Sausage and Kale Soup and a Toddler who was happy for half the day...

As I write this, Sophie is asleep for her first nap in her "big girl bed."  We put a twin mattress on the floor in her room, put a toddler railing on it, and we make sure to close her door so she can't get out of her room (the stairs are awfully close to her doorway).  Seems to be going well so far, knock on wood.  Maybe I won't have to buy two cribs, after all.



Given her generally happy and fun-loving mood today, I'd say we've finally broken through that molar that was causing us all the trouble last week.



We didn't really grasp just how badly she must have felt until we got to see her on "the other side" of this pain -- she has SO much more energy now.



It just proves to me that she really was feeling terrible for the last couple of weeks.



She is also talking up a storm.  So far, I have heard the following words from her:  "Dada" (which she actually says as "dadadadadadadada!" and it was probably her first word that she connected with a person), "Bubbles" (she says it "bah-bull" and points to them in the sink when I am washing dishes or in the bathtub when she's taking a bath), "Baby" ("ba-ba" and she will run to pick up her baby doll), "Bottle" (also "ba-ba" but doesn't sound quite the same as Baby or Bubbles), "Mama" (sometimes she says this when she is sad, like "mah-mah-mah-mah" with a sad little pout and it breaks my heart), and she even said "Cheese" pretty clearly one time.  I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting.  Sometimes she can repeat "Nananana" when we say "Banana," but that one isn't consistent yet.


"Dadadadadda!"
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And as I was in the process of writing this post during Sophie's 2-4 PM nap, she woke up crying, and when we went up to check on her, she had puked all over herself.  So much for being beyond the teething/sickly phase.  Poor baby.  She ended up throwing up 7 or 8 times tonight.  We called the pediatrician and they advised us to give her only 1 oz of water or Pedialyte every 30 minutes, and not to feed her any food for the rest of the evening, because her tummy needed to rest.  That seemed to work, and she's asleep now for bedtime.


Poor baby.

And now, having said that, I will awkwardly segway into telling you that I made soup this afternoon. (I don't think that was the cause of the later issue, at least, I'm hoping it wasn't....)

White Bean Soup With Sausage and Kale:



I've made this soup before and even blogged about it previously.  The recipe is pretty easy, so I'll see if I can just approximate it for you without violating any copyrights.



The ingredients are:  Mild Italian Sausage, chopped onion, minced garlic, a can of drained cannellini beans, a can of diced tomatoes with oregano, basil, and garlic, and two cans of chicken broth.



You cook the sausage in a separate skillet until browned, then set aside.  The chopped onion and minced garlic go into your cast iron pot with some veg or olive oil until soft, then you add the drained beans, tomatoes and chicken broth.  Bring it to a boil, then simmer for 5 min or so, then add the sausage and kale.



Stir and simmer for 3-5 minutes until the kale is wilted, and season to taste with ground black pepper.



Delicious and it freezes really well.  In my experience, you probably don't want to feed the cannellini beans to your toddler, though, apparently.