Another Rave for 5 Minute Artisan Bread

I wrote about this bread the other day, but since then I actually got the book from the library (and have now ordered it for myself, plus the new 5 minute healthy bread) and made some other recipes with the dough and it is fantastic.  I apologize in advance for sharing this, but I made sticky buns from the dough and they are really, really delicious, and pretty easy.

I also made some Naan flat bread and have been making more pizza as well.  Usually when I make pizza I cook at a high temperature (500 degrees), I pre-bake the crust before putting on the toppings, and I let the dough rest before rolling/stretching it out.  But I've found that I can make a pretty decent pizza in 15 minutes by cooking at 450 (less time preheating the oven and reduces the chance of the fire detectors going off), not letting the dough rest, and not pre-baking the crust.  So for just a slight bit more inconvenience I can get a way better pizza than a frozen one in almost the same time.

Allie is 7 months

Our little cutie is doing good.  She is working on her cruising.  She's still a little wobbly and slow, but I'm sure in a few short weeks she'll be speedy.  She is also getting into the pulling all the books off the shelf stage.  I just can't wait till she actually wants to sit down and read a book.  Selena loves reading books, but it is hard to read to her and keep Allie happy at the same time.  It will be great when I can snuggle up with both of them and read. 

She got strep throat earlier this month.  It was very sad.  Babies should not get sick.  Fortunately she wasn't too upset as long as I held her so she spent most of the day in the backpack and slept all night in my arms.  She thought it was very luxurious to sleep in my arms and nurse all night long so she's been trying to continue doing that since.  She liked taking the medicine and she got all better.  But now she has a super runny nose and she uses every trick she knows to not let me wipe her nose, so she has spent the last couple days with a permanent booger encrusted on her nose. Yuck.

She's also been eating lots of new foods.  I'm being real lazy about it but she seems happy with what I'm giving her.  I just cut up whatever we're having into tiny pieces and let her have at it.  She manages to put lots in her lap, some in her mouth, but usually ends up gumming it and then spitting it out.  Which is fine with me.  She does manage to eat a bit, and I'm sure when she is ready she'll eat more. 

Christmas was fun.  I think she enjoyed all the wrapping paper.  She mostly got jammies and cloth diaper covers, but she has more toys than she needs, plus her sister got a ton and she can share with her.  It is funny though because Allie really likes toys.  Selena never really played with toys when she was little and still isn't too into them.  But Allie really enjoys crawling into the toy closet and finding all sorts of stuff.  I think she plays independently about the same amount as Selena does now, maybe even more.  She did get Sophie the Giraffe from her grandpa since I saw it blogged everywhere and she does like it but not excessively so.

She is still really grabby and abusive.  When you hold her she is constantly lunging for everything in sight and if she isn't doing that then she's giving you fish hooks, pinching your nose, pulling your hair, or just whapping you.  Sometimes when she is in the backpack she just sits there and pinches the back of my arms, which really hurts.  We definitely need to work on being gentle.  She's lucky she is so dang cute and you know she doesn't mean to hurt you.

She is getting more and more adamant about doing everything her sister is doing.  The other day Selena was painting and Allie was crying because I wouldn't let her paint too.  What baby cries because they aren't allowed to paint?  She likes brushing her teeth too.  She gets very mad if I don't bring her into the bathroom let her brush her teeth with her sister.  The other day she had a toothbrush she was playing with and she kept trying to brush my teeth with it, so I took it and pretended to brush my teeth, and she got so happy and gave me the biggest smile.  It was really cute. 

Picture Book Recommendations

Here are a couple books Selena has enjoyed:

Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale and Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity - Mo Willems is a funny author. His Elephant and Piggy series are good too. But these two books are really cute. We had to look through Selena's stuffed animals to find her and Allie their own Knuffle Bunnies.
Good Night, Good Knight - I've been surprised at how good some of the easy readers are. This is a cute story about some dragons who need the Good Knight's help to get to bed. The dragons are cute and it has some fun repetition in the story.

Blog Makeover

I gave my blog a little makeover. I think I like the minimalist look, but I'm not sure. I think that it would be fairly easy to add a background to this template if I want to. It was kind of fun dinking around with the blogger templates. I changed some font sizes and widened it a bit from the default.

Selena Update

Selena has been getting really cute in her imaginative play. She's been taking her toys and creating extensive conversations between them. She enjoys playing in her kitchen making pretend meals. Floyd was asking her to make him some bear cookies and she said, "We don't have any bear cookies. I'll make you some pretend ones in my kitchen." Both her and Allie got strep throat last week so we had a couple trips to the doctor so she started pulling out her headphones and using them as both a stethoscope and as a light to peer into her patient's ears and mouth. She uses Allie as her patient and says to Allie, "I'm Selena the doctor, and you are the patient." Then she tells Allie to open up her mouth so she can see how perfect it is. Completely adorable. She has also pretended she was the teacher and Allie and I were her students. She had us do art time.

As I mentioned she got sick last week. It was really sad. She had a fever, a sore throat, and an awful cough. Fortunately it wasn't the flu so we could get antibiotics that made her better fast. But for some reason I was kind of lame and didn't get her a shot, but chose to do an oral liquid for 10 days instead. It has been very hard to convince her to take the medicine. Lesson learned.

We have been cooking a lot lately. Most of the time she loves to help. Unfortunately her style of help is sometimes the opposite. She is frequently pouring flour into stuff she shouldn't or scooping ingredients out of the bowl or reaching in and eating the mix. So when she put a huge chunk of ginger in her mouth the other day I didn't feel too sorry for her. She also created her first recipe. Casadias are one of her favorite things to eat and I was nursing Allie and apparently she was hungry. So she goes to the fridge and starts taking tortillas, cheese, and much to my dismay eggs out. I'm yelling at her to stop and she continues to grab a box of eggs and hold it vertically, carry it over to the table, take the eggs out (thankfully there were only two left) and roll them across the table. She said she wanted casadias with egg. Despite my frustration with her in not stopping when I told her to, and getting stuff out of the refrigerator without asking I was pretty impressed that she came up with that all on her own.

She's pretty excited for Christmas. Getting our tree was fun for her. She really was looking forward to putting the angel on top. Every time she goes into the living room she points out the tree, notes how pretty it is, and talks about the angel on top. We've been recording Christmas movies on TV and watching them. She really likes "Rudolf with the shiny nose." I think she has watched it at least 5 times already.

Potty training is going good. She does really good at home and for short outings, but when we go visit family for the day or overnight she'll have a lot of accidents and then it takes a few days before she is back in the groove. But her diaper has been staying dry most nights and she will even wake up and go to the potty in the middle of the night.

Other random cute things she has said:

She just got finished watching an episode of Blue's Clues about opposites. She really doesn't like wearing clothes and most of the time she just takes them off, this time she provided an excuse. She said she was doing the opposite of me and since I was wearing clothes, she needed to take hers off.

Floyd loves to tease, especially me. One of the things he likes to tease me about is that I eat the scraps from meals. So Selena eats some of her lunch and is done and tells me that she saved some scraps for me. Or she'll just be talking and say that her and dad eat the food and then me and Dyna get the scraps.

Also influenced by her dad she will tell me that she needs to brush her teeth really good so she doesn't get cavities like me. (I recently had a cavity filled, but I have had far fewer cavities than Floyd has so I think this is a very unfair comparison, but it does get her to brush her teeth well.)

If you say something is hot, she'll say, "It's hot, but not THAT hot." She pretty much does this with anything you say. "It's scary, but not THAT scary." Then one day I caught myself saying it to Floyd. He said the cookies I made would get hard and I said, "They'll get hard, but not that hard." I'm not sure if she got it from me, or if I was copying her.

She calls Allie a tomato monster baby. Except she doesn't enunciate the first T in tomato so it sounds like a homato monster baby. Not sure where she got that from, but its funny.