Fat Tuesday

{Incidentally, I love how Skulduggery Pleasant is peeking out between the scissors like he's up to something.}

Thing One took me to chemo #9 yesterday and we celebrated Fat Tuesday by getting FAT. We went to Olive Garden afterwards, ordered lasagna and unlimited soup and salad, and let's just say...

Do you remember what it looks like when Cookie Monster devours food? That was me. I practially inhaled my first bowl of chicken gnocchi soup and my first plate of salad. Then I polished off Thing One's unfinished soup and had another plate of salad whilst somebody dug through lasagna and snarfed down breadsticks. Our excellent and patient waiter then brought me a bowl of the Zuppa Toscana with Italian sausage, potatoes, and kale.

Kale.

Now, I LOVE lettuce. But kale is a different level for me. So I tried a spoonful. And then I tried a spoonful with kale in it. And THEN I inhaled the rest of the bowl, like my body had just discovered raw materials for the first time. I would have had a vat of it if I wasn't already so full. It was amazing! I've even hunted down a copycat recipe! 

Nobody is more shocked than I am.

Our waiter, pleased, asked if we'd like dessert, which was a no-brainer as they'd left the photo of the Black Tie Chocolate Cake on the table the entire time. We split it and then just about split our pants. So. Full. Of. Deliciousness.

We came home with lasagna, breadsticks, and a small bit of salad. Definitely fatter. #WeDidItRight

Glad my weigh in on the rhino scale was BEFORE lunch...

 

Silliness to spice things up

 A good bit of winter seems to be monotonous. The dark, the cold, the shoveling. Thankfully we have imaginations and can be a bit playful instead of steeping in the drudgery.

Our friend The Taskmaster sent us a task to freeze the latest message in an extreme circumstance and the task had to be completed before Lake Erie froze. Well, I saw on the news that a buncha Lake Erie was freezing so figured we better get on the ball. Here's our extremely frozen task. I didn't even put it in the freezer, I just set it out on the railing of the deck! 

We need a person named Alex (not a person named Eunice, for fans of "What's Up, Doc?") for our next task, so send some Alex-es our way!

The most adorable tiny banana, and a pretty cute Thing 3.

Cookie Monster is reading the page about "guess whose mother forgot to put in dessert" to The Child. "Strange bedfellows" indeed.

My virgin attempt at cooking green lentils. I need a vat of this stuff. It was sooooooo good that I just couldn't get enough of it. Will definitely have to double the recipe next time!

Never know what The Child is going to be up to...

Ah. Maybe he's blasting Vader. Are those reading glasses?

Sometimes you just need a silly cake. Delicious devil's food for no particular reason.

So. Much. Snow.

Might as well have a(nother) slice!

 

Mystery Adventure

Dada surprised us last night by being home in time for dinner instead of the after-bedtime ETA we'd been expecting, so we packed him up and took him along on a Mystery Adventure. 

We headed to the next school district over for a night of children's theater one acts. Their show runs again tonight and tomorrow afternoon as well. I had an inkling our kids would know some of the theater kids, and sure enough, as soon as we got there Liam pulled a Nana and ended up not even sitting with us. He joined a posse of his friends, some of whom are in the show and some who have siblings with parts. I thought it was so neat to take our kids to something other than karate or other sports to see real kids they know doing something that also takes practice and teamwork and creativity. Apparently this theater would love to have some fresh blood and are flexible with commitments throughout the year. I think we'll be looking into it, especially over the summer when we're not bogged down with homework and enjoy looser (and later) bedtimes.

Then, of course, we had to pull a PaPa and "go be bad". The ice cream shop a few blocks from us was already closed (what's THAT all about, people!? Sheesh. Some people's Priorities.) so we headed across town to the one that has the Cookie Monster ice cream mentioned in a previous post. I had a serving of The Bomb, and if I read the upside down bullet points right it mentioned butterscotch, chocolate chips, toffee bits, something peanut buttery in vanilla bean ice cream. Aptly named! "It comes in pints?! I'm getting one!" (That would be Pippin in "The Fellowship of the Ring" for those of you keeping track.)

By the time we were home, Damon was close to tears with tiredness and alas, they all had folded laundry on their beds waiting to be put away. We made it through the bedtime routine minus any reading of The Hobbit (for the boys) or The Scorpio Races (for Carrie) and everyone seemed to sleep soundly. It was a great date! I love Mystery Adventures!

And speaking of love languages...

Church has begun a new series based off of Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages, which is truly fascinating information. Anyone who knows me well will know that I am a Quality Time kind of person over anything else, and that it totally psychs me out when I find the right gift for someone because I am NOT a Gift kind of person. Sweet Dada appreciates Acts of Service over Words of Affirmation, which is another one that comes naturally to me, so I need to work on showing love to him in the way that he best receives it instead of just doing what's easy for me. The kids are all different as well, but Quality Time for any kid makes a big difference. I'll put a link at the bottom so you can check out the info. I see a lot of potential in how it helps with relationships of all kinds. 

But Mr. Chapman neglected to mention my true love language: cookies.

That's right. I am, above and beyond, a Cookie Monster at heart. That's why this particular $2 find at Goodwill made me do a happy dance:

I love to eat cookies, to bake cookies, to ship cookies in the mail, to deliver cookies to others, and to eat still more cookies. Cookie Monster IS my spirit animal.

And now you're getting the general idea of why this time of year is so dangerous:

~the oven warms up the house and makes it smell pretty

~Girl Scouts are selling crack cookies 

~since I can't hibernate I might as well bake

~people need cookies to cheer them up in winter doldrums

~Valentine's Day means fun heart shaped chocolate cookies

~and fun sprinkles

~nobody's really sticking to their resolutions by now anyway

~I got a new cookie cookbook for Christmas and have to test out all those new recipes

~we have kids and kids request cookies

~#wehavekidsthereforewehavecookies

~bananas headed to the dark side need transformed into creations other than banana bread sometimes

~repeat

So, grab some cookies (and hug those precious Girl Scouts) and tune in to listen to the messages here about the love languages and how they help you better relate to those around you. And have some milk. And another cookie!

Word Wall

Poor Grandmama has been campaigning for this post for awhile. She keeps dropping hints that I'd written word lists for both the other kids and hadn't done one for Damon. The reason for that was because until very, very recently, he didn't say anything! His word list has consisted of "Dada", "PaPa", and naturally, "Doh-Da" which translates into Yoda. Liam plays a lot of Star Wars on the Wii and Damon has taken quite the liking to Yoda and R2D2. Yes, you read that right. Dada, PaPa, and Yoda. Occassionally there'd be an "ouch" or a "touch." And he calls Liam "E-O" along with the corresponding notes we use when we call Liam- one higher, one lower.

No Mama. Nothing resembling Mama. Until Spring Break, when Grandmama was here. Then he started saying, "Mama." At 22 months old. Bonehead.

Now he's added, "doos" which means juice, "Bee" for Carrie (which makes sense because Liam called her Dee and that stuck. We call her Dee, so he calls her Bee. She likes it.), and I was thinking there was something else but it poofed...

He still sucks his thumb and grunts a good bit. He jabbers constantly and can follow your notes, but isn't interested in using words too much yet. Oh I know, he says "baby" and "bibby" also. He still signs for "more", "please", and "bird." He even sings something that sounds remarkably like the Star Wars theme song (I wonder why).

He's also a huge fan of Elmo, Cookie Monster, and anything involving a ball. He flips through books asking himself something that we think translates into "where's the ball? there's the ball!" He recognizes a lot of object words and points to everything. As you'll see in the following pictures, he also loves to climb. There are very few places we can put things that are truly out of his reach.