3 1/2

Meg is officially 3 1/2!

I let her learn how to use a mouse to play "computer games" this month (on Starfall- great website for this age!). She picked it up pretty quickly...I'm hoping I can get these girls tech-savvy early so they can teach me how to use my computer as I get older.

homemade pizza attempt #3: getting closer

I started to see a glimmer of hope last time I made pizza...I believe I have a good whole wheat dough recipe and maybe a good sauce recipe. This time, though, I used half of the dough for a thinner crust and it tasted more like pizza instead of a slice of bread. But it was still too soft and mushy.

Once I figure out how to make the dough a little more crusty (put it directly on the oven rack?) and the right proportion of sauce to crust and cheese, I will be headed towards achieving my goal of good pizza.

(A side goal is to take a picture of pizza that doesn't look oily and gross...)

20 months

At 20 months, Katie is sailing into the Terrific Twos at a good clip.

See that tear glistening under her eye? That is a permanent feature on her face these days, as she vacillates from screaming/crying to laughing/singing in under 1 minute flat.


This expression is one I see many times a day. It means, "I don't know if I am allowed to sit on this diaper box but I am going to just go ahead and do it. If I maintain eye contact with Mom the entire time, I can watch her expression to see what her reaction will be."


She has started doing what we call "the roll call": when sitting at the table she will name everybody in the room really fast, "Mommy, Daddy, Megan, Katie, baby!" "Baby" is what she calls Claire.

Her current favorite toy is a fridge magnet that plays the ABC song. She sings along and dances by swaying her hips hula-style. It is so cute!!

zen and the art of mobile making

Making this mobile tested my patience. I walked away from it many times (I actually started this when Katie was a baby!). Why so hard?? It took a lot of trial and error and personal pep talks to make the hoops level and balanced. Once I got those right, it was fast and easy to tie on the butterflies.

4 months

I have not put a picture up in a long time! Another sickness has slooooowly made its feverish, coughing, sniffly, cranky way through our family. Katie is the last one and we are just in the final nose-wiping stage with her. As in wiping-the-nose-every-3-minute stage.

Claire is 4 months now! She can hold her head up very sturdily and prefers sitting up and being held upright to any reclining position. If she is getting bored she will be very vocal and let us know! As long as she has people to look at and to talk to her, she is one content little baby.



There is some crazy hair hiding under this hat!!

homemade pizza attempt #2: fail

I really appreciate all of your thoughts and advice on the pizza making! I took them all into consideration and did a little (very little) reading about it.

I didn't get a thermometer, but figured out the right temperature anyway: if you can't hold your hand under the water, it's too hot! Keep making it cooler until you can stand holding your hand under the running water, and it's probably "warm" for dough-making purposes.

My pizza this week ultimately failed, but I did have a few successes: got the right temp for the water, got the dough to rise, then rise again (so cool!). Used an actual recipe for pizza sauce (instead of just dumping a can of tomato sauce on it), and used a different recipe for the dough.

The failures: the crust had the same texture as bread. It wasn't chewy like pizza crust should be. The pizza sauce still was "off"...I need a good recipe!!

My pizza eaters were not as forgiving as last time. One took a TINY mouse bite and then decided she'd rather go hungry for the night than eat any more.

stuck indoors

The cold weather lately ("cold" for Florida people) has had us stuck indoors trying to avoid cabin fever.

Katie got into our hat/scarf/glove basket and this is how I found her:


Just in case it wasn't interesting enough, our headless toddler started running full speed through the house!

And that is how we spent our afternoon.