lovin'

--The boys' emerging linguistic skills


I could listen to Little Dude's babbling all day. And I'm so glad he's vocally leaps ahead of where his big brother was at this age. Makes me hopeful we won't have quite the delay and a bit tentative of what another talkative person in the house will bring. Right now I'll enjoy it thoroughly.


Big Brother's singing is hilarious. Mostly he just repeats a phrase over and over. "Jingle Bells" and "The First Noel" got on my nerves this holiday season as a result. I also laugh at how he head bangs so much as he's singing just about any song that he forgets to sing. When he sings the ABC's he skips four and five letters at a time.

B's other funny thing lately is his friend, "Brian." That's "Brian" with quotation marks because that's the name of his Winnie-the-Pooh (not, apparently, "Winnie" or "Pooh," which he adamantly told a lady at a hotel over Christmas vacation). "Brian" has a friend "BJ" who I think is our Kermit the Frog (which is almost as old as I am) and a sister named "Emily" (don't know who she is.) They have all sorts of adventures like going to California for work because they have two meetings. Lately, Brian and BJ have also become alter egos, a way for B to project what he wants to happen. This week Brian and BJ's mom was going to let them have M&M's. They also told their mom "no nap" today, Ben said. That did not happen in B's world.

--The Princess and Skippyjohn Jones

R singing the little songs from our newest literary acquisition--Skippyjohn Jones: Lost in Spice--cracks us up. The book came with the author reading the story as well (which we heard several times on the way home from Florida) and she imitates the voices exactly. I love those books.


--Bread


I'm lovin' experimenting with two new cookbooks including Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I've made three versions so far--herbed boule, a light wheat, and challah. The idea is that you mix up the dough (usually enough for three to four loaves at a time), let it rest on the counter for a few hours, and then put it in the fridge. You can then bake off a loaf or more at a time for about a week, never spending more than about 5 minutes doing something with it. Plus, there are so many things you can make with the basic doughs including cinnamon rolls with the challah dough which we will be doing this weekend. This isn't baby weight; it's bread weight.