2 years old

My dear, sweet, baby girl.

Today you turn 2 years old. How did this happen? It seems like just a few months ago Daddy and I were bringing you home from the hospital.

You are a very fun little girl and you LOVE to laugh and have a good time. You have the best laugh of anyone I know. You get worked up and out comes this deep belly laugh. Anyone who hears it can't help but laugh right along with you. You often get the giggles just like your mommy used to...or still does.

You are becoming such an independent little girl. You are very opinionated and know what you want. That scares me a bit. If you're this way at 2, what will you be like at 13?

You are also very smart. I know every parent thinks their child is the smartest, but you really are a bright girl. You have a brain like a sponge and you learn things so quickly. I am constantly amazed by what you know. So far you know all your colors, you know your shapes, although rectangle is probably the one you have the hardest time remembering. You can identify all your alphabet letters and you can sing the abc's like a pro! You can count to 10 and even recognize some of your numbers. And you could do most of this around 19-21 months.

You love to sing. You know dozens of songs and even if you can't say all the words yet it doesn't keep you from singing your heart out. You love to listen to Laurie Berkner music when we are in the car.

In the last month or so you have started talking in simple sentences. You talk all the time. Most of the time we can understand what you are saying, but there are still times when we can't figure out what you're talking about.


Lucy you are the light of our lives and we feel so blessed to have you as a daughter. I am looking forward to all the years to come and to watching you grow through each milestone.

You are loved more than you know.




Happy Birthday Lucy!!

Love,
Mom

Yummy Goodness

This is a recipe I came across on a blog not too long ago, don't ask me which one cause I have no idea! This recipe has been adjusted a bit because I couldn't find all the ingredients at my local grocery store. Ugh, that is one of the things I hate about living where I do. If it's not at Walmart or Krogers, forget about it. But, that's a whole other post...

What I love about this recipe is that it is sooooo easy. I threw it together tonight for supper and so thought I would share it with you.

Baked Cheese Tortellini

2 cups marinara sauce ( or 1 jar spaghetti sauce with spices)

3/4 cup marscarpone cheese ( this I couldn't find so I used cottage cheese)

1 lb cheese tortellini

fresh mozzarella cheese ( I used pre-shredded mozz. cheese)

1/4 cup parm. cheese

** I also added in some dried parsley flakes, dried basil and salt and pepper**

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x13 baking dish. Mix together the sauce, cottage cheese and spices in a mixing bowl. Cook tortellini, drain and then add to the sauce mixture. Pour into baking dish and top with about 2 cups of mozzarella cheese and the parmesan cheese. Bake 30 minutes. Enjoy!

This recipe originally came from Giada (from food network). If you're interested seeing the original you can go to foodnetwork.com and search in Giada's recipes.

Did you all go out early Friday morning to get all the great Black Friday deals??? I didn't. I stayed in my warm bed all sunggly and cozy till almost 8 o'clock.

Breaking the Habit

Our toddler is a thumb-sucker. She's been sucking her thumb since she was 4 months old. I was not concerned at the time about this new habit. I liked the fact that I didn't have to keep track of a pacifier, after all the thumb is always there and she could never lose it. In the middle of the night, Lucy was able to soothe herself and I didn't have to get out of bed to stick a paci back in her mouth. Life was good.

Fast forward to the present. I still don't mind the thumb-sucking so much but it's the other issues that are related to it that have to stop. Around 8 months old Lucy also started pulling on her hair while sucking her thumb. This has grown into a bad habit and the two compulsions go hand in hand. We've been putting a sock on her hand during nap and bedtime for a long time now just to keep her from being bald on one side of her head.

In the last month though Lucy has started another bad habit that goes along with her thumb-sucking. She's picking on her face. While she's going to town on the thumb, her index finger is picking on her cheeks. She's had a sore on her left cheek for over a month now that will not heal because she keeps reopening the wound. Her right cheek has 5 small sores and they have yet to heal as well.

I was going to wait until after her birthday and then concentrate on breaking this habit, but when she started picking her face and when it wasn't getting any better, I knew we needed to try and stop this now. Last night was the first night of breaking the thumb-sucking habit. I put a sock on both her hands and used duct tape to secure them to her pajamas. I was a bit worried if she'd be able to fall asleep but it only took about 30 minutes and she was out for the night. She did great at naptime too. She seems to be doing well even though she can't put the thumb in her mouth. YAY!!

We stopped at Walmart after church this morning and bought THUM. It's a bad tasting "nail polish" that you brush on and keeps her from sucking her thumb during the day. There were a few times today that she got mad when she put her thumb in her mouth and then realized it tasted bad. But overall she did pretty good.

MoNSteR CoOkiES

This has become my new favorite cookie lately. They are so easy to whip up and they are just so darn good. I also like to convince myself that they are healthy cookies. Well, maybe healthier. These cookies have lots of oatmeal which is good for the heart, right? And they have peanut butter which is protein, so you see, healthy!
We'll just forget about the stick of butter and the 2 cups of sugar that's in there.

If you haven't tried Monster Cookies, then you should go in your kitchen right now and bake a batch for your family. They will be begging for more when the last one is gone.

Monster Cookies

1 stick butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
2 tsp baking soda
1 T vanilla
4 1/2 cups oatmeal (I use old fashioned oats)
1 cup semi-sweet choc. chips
1/2 -1 cup mini-M&Ms (these are getting hard to find)

In the bowl of your mixer, cream butter and sugars together until well blended. Add eggs one at a time incorporating each one well before adding the next. Add peanut butter, baking soda and vanilla and mix well.
Remove bowl from mixer and stir in the oats and choc chips and M&Ms.

Using a large tablespoon, drop onto pan and bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

These cookies are best if they are still a bit gooey in the middle when you take them out. These also freeze well if you want to put some away so you don't eat the whole batch in one sitting...ahem, I wouldn't know anything about that...

Also, another thing to note is that this recipe has been cut in half. The original recipe was double and that really makes a ton of cookies. I cut it in half so I could bake them a little quicker and not get stuck in the kitchen all day.

cookbooks

Somewhere along the way as I became a grown up, I have discovered I have a slight addiction to cookbooks. I just ordered 6 of them on Amazon last night. Now, 3 of them are gifts for Christmas, but the other 3 were for me and I could have easily purchased 6 more all for myself. I don't know for sure what it is that appeals to me, but I can sit and pour over a new cookbook for days. That doesn't make me a nerd? Does it?

back to blogging

I've decided to take a stab at blogging again. I got tired of my old blog. I never liked the name and it was feeling worn out. It served it's purpose at the time but now I'm ready for a new start.