College Student to Mother of Three

I have spent the past few days overnight nannying for my neighbors who have three wonderful children. As a theme for this summer, I kind of feel like I graduated from college and immediately became a single parent. I absolutely love nannying and spending time with children and it is giving me excellent practice for when I have my own kids one day (a long time from now!). I really felt like a mom when I was taking the younger two kids to their Elementary School open house, which was at my old elementary school, and all the other mothers are looking at me and trying to do the math... The most fun thing about my job is that I get to be a kid again. And this week I actually got to use my Bachelor's Degree in psychology... I know what you are thinking... I did not psycho analyze the children, but I did get to share some of the research I did and some things I learned that I find extremely fascinating. My neighbor's oldest son is going into high school (I know he is too old for a babysitter but I was mostly just there to make sure the house didn't burn down and provide protection overnight because I am big and strong and can almost do 2 pull-ups now... I digress) and he is very curious about the human mind. So, put the two of us together in the same vicinity and I am on cloud nine. Surprisingly all three of the kids became fascinated in what I was telling them about human development and how infants perceive things differently than adults because of something called perceptual narrowing... And now the middle child wants to do social psych experiments on her mom. Anyway, I had a great time and I knew my formal education would come to good use someday ;) And I've still got a long way to go. I also had a chance to bake with the kids and this is the delicious concoction we came up with.

Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 ripe bananas (smashed)
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup veggie oil
• 1/4 cup crunchy peanut butter (melted)
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp each of baking soda, vanilla, and salt

Baking Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Combine all ingredients until flour is mixed.
3. Butter a 9x5 bread pan.
4. Pour batter into the bread pan and sprinkle with sugar.
5. Put in the oven and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes.

After a few days of overnight nannying I came home to share a slice of this delicious bread (more like dessert) with my mommy while sipping a spot of tea. Then my dad came home from work and we took our new paddle board down to the river for a nice relaxing paddle. This is the life... 

My daddy made that paddle board carrier :)

More adventures to come.