Deceptively Delicious

You have probably all heard about this cookbook. I have had it since Christmas and I love it. First of all it's darling. Each page is cute and there are lots of yummy pictures. Every recipe calls for a vegetable puree of some sort. I do feel like a better mom knowing we are all getting a little extra nutrition. Tonight I made tacos with sweet potato puree hidden in the meat. The whole dinner Corbin kept saying "Delicious" and "This is good" and "Yummy". I'm not kidding after every bite he had a compliment. I'm pretty sure that this posting will be Derek's first clue about what I've been doing. He has no idea that the muffins I've been making have butternut squash in them or that the mashed potatoes have cauliflower. I have tried quite a few of her recipes and they have all been hits. I also like it that she uses a minimal amount of sugar which is great for Corbin and even with his strict diet I can modify most of the recipes to fit him. Usually I look through the book and pick out a few ideas that have the same purees in them so I don't have to do too much extra work. The pureeing takes very little time at all. I know it's not going to solve all our veggie eating dilemmas at the dinner table. But I know that even if Corbin won't eat the peas on his plate at least he had spinach in his breakfast bar or sweet potatoes in his chicken nuggets which makes me feel like I'm a least trying to do my job as a mom. Tomorrow we are going to make Lemon cupcakes (with yellow squash) and Raspberry filling (with beet puree). So Hooray for Deceptively Delicious!

Service+Kids=Chaos

So this is what ALL of my towels look like when they are soaking wet and relaxing in the tub.

Let me rewind.

The girl I visit teach just had a baby. I was asked to organize dinners for her and her husband this week. Sounds simple enough right. Well, now that church has moved to the afternoon, Corbin doesn't get a nap. When he is sleepy he starts getting into things that aren't in his usual preschooler trouble making repertoire . He keeps us on our toes. Tonight I was alone, Derek had to work, but the evening was moving along smoothly. That is UNTIL I picked up the phone. So, normal kids see this as a universal signal to run amuck... right? Well add a sleepy Corbin to the mix and here is what happened in a matter of less than 30 min. and 3 phone calls (and each one was only a couple minutes).

First he decided to try to cut Coopers hair. How he got the scissors that we keep up high in a matter of seconds baffles me. So I hung up got the scissors away from him, calmed Cooper down and called the same person back.

One dinner down, next phone call, he finds a green marker and starts to write on the kitchen cupboards. I chase him down and schedule another meal...this time all in one call. It's getting late I need to make at least one more call so I decide to put Corbin in the bath (his favorite pass time). He should be content for a while. I get him settled in, schedule another dinner delivery and realize that the water is running in the tub. I head down the hall to turn it off and the carpet out side the bathroom door is not the right color Uh Oh! There must have been at least 2 inches of water on the bathroom floor and the tub was just running over. Corbin thinks it's the best thing ever.....I don't think he'll do that again however. So Corbin is in time out, I'm running around gathering towels to soak up our new indoor pool and Cooper is crying (but if he's crying he's not choking right...so he'll be fine). I let Corbin out of his room and went to get a fan to blow on the carpet and hurray the chaos it over.

When I realized that Cooper wasn't crying anymore, I went to check on him. This is what I found. Sleeping Cooper on the floor by the dining room table. He made it halfway to me before conking out I guess.

It took long enough to clean up the watery mess that by the time I was done, I wasn't so mad. Good thing too because Corbin was keeping busy playing with my "Plan of Salvation" props from my Sharing Time lesson today. Very cute, he was even doing and saying some of the things I did in primary today. That helped me get back in a good mood, too bad Derek won't have any dry towels when he comes home tonight.

Bottles of Joy

I was having one of those days when I felt like I just wasn't getting anything done. The beds were only half way made and the bathrooms were only half way clean and the toys in the family room were just pushed into one corner. I was in the kitchen cleaning dishes for at least the second time that day and going over in my head the list of things I would rather be doing when I emptied the basket of bottle pieces out of the dishwasher and onto the rack to dry when quiet joy came over me. Suddenly they were the cutest things ever to me. The colors made be smile, even their shape and the way they landed on each other made me happy. I started to feel lucky. Lucky that I was a mom. That a had a baby that I got to wash bottles for. And even though the list of chores seemed never ending that day... I had read books with Corbin and played with squirt guns in the back yard. I had bathed Cooper and held him before he fell asleep. It was a good day and for some reason it took plastic bottles to help me see it.

Through the Lens of a Toddler

Okay so I may be crazy... but sometimes I let Corbin use my camera. It is little palm size thing, and he just loves to take pictures. Usually I go through and delete them before I upload to my computer but sometimes I forget so some have slipped by me. It wasn't until he took pictures of his train one day that I decided It might be fun to keep some of his shots. So I have gone through my files and started a folder to keep some of pictures that he has taken. This may just be a phase that he will grow out of but for now I have a sweet appreciation for how he sees his life through the lens of the camera.

His photos seem to fit into a few categories I have decided to Label : "Things I Dumped on the Floor", "Elbows", "Dad and Mom" and "Self Portraits".

"Things I Dumped on the Floor"

I love that his little feet end up in lots of his pictures

"Elbows"

My green elbow was taken on the way to Corbin's 1st day of Preschool

"Dad and Mom"

"Self Portraits" (yes, he's usually at least half naked)

Tummy and toes, yes that's his belly button. The second one is a close up of his nose.

His new thing is to put the camera on the counter, with the timer set, then run in front before it flashes. He got that from watching his grandpa take family pictures for everyone this Christmas. Maybe Corbin will grow up to be a photographer like his Grandpa but for now... as Corbin would say "My Sl" (that's smile, he gets the sounds twisted around).