Monday, March 4, 2013

My son... **EDIT**

   My glorious son is absolutely the beginning and end of my world. He wakes me up every morning by crawling into bed with me and telling me stories until he is hungry for breakfast. He puts his cold little feet on my back and giggles and I tickle him until he gives me a big fat smooch on good days. On his cranky days he just wants a hug and for me to rub his hair while he curls under the blanket with Ray until he feels better. Then we get out of bed and have breakfast together. It's so hard to get out of bed on the wrong foot when I've got my warm, snuggle-y lump of little boy shaking me awake to tell me all sorts of nonsense. I have off days just like everyone else, and I am tired a lot of the time, but my little boy makes it hard to spend more than .25 seconds thinking about it before I'm hopping up and feeding the dog and cooking breakfast with my dude.
   Weekends are a little different. Brandon's home, so Cooper wakes us up by tackling him. It's funny. I get up and make them both breakfast while Brandon sleeps a few more minutes and enjoys his mornings off. I LOVE having my boys home in the mornings. I used to get up and make Brandon breakfast during the week, but he would rather grab something fast and get to sleep for 10 extra minutes and let me sleep since being pregnant makes me so tired. He's sweet that way.
   The point of all of this being, it occurred to me last night that I'm not going to have these mornings forever. It's only a short matter of time before my baby is too old to want to hop into bed and cuddle and be tickled and tell me stories. He is getting so big, so very fast. It's exciting and bittersweet and terrifying and beautiful. I'm so proud of him.
   There was another bump in the road to getting a car (see what I did there?), so we're going to have to wait yet again. So we decided to take some money and buy something really special for our baby that we weren't able to get him for Christmas or his birthday. We got him an Innotab 2. He adores his "computer" and has already figured out how to open all the games and apps he likes, it's helped him learn his colors substantially faster than learning them with just mom. We got a bunch of educational games for him, but his favorite thing about it is the music. We got him a keyboard app, and downloaded a TON of music videos he likes, and he jams out constantly. I'm going to upload a video. Please ignore the linoleum though. I had literally just mopped, but it's so old and beat up it looks nasty. There are so many things I would do to this house if it was mine. ANYWAY, enjoy this!
   And just in case that wasn't enough cuteness for you, here are some pictures.
He was playing with it on the floor while I cooked.
He had it in the car right after we got it and was figuring it all out before we even had time to read the manual. Techy kid. :D
   I'm going to go back in time a little bit, to earlier in the day. We did a lot. We got up and got dressed and cleaned up the house a little bit, and then hopped in the car with our friend and went in to Boise to meet Morgan and Allison at the park and get lunch. Cooper loves the park, and there's a park in Boise we particularly love. It's quite and off the main street. It has nice restrooms and a newer playground that it extremely toddler friendly, lots of old trees, a HUGE field, and nice sports courts. It's easily my favorite park in the area. It's part of the reason I want to live in the neighborhood I so desperately want to move to. There is a lot more than the park, but the park is certainly a perk I take into account for my kiddo.
The bandaid was intentional. I let him pick his outfit, and he picked the entire ensemble, bandaid included. He got upset when I tried to take it off because he said it was his sticker.

SOMEONE found an instrument on the park equipment. He played on them for a long time.


"I'm gonna getcha!"

We were racing. I was letting him win, but also I was out of breath from lugging around extra boob and baby belly, so he kind of won for real, too.

Brandon had the camera all day, so he got one or two of me that aren't bad, but I didn't get to get any of him. Next time it's happening. It's. Happening.
   After the park we went to the mall and tried some tea samples at the Teavana I was unaware we had. Delicious. I know where I'm getting tea for my new tea set! I love their white teas. Soooo light and delicate. Yummy. It's expensive, but I feel like it's worth it. We stopped by Hot Topic because they have a whole MLP section and Cooper flipped out of it. I want to get him the hat that says Brony, and he really wanted all the little figures. The girl in the store was shocked and thought he was so cute when he booked it into the store and was friendly to the people with rainbow hair and piercings and was talking a mile a minute about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash and Spike. It was pretty funny. Then he got to play at the play center in the mall, and had a blast. Afterwards we went to Petsmart to look into getting Brandon a lizard this year now that he has really good income. He decided on a chameleon and is going to be putting a little bit of money out of every check into savings for everything he'll need. He's pretty excited. I told him as long as we have everything we need for the baby and Cooper, and the bills are paid, and we can get a car by June, I don't care what he spends the extra on.
   He wants a veiled chameleon, and we've been learning all about their care and habitat requirements so when we get it, he can provide the best care possible. He's always wanted a chameleon, and we've both had lizards in the past, so we understand the level of care reptiles need. We were thinking of getting Cooper a puppy when he turns 3. The more I think about it, though, the more I want to wait until he's old enough to really participate in it's care and training, and I don't want a puppy chewing up the new baby's stuff, so I've been considering waiting until Cooper is starting kindergarten. By that age he can be responsible for a lot more with some guidance, and I feel like the dog will actually BE Cooper's, not mommy's that Cooper calls his. He can help pick the breed he wants and Baby will be 3 and old enough that I won't be changing diapers on top of cleaning up puppy accidents.
   Finally at the end of the day we went to Toys R Us and got him his tablet. He had fun looking at everything, but was getting tired and cranky, so he cried when we had to leave. He crashed HARD when we got home, after eating dinner and playing with his tablet for about an hour. He had to unwind a little bit, but man he slept hard. It was great. Such a good day.

**Edited to add this recipe for Veronica, since Brandon tells me you read this**
Boiled cream cheese frosting (MUCH healthier than regular with substantially less sugar and no butter, and extra tasty, and so smooth you won't believe it!)
16 oz cream cheese at room temp
1/4 cup flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup full fat milk
pinch salt
vanilla to taste
any spices you may want (I used cinnamon for the frosting on top of the banana cake I made for Brandon. orange zest would be good with carrot cake, I think.)

Whip the cream cheese for days. I mean, I set my mixer on almost high and let it whip the crap out of the cream cheese while I made the rest, and ignored it except to scrape my bowl until it was so light and fluffy and sticky looking it looked like frosting as it was. Then set it aside in a separate bowl and ignore it some more.

Meanwhile mix the flour, sugar, milk, salt, and spices in a sauce pan with a whisk until smooth, then apply it to medium high heat until it comes to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium low and let it simmer to thicken a lot. A lot a lot. It should come together and be thicker than gravy, but not like dough. It will thicken more as it cools.

Dump that into a bowl with the vanilla and whip it for about 12 minutes until it's cool and light and fluffy. It won't be super fluffy, but it should increase in thickness and volume as it cools. I have a stand mixer, so it's easy on my arm, and once I get a powder blue one you can have my red one. Holding a hand mixer for that long is a pain. Get Blake to do it. Bribe him with frosting.

Once it's cooled to room temp, whip in the cream cheese and let them mellow. Chill it for at least 10 minutes before frosting just so it will finish thickening. 

This frosting has no oil it it, and about 1/4th the sugar, and it's so much yummier. Brandon said you had started baking and cooking, and I figured this would be something you should try. Carrot cake happens to be super easy to make. Good luck!

1 comment:

  1. Ohhh thank you honey! I really appreciate it, and will give it a try. :)

    ReplyDelete