Sunday, November 28, 2010

Food Stylist, Extraordinaire

Ben and I both have fond memories of helping our moms cut out sugar cookies at Christmas, but our Christmas season is going to be pretty heavily disrupted by moving this year. So before we started packing up the baking supplies, we decided to have Blaise help us make a few. I think we might have a budding (abstract) food stylist on our hands.


For the record, I like iced sugar cookies, so they're all bare right now, waiting for icing. Blaise's Grandma Janet is an all sprinkles sugar cookie baker. Gran does a mix of icing and sprinkles. Blaise just ate one plain. To each her own.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Turnips and carrots

Happy late Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you had a lovely day, however you may have spent it. We hung around in our pajamas and tried to get Blaise to watch the parade. Can you tell we don't watch much TV?


She wandered off after about 2 minutes. Commercials are loud and confusing; coloring is fun. We went back for the dog show, which she liked better. Really, who doesn't like the dog show?

Blaise was very interested in the turkey but refused to eat any. She also didn't want stuffing or mashed potatoes. The big hit, as was the case last year, was Aunt Kate's mashed turnips and carrots. This traditional New England dish is sort of the gefilte fish of Thanksgiving: only one person really likes it, but it's part of the tradition, so everyone takes a little to be polite. Well, Blaise loves it. So turnips and carrots and a big slice of bread were her Thanksgiving dinner. She also ate some pumpkin pie and was all about the homemade ice cream. (She kept whispering "Andrew make it. Make ice cream." Learning that he can make ice cream puts Andrew in a whole new light.) The rest of us ate too much of everything.

As for thanks, Blaise's ability to articulate which foods she wants, eat whatever she chooses (even if it's mashed root veggies), digest most of that properly and then run around the house while we try to finish eating pretty much sums up what we're thankful for. A lot of smart, skilled people worked very hard to get her there. We will never be able to thank them enough. We are also incredibly grateful to our amazing friends and wonderful family, who were our support and strength along the way. Thank you.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Good night, friends

Blaise has been acting out care behaviors with her stuffed animals and dolls for a while, mostly in the feeding domain. The last few days, though, we've seen her start to push that further. She put several of her friends to bed the other night, even patting their backs and singing a little.


The animals are also subject to less fun care. They "bump heads" and get kisses. They also, apparently, share Blaise's dislike of diaper changes. She was putting a diaper on one of her stuffed monkeys last night and after a minute began patting his stomach and saying "Relax, relax." Ben and I both laughed out loud to hear her so closely mimic what we do when she starts resisting diaper changes.