Sweets and treats

I didn't get very much sleep last night, and only kind of napped this morning. Riley, however sleeps just fine during the day. Last night he would fall asleep while nursing, I would burp him and he would still be sleeping. After I would lay him down, however, he would wake up. I let him fuss for a bit, but each time he would start to cry and scream so I would pick him up and he would show signs of wanting to nurse. It was definitely a rough night. I ended up falling asleep while burping him this morning at 0600.

I'm guessing there will be a lot of blog posts about sleep, because already I've talked about it nearly every day I've posted this year. I apologize in advance.

In other news I've been doing a lot of baking/making of sweets of late. One thing I made before Christmas was Cream Cheese Banana bread. I found the recipe here. (and I don't think she wants me to re-post the recipe, so you will just have to go there to see it.)

The only thing I have to warn you about is that the recipe calls for self rising flour. I personally do not have this, and unfortunately I forgot that it was different than all purpose flour. If you also do not carry self rising flour, you can make your own by using the following conversion:

1 cup of self rising flour= 1 cup of all purpose/plain flour minus 2 tsp., and add 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt to make the full cup. 

For this recipe instead of 3 c. self rising flour you would use:
2-7/8 c. all purpose flour (which is the same as 3 c. minus 2 Tbsp.) (Or just use 3c. and not care about the extra 2 Tbsp and risk having it be just a touch dry)
4-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1-1/2 tsp. salt

I forgot about this conversion and had already put in the 3 c. all purpose flour, so I added the salt and baking powder after I was done mixing. I over mixed my dough, so it ended up being a bit crumbly and dry. I will remake this and see if it is less dry with less flour and less mixing. It did have a good flavor though. I made one loaf with nuts and one with mini chocolate chips. Both were lovely. :D

I have more recently made a pumpkin pie, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies. I'm married to someone with as big of a sweet tooth as I have. It will be hard to lose the extra 7-10 pounds of baby weight with treats readily available, but I'll begin working on that soon.

I got Zumba Fitness for our x-box Kinect for Christmas. I haven't tried it yet, because I wasn't supposed to do too much heavy exercising. My midwife said to let my lochia get my guide when it comes to activity. If it increases, I'm doing too much. I do notice an increase when I am more active, especially when Riley and I leave the house. My lochia is nearly gone now though so I will probably try it soon. I never realized how long lochia (bleeding after delivery) sticks around after having a baby. Thankfully it was only heavy for like 4 days after delivery and has been light ever since.

I don't see myself restraining from cookies and ice cream in the near future. They taste too darn good to me right now. :D