Seriously?

Dog Lives With Leopard. And Piglet.


Is there anything cuter than this?

In case I had any doubts that my daughter knows what to do with a cup...

They all went out the window the other night when Michaela filled her bath cup with bath water (grime, suds and all) and poured it down her throat. And then squirted the water from her ducky's tummy into her mouth when I took the cup away. And then proceeded to lap water from the tub like a dog when I took her duck away. Is it weird for an 11 month old to like drinking water so much?

Chinese New Years Resolutions

I was being a very lazy blogger over New Years and never got my resolutions out. So being that this weekend was Chinese New Year, I think it is ok for me to publish them now. :) In no particular order:

*Get our budget back on track. Philip and I pretend to be healthy spenders, but really, when it comes to something we really want, we are like ADD children in a candy store. As I was looking at our spending from last year, the biggest problems were groceries, eating out, and buying gifts for friends and family. We are going to try to eat out less, and share meals when we do. I plan on making menus every week to help streamline my grocery spending. And I want to make gifts as much as possible, or really take advantage of after-holiday sales for the upcoming years presents.

*Spend less time on the blogosphere. I know, this seems crazy, but it seems like I am constantly checking my Reader. As much as I love reading my favorite blogs, if I can keep my habit down to one time a day, I will have so much more time for other things I have been putting on the backburner, like making a baby book, writing my novel, or planning menus.

*Spend more time in the present. I seem to always be planning ahead and looking to the future. I put off projects because I think next week or next month will be a better time. I need to start paying more attention to the things that are here in now in my life, including my husband and my daughter. I need to appreciate the little things and spend that extra time playing or listening instead of trying to get something else done.

*Work on my relationship with God. I need to stop taking our relationship for granted and really start behaving like the Christian that I am. I want to spend more time in prayer, both structured and through my actions and thoughts towards other people.

*Treat my body more kindly. I want to stop shoving bad and harmful food into my body. I want to stop lying around on the couch and letting my muscles turn to pudding. I want to stop criticizing my body and blaming it for all the bad things in my life. I am going to treat my body the way I treat Michaela's. I give her good healthy food, it is time to be just as nice to myself. I have her walking and moving around all day. It is time that I follow her lead and do the same. I adore every little hair on her head and every adorable little fold of skin on her body. It is time that I learn to love myself that much.

Wish me luck with my resolutions! I hope to re-evaluate in the summer and see how I am doing.

Operation Baby #2

Yeah! My Aunt Flow is visiting! Now normally, I am not such a huge fan. But she hasn't visited for almost 2 years and Philip and I have been wanting to try for baby #2 (we want our kids spaced closely together). I don't think I have been this excited over one of her visits since she visited me the very first time. Yes, this is probably so much more information than you ever wanted to know from me, but I am so happy, I just had to shout it out to the world! Operation Baby #2 can now commence!

Thank you Reynolds...

Dear Reynolds,
I hate you. I know hate is such a strong word, but in this case it is completely applicable. I know we used to have such a good relationship, I mean I use your products several times a week for cooking, storing, and even cleaning purposes.

But yesterday I decided to cook the extra turkey that I bought at Thanksgiving so that I would have turkey instead of chicken for my recipes the rest of this week. I decided to use your famous turkey cooking bags so that I wouldn't have to be continually checking and basting it. I am not a stupid girl. I know that my roaster is metal and that plastic and heated metal do not belong together. But for some reason I thought that this would have been taken into account with this product. I mean, I'm sure that a large majority of turkey roasting pans are metal right? And there was no warning anywhere on the box or on the instructions! I just assumed that this was magic plastic, you know the kind that would have been specially designed to not melt to a still-new favorite metal turkey roasting pan in under 30 seconds. I guess I was wrong.

To conclude, I hate you Reynolds. For messing up my pan, for making me spend an hour trying to clean the burned, melted plastic off, and for making me spend my day continually basting my turkey while my pissed-off, teething daughter screamed in the background. Grrrr.

Chocolate Mousse & Tuiles

Motherhood for Dummies hosts Family Moment Mondays, check her out to get more ideas on how to spend time together as a family!

My FMM today is a delicious recipe that I tried out this weekend. We were invited to a friends house for dinner and asked to bring a dessert. I sat racking my brain trying to come up with something that would be easy and fast, and finally turned to Kraft, my go-to website for quick food. I found this delicious recipe for chocolate mousse using Toblerone candy bars. This was super easy and super quick to put together. With your supervision, a child could easily make this. If not, your kids will love licking the mixing spoon with this dessert.

The only problem was that this mousse was a little bit rich. I started thinking of ways to balance the richness of the chocolate, and decided to try making some mild cookies to go along with the mousse. I decided to make a tuile- a thin, mildly sweet cookie that can be shaped however you like while still warm from the oven. I found this particular recipe here. Your kids will love making these cookies into little cups, rolling them into little cylinders, making them look like waffle cones, or simply draping them along a rolling pin to create a pringle shape like I did. If you want to go one step further, you can dip, or drizzle the cookies in melted chocolate once they are shaped.

Toblerone Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:
· 8 triangles (2.5 oz) Toblerone Chocolate
· 2.5 cups Cool Whip, thawed [I used about 4 cups, it made it a little less rich.]

Directions:
· Microwave chocolate about 1 minute or until mostly melted and let cool about 30 seconds.
· Add in Cool Whip and stir until well blended.
· Chill in refrigerator for at least 1.5 hours. [The longer it chills, the better it tastes, and the more mousse-like a consistency it becomes.]

Belgian Tuile Cookies

Ingredients

• 1/2 c butter, softened [I used margarine]
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 c all-purpose flour

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375, grease cookie sheets.
• Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Add egg white, vanilla, and salt
• Gradually add flour until well blended.
• Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet, and flatten slightly with a spatula. [These spread when they cook. The original directions say to place them 4 inches apart on the cookie sheet, but I did them about 1 inch apart and they were fine.]
• Bake 6-8 minutes, or until golden brown.
• Pull them out of the oven, as soon as you are comfortable handling them, take them and place them over a rolling pin to create "pringle" shape.
• Let cool about 1 minute before removing from rolling pin.

Sleep, glorious sleep...

I have not fallen off the face of the planet. We were in San Antonio last week visiting my husbands family and although I had my computer with me, I was lazy and didn't bother to post anything or really keep up with my google reader. I think I've pretty much given up on doing too much more to my page, but I will try to keep updating my blogroll, it takes forever to add blogs via html!

In other news, Michaela started sleeping in her very own crib in her very own room this week. She has been sleeping in my bed pretty much since the day she came home from the hospital. I tried reading The No-Cry Sleep Solution, and while it did have alot of great ideas, none of them seemed to work very well on Michaela. I know alot of parents let their children sleep in their beds for years, but it was not working well for our family any more. Philip is such a light sleeper that he tosses and turns, and would wake the baby up, so he has been sleeping on the couch for a long time now. For the health of my marriage, Michaela needed to go into her own room!

It hasn't been too too bad so far. I've started doing a better bedtime routine with her, and now I nurse her until she is drowsy, then put her in her crib. The first two nights daddy rubbed her tummy and her head until she fell asleep, and then would do the same whenever she woke up in the middle of the night. I would wake up to feed her after she had slept for 5 or 6 hours and then put her back in her crib. Last night daddy did not go to her when she woke up, we let her try to get back to sleep on her own. I would be lying if I said that this has been a smooth, cry-less situation, but there has definitely been less tears than I expected.

The first night I had a really hard time sleeping without Michaela tucked into my arms. Last night I slept like a rock. So although I will miss Michaelas little night noises, and the feeling I get when her little hand brushes against my arm as she turns over, I know this is the right thing to do right now. Daddy is happy to have his bed back and I am happy to have him back as well. :)

Being defeated by technology...

My redesign is not going as well as I would have liked it to. I have some good changes so far (spiffy new header, 3 columns and a scrolling blogroll!) but I am having problems with changing my background and putting pictures in my sidebar headers. I do not know html very well so this is all a lot of experimenting. If anyone does know how to do that, please please please help me out! I am strangely computer illiterate for my generation! :(