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What Peter Is Thankful For

Peter: (as he was saying his personal prayers last night) Thank Thee that we had such a yummy dinner. And thank Thee that Mommy didn't need any help.

He had offered to help with dinner, and I thought I had given him a job, but apparently I didn't.

This was the "yummy dinner" we had. I think next time I'm going to try it with a less expensive sausage, like, maybe hot dogs. We ate it over rice with a spinach salad and a serving of applesauce. And it was delicious.

Aidells Chicken & Apple Minis In Marsala Cranberry Sauce

Description

The sweet and savory sauce is the perfect complement to our Chicken & Apple Minis.

Ingredients

2	T	unsalted butter
1		onion, finely chopped
1	c	(5 oz) dried cranberries, finely chopped
1	c	sweet marsala wine (I used red grape juice instead)
1	T	sweet and hot mustard (we like mendocino sweet & hot mustard) (I used honey mustard.)
1/3	c	(3 oz) brown sugar
2		12-ounce packages (64 mini links) aidells chicken & apple mini (We used the full sized sausages, I just sliced them up.)

Instructions

Melt the butter in a 10-inch sauté pan over medium high heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent. Add the cranberries and sauté 2 minutes more. Add the wine, mustard and brown sugar and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until reduced and thickened, about 3 minutes.

Add the sausages and toss to coat. Cook until the sausages are heated through, about 5 minutes. Serve in a warmed bowl, crock-pot or chafing dish with cocktail picks.

Serves 14-16 as a part of an appetizer buffet.

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Source URL: https://www.aidells.com/content/aidells-chicken-apple-minis-marsala-cranberry-sauce

To The Rescue!

Cooper has a vivid imagination. Both boys do, but Cooper has been more vocal about it lately. In fact his powers of mental creation are so good that it's hard to get him to finish a meal because instead of eating his carrots, he's busy sending them on an adventure around his plate.

On Sunday night he was too busy aiding his Superhero Fork in it's battle against the Super villain, Spinach Leaf. At one point he looked at me and said with a reassuring tone, "He saved the baby."

Well done Superhero Fork, well done.

Make 'Em Laugh

Quiet Time

I've been trying to have an hour of quiet time every afternoon. We each have something to keep our minds occupied and ours voices turned off during that time:

• I read my scriptures while feeding Phoebe
• Phoebe eats
• Peter sits on the couch and reads (in theory; in actuality he asks me every few minutes if quiet time is over yet, which is funny because he can tell time pretty well and doesn't need to ask, and also not so funny because I NEED him to be quiet during quiet time)
• Cooper kicks it in his bed with a stack of books. Of course, sometimes he falls asleep, and that's okay too...

Do You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

The boys have discovered name calling. I don't mean things that could be considered affectionate like "silly goose" or "monkey". I'm talking naughty-sometimes-bathroom-humor-related name calling.

I do not love it.

The naughty word of choice at the moment is stupid, as in "Mommy, you're stupid." Yeah that earns a time-out. Cooper is the biggest offender. Whenever I ask him to do something he doesn't want to do he replies with the "S" word. We went and looked it up in the dictionary after he and Peter were both using it repeatedly. We read the definition and decided that no one in our family was actually stupid. Too bad that hasn't stopped them from saying it.

They are learning a way around the "stupid" ban. Both boys employ this ruse, but I'll use just one example from last night's dinner to illustrate:

Cooper: Mommy, you are stupid.

Me: (giving him a LOOK) What did you say Cooper?

Cooper: Ummmm... I said "Mommy, you are stupendous!"

Me: Yes, I am.

Like Sputnik, But Pointy In Parts

I've been mulling over my opening line for this post for the majority of the day. Should I go for an attention-grabbing, scary sounding hook? Or should I play it safe and just tell you what we did today? Perhaps I'll do both.

I saw Phoebe's brain this morning.

More accurately, I saw a picture of her brain on a screen. Her brain is still firmly encased in her un-flawed skull.

Last week at Phoebe's sixth-month check-up the nurses took the routine measurements: height, weight, head circumference. She put on less than a pound in the last month but added two inches to her stature. And her head grew, too much apparently.

When the size of Phoebe's head was brought up I pointed out that my children have enormous noggins. That might sound rude, I don't mean it to. It's simply a fact. Tonight at bedtime we discovered that Cooper's head was too big for the shirt he was wearing. (It's easier to get a too small shirt over a large head than it is to take one off. Just ask Cooper.) We have trouble finding hats that fit. And turtlenecks? Well, they're risky, I'll leave it at that. There are lots of brains in those ridiculously cute heads, so I'm not at all bothered by it.

But I guess Phoebe's head size sent up a red flag. See, her growth chart is supposed to make a nice curve. The line plotting her head size wasn't so much curving to the side as going up. So the problem wasn't that her head was so big, the problem was that it had jumped significantly in size in a short period of time.

This meant that today Phoebe, Cooper, and I (Bryan had kindly offered to work from home so Peter could stay and play, for which I am truly thankful) spent some time at the nearby Primary Children's Hospital. And by nearby, I mean an hour on the freeway away. We were already going to be up there to have Cooper tested for allergies to peanuts and cats (both were negative!) so I asked for an appointment close to his to avoid making the trip twice.

Here is what I learned:

1. The people who drive near the hospital are completely insane, at least the two or three that almost ran me off the road are.
2. Children's Hospitals have way more toys in their waiting rooms than regular hospitals.
3. They also have really cool ceilings and walls painted to look like the out-of-doors.
4. In spite of the awesome paint job, knowing that that hospital is full of sick children is still really sad.
5. Phoebe does not like to be restrained for any reason.
6. Phoebe also doesn't care for an ultrasound wand being rubbed all over the top of her head.
7. Phoebe is extremely loud. (Okay, I already knew that one, but now a large portion of the hospital staff knows it too.)
8. Cooper loves finding sinks that he can turn on and off all by himself.
9. If given the chance to play in a sink (say, while his mom is changing his baby sister's diaper), Cooper will go from dry to sopping wet in a surprisingly short period of time.

The most important thing we learned was that as far as the doctor could tell from the ultrasound, Phoebe's head is just fine. She didn't have any fluid on her brain, which was the concern that caused us to get the ultrasound. In fact, when the doctor saw her next to Cooper he said, "Wow, they do have big heads, don't they?"

Yes, yes they do.

Sleep, Glorious Sleep

My brother Jordan asked yesterday if I've been busy, probably because I've had some cop-out posts lately. The answer is yes. And no. I have been busy with normal everyday stuff. But the reason I haven't been writing anything in depth is that I don't have anything to talk about.

At least, nothing I've wanted to talk about.

I've mentioned (and by mentioned, I mean devoted many many blog posts to) the fact that Phoebe has a hard time sleeping. And that her sleeping habits have resulted in two very tired parents. There was a day last week when I finally fell into bed for the night at 2AM, only to have Phoebe wake up within minutes of me putting her down. I couldn't handle it. I just started to cry and shake because I couldn't imagine getting up with her again. Thankfully Bryan took over and held her for the next three hours while I slept.

I woke up at 5:20, Phoebe next to me on my bed, her eyes wide open and her voice reaching maximum levels of deaf-making. She wasn't crying, she just wanted to chat and I clearly was not cooperating. Turns out Bryan had brought her into me twenty minutes before and asked if I could feed her in bed. I was completely asleep but told him (in a coherent, awake-sounding voice) that I could, and I proceeded to feed Phoebe. In my sleep.

Three hours of sleep and a full day of child-wrangling do not make for witty writing in the evening hours, which is why my posts have been short on words as of late.

Phoebe had her six-month well-baby check-up (that's a lot of hyphens) on Thursday and I explained to the very capable PA about Phoebe's sleep issues. She told me that at this point most of that behavior was probably learned and to try to get Phoebe to sleep on her own.

I wrote about teaching Peter and Cooper to sleep when they were ten months old. We've never tried getting a baby to sleep unaided as young as six months. Maybe it's the curse of being the third child that we even considered it, but I don't think I can take another four months of sleeping three hours a night.

So, on Thursday night we began. I nursed Phoebe like usual, read her a short Dr. Seuss book, sang I Am a Child of God while I held her and swayed, then I swaddled her and put her in her bed. And she cried. But here's the crazy part: she only cried for twenty minutes. And she slept for six hours!

She's been holding pretty consistently to sleeping for six hours and waking up at 3AM to nurse, which I can handle. I think my body is actually getting used to the new routine (except for the part where I can't always fall asleep when I put her back down at 4, that's not so awesome).

It's amazing what a difference going from a piecemeal night of five hours of sleep to seven hours of sleep will do for your mood. And coherency.

Happy Spring!

Corn Pie and Cloclate Ice Cream

I figured this interview was a good follow-up to yesterday's birthday post. I repeat most of what he says, for those of you that aren't used to deciphering his particular dialect.