Random Bits...

Today we made pumpkin cutout cookies. I think I have mentioned my favorite rollout cookie recipe before... I make it any time I need rollout cookies, but it is obviously best suited for fall, having pumpkin in it! We have been eating lots of good fall foods lately... pumpkin pancakes and cookies, pumpkin-pear soup, butternut squash soup, roasted veggie stew (I tried rutabagas yesterday for the first time!), grilled cheese and tomato soup...

Caroline (after much hand-washing) helped to roll, cut, and decorate the cookies. We used pumpkin, cat, and ghost cookie cutters. Then she put mini chocolate chips and raisins on for their faces.

Oh, and we tried pomegranate seeds for the eyes on one cat and one ghost. Pretty evil-looking...
If we are well for our hot dog roast on Halloween night, we'll bring these for dessert! I love that they are slightly sweet... only a half cup of sugar (I use Sucanat) in the recipe. Yay for relatively healthy desserts! Hmm, I should make a pear crisp for dessert one night soon, too!

Caroline shows off her work - a full tin of cookies (with the evil cat on the top).

So, other random things from our life recently...

I was reading The New Baby to Caroline and Cecilia (who calls it "Nude Baby" - that is how she says "new"). It is a Little Golden Book from the 70s - which the illustrations show very clearly. The dad's suit, the wallpaper, the mother's maternity clothes... what a hoot! I enjoyed this book myself as a child, which is why we have it now for my children. The funniest thing is that there is a room in the story which has a window seat... and I swear, it looks exactly like our room with the window seat before we painted it - complete with the same teal blue paint on it and the doorway trim and everything. So, in this book, the deliveryman brings a big box to the house, and it says that he "put it by the window." Now, this meant inside the house because the mother had let him in when he knocked, but Caroline thought it meant that he left the package on the porch next to a window. "But if he leaves it there, people will think they are putting it on Freecycle!"she exclaims.

Caroline held a chicken for the first time yesterday. She pulls them up close to her chest and kind of hugs them, not caring about their poopy feet getting too close to her like I am when I hold them! The chickens have still not laid any eggs... scared eggless, maybe? They do seem to have recovered emotionally... back to their normal selves. No PTSD for them, I guess... must be tougher (or just dumber?) than my parents' cat, Mason, who seemed to have suffered from PTSD for a few years after the other cat died and a new one was brought home in its place. Poor Mason, she had just recently returned to "normal" (it didn't seem normal any more after several years of her extra-aloof skitterishness!), and then disaster struck: she was stranded on a shelf in my parents' basement when it flooded. Welcome back, Mason's PTSD. She's back to her other "normal" now, at least when I visit, anyway...

Speaking of traumatic... Cecilia has developed a deep fear of...

...MUSHROOMS! Wild mushrooms, that is. We have had them in our yard for months now, what with all the rain... but not quite as many as we had yesterday. And these were different - little red-topped ones. Cecilia was walking along, when suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks and looked horrified. It was like she was frozen - couldn't go on, couldn't go back. She'd spread her legs apart a bit and was looking down, crying, about the mushrooms. She refuses to walk near them if she notices them ahead of time. She even stood next to the house at one point yesterday while I was helping Caroline find hot dog roasting sticks, saying firmly, "Go 'WAY, mushrooms!" I seriously do not know what has brought this on... it's her first real fear that we have noticed! If the mushrooms have her "trapped," she will just fuss until I come to rescue her. She cannot just walk around them or run back to me, for some reason...

Hmm, what else? Cecilia continues to try to get out of diaper changes by insisting, "No, DRY!!!" whenever we ask her if her diaper is wet. She is into big-kid games: "Play playdoh!" "Play Brown Bear!" Other-saur is still somewhat important to her, but seems to be fading a bit in popularity, just like "Shick-il-ay Cow" did. Speaking of, the real Chick-fil-A cow came to my mom's preschool last week when we were there... Cecilia was so excited when she saw him walk by in the hall and ran out of my mom's office, with Caroline aka Little Mommy running after her and dragging her back to me, as I was trying to wolf down my last few bites of lunch and clear up the kids' empty yogurt containers and such off my mom's desk... So, when we actually went up to "Shick-il-ay Cow" outside the building (he was standing there to greet people in the carpool line to advertise the school's Chick-fil-A night, in which portions of the sales go to the preschool)... the cow reached out to shake Cecilia's hand, and she immediately did a 180! She put her head to my shoulder and her eyes got huge, and she let out a cry... that cry of hers that says, "You hurt my feelings so completely and totally, how could you???" I guess the cow is really just HUGE in person compared to her little cow from the kids' meal! She regained her composure when she saw that i was shaking his hand and that Caroline wasn't in any danger... and she even touched his hand ever-so-slightly, and joyously waved and yelled to him as we left. There is a photo, but it is on my mom's camera... [Edited to add: Today, in listening to Cecilia talk about her little cow, she was saying "Click-lay Cow." Caroline insists that's how she has said it all along, but I really thought she was making more of a "sh" sound last week...]

Caroline unloaded all the dry clothes from two drying racks for me today! I like to take laundry outside to fold while they play (that is, when I am not summoned to defeat the evil mushrooms), and honestly, some days it takes an act of Congress to get out the door! Is dinner in the oven? Does everyone have shoes? Water bottles? Go to the bathroom? Oh, another nasty poop diaper? Okay then, we'll be headed outside in a few minutes... Do we need jackets? Do we need to change into short sleeves and remove our socks and find our sandals? So, having the laundry tossed into a basket for me while I dealt with the diaper was so helpful! Ever notice how it takes much longer to hang, unhang, or fold a load of little kid clothes? Same amount of fabric, so many more articles of clothes!

Observation: The hand towel in my main bathroom is never dry. Never. Well, maybe first thing in the morning. I guess that's what happens when it gets used by somebody every hour all day.

Cecilia got new potty from IKEA. It cost $3.99!! And it is RED! She likes to try to stand in it. It requires a great deal of adjustment for her to decide she's on it comfortably... she stands up and asks me to "Scoot better" until she is satisfied with its positioning. Other notes in Cecilia's speech: her favorite word for about a month now has been "also." She uses it correctly and often. She can sing much of "Five Little Pumpkins" on her own. She acts like she gets the inside joke regarding how I said "da-bahn man" instead of "gingerbread man" when I was little as she giggles and says, "Gwampa... no, Daddy... da-bahn MAN!" Two other popular phrases are "Want Mommy!" - often pronounced as "Muhnt Mommy!" lately, and "Do self!" or "Cici turn!" And it is always funny to us when Cecilia hands us her plate of food and asks us to blow on it if it is too hot, and then, if she is not satisfied, she asks us to "blow loud." I think it is interesting that she has lost her use of possessives for the most part... she was adding s to the end of many words to show ownership when she began to talk at about 14 months! She is also getting tooth number 17. Only three more to go!!!

Oh, and Cecilia ate dirt today. Or at least smeared it around her mouth.

Finally, more of Cecilia's drawings. Caroline did the writing on the envelope, but the rest is Cecilia's doing. my mom watched her draw last week and said, "Do you know that she is holding the crayon correctly... and in both hands??" I hadn't noticed, but she was right. She also pointed out that most young children put their elbow up in the air as they hold the crayon - Cecilia does not. She rests her hand and arm on the paper as she works. Weird. Guess I'd better force her to begin handwriting at age 2, ha!