With the cold fall weather rolling in I felt the need to make some cold weather food. I have cold weather food and hot weather food, and the hot weather food doesn't taste good in cold weather and visa versa. So I made this
Chicken Chili from Annie's Eats except I made it easy instead of slaving over the oven and the stove all afternoon - I put everything in the crockpot and just let it cook. I also cut the recipe in half. In the future I would not use all the juice from the canned tomatoes. I even added a small can of tomato paste and it was still a little soupy. It's worth trying though - the spices were perfect: just spicy enough without making my mouth on fire.
I also made the
Pumpkin Butterscotch Cookies for our bake sale at school. They have no butter in them - just oil, totally weird. They had a really good flavor, but they were very cakey. I would make them again for a fall treat. I think I'm going to try these
Pumpkin Pie Bars for Thanksgiving this year. I guess I might make pies too if needed.
On another note...Anna:
She had her 2 and a half year checkup today. All is well. She actually sat on a chair and waited for the doctor to come in, got on the the big scale with only a little convincing, and entertained the waiting area. She is meeting all the milestones (jumps, names/points to body parts, can take on and off some clothing, says animal sounds). The only one I'm not sure of - other people can understand 50% of what she says. I don't know - I still don't always understand what she says. I think she knows a lot more than she is able to verbalize, but I think that's normal. She also told me Anna's motor skills are advanced (because she was hanging on the edge of the desk and swinging back and forth and jumping and climbing everywhere). It's things like that that make me wonder if she is really my kid. Really...advanced motor skills? I'm a total weakling, and I am too scared to try anything where I could hurt myself.
I've hit my limit with her coming into our bed during the middle of the night. It all started so innocently. My sweet girl who was sleeping through the night at 2 and a half months started having sleep trouble at around 15 months (that was when life really turned upside down for us). She would get her legs stuck in the bars or would try to climb out of the crib and get stuck on top of the railings, so of course I would have to go in and help her. Well, over time it has changed and escalated to weeks of time when she will wake up at night screaming for me. Since I need my sleep the easiest thing to do is bring her into our bed rather than get into a fight over why she should sleep in her own bed. It's time for that to stop, but I can't cut her off cold turkey. So we are working on a reward system. If she stays the whole night in her "girl bed" then she earns a present in the morning. I bought a bunch of dollar bin stuff at Target over the weekend for prizes. The past few nights when she is screaming for me, I go in, comfort her for a second and remind her that to earn a present she has to sleep in her bed. Guess what? She lays right back down and goes to sleep - I'm a total sucker. I didn't think she understood, but obviously she does because when a treat is involved she has no problem sleeping in her own bed! Kids.
After a week or so I'm going to have to figure out how to get her to go back to sleep on her own without the screaming and drama. Then she'll get presents for that :) A few ideas: put the ipod in her room with quiet music all night, a night light, and just turning the damn monitor off.
Also the dog pooped all over the house, and now Bryan is thinking of ways to get rid of her. And, my kids were wacky today. One boy fell out of his chair 3 times during a half hour guidance lesson and 3 times walking down the hallway. What is going on?
Today I'm thankful for:
- a good doctor check-up
- tomorrow is the last work day this week with kids
- reading with Anna
