The "Rookie Wife" is Now a Rookie Mom!

On December 2nd, 2011, our lives changed. We welcomed our sweet little boy into the world and I became a stay at home mom. The department was wonderful, encouraging my husband to take off "as much time as he wanted," and we got to have him home for a whole month! There is no way we could have done without him, and I am so thankful for that bonding time we had as a family.

So now I enter into a whole new realm... the past 5 years have been filled with being a nurse, and working full time. I will miss that- but I am loving being a mama.

Today was J's first day back at work, and he is due home any moment. I was terrified of parenting alone (he hasn't been gone from home since before little man (W) was born), and tears were shed. But... it went awesome! I have enjoyed the quietness, and have gotten a ton of things done here at home.

I made a new banana bread recipe today... it is wonderful!

• Ingredients:
• * 3 ripe bananas, smashed
• *1 cup sugar
• *1/3 cup melted butter
• *1 egg
• *1 tsp vanilla
• *1 tsp baking soda
• *Dash of salt
• *1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

Preheat to 350 degrees. Mix butter into the mashed bananas with wooden spoon in mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, vanilla and egg. Sprinkle both the baking soda and salt on top of mixture and combine together.

Add the flour last*, and mix thoroughly. Pour mixture into loaf pan and bake for 1 hour.

(*note: I also added chocolate chips and coconut to the mixture and it turned out great!)

This is such an easy and delicious recipe... I encourage you to try it if you don't have a "go to" recipe to use up those (very!) ripe bananas.