Brownies Are a Boy's Best Friend

Jason made a batch of our newly discovered AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS homemade brownies for Rudy's second birthday treat at my parent's house. They were a much bigger hit than the cake out of a box offering of last week. Here's the play by play of Rudy's first encounter with the scrumptious treat known as the Brownie.

"What is this brown thing you have placed before me?"

"Hmmm. Interesting. Have you ever tasted one of these?"

"This is unlike anything I've tasted before..."

"Maybe I'll just have one more nibble."

"This is really growing on me!"

"Maybe I can get the whole thing in my mouth at once!"

"Almost in!"

"Wow! This brownie packs more punch than I could handle in one bite after all!"

"Delightfully delicious! My complements to the cook!"

"Go ahead and bring the rest of those over here."

"Finger lickin' delicious!"

"Washing it all down with a good swig of the ol' sippy."

Hooray for Love!

Today marks the completion of our fourth year of marriage! What a happy day! I remember how everything seemed to just float past us on our wedding day...like the rest of the world was about 100 miles away from our little bubble of bliss.
Today was not quite so bubbly blissful, but it was a beautiful day, nonetheless. Jason came home between his split shifts (he took his last final yesterday--yippee!) and helped me bring order into our chaotic house. Then he played with Rudy while I enjoyed baby free cooking. (I never realized how relaxing cooking can be, when you suddenly don't have a one year old vying for your attention or trying to get into dangerous things while you are trying to "stir constantly at a low simmer") Anyway, I made us one of our favorite meals, stuffed bell peppers, which we enjoyed while our bundle of joy was napping. Before I put Rudy down for his nap, we watched our wedding video as a family. I think it's the first time Rudy's seen it (shame on us!). He loved it! I'm sure one day he'll ask us where he was while we were having all that fun.
On Saturday we'll hopefully make it out on a date, to more officially celebrate, but for now, I'll just sigh my most blissful sigh and contemplate all the things I love about my rockin' husband:

I love your sacrifice of your time and energy to make it possible for me to stay home with Rudy.

I love your physical strength (many a pickle jar would have remained unopened without you!)

I love the ferociousness with which you protect your family time.

I love your eyes, your crooked teeth smile, your chuckle.

I love the dedication you show to self improvement.

I love your tenderness with Rudy and me.

I love your level headedness.

I love your wit and charm.

I love your warm hands.

I love your friendship.

I love your courage.

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!

Love,

Your Cheeky Monkey

:)

Bringing Santa Back to Life

Santa was kind of an after thought for us in our family. Not that we were militantly focused on the "Reason for the Season", we just didn't make a huge deal out of keeping Santa alive past the first tender years when EVERYTHING is magical and believable. We wrote our wish lists to the elves and set cookies out for Santa when we were wee ones, but its been so long I've almost forgotten how to believe. Kinda like Peter Pan in the movie, Hook, when he's trying to remember how to play pretend.
Jason's family, on the other hand has managed to maintain the magic (like my alliteration? ;) ). We had Rudy's birthday party there last week and Mom had the house all decked out for Christmas. I bet she's got at least a hundred Santa's adorning her floors, walls, tree, window sills, shelves, chairs, etc. etc. etc. It was GREAT! It felt so festive and so...so...so magical, I guess.
As Jason and I have been discussing how we want to put Christmas on for our own family and the traditions we want to tie to this lovely holiday, he has had to keep reminding me about Santa. I'd make a suggestion, not even thinking about whether that would jeopardize our children's belief in the fairy tale we call Santa. Jason would say something like, "that sounds great, but how about we tweak it here or there so that it doesn't blatantly scream 'there is NO Santa Claus!'" Oh yeah. That Santa guy.
So I've been trying to get back into the Santa tradition. I've been reading Santa Claus books to Rudy, and I've been trying to beef up my knowledge about what Santa does, where he lives, what his reindeer are named. It's a fun traditional story. One that our culture still likes to tell, and I see value in that. If Rudy ever looks me right in the eye and asks if Santa is real, I don't think I could answer in the affirmative, though. Maybe I'll just tell him that's a question for Grandma. I want our children to cherish Christmas because it celebrates the coming of our Savior into the world. I want them to cherish it because it means family getting together and sharing loving memories with each other. And I also want them to cherish it because it's a magical time of year.

Here's to Jolly Old Saint Nicholas!

Birthday Pictures at Kiddie Kandids

Kiddie Kandids does a free 8x10 picture every year for your child's birthday. Cool, huh? These are my two favorites:

Let's Get This Party Started!

Rudy's turning one year old this Friday. I can't believe it! He's grown up soooo much since last December. I'm floored at how fast babies grow, and how many skills they acquire over such a small period of time. On Sunday, as I was unsuccessfully trying to convince Rudy that nursing was more fun than playing with one of his little friends who was also visiting the Mother's Room, I wished I could have as much control over him as I did those first few weeks. I could position him however I pleased and he'd stay that way. Thinking back to those days, though, I remember anxiously awaiting the time when Rudy could position himself in the most comfortable nursing pose rather than me always having to do the guessing game. There are beautiful things in every stage, I guess.
Since my baby brother is getting married on Rudy's actual birthday, we did a party with Jason's side of the family yesterday, and we'll do a little something (if anyone still feels up to it after a weekend of wedding festivities) with my family next Sunday. Mom was nice enough to host a dinner and let us do the party at her house. Our only responsibility was getting the word out and bringing cake and ice cream. (Katie brought the ice cream, actually, so really we just did cake.) It was a nice, gentle entrance into the world of throwing parties for our kids.

Here Rudy is experiencing one of life's greatest indulgences...licking the beater. I gave him the beater after mixing up some scrumptious cream cheese frosting (Thanks for the recipe, Lauren!)This is the first time I've ever let him do that. I have a feeling he's going to want to do it every time from now on.

Here we are presenting the birthday (cup)cake to our big man. He wasn't sure what to think about the flame on the candle. When he's really interested in something, but unsure about whether it's ok to investigate, he gets out his pointer fingers, and cautiously points at the item of interest while watching my face to see what I think about his desire for further knowledge. It's super cute, though sometimes he decides to check things out even after I give him my best "ABSOLUTELY NOT" face. :)

Diving in. I was relieved that Rudy didn't inhale the whole cupcake. Actually, he hardly ate more than just a few licks of frosting. I made a point of stuffing him with sweet potatoes and bread before serving the cupcake, 'cause it just made me cringe to think that he may actually ingest all that junk. (Funny, I didn't worry one bit about the THREE pieces of cake I ate later that night while Jason and I budgeted...but hey- we were budgeting...that medicine takes a big spoonful of sugar to help it go down!) Anyway, in my heart of hearts, I wanted to make one of those organic, no sugar, might as well be a granola bar kind of cakes that I always scoff at when I see recipes for them. I've always said that if you're gonna give your kid sweets, than let them eat sweets, not some kind of health food version, but when it came right down to it, I kinda wished I had a health food version to place before my sweet, pristine baby. Not that I'm gonna whip up some organic concoction for his next birthday. I just won't roll my eyes when other moms decide to put a candle in a bowl of applesauce with yogurt "frosting".

Jason helped Rudy unwrap all his gifts. Rudy didn't get that you're supposed to rip off the paper and then throw it away. He just wanted to rip off paper and play with it. It took some prodding, but eventually all his gifts were unveiled. He got so many fun, cute toys, books and clothes. Thanks everyone for your thoughtful, generous gifts! Rudy's played with them all today. It was great to have new and exciting things to do inside with the blustery weather outside.

Today we completed the first step to making our "thank you" cards for all the gifts he got. Rudy's job was to annihilate all the blobs of paint on the paper. He took his task seriously! :)

A job well done.

After such focused work, Rudy needed to take a breather. (He's leaning his head right in the finger paint that worked its way onto the plastic tablecloth.) Needless to say, both Rudy and I needed a bath after our morning adventure.

Its been tons of fun celebrating the big ONE with Rudy. What a great kid. What lucky parents we are!

Rudy's Favorite Things

Here's a few pictures that express some of Rudy's most intense interests these days:

Rudy like doing "tricks" like turning his head while walking. He's constantly challenging his abilities to see what he can do. He's such a great example to me: willing to risk failure in order to progress. (And sometimes he does fail... but walking into walls or off side walk curbs doesn't stop him for long) :)

Rudy is fascinated with "work". Here he has shoveled up my shoe (well, more like shoveled into my shoe) and then picked both shoe and shovel up in his own little world of very important tasks to be completed. What a cutie.

When Rudy finds something fascinating, he does this look, accompanied by a slow, guttural "Wooooooooowwwwww". It is hilarious to watch, and wonderful to notice the things that elicit such displays of wonder. In this case it was looking up and realizing he was under our stair way.

Finally, Rudy loves all things technical. You can't really see from this angle, but Rudy's fiddling with a combination lock attaching the bike to the bike rack. (I choose to see this as a sign that he'll be a gear head, not thief, since he's interested in turning the lock and has no clue that it even does open) :)

There's our little man in a nutshell. He's such a blessing in our lives!

Our First Christmas Miracle

Rudy checking out the new arrivals.

On Saturday, I came home from running errands and found a big Costco size box of diapers and another huge box of wipes waiting for me by our door. Wow! Extreme ding-dong ditching, huh? At first we thought it must be from my mother-in-law, 'cause she'd been asking Jason about our diapering status a few days earlier. When she denied any association with the event, we were, and remain, stumped.

We typically use cloth diapers, and I really enjoy it, for the most part. The cloth diapers are more bulky than paper, so it's hard to find pants that fit over Rudy's bubble bum, but otherwise, it feels good to be more earth and money friendly. That said, it's always nice to have a disposable option available, for weekend trips and the like.

On that Saturday evening, I didn't know how valuable those diapers would be. I just thought, "How nice of someone to be so generous and thoughtful." By Sunday afternoon, I realized that my Father in Heaven had provided for my needs before I even knew I had them.

Rudy has had pretty intense diarrhea for the last 24 hours or so. He has (literally) blown through more diapers than I would have ever been able to stay on top of if we were using cloth. We'd have run out sometime last night and had to do a load of diapers in the middle of the night while hoping Rudy didn't have any "incidents" before fresh diapers were available. I know this isn't a huge crisis, but it feels so good to know that God knows and cares about our needs (even minor things like making an attack of the runs less frazzling for all involved).

This mystery delivery couldn't have been more perfectly timed. I believe that someone must have been following a prompting from our Father in Heaven. Like Elder Jeffery R. Holland said in his last Conference talk, "My brothers and sisters, I testify of angels, both the heavenly and the mortal kind. In so doing am I testifying that God never leaves us alone, never leaves us unaided in the challenges that we face" (The Ministry of Angels, Oct. 2008 General Conference). I'm so glad that whoever dropped those diapers on our doorstep followed the prompting they were given. They have blessed the our family with convenience and testimony.