Should it Concern Me...

...that my son frequently asks the following question to his toy cars and helicopter: "You wanna go to time-out?" and then places them apart from the other toys? Could I be using this discipline strategy a little too often?

$3 Limit

It's been a tradition since our first Valentine's day together to eat Thai food. I love Thai food. A few years ago Ryan and I started another tradition of setting a $3 limit on Valentine's Day gifts for one another. It sounds a little hokey but it has actually been a lot of fun and forces us to be creative.

This year we expanded on the tradition a little bit two include the entire family. Isaac and Ryan bought gifts for Maddie and I (since we doubled the members of our family, we have doubled our limit to 6 big ones), while Maddie and I were in charge of gifts for Ryan and Isaac. We had a really good time and I hope to do something similar every year.

Maddie scored some gourmet Gerber yogurt puffs for V-day. She and Isaac downed the whole bag in no time.

We got Isaac a bubble-blowing airplane.

It was a hit.

Ironically, I bought Ryan the latest flavor of Ben and Jerry's (Imagine Whirled Peace--highly recommend it), while he bought me some hand weights I've been wanting to have while exercising (he broke the rules by a few bucks which means I'm going to go HUGE for his birthday at the end of the week--no holds barred, honey!).

How do you Say "Water" in Spanish?

Here's a clip of Isaac showing off his bilingual skills (the video's edited because it got really long). I cut out most of the parts where he made mistakes (so you would think he's a genius)--I just left in a couple errors to keep him humble.

My Very Own Pippy

Cooking Club

This past winter some friends and I started getting together once a week for what we call "Cooking Club." A different girl hosts each week and teaches the rest of us how to cook something. We've learned how to cook everything from soups to pie crusts to pumpkin bread. We've learned some simple and easy recipes as well as some complex ones. Whoever hosts posts their recipe on this blog. Today, we learned how to make pot stickers. Needless to say, they were delicious.

More than anything it was organized as a way to ward of the winter blues and get our kids out of the house. Sure, it's a little bit crazy and one or multiple children are almost always crying (mine did their fair share of that today), but we have a lot of fun, and the food never disappoints. Plus, the kids get to play at their friends' houses with their friends' toys (which are always much more exciting than the toys they have at home).

I thought that the novelty of it all would wear off after a month or so, but it's still going strong. It keeps us happy and entertained until it's warm enough to go to the park instead.

Wanna come next week? Isaac learned how to push Maddie around on his car while we waited for friends to arrive. She loved it because he was sharing her toy and he loved it because he was being such a "big boy." I loved it because I didn't have to strain my back. Here's the master chef working hard in the kitchen. Shauni taught us what to cook but it was held in my apartment since I live a little bit closer (she lives about a half hour away from most of the girls). Who knew homemade pot stickers could taste so much better than the store-bought variety? Maddie was a little upset that I sat her down so close to the food but wouldn't let her eat it. She needs to get another tooth or two before that can happen.