Hidey, Hidey, Ho! The elephant is so slow!

Peanut has been walking around our house saying this and a variety of other catch phrases and punchy lines that he's picked up. This is a particular line from his Zoo book. We have been spending ample amounts of time in the tipi postponing bedtime with books. That Peanut is a sly one. He is also saying other equally amusing things like, "Mommy, tomorrow see friends and eat broccoli?" and "Thankful for potty, party, Grandma and Daddy. Amen.".  I even listened to him sing the phrase "choose the right" for at least 30 mins straight in his bed one night.

Well we've been busy with life lately. It's fun. It's exciting. Life and the pursuit of living, that is. So here's a rather long list of what's going on around our house. And per some requests, there will be videos included in the continuation of this post. I guess I have more readers than I realized and some say they even check daily to see what's new. Gasp! I haven't posted more than twice a month for who knows how long. Sorry to disappoint. I'll see if I can satiate any appetites.

1) Cashew rolled over by himself for the first time today! I was fearing he had no desire. That he would be hairless on the back of his head forever. He sure fooled me. He also tried his first solid food. It went as well as bottle feedings have gone. Absolutely, positively a failure. All subsequent tries have fared equally as well. So much for listening to the Doc on that one. She wants him eating proteins by 6 months. Ha!

2) Everyone's caught a cold. I'm going to blame the play place at the mall. Mommy's have to walk somewhere when it's cold out and I can't keep Peanut locked in the house forever. And speaking of the mall, I found Peanut scaling the shelves of gumball machines they have conveniently placed next to the little'uns playground. It's like he was scaling the barricade getting ready to battle for a quarter that I obviously was not going to surrender. I wasn't quite quick enough to snap a picture but I'm sure you can all do one up in your brain just fine with all you know about Peanut.

Our budding artist showing off his masterpiece.

3) I am a rock star. Yes I'm going to toot my horn about a feat which many other women have accomplished before me. I watched 4 children, ages 3, 2, 1 & 4 months, from 6:30am to 5:00pm last Wednesday (yes two were my own).  No one died, we didn't have any real tears, everyone got fed at the correct hours, they napped, I got some laundry folded, the house was not destroyed, we were all dressed before lunch time, we didn't watch movies all day and I did not hate children by the end of it. In fact I quite enjoyed it, except for the part where I was absolutely exhausted by 8:30pm.  My mother once described my babysitting philosophy as "taking the path of least resistance, in order to simply endure the experience of tending children. Boy have I grown! Kids I am not afraid of you anymore! Good thing, since I have two of them. I felt amazingly accomplished and absolutely spent. So I demolished an entire Café Rio salad in one sitting to rejuvenate. Hats off to all you Mothers who dare or dared to have over three children and three in diapers at the same time.

And as an aside, quote of the day from the 3 year old:

Her: "Oops, I tooted."
Me: "Yeah that was crazy."
Her: "Mmm hmm. It was like it was talking."

4) Which brings us to other great and important news, we have a Café Rio, now located just 3.2 miles from my doorstep. Bless that Tex Mex goodness!

5) I am making curtains. I am sick and tired of having to put clothes on to come down the stairs to grab something from the fridge (don't you love my motivation), so a fabric decision was finally made. Much to Rob's relief. As much as I know he loves pouring over fabric swatches and decoration ideas.

6) And speaking of the fridge, I made Neopolitan cupcakes. I tried a recipe from pinterest...Awful! So I changed it. I found this excellent recipe in my Cake Bible (thank you Tiffany!), for a checkered cake (vanilla and chocolate) and then made a buttercream frosting and laced it with strawberry jam. Oh mama were they good! You should all give it a try. Here is the unfrosted version. I think they look like cows.

7) We went to a Superbowl party. Any favorite Superbowl commercials anyone? I love living in the state with the winning team. There is a lot of Raven pride around here. I'm just a fair weather fan though, let's be honest. I was just excited to say that I knew two whole players on team. One from BYU and one thanks to that excellent movie the Blind Side. Oh boy do I sound like a girl.


TO BE CONTINUED...