of muffins and nightmares

Almost immediately following the healing of his eye, Ethan came down with a cold. As all parents of asthmatic children, the walls come crashing down at the first signs of a cold. The cold morphed into a pretty nasty one. His throat hurt, he boycotted all food but popsicles and he refused to sleep. Like, at all, in the sense that midnight was an ideal time to wake up for the day. We spent yesterday morning at the beach in hopes the salt air would work as a natural decongestant and give him some relief. Poor kid was miserable and I was trying to baby his lungs along by trying my hardest to get him to relax -- as much as one can make a two year old relax -- by temporarily letting go of my no television allowed stance once we returned home from the beach. This worked. Yesterday evening I was preparing Ethan a snack at his request while he sat on the couch watching Curious George. He decided he wanted a muffin. I assured him I would, in fact, get him a muffin. I wasn't moving quickly enough for him so he hopped off the couch and started making the fifteen step walk into the kitchen when suddenly he started screaming. I thought he wasn't pleased with my muffin getting speed and looked up to find him standing there covered in blood. Blood. Blood on his face, blood in puddles on the floor, blood all over his foot and leg to the point where you couldn't even see a fleck of flesh underneath all of the goopy, gooey crimson red. I'm not the best in these situations, admittedly. I called my parents screaming that there was blood, blood everywhere, I'm calling 911, help me -- and my dad arrived to the scene in about five minutes while I stood outside holding Ethan as he bled all into the street. (If we're Instagram friends you've already had the...honor of seeing the bloodbath in my living room.) He had somehow split his little toe and must have hit some kind of little artery to cause all that bleeding. In the end, he simply needed to be cleaned and bandaged and I am infinitely grateful for my uncle who is an ER physician. (In the end, I lost a good thirty years off my life.)

Of course, it only made sense that this morning Ethan woke up with a cold and I woke up with some killer body aches, chills and an awful sore throat. I feel like my head is a balloon being propelled fifty feet above the rest of my body and Ethan is hobbling around the house with his Spiderman bandages and shoving pieces of watermelon into his mouth. Neither of us felt compelled enough to wear pants today. We're a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you.

Anyway, before the horror of fifty thousand gallons of blood spurting sprinkler style out of my toddler's body, we made muffins. They were delicious muffins and a couple of people asked me to post the recipe, which I had fully intended to do last night but then, you know, it didn't happen.

A friend of mine had posted about Weelicious Parsnip Muffins on Instagram. I had two parsnips just begging to be used before they must be thrown out in our produce drawer, leftover from soup I had made last week. My only issue was that I didn't have all of the Weelicious ingredients on hand (like the creamcheese filling) and I had wanted to make them gluten free so my husband could eat some, too. (In hindsight this was a bad move because he somehow ate all of the muffins last night and Ethan was less than pleased this morning about this.) I also had some carrots I needed to use up, so I added those, too. With a few alterations to fit the ingredients we had on hand -- as a grocery store trip with a snotty, coughing kid is not my idea of a good time -- we put together a batch of Parsnip Carrot Muffins that were surprisingly delicious.

1 cup gluten free flour blend (or regular/whole wheat if not gluten free)
1/2c gluten free steelcut oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2c plain yogurt
2 eggs
1/2c brown sugar
1/4c coconut oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup grated parsnips
1/2c grated carrots

1. Combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon in a large bowl. Whisk to combine.
2. Combine yogurt, eggs, oil and vanilla in another bowl.
3. Stir parsnips and carrots into flour blend and pour mixture into wet ingredients.
4. Pour into muffin tin and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

As for us, for the rest of the day? I'm going to close my eyes and just pretend that I'm here right now: