New Hobby: Grabbing

Sarah LOVES to grab these days. We used to be able to eat and hold her on our laps, but no longer! Yesterday I tried it--I pushed my dish about six inches from the edge of the table, made sure all my silverware was out of her reach, and what did she do? She grabbed the placemat and pulled the whole mess toward her at an alarming speed! I caught it just before she it all would have come crashing down. And this whole time I was holding her! The other day David was holding her while he was on the computer and she managed to reach over and snatch one of the arrow keys on his keyboard and pull it clean off! So, naturally this morning when I tried to take a picture of her with her hair all messed up and staticky from playing in some pillows, all she was interested in was grabbing the camera out of my hand. Evidence:



This was the photo I was trying to take, hehehehe. :)

Peas

Sarah had peas last night for dinner for the first time. I know, not exactly newsworthy. But the green mess all over her face was so darn cute, I just had to snap these pics! Sarah is so expressive these days; she just exudes personality!! I think it really comes through in these photos. Enjoy!

So Happy Together Part 2

I forgot I had a few more cute pics of Sarah and Kayleigh playing together from last week! Here they are:


So it turns out 3-year-olds these days know how to operate a camera phone. Seriously! :)

So Happy Together

The past week has brought the return of many of our friends who went home for the summer! David and I had a blast spending Sunday with our good friends Josh and Danielle, and on Monday night our friends John Greene and his 3-year-old daughter Kayleigh got back in town (John's wife Alisa and their son Zeb are staying in the States a couple more weeks to complete some medical treatments). Before they got back, Alisa emailed me to tell me that Kayleigh was very excited to see "Baby Sarah" and would cup her hands together as if she was holding a tiny baby when she spoke of her. This is because before they left in May, this was how Kayleigh and Sarah spent time together:
Alisa said she'd been trying to prepare Kayleigh for the fact that Sarah was a little bigger now, but wasn't sure she "got it." Anyway, Kayleigh is here now and seems to accept the fact that Sarah is bigger. She has come over to play a couple of times since they got back on Monday. We've tried sitting them together down on the floor with some toys. But for Kayleigh, the best thing is still "holding Baby Sarah."
Sarah is far more cooperative with being held by a 3-year-old than I imagine. And Kayleigh's been very patient as she's had her face grabbed and hair-pulled during these holding sessions! I imagine that she's used to it from having a one-year-old little brother. Either way, they seem to be happy together!

Ninja Baby

Sarah has recently discovered how much fun it is to play with anything made of cloth. She is absolutely fascinated by blankets, towels, t-shirts, etc. I recently even discovered her playing with a pair of David's underwear (clean!! She pulled it from the top of a pile of clean laundry). I have actually found her playing his underwear twice, recently. Anyway, these photos are of her playing with one of my t-shirts:

Suddenly, I look over and see this:
Ok, so to be honest this is a "reenactment" of what I saw, but basically, yeah. Ninja Baby. :)

Just Not a Baker

I am just not a baker. I really think baking, unlike cooking, is not a skill that can be learned but it is something that you are born with. David bakes like maybe once a month, but everything he bakes, every single time, comes out fantastic. He makes the most perfect chocolate chip cookies, incredible homemade cinnamon rolls, made a loaf of white bread from scratch and it came out delicious the very first time he made it. I have to use italics to emphasize what a baking phenomenon my husband is. But it just further emphasizes how terrible I am at it. When I try to figure out what his secret is, he says, "I just follow the recipe." Well, let me show you what happened recently when I followed a very simple recipe for a pound cake:



The recipe called for the cake to be baked in an 8 or 9 inch "tube pan" (angel food cake pan?), which I don't have. So, I read through all the comments, and one baker said she had made it in a bundt pan and it had turned out great. So, I have a 9 inch bundt pan, and I baked it in that. I mean, how different in size could a 9 inch tube pan and a 9 inch bundt pan be??? As I was pouring the batter in, I thought to myself--this does seem like a lot of batter. Turns out I was right. Anyway, I improvised and made a cobbler for my guests that evening since the cake was totally unusable. Grrr.

Thankfully, I am getting better at cooking. Recently, I have become more adventurous at stir-frying. I have observed here that the key to delicious Asian stir fries is to get the oil really hot, but not let it burn, and then throw everything in and flip and stir it really fast over really high heat. This is kind of scary as the oil is popping everywhere and there is lots of smoke and it is very noisy. But if you cook it on a lower temperature, your food just comes out soggy and just not as good. See, this is an example of how you can GROW and learn as a cook!! Baking, for me at least, is a totally different story.

A Favorite Moment

I would like to share with you all, one of my favorite moments of the day. I absolutely love going in to get Sarah out of her bed in the mornings. She is fully rested, and super happy to start the day. I almost always find her sitting in her bed making her happy babbling noises and playing with Mr. Bun, her sleeptime companion. Here is a glimpse of what that precious moment is like each day: