Happy Halloween!

As Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I thought I'd share a few of our photos from this weekend's festivities....Hope everyone has a very Happy Halloween!

A proper princess with her pumpkin cookie at the Crossings Halloween party

Silly Cinderella finds spider rings in the hay at the Boght Fire House

Sweet little gnome posing at a friend's Halloween party

Chocolate "dirt" cupcakes topped with chocolate frosting, cake crumbs, and gummy worms for the Halloween party at school.

F, G, and H

We finished last week by learning about the letters F, G, and H.

We celebrated the letter "F" by having French toast sticks for breakfast, jumping around pretending to be frogs, visiting some friends, taking a drive to check out what's left of the fall foliage, and (as evidence by these pictures) making funny faces.

Yummy french toast sticks!

We learned about the letter G by being guests in bug's aunt's classroom, practicing being gentle with our kitty moe., and playing guitar with Daddy.

I know the cat looks like she's trying to get away,

but she actually was purring and seemed quite happy.

Playing along to Phish's "Joy" with Daddy

Our celebration of the letter H was a bit off because we had to spend the day out of the house as bug's Daddy and Pa were doing some major construction in the middle of our living room (taking down half of a wall and sheet rocking). We visited a bounce house playground to hop and bought a new Halloween hat (the next day we went on a hayride too!)

Halloween hat from Gymboree

30 months

I started doing these snapshots of what it's like living with an infant/toddler at different stages and thought it might be fun to resume! Here's what my bug is like at 30 months!

• Tantrums still happen, but are far less frequent and easier to defuse with distraction than they were 6 months ago.
• Diet is fickle to the extreme. Sometimes she will request seconds and thirds of a meal, other times she refuses to eat more than a few bites. Her favorite real foods these days are broccoli, carrots, grapes, cheese, and shrimp. Her favorite junk food is mini lollipops.
• Everything prompts a question. I must answer "What is it?" and "What's in it?" twenty times a day minimum.
• Her language skills seem to be improving and expanding on a daily basis still. I can tell she is putting more complex thoughts into words and gets frustrated far less frequently.
• She has a great memory and picks up on routine well. For example, I made a comment that her Papa (my dad) might not be home and she responded, "Yea, Papa might be at camp" in reference to his cabin that he frequents all summer.
• She is starting to repeat, but with her good memory the things she hears can come up much later so we really need to watch ourselves. We don't really use curse words, but I made an offhand comment one day referring to myself as "fat" and days later she started chanting "Mommy's fat, mommy's fat" in the car. Oops!
• She still loves to dance - I'm thinking of starting her in dance class soon.
• She has a sense of humor and loves to watch America's Funniest Home Videos - she laughs at all the animal videos.
• She has an insane imagination. She plays house with her babies all the time and her bath time is frequently invaded by walruses, sharks, sea turtles, and dolphins after our visit to Sea World.
• I got away with not having to wean pacifiers or bottles, haven't had to deal with a crazy attachment to a stuffed animal or blanket, and don't have to worry about bug trying to get into places that are off limits (she HATES when I unlock under the sink to get a new garbage bag and tries to re-lock it), but she is aggressively resisting my attempts at potty training. In fact, she doesn't even want her diaper changed anymore. It's a complete waste disposal shut down.

Things might be busier and more difficult in some ways, but I LOVE this age. She's funny, interactive, and learning like a sponge. Not to mention the fact that she's the cutest kid I've ever seen...don't you agree?:-)

Letters D and E

I'm not sure if anyone finds this interesting so I am going to consolidate posts for a quicker re-cap of the letters of the day...

To celebrate "D" day we ate a donut for breakfast, had a visit with our neighbor's dog, fed the ducks at the park, had a dance party and drum circle listening to Keller Williams, and pretended to be animals that start with "D" (this mostly involved me being a dog and the bug leading me around the house by the string on my hooded sweatshirt).

Feeding the ducks some old rice krispies

I'll admit, "E" was a bit harder to come up with activities for! We dressed up as "eagles", ate eggs for lunch, watched Enchanted during afternoon quiet time, and went to the gym to exercise.

My little future Boston College Eagle

Candy Corn Cupcakes

This is going to be a very short post as I can just link to the two recipes I used:-)

Go to Scharffen Berger's site and click "Make a vanilla cupcake." Once there look for the link in the upper right that says "Get our base cupcake recipe." I followed the recipe exactly. At the end I divided the batter into two bowls and used food coloring to make half yellow and half orange. I put one spoonful of yellow into the cupcake liner followed by a spoonful of orange to mimic a candy corn. Bake as directed

I used this buttercream recipe and it might be my new favorite! I halved it to avoid too much leftover. I did add a little bit more milk than called for so it would be softer - you can play with it as you go to get the consistency you want.

Enjoy!

The letter C

Friday was "C" day!

We celebrated by having Cinderella waffles for breakfast, visiting lots of cats at the animal shelter, wearing costumes, baking candy corn cupcakes, and making our "C" collage!

Yummy Cinderella waffles.

Visiting the animal shelter - "Can we have one, Daddy? Pleeeease?"

Thankfully, my bug loves to cook with me!

Mixing the batter to make candy corn colors...

Proudly showing off her costume and mini-cupcake!

We are on our way out, so I'll post the candy corn cupcake recipe later...

The letter B

Yesterday was "B" day!

We celebrated our letter of the day by wearing a butterfly dress, remembering some of our favorite B words (balloons, beach, and bugs!) on a collage to add to the ABC scrapbook, by going to the library and picking out lots of books, by running around the house acting out B words (bees, birds, butterflies, bouncy balls, etc), and by making a delicious butternut squash soup!

Bug enjoying her new library books

Butternut Soup

Quick Recipe

1 TBSP olive oil

1/2 cup diced onion

1/2 cup diced carrots

1/2 cup diced celery

2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and diced

4 cups butternut squash, peeled and cut into small cubes

4 cups of low-sodium organic chicken broth

1/2 tsp cinnamon

sprinkle of nutmeg

sprinkle of coriander

1. Saute onions, carrots, and celery in olive oil for about 8 minutes until starting to soften.

2. Add all remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Puree in a blender or with an immersion blender.

4. Enjoy! (I topped it with a teeny dollop of fresh whipped cream and cinnamon to make it look pretty!)

ABCs

As soon as I found out that I was going to be home with bug for a few months, I decided that I wanted to try and teach her the ABCs. Her daycare has been amazing and has helped teach her all of the colors, how to count to 15, and all of the basic shapes, but I really wanted to take this on as a fun project for the two of us together.

My idea is to spend the whole day (each week day) talking about "the letter of the day." We'll use her leapfrog Fridge Phonics set to review the sounds that each letter makes, practice writing the letter, cook using ingredients that start with that letter, and do at least one arts and crafts project highlighting the letter of the day.

Today's letter (predictably) was "A."

We made a letter collage using paper punches and stickers with some of our favorite things that start with "A".

For lunch we had Pasta with Apples and Almonds. See recipe below.

Apple and Almond Pasta

2 cups cooked pasta (We used Spinach wagon wheels)

1 cup halved red grapes

1 medium apple, peeled, cored, and diced

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1 TBSP sliced almonds

1 TBSP Parmesan cheese

juice from 1/2 lemon

pepper, to taste

Cook your pasta and run it under cool water. Mix the fruits and nuts together in a large bowl. Add the pasta to the bowl and toss to combine. Mix in lemon juice. Add pepper and Parmesan and toss one last time. You can chill it and eat it later, but we ate it right away at room temperature.

And exhale...

I realized that it has been almost 2 months since I posted anything! In all fairness to myself, it's been crazy around here. In brief, this is what's been going on that's kept me away from the computer:

• I got hired for a new job! A real job! And...I'll be working part-time for at least a year.
• We (meaning my husband, father in law, and dad) re-modeled the bug's playroom.
• I finished residency!!
• I found out my new job won't start til December, so I'm a "stay at home mom" for two months.
• We took the bug to Disney World!
• I studied for and took my certifying board exam.

And now, I've finally reached the point when I can take a deep breath, slowly exhale, and RELAX! I'll try to give some attention back to the blog because I have many things I'd like to share about Disney, plenty of new recipes and crafts, and I imagine I'll need an outlet for my thoughts on what it's like to abruptly switch from working 40-80 hours a week to working NONE.