Linguistics 101

It's been a little loud throughout the house lately. Chloe's really trying to show Elise up and have the talking thing down before her 2nd birthday. She's doing pretty well. I can understand about 67% of what comes out of her mouth. But this is only after an intense period of sequestration where I spend all day observing and interacting with her. We call this "welcome to my life."
It helps that almost every sentence starts with "I want ..." and that approximately 88% of what comes out of mouth is "no," especially since it doubles as both yes and no.

Elise got a book of fairy tales from my parents for Christmas and it's just about her favorite book ever. We've read them all a million times already and she talks about them all day long. She's insisted on "porridge" for dinner two days in a row, courtesy of Goldilocks and the three bears, and has started chanting this gem around the house. Watch out all you Englishmen. Elise is on the prowl.

A confession

Dear blog,

It's been a while since I've last posted. I'm sure you've probably been suspicious for a while, but it was the holidays and we were gone for a few weeks so you let it slide. But now it's gone on too long and I feel it's time to come clean. I've been using Facebook. It started out innocently enough and then suddenly I was posting pictures, family pictures, pictures I should have been posting on you. And I saw how easily I had been seduced by the ease and instant gratification of its flashy interactive features, the status updates, the picture tagging, the wall writing, catching up with old friends. It was thrilling, and a little addictive.

I don't want to make excuses, but I am a busy mom and I only have so much time during the day. Still, I think all 3 of us can coexist together. I miss writing more than one line about my life at a time. So with your forgiveness, I'll start blogging again.

And to anyone reading this, want to be Facebook friends? :)

Ben (after church): Elise, what did you learn about in Sunbeams today?

Elise: I learned about snacks!

C is for cookie

We've had a good past few days. We've been baking treats, trying to give them away, and then getting way too many back. Luckily I ran a half marathon on Saturday and burned off some calories there, though at this point, I'd probably need a marathon to do that!

The race was lots of fun. I'd never done a half before and it went by so fast. It was great. About halfway through I thought to myself, I wonder if I'm going fast enough, but decided to be safe and not push it too much more and thanked myself for that around mile 11. The race was in Charlotte, a little over 2 hours away, and we'd planned on all going up the night before and having a little family outing, but then Ben had to work so I ended up waking up at 4:30 in the morning and driving there that day, running the race, and then driving home all by myself. But, I had a good race and ran a 1:30:29 averaging 6:55 miles so it was pretty much worth it.



Anyway, I really enjoyed the treats I made this year so I thought I'd share. Nothing original here, everything I made I found on other cooking blogs. I made chocolate turtle cookies from My Kitchen Cafe, Sugar cookies and the best icing/glaze ever from Our Best Bites (it looks much prettier there), hot chocolate mix from here, and orange cranberry bread from King Arthur flour.

I wish photography was as easy as baking. The cookies looked even better in real life.

It's never too early for presents

Christmas came a little early for Ben and I this year. We've been eyeing my brother's camera all year and finally decided to take the plunge into the world of digital SLR, or fancy pants , cameras. It's a little intimidating. We just stared at it the first few days, too afraid to touch it, but we finally broke it out of the box and read just enough of the massive manual to figure out which button to push to take a basic picture. Hopefully we'll get a little braver soon and check out some of the cooler features that I assume it has, but here are some of the better pictures we've taken so far. Laura Bruschke here we come!

Dancing to the beat of a different drummer

Today was Elise's last day of ballet class. I'm not sure how much ballet she actually learned, as seen in the videos, but she had lots of fun with her little friends and was always good for a laugh and some awesome moves.

How to make your children love you

Go out and buy them a $10 used slide on craigslist, even if it doesn't fit in your car's trunk and you have to make the man you just bought it from tie it down for you. This will make your children happy and pleasant to be around.*

* This effect is, unfortunately, only temporary. And some fighting will occur as a natural result of the acquisition of a new toy.

Bonus: How dads can make their children happy while the moms are away on a long run.

See how easy it is?