Toofie and Baby Time Out

 Part One: Toofie

We promised Addie some time ago (like 9 months ago) that we would get a puppy sometime just after Spring Break.  Spring Break came and went with no promised dog.  I'm not ready to have a baby human and a baby dog at the same house, so here is the compromise.  Meet Toofie the Guinea Pig.  These pics are from her first day at the Sole household.  It took approximately 20 minutes after coming home for the following things to happen:  1. Set up Toofie habitat. 2. Dress up Toofie as a princess and give her her own kingdom *originally designed for My Little Pony princesses, but let's not quibble. 3.  Let Toofie run in the living room and lose her under the couch.  Welcome home, Toofie!

Guinea pig castle (formerly My Little Pony castle)

Isn't she a beautiful princess?

Part Two: Baby Time Out

Teddy has been pulling a lot of hair and snuggle-biting his Mama recently, so I have begun to tell him "no" and then put him down in the attempt to get him to quit these painful behaviors.  Let me walk you through how this went today. This whole progression of pictures takes place over approximately 1 minute.

1.  "Mama!  Don't put me down!  I'm sorry!!  I'll never do it again (for the next 10 seconds!)  The floor is LAVA!  I'm sure of it!!

2.  (10 seconds later) Ok.  This isn't as bad as I thought.  Now pick me back up.

3.  Look at meeeeee.  I'm cuuuuute!  Pick me up, oooohkaaaay?

4.  Please?

5.  Look!  Toes!  Fun!

6.  You're taking pictures!  HI!!

7.  I found a ball.  I'm so over you.

Weekend fun

I've had a few days pass (most of a month) since I've blogged, and there are some pictures that I need to show from the past couple of weekends.

First, just so you know, my sweet girly girl who is so exited (and able) to put together the little fashionista outfit that she was sporting in the last post also makes mud pies.  Just for reference:

Adorable.

Those are my cleaning gloves. No, she didn't ask permission.

We also visited the annual sale at Bicycle Garage of Indy, spent some gift cards sent to us from BGI for appearing in their blog (double score!), and got Teddy his own bicycle trailer.  We're so excited for cycling season!  Here is Teddy in his new helmet.  He has to wear one, too, even though he's just going to be hanging out in his trailer. :)

I also have to show you guys this one.  Jason is such a great Daddy.  Addie is such a sweet sister.  And that's my leg.  You can't win them all in one picture.  But you can come close.

Haircuts

Both of our kids have been rather hairy lately.  See what I mean?

waist long hair

Hi!  You're funny!

Addie had about a mile of Rapunzel hair, and Teddy was born with craziness going on on his head.  It took about 5 years for Addie to come to the point where she had just one too many long/painful hair brushing/drying episodes.  She was ready to abandon "Rapunzel" as her hair ideal.  Her new hair inspiration is her friend, Rachel.  See the photo below for reference.  The two of them are just sweet BFFs (in their words.)  In order to make it a bit more palatable to give up her locks, we took her to the salon where I get my hair cut, a "real hair salon," (in her words.)  She's a pretty girly-girl when she wants to be, and she loved the whole experience.  Whose kid is she, anyway?  Seriously, I'm so glad that she loved it.  Also, she decided to donate her hair (about a foot of it!) to Locks of Love so they can make wigs for kiddos with cancer.  Sweet girl.

BFFs

Teddy has two different people's hair on his one head.  The front/top is smooth and fine, and the back is super curly and coarse.  I cut the back on a whim weeks ago because I was so frustrated with him waking up with a dreadlock forming after every sleep.  The top, though, has recently begun to droop into his eyes.  It is time for a trim!  I am a quite accomplished barber, if you didn't know.  I didn't know it either, but I learned how to approach the kiddo's noggin approximately 3 minutes prior to picking up the scissors by looking at the first website that Google returned to me when I searched, "cutting boy hair."  Like I said, accomplished.  Totally a professional.  What?

Here are the results of both cuts (and one sweet in-process shot of Addie).  I was snipping as quickly as I safely could with Teddy so as not to accidentally snip his sweet little hands (which were really wanting to touch the scissors), so there was not a way to get an in-process picture.

This is a big step!

Cutie Patootie. Also notice the outfit that she put together for this occasion, if you please.

Oooh...so handsome!

Ta-da!  We are groomed! :)

Timber!!

Teddy has officially outgrown his baby pumpkin car seat.  This is a problem for me because he doesn't sit up very well yet.  So, going to the grocery store for me is a bit more of a challenge than it used to be.  There just isn't a great place for him to hang out in the cart anymore!  He doesn't have his little seat, and the "big kid" seat doesn't hold him upright.  I don't often take the little bugaboo to the store, anyway, but here's what happened yesterday when I did. 

First, he was like this:

Then, he was like this:

Repeat.  12 thousand times.  Thankfully, his grocery cart cover (passed down by the Kimmerle family...thank you!!) is soft, so he wasn't upset by falling over all the time.  It was amusing to me, though.

No Milk

We have no milk in our house right now.  This is a problem for two reasons.  First, a winter storm is coming, and we all know that milk is essential for weathering a storm.  Second, well...here's the story.

Our wonderful neighbors invited us over for dinner tonight.  Yay!  All I need to bring is a dessert.  I love bringing the dessert for at least the following 3 reasons.  It lets me cook whatever I want because it doesn't have to go with the meal, it lets me experiment in the kitchen because an un-tried dessert is almost always still delicious even if it is executed miserably, and it lets me be creative and not worry at all about calories...no one expects a dessert to be good for you.  Also, I can leave whatever dessert we don't eat at the hosts' house.  They get to be happy longer, and I get to be happy because I'm not tempted to eat the whole rest of the thing.  I planned to make cream puffs.  I really wanted to make cream puffs.  They are easy, make you look like a rockstar, and can be filled with whatever makes you happy at the time.  What was going to make happy today was white chocolate pudding with raspberries on top all dusted with powdered sugar.  Well, here's the thing.  We have no milk, and you need milk to make both pudding and cream puffs.  So, off to the store I will go!

This plan would have worked had the car started when I turned the key.  It did not.  Why not?  Because it only starts when it is good and ready and/or when it has been run in the last 18 hours.  This has been going on for a few months.  Why don't I get a new car or get it fixed?  The short answer is because I'm stubborn.  Very very stubborn.  I hope to explain the long version soon in a blog post entitled, "My New (to me) Car: No More Dave Ramsey Beaters!"

Ok.  So no milk.  A new dessert plan was needed.  I pulled out my cookbooks and discovered that there are very few desserts (at least interesting ones) that don't require milk.  I did figure out that I had a can of sweetened condensed milk hiding in my cupboard, and I felt a strong compulsion to use it.  Maybe I was now fixated on this dairy-less situation and felt like I needed to defeat it.  I don't know.  I digress.  I found a recipe that required sweetened condensed milk, it was un-tried, and it already looked I wasn't going to be able to stick to the recipe, anyway.  Perfect!  Time to make some key lime pie.  Nevermind that I don't have limes.  I have lemons.  No problem.  Nevermind that I don't have a graham cracker crust.  Wait.  I actually DO need that.

What happens now takes, I know, a special kind of crazy.  I am just that crazy.  I decided that it can't be THAT hard to make graham crackers.  The Googles know these things, right?  It turns out that the only people out there on the interwebz who are making their own graham crackers are granola-eating hippies who use ingredients that I haven't got (and sometimes haven't heard of....such as sprouted einkorn flour.)  I finally found a recipe that I thought might work, and it only looked like it would destroy my kitchen and take half the day, so I decided to give it a try.  It destroyed my kitchen and took half the day, but I made them, and they are good!  I made the things into a crust, and all that was left was the filling.  The rest of the pie was a piece of cake...or pie.  All finished.  It doesn't look great, but I hope it tastes good.

It was about this time that I realized that my dear hubby would actually not like the pie that I just made.  In fact, he would hate it.  His sour taste buds are like that annoying kid in 2nd grade who yells and screams to the teacher when the slightest little thing annoys him.  He can taste a lemon a mile and a half away.  He does a pretty great Gollum impression where he says, "The lemonsesss...we hates them!   We HATES themmmmmm!!!"  He would have eaten a bite or two and tried really valiantly to like it, but he would have hated it.  So, I made some snickerdoodles.  They took me approximately 30 minutes and didn't destroy my kitchen.  Why snickerdoodles?  Two reasons: First, they are delicious.  Second, the don't require milk...because we have no milk

The chillin' pie...too much filling, but you get the idea.

This is a homemade graham cracker.

These are snickerdoodles.

Circus Music Mornings

Sometimes mornings around here are peaceful.  Usually, we just eat our cheerios (and bottles) and get ready for the bus to come.  We even get to chat a little bit, and some of my best times with the kids are when everybody is happy and nothing has yet caused the day to turn stressful.  Today was not that morning.  This morning should have had theme music...circus theme music, specifically.

Addie woke up this morning feeling like she was sick.  Specifically, she felt, "sickish."  Her choice of words could mean one of two things.  First, it could be that she wasn't TRULY sick.  She was just a little tired but didn't prefer to bother with school today.  Second, she could be adopting the language of Junie B. Jones, the most irritating protagonist in the history of children's literature.  It wouldn't be the first time that she's incorporated JBJ's language into her own.  Whichever it was, I told her that a sick day today meant being in her bed with books, not TV.  Addie insisted that she have a throw-up bowl in her bed with her, and (honestly) she did look a little...well, sickish.  Off she went to her room.  Once she was all set up with a water bottle, piece of dry bread, the requested bowl, and a stack of books a foot thick in her bed, I set about my day.

Let's fast forward a little bit, shall we? Say...45 minutes later?  Teddy, having woken up earlier than I would have preferred, is now ready for his nap and is getting fussy. I still haven't had breakfast because of taking care of a sick kiddo and a little kiddo.  We're also expecting a visit from a dry-waller to help us finish our bathroom, and he's running a little late.  Then what to my wandering eyes does appear?  Addie has made a seemingly miraculous recovery!  She insists that she's feeling better but NOT better enough for school....at least not yet.  Riiiiiight.  5 minutes later (and I'm not exaggerating), we're on the way out the door.  So, Addie's teeth may or may not have been brushed.  None of that matters anyway, right?  We're off!  At just that moment, the drywaller guy appears, apologizing that he's late.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Gotta go to school.  BRB!  So, I let the guy in, quickly showed him the project, and ran out the door.

Because I'd already called Addie into school, I now had to walk her in to show them that she's actually present and accounted for.  Addie wanted me to walk her to her class because she might die of embarrassment arriving late like she was.  Nothing doing, kid.  This is one to just suck up.  Good news, though!  She arrived before she was even late.  Rejoice!

We then arrived home to find that the drywaller guy has gone out to his truck (without his coat, I think) and has locked himself out of our house.  Ah, well.

I'm happy to report that right now (9:45am), I'm finishing a bowl of cheerios.  Teddy's napping (finally) despite the pounding drywall sounds, and I'm finally ready to figure out what to do with my day.  Ya da da da da da da da da da!  (If you go with me here and sing it instead of read it, it makes more sense.)

Ok...here's a totally unnecessary but kindof fun couple of pictures which have nothing to do with this post.  Enjoy!

Getting cuter each month!

Addie reading poetry at her school's Reading Night

Love this.

Happy Valentine's Day!  These are the lips we made for suckers.  The boys got suckers with mustaches.

HI!

What I am doing

Addie is home sick from school, but she is feeling much better now. So here's what we're doing. Addie is reading her new Magic Treehouse book about the Titanic.

Notice that reading for her involves several horses, Baby Kendall, and an assortment of pillow pets.

Teddy is swinging and snoozing.

 I am drinking coffee and drinking in God's Word.

Doesn't get much better than this, does it?