If You Give a Toddler Apple Sauce

If you give a toddler apple sauce, chances are she will fling it on the dog.

So then you will want her to concentrate on her healthy meal of chicken nuggets and blueberries.

But if you give her chicken nuggets, she will ask for ketchup (which she will smear all over her chair) and she will want to share her dinner with Elmo.

When she is finished with her chicken nuggets, she will want to play with her horse video game.

But since mommy and don't don't quite understand how that game works, they will give her a boa to distract her from the horse.

Chances are that if you give her a boa, she will suck on it and ruin it. 

And when you throw away the ruined boa, she will be sad and the only thing that will cheer her up will playing in her NEW ball pit.

Once she gets in to her new ball pit, she will want Uncle Hag to bounce it.

Uncle Hag will bounce it so hard that the top ring will be deflated the next morning. Or maybe it just had a small hole in it...

Either way, once she discovers that the ball pit is out of order, she will begin to push her toys out the disgustingly filthy doggie door.

The doggie door will remind her of her stuffed dog, Biggie, so she will want to carry him around the house.

Carrying that big dog around will make her tired, so she will want to rest. On Biggie.

 While she is resting, she will discover that she has worked up an appetite, so she will ask you for some apple sauce.



Holiday Tardiness

Why the tardiness in posting my holiday blog?

I wasn't sure the world was ready for it.

But I can't put it off any longer. Hold on to your pantalones, people (and wipe up the sarcasm I just dripped everywhere) because here it comes.

Christmas Eve was spent at my parents house, as is the holiday tradition. Cathy and Charlie weren't snowed in this year, so that was nice.

(above: Cathy, me and Christy - David was working and snuck in a little later).

The ONLY thing that Freddy wanted for Christmas was gift cards to Golfsmith so that he could buy new clubs. That's it. That's all. "Nothing else, Cheryl. ONLY gift cards to Golfsmith."

Of course, neither one of our moms could stick to that, so each of them bought Carly a set of golf clubs to tie Freddy's gift cards to. She loves to golf!

Lola also loves the golf clubs.

As the evening went on, Carly started to wear down. Or so we thought.

Around 8 ish she started to run a fever.

Gr-reat! Who asked Santa for a fever, anyway?

Oh, that's right. I remember reading that in my parenting book:

"Kids only get sick on holidays, while on vacations or on a day when mommy and daddy absolutely, positively, with no exception need to work".

So we packed her up, headed to the house and settled in for what we were sure would be a long night of fever-induced crying and wakefulness (is that a word?).

It wasn't that bad, but I did start Christmas morning off with a cup of coffee - in what is now my traditional Christmas Coffee Mug.

Carly - and her crazy hair- woke to living room full of wonderful presents.

Like her climb and slide.

Side note: the climb and slide stayed in the living room for two weeks. At that point we only moved it so that our guests wouldn't judge us.

I made Carly some more bows and she LOVED them (of course!). She wanted all of them in her hair at once.

Daddy got her a shopping cart. I'm not sure that he thought much about the habits he might be forming.

Freddy's parents were so sweet. When we called them Christmas morning to tell them that Carly was running a fever, they packed up all the food and gifts and headed our way so that we didn't have to travel with her. I guess that is one more benefit to Freddy being an only child.

Carly got a kitchen from Nana and Grandpa. I can't wait for her to learn how to cook for real. Truth be told, I really can't wait for her to be old enough for an Easy Bake Oven. I always wanted one and never got one, so I plan to live vicariously through her. I also plan to eat a lot of Easy Bake cakes because anything baked by the heat of a light bulb has to be gourmet - or at least pretty darn close.
Carly played all day like a fever-less child. Of course! I was worried my in-laws were going to think we were liars. But after her bath Carly began to whine a pathetic whine and actually let people cuddle her. Yesssss! Liars we are not.

I hope all of you had as wonderful a Christmas with your families as we did with ours - one whole month ago.

Pants on the ground

My sweet baby Carly turns 22 months old on the 13th of this month.

She is finally able to keep her 12 month pants up.

Or maybe not...

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January To-Dos

Before sharing with you my January to-do's, I would like to update you on my December to-dos.

Create a new Christmas decoration.

What I had in mind was some hand-painted canvases for the table in our entry way.

I chucked my first attempt in to the trash can and returned the other two canvases I bought. I need Painting with a Twist - I can't do this on my own.

A little problem-solving produced a new Christmas decoration for the Clark house.

Our tree-shaped photo holder was overwhelmed with holiday picture cards, so...

$2 worth of mini clothes pins pinned to a mirror that already hangs in our entry way, and here is what you get...

I LOVE IT!

Try a new recipe.

I tried TWO. Let the over-achiever comments begin! Seriously...I never get called that, so bring them on.

Anyway...Dish #1 Chicken and Dumplings. I've never had them before this. They were okay, but I'll take my spoon-fed comfort food in the form of potato soup, please.

Recipe #2: Chocolate mousse. I love to eat it, but have never made because I have always been intimidated by the "whip egg yolks until light yellow and stiff" kind of directions in the recipe.

The ingredients were few and simple. The recipe was much easier than I anticipated and it tasted PERFECT!

I did...

-finish organizing my digital pictures, but that is a never-ending project!
-start organizing my recipes on the Demy, but that is also a never-ending project!

My January to-do's are not very ambitious.

1. Try a new restaurant

2. Replace the (again) broken blinds in the bedroom

3. Create a new header for my blog

And, in typical Cheryl fashion, there has to be at least one to-do that I have to carry over to January - Finish cleaning my closet!

Cheers to a new year and new to-do's.