The Cookbook Junkies

Enough with the rant titles – I’m giving myself a headache.

My son is addicted to the alphabet. My friend, Crissy, with loving sarcasm calls him the alphabet prodigy because at 18 months he could identify any upper case letter that you would point to or write. Now he puts them in alphabetical order (the fridge phonic letters), knows upper and lower case, goes around the house saying “I love W so much” (the letter not the President), “I love the alphabet”…it’s absolutely makes me break out in a cold sweat. Mind you, he loves trucks, cars, toys, lots and lots of toys, his best buddy, John (Crissy & Denis’ son), his parents, his cup – but he has continually played with alphabet and number games for almost four days in a row now (previously only 50 percent of the time). I need to find a program for him…

“Hi, I’m Andrew and I’m an alphabet-o-holic“….

I have to say he does love “W”. We have an alphabet train puzzle and we use to start the puzzle with A – but he would say at least 100 times before we got to the middle of the alphabet – “I want W” “I want W” “I want W” W W W W W W W W. I have nightmares of giant Ws chasing me….now we just start at Z and go backwards, if he ends up dyslexic it is his own damn fault.

I’m proud of him that he loves to learn but I think the majority of ability in his INCREDIBLE memory. I could bore you with countless examples but I won’t. He inherits his memory from me – I remember everything much to my husband’s dismay. My husband, a wealth of knowledge, by any standard, is like the nutty professor sometimes – he once lost two sets of car and house keys within a space of two weeks. He is no longer allowed to carry keys to any of our assets. I was the one that had to go to the car dealer with a signed letter from him (at that time his name was on the title of our car as we had just gotten married) to have duplicate keys made at the cost of $10 each. The key maker had to call my husband on the phone to verify that he indeed approved of the duplication of keys to the car. The guy told me he has to verify everything now because someone came in and made copies to an ex-husband’s car and then went and drove it off. He said divorce was nasty sometimes. I told him, “if my husband loses these keys…our divorce will be nasty too.”

Well, mudslide is calling…

Finally, it is cold! Global warming my frozen fingers (in lieu of a three letter word that I try not to use any more as we have a 2 1/2 year old parrot).

It started snowing again for about 15 minutes last night. Of course, it was the 15 minutes that Andrew and I had to go to the train station and pick up Jim. I bundled him up (Andrew not Jim) and put on his mittens that are a tad too big. He holds his hands up like a surgeon freshly scrubbed when he has his mittens on. Andrew usually likes for me to lower the rear window so he can hear and see the train better (reminds me of the old line: even Helen Keller can hear a train coming!) but since yesterday on Curious George – the camper that George was in had the sunroof/vent open and it couldn’t be closed when it started to storm – and it flooded the camper, Andrew now thinks that any snow/rain will flood our car if we leave the window open. (Note: George saved the day as he had everything they needed to make camp in his backpack …

Camper fully equipped with satellite television, solar roof panel — $250,000
Global navigating system — $500
Camping with a Monkey who loved the show MacGyver — Priceless.

I’m starting to make dough for 60 baby “onesies” cookies for my friend’s shower next week. I’ll probably bake them today/tomorrow and start decorating to have them done by Friday. Lily Arline will be the baby’s name – I actually like the name Lily (although it does make me think of Yvonne DeCarlo and her Munsters role – sorry Susan). My husband is a traditionalist and if a name doesn’t fall into this category he feels Children and Family Services should be notified. Also, apparently he also prefers the traditional puff pastry top to his chicken pot pie and not a cornbread version (which I thought was very good but I’m not a traditionalist — I’m a road less traveled girl and for me that has made all the difference).

Well, back to the drawing board (rolling pin)…..

So much for snow….there wasn’t enough to make one good sized snow ball and here I was thinking this morning – I better get to the shed to get out the shovel before it gets too deep out there.

Andrew (the 2 and a 1/2 year old which I shouldn’t have to clarify because if my 22 year old did these things we’d be on Jerry Springer sooner than I anticipate) likes to lightly pinch me, wants me to make a face, then he says…”Mommy sad. Mommy got a boo boo. It’s okay Mommy. I make you happy.” Then he hugs me. He does this 46 times a day, every day.

I made chicken pot pie with a cornbread crust (yes, honey, I got the little baby peas – just in case my husband is reading this) and a beef roast and mashed potatoes. I have to hide both until dinner time or the 22 year old will eat them both. He’s like a bear — sometimes we have to tie Andrew up high in a tree so he won’t try to eat him too. I usually don’t make two separate meals for dinner but my wonderful, handsome husband asked for chicken pot pie this week and he is sick and I want to do anything I can to make him feel better and I had to cook the roast today. Okay, now I can send him the link to this blog.

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