Taking the Scenic Route

Zora giggling on Daddy’s lap

Tonight Zane started knocking on the door. 

After several attempts to get him to stop (made no sense to us) I asked him why he kept doing it.  Who does he want to answer? 

A mumbled reply. 

I asked again. 

He thought I wanted a sentance instead of just a word, so he added on “I want…Grmbmbmbmb”  Took me a second, then it dawned on me…”Grandma & Grandpa?” 

“YES!”. 

Grandma and Grandpa are at their house.  They aren’t coming today.  They are coming on Thanksgiving Day in two days.

he starts to cry a bit…”I want Grandmapa”

“They can’t come here now, but do you want to call them?”

“YES!”

So, here is Zane, after his first request to call Grandma and Grandpa.  Enjoy.  : )

We got a little lego tray table thing from our old neighbors (their kids were using it to stand on and get into things.) and Zane and Zora both wanted to play with it.  Zane’s idea of playing is building.  Zora’s idea of playing is knocking down.  So, Zane tries to build, and Zora grabs the pieces and pulls them apart.  For a few minutes, Zane was handling this in the cutest way…Zora grabbed a piece, Zane said “uh-oh”, then took it from her and said “thank you” and put it back….wash, rinse, repeat.  Naturally, he got frustrated after a while and Dad had to intervene to help Zane learn how to cope with it and how to play with his sister, but it was a really cute problem solving attempt for a while.

Take a basic sugar cookie recipe, some spices, some food coloring, and some sprinkles, and you have fall leaves and acorns.  I was too tired to get up early to take new photos in better light, but you get the idea.

For the acorns, I added some cocoa to the batter, and then just a bit of food coloring to pump the color up a bit.   Next time, I think I will just make them more chocolaty.  I added some almond extract in addition to the vanilla.  (only ‘nutty’ flavor I had on hand) 

For the leaves, I divided the dough into 4 sections, colored the 3 larger sections red, orange, and yellow, and a smaller section green.  (next time I will work to make the green a little less bright.  lol).  Once they had firmed up a bit in the fridge, I pulled out the colored logs, laid down a large piece of saran wrap, and then pulled off various size lumps of cookie dough, including a small amount of the acorn dough, on the saran wrap to mix the colors.  Then I smashed them together and I used the saran wrap to help me fold it a few times to give a more layered look (and, try to prevent them breaking at the color breaks).  I rolled it out, and put it back in the fridge to firm back up.

The next time I do this, after I have cut them out, I will take a toothpick and make veins in the leaves…since the colors are layers, the veins would show different colors than the top layer.  In general, I do like how the various colors of colored sugar worked on these.  Put a nice finish on it.  (I attempted to put orange sprinkles over the orange, red over red, ect.)  My oven temp wasn’t quite “on target” either…it looks like they melted a bit before they rose, so you don’t get the good shape definition I like in shaped cookies.  Something to strive for next time.  Maybe they just needed a touch more flour….I used saran wrap instead of a floured surface and that might be where I need to make adjustments too.   *sigh*  baking is fun, but it is always a learning process. 

These ended up a bit on the spicy side…added some cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg to them in addition to the vanilla.

It was fun.  It was like the grown up version of play-do.  We have some left over dough too, so Zane will have fun messing around making more cookies today.

 *warning* grab some kleenex if you click on the video.

Importance of a 5-Point Harness Carseat

edited to add:  Just this week we were discussing whether or not to just put Zane in a booster and put Zora in his Wizard (their first generation car seat with the side impact wings, they renamed it when they put out the later lines) instead of getting his old Roundabout that is stored out at my parents place.  This really cemented the decision to go ahead and just pull out the roundabout when she outgrows her infant seat.  (actually, if we can afford it, getting him the higher weight limit seat and putting her in the Wizard…I like the side impact protection since our car doesn’t have it)  Wow.  I also noticed that the boy in the video is just a few months younger than Zane.  I just can’t imagine the grief they must still be going through.

Zane figured out how to hug this week.  It feels really nice.

Also, tonight when I came in from shopping, everybody was back in Zane’s room when I walked in the door.  As I dug into the bags, Zane came running around the corner, reached up to me, and as I leaned down he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a kiss, then ran back to his room.  Such a simple, huge thing.  It still has me feeling really warm inside.

I wish my kids were old enough to use them as an excuse to go to the Little House on the Prairie event at a (somewhat) local arboretum.  It looks like soooo much fun, but I am pretty sure the kids wouldn’t really get it.  Maybe I will do it anyway.  lol. 

We have the sickies in our house.  Nothing serious, just annoying.  Zane zonked out at 6pm and is still asleep.  I am really hoping this doesn’t do a number on his sleep schedule, but he needs sleep to heal, so I am just letting it go at this point.  Zora finally slept about 4 hours this afternoon, which isn’t like her either.  Both of them are cranky and snotty, but I am glad it is just normal cold stuff and nothing alarming.

I was quite annoyed yesterday when I went out shopping to get a ‘leaf’ cookie cutter to make cookies for Zane’s preschool Thanksgiving feast.  I went to two stores, and both of them had all their Christmas stuff out, but no Fall themed stuff.  No sprinkles, no cutters, no little decorations…nothing!  And, to add insult to injury, while I was shopping, I noticed the music was all Christmas music.  You have GOT to be kidding me!  I could understand it more if we were in Canada, but here we actually have another fall holiday between Halloween and Christmas, do we have to shop for Thanksgiving BEFORE Halloween now to make sure we can still purchase fallish things?  Ridiculous!  Which means I have to go out tomorrow to try and find the cookie cutters I want in between Zach’s classes, which puts me on a time crunch.  I hope I can find some. 

but relatively peaceful around here.  Thankfully, Grandma is doing well, which eases my mind. 

Both kids seem to be teetering on the edge of sickness.  Zora is a mess with teething and I ended up pulling out the big guns for her.  The tylenol and motrin seem to be helping, but not completely solving the problems.  The oragel, frozen washcloths, teething rings/biscuits and teething tablets weren’t touching it though.  She also has a runny nose, but I think it is related to the teething.  The dr. checked her ears yesterday and they are finally fine.

Zane did great at the drs yesterday.  He stood on the scale and let his height be measure, let 2 different people look in his ear, let his temperature be taken (that is the first time EVER he has let somebody do that without us ending up restraining him), did most of the eye chart across the room (that had shapes he had to name…but, most importantly, he had the joint attention to accomplish it), and answered “what color is this…” as the nurse pointed at different things around the room, let the dr look at his throat, and was fine with the physical exam.  I am so proud of him. 

He is a bit feverish and grumpy and not interacting today, which makes it pretty clear he feels like crap.  Hopefully it will pass soon though. 

Tonight we made chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and cream gravy from the pan crumbs.  It was really tasty.  I don’t think it is possible to buy as good of chicken fried steak as you can make at home.  Such a treat!  Wish the kids liked it better, but I think it was because they weren’t feeling terrific.

Everything looks good right now.

She wrote:

 Moms surgery went as expected, pretty much. It ended up being quadruple instead of triple. The surgery took about 5 hrs, and fortunately Pastor was able to stay with me the whole time (except for running and errand, leaving the back door ajar and running down the battery, then needing my (mom’s) car to use for jumper cables. He’s a blond…what do you expect. He’ll hear about that one for a while. He’s 30 and a sweetheart) She woke up quickly and all her systems seemed to be doing what they were supposed to be doing. They took the breathing tube out within a couple of hours and she was talking (kinda) right away. She was sipping water and they had her start her breathing exercises last night already. She will possibly be sitting up today.

So the immediate crisis is subsided. I’ll spend partial days with her now, unless I’m needed more.

Thanks for your support and prayers.

 

I found out today that my Grandma is having bypass surgery tomorrow. (technically later today, since it is past midnight)  She has 98% blockage in an area where it is more dangerous to put a stint than it is to leave it alone, so they need to do bypass surgery.  She is at peace with it all and in good spirits. 

I can’t be with my mom tomorrow as she waits for her mom to go through the surgery.  Please keep them both in your prayers.

On our satelite we get BabyFirst tv, a channel that plays short little sketches 24 hours a day, the core of which are the BabySmart videos that are a lot like the Baby Einstien videos.  Now, I don’t really mind the videos segments, but all the other stuff pretty much makes me crazy.  A number of the other shows are voiced by the same people and one of the voices just makes me want to run screaming from the room.  One of the voices is part of this recurring sketch where two squirels hide an acorn and then do the cold-hot game to find it.  It has the single most annoying set of songs in it, followed closely by Fred & Fiona and their magical boardy board.  This is insanely bad animation…I swear they have almost the same show, just voiced with different words.  It makes me look forward to “Wonder Pets”.

I am looking forward to the kids getting old enough to watch regular tv shows.