Dinner with Friends (or Cooking in Underwear)

This is the reason baby blogs have a limited lifespan.

We had some friends over for dinner last night. Don't worry, I limited That Grace's helping to non food items. I'm glad she is becoming more hospitable. She didn't lie on the floor and cry when she saw them like she has done with other people. After dinner, she even played with them some (if taking them a book and insisting they read it to her is playing).

Yesterday, I was watching That Grace play on my bed. She was sitting on top of it with her baby. She reached down and covered up her baby and then held up her arms and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, "Where's the baby?"

We have a laundry sorter in our room and she loves to get in it and hide while we say, "where's the baby? Where's mommy's baby? Where's That Grace?" Then she jumps out and we cry, "There she is!" so I guess she was playing this game with her baby.

She also brought her play orange juice carton over to her table, slammed it down, sat down in her chair and slapped her hands together to say the blessing. Her pretend play is getting more complex these days and I'm starting to see a lot of our daily life reflected in it (not that we slam orange juice down on the table).

Busy at Home

We did an activity with matching pots and lids today -- look at that concentration!

Reading Mother Goose.

Maniacal sweeping!

We roasted a butternut squash today. That Grace helped scoop out the seeds.

Soup that we made from the roasted butternut squash. I had several recipes but I didn't have all of the ingredients for any one of them, so we just made up our own. I sauteed 1/2 an onion in some butter and added some cumin seeds. Cumin is my new love. I used it in the black bean stew last night, too. We're a little soup obsessed over here these days. Then I added the roasted butternut squash, thinned it out with a little water and added some cream. What? There are no carbs in cream. It's practically diet food. I didn't blend it with the stick blender because I like a chunkier soup. That Grace loved it. She also loved gradually uncovering the picture on the bottom of the bowl.

The new Babybug came today, always very exciting. By the time the new Babybug comes, we are tired of reading the old one, although we then have to get all of the back issues and read through them all. It is a great magazine and, as you can see, she really likes it. She carried it around hugging it for quite a while before we got around to reading it. She looks a little rough in this picture because she just dumped a cup of water on her head.

Dinner and a Show

Sunday night we had a lentil casserole and acorn squash rings. That Grace helped cook, which mostly consists of her tasting all of the food. If you're eating with us, there are some things you're better off not knowing! Here she is reaching for an onion.

Here she is after figuring out why most people prefer not to eat raw onions. After that, she decided to stick with the greens.

We weren't able to go visit the grandparents because That Grace is still contagious but Grandma sent loot home with Daddy and Caroline (who refuses to let me call her sissy, even in the blog).

Thanks, Grandma! She loved the candy, pumpkin and especially the rooster!

That Grace is too contagious to go out, sick enough to be cranky but not really sick, so I decided to put her to work. Most people only use 1 broom. That Grace wants to be sure her floors are spic and span, so she uses 2.

She loaded the dishwasher herself.

Daddy wants me to cut her hair, at least her bangs, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Mostly I try to keep it in a Pebbles ponytail. She has started pulling it out and then saying "uh oh."

We did have a big development on the language front tonight. That Grace said her 3rd word -- what did she choose after "Mommy" and "Amen," you ask? Well, Caroline was entertaining us by putting on a play that she is going to be in at school. She was performing all of the parts herself and at one point one of the characters tells another to die. So, That Grace's 3rd word was "Die!" which she shouted repeatedly as she helped wash dishes. One can hope she was talking to the germs on the dirty dishes!

Making Pumpkin Bread

I had all the supplies out to make cookies for the Halloween party, so we decided to go ahead and make pumpkin bread while we were baking. We used the recipe from Mommycoddle's blog. It was delicious, but very sweet. I was planning to let That Grace make cookies with me but after our pumpkin bread experience I decided to make cookies after she went to bed. Once she figured out that we were dumping stuff into the bowl, she decided to try to add a few of her own ingredients -- like the jar that the pumpkin pie spice came in and the saltshaker! You can see that she believes in tasting as she cooks!