the “last edited” date at the top of the note, it reads 11:23pm two days after B’s birth. I would still have been in the hospital then, I couldn’t have finished it by that time.

Maybe I did imagine it. I’m so sure it existed.

It doesn’t matter though, it feels like a loss all the same.

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Like a cat

B is like a cat. He wants up, then immediately wants down. Hands me something, like my clog, and then immediately wants it back. Then he’ll run around with two sets of tongs for a while. (To be fair, I don’t think cats can do that.)

He’s started learning animal noises.

“What does a snake say?”

“How does a mouse sigh?”

“What does a horse say?”

And he’s finding his voice. I shouldn’t laugh. I think I’m supposed to stay serious when he gets so loud (we have lovely neighbors we would like to keep), but I can’t help it. Extended vocal techniques. Meredith Monk has nothing on him.

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Memory dump

Life has felt kind of hard recently. Water running through my hands. So many things backed up in my “Blog stuff” folder in Notes, things I didn’t want to forget but wasn’t able to sit down and put in a post. Here’s a bunch so they don’t languish there forever. Oldest to newest.

Image of color gradient from white in lower left corner, through light blue to navy, with a tiny bit of pink in the upper right corner

I want to make a “Uses” page, but not just software/hardware. Skincare, furniture, kitchen tools, etc.

To read: Werner Herzog’s new book, The Twilight World. Or books? I don’t think the other one from lockdown is out yet. See this New Yorker interview. Via RS.

People talk about finding joy in the way your kid looks at the world. I really didn’t understand how moving that could be until recently. Hilarious, pure, and sometimes a little melancholic.

B was being funny about dinner because of a long day, so we just gave him a huge block of cheese to go ham. He couldn’t believe it. Imagine being handed a whole forearm-sized block of the best thing you’ve ever tasted in your short life.

He’d never seen anything like it, and I’ve never seen someone eyes go like that.

Generally more interested in the process than the outcome. In my work and others’. See CBToF (again), also the guy that’s piloting a tiny speedboat around Britain at his own pace. Boat guy via SB.

People in the US seem individualist to a fault.

A generalization, and obviously that individualism has certain upsides as well—don’t get me started on the way that UK schools force you to choose subjects so young—but I see the negative effects every day.

Was talking to DB, she mentioned how in the UK, there is a natural flow to walking. For example, getting between platforms on the tube. In NYC, it’s an absolute free for all.

Woman on the stairs at Broadway and Lafayette, walking up the left hand side of the stairs not holding on to the handrail when the person walking down, their right, clearly needs the handrail. “You see me fuckin comin, right?!” Wild.

[And do not tell me this is just a thing in US cities. I’ve seen it in suburban Tennessee, the middle of Ohio, all over the place. It just comes in different guises. An able-bodied person parking in a handicap spot in a packed Walmart parking lot, believing that Andrew Wakefield’s vaccine bullshit is more important than your children’s friends’ health, asserting that your right to any gun that could possibly exist is more important than reducing the likelihood of serious injury or death during a shooting in our schools and places of worship, etc.]

I think one of my least favorite phrases in the whole entire world has to be “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.

It’s a turning away from the world. Announcing that, no, I don’t want to learn anymore thank you very much. No thank you, life is perfect for me as it is, heaven forbid I grow or change. Much better for the world to bend to me.

Gross.

Great article on accessibility: “Writing even more CSS with Accessibility in Mind, Part 2: Respecting user preferences” by Manuel Matzo.

See also: “Accessibility for Vestibular Disorders: How My Temporary Disability Changed My Perspective” by Facundo Corradini.

Came across these while writing a manual accessibility testing guide, an auditing system, etc. for SuperHi.

If things have been calm for a while in life, little stress and so on, I feel like my body can build up stress of its own accord. Is this some sort of innate expectation that if things are going well for a while, surely they must go wrong soon? A sort of fight/flight overture? If so, it kind of makes sense that exercise could help. Literally getting your ya yas out. Don’t know.

Getting properly dressed in the morning, makeup and everything, is such an important part of my day working from home. Don’t know what it is, but I really don’t feel like myself otherwise. I fell out of the cycle once a while back and it actually led to some really low points. It helps if my skin is cooperating.

Related to current events: So one time I had to get a birth control prescription refilled while we were visiting family in the Tennessee. This was in high school (maybe early college?). It was a little more complicated at that point to get a prescription transferred between pharmacies, especially between states, so it had stressed me out but I was able to get it sorted. Anyways, I got the prescription filled and went on my way. It was a very forgettable experience.

Until I got a text from the pharmacist. He used the private contact information in my file to reach out and ask if I was available.

I should have done something about it, but I didn’t know what to do. Thank god I didn’t live there, imagine having to go back.

The shooting in Uvalde happened, and I reflexively went on Twitter. I don’t know what it was about that moment in time, but the instant I started scrolling I felt actual revulsion. It suddenly clicked, how horrible Twitter can make me feel. It didn’t used to be like that. I haven’t really used it since then. I met some great people on it in the past, but that hasn’t happened in a long time. I hope people realize they can always reach out to me here.

Read Notes on maintaining an internal React component library, an article by Gabe Scholz. Via CDM.

Watch How I Code and Use a Computer at 1,000 WPM!! by blind coder Sina Bahram. See also Coyote, “a project developed by cultural heritage professionals and people from the accessibility community to encourage the use of visual description in museum practice”. Very cool. Via RS.

Read about Meno’s Paradox on this University of Washington faculty page. I do not know how to summarize it, only that I have tried to articulate this and have failed every time. Now maybe I can just refer to Meno’s Paradox, or at least to this page. Via CDM.

Read this Guardian article on a neurologist’s tips for fighting memory loss and Alzheimers. “Samuel Johnson said that the art of memory is the art of attention.”

Claire McCardell was incredible. She popularized separates for women! Capsule wardrobes! In like, the 30s!! This is a great article about her contribution to fashion: Claire McCardell originated The American Look (part 1)

Explore philosopher.life. Via LS.

To read: Social Warming: How Social Media Polarises Us All by Charles Arthur. Or not. It sounds worthy, but depressing.

Dig further in to Roni Horn’s work. Specifically, “Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)”. Via BL.

There is no reason to be anything but nice to strangers. It makes you both feel good. Being a dick to someone makes you both feel bad.

Yep, exactly. Well said, and happy birthday, Chris Coyier!

Thanks to B for the photo ❤️