18 months

Dear Elliott,

Today you are eighteen months old! You have grown into a little force of nature these past few months. You still have cheerful moments, a wonderful giggle, and a radiant smile, but you also have this fantastic glower, intense little eyebrows, and a tiny iron will. Like me, you have a quick temper but get over it pretty fast. You occasionally throw spectacular tantrums, folding dramatically to the floor and wailing while you kick your feet. You make spectacular excited / surprised faces sometimes when things make you happy. You definitely have some words, and you understand lots more than you say. You constantly surprise me. You are mischievous and headstrong and funny and beautiful and I feel so fortunate every day that I get to be your mother.

Other things about you as you reach a year and a half...You still really love mini muffins and when you get to Grandma's in the morning, you trot right to your high chair and demand that we open the container. ("Muh! O muh!") We have to cut the muffins into quarters so you don't stuff them whole into your cheeks. You're a champion eater overall right now, and the only thing you've ever rejected is cheese pasta, even the good kind from Panera. You can drink from an open cup if someone holds it for you, and call all drinks "Ba!" whether they're in a cup or a bottle. You love to splash in water and will usually try to drink it - so far this month you have drunk from the bubble rock at the little landscaped creek we visit, the fountains at the zoo, two swimming pools, and the water room at the children's museum. At swim lessons you'll industriously paddle your little arms through the water and sometimes kick your legs. You'll take my hands and step happily off the wall during jumping-in practice. You're trying to work out how to blow bubbles and it's adorable. You're bold on slides and stairs and have seemed to enjoy our last few visits to Pump it Up. You carry flannel blankies around now, though you don't seem to have a particular favorite.

You are in some ways my mini me and in some ways wholly your own creature. You are so unexpectedly different from your brother and yet the perfect complement to him. You are smart and stubborn and sassy. We have so many adventures ahead of us, little one, and I can't wait.

Love,
Mama

Here are some photos of the other dude, too:

Muffin men

Back at the beginning of June I made some mini muffins on a whim, so that I'd have something easy and portable for Nico to eat at my desk at work each morning before summer camp started. It turns out my kids really like mini muffins. Like, really like them. They've eaten so many that I seriously considered ordering a bulk case of muffin papers from a restaurant supply company. At first I made box mixes from the store, but then I started feeling kind of guilty about it. I tried the basic plain muffin recipe from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook with chocolate chips thrown in, but they were awful - the texture was all wrong. I'm not sure if I lost count and added and extra scoop of flour, or what. Has anyone ever used that recipe and liked it? I haven't made another attempt since I was so annoyed by the wasted supplies and work that first time.

When I can get nice zucchini, I use the Better Homes & Gardens zucchini bread recipe and add chocolate chips - the boys have no idea they're semi-healthy. I've been buying this "simple mornings" mix that claims to have no artificial ingredients for a blueberry option, though I'd still like to come up with a version I can make myself. And last night I made banana muffins from this recipe and holy cats, the house smelled AMAZING. I could easily eat the entire batch myself if I let myself get started. It's really good as bread and even better as mini muffins, it turns out. (I add a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon to the recipe since cinnamon makes everything better. Oh, and I bake all the minis for 15 minutes or so, regardless of what the recipe claims to be the correct bake time.)

I have a really good pumpkin bread recipe for when zucchini season ends, but if the children keep eating muffins like they're eating them now (four per kid, every morning), I'd love to have some more semi-healthy options. So, hit me with your favorite muffin or quick bread recipes, pretty please! Two muffin-loving small boys thank you.

Turns out if you leave two small children alone with a bowl of mini muffins, they will eat all the mini muffins.

Things coming, things going

1. O captain, my captain. What a sad news day this has been.

2. I found my ring! And happily, not in a diaper. I was changing Elliott for bed on Friday evening and used the last wipe. When I picked up the box to put in more, it rattled and lo, there was my ring stashed inside. Sweet relief!

3. I'm giving away a book, so leave a comment over here if you're interested.

4. I was invited to a grownup lady playdate to watch the first episode of Outlander on Starz. I read the book way back in high school and kind of loved it. The show so far is very good. I am not 100% sold on the casting of a very handsome but not very gigantic actor to play Jamie. I was initially also nonplussed by his non-flaming red hair (I'm a little biased on behalf of redheads, you know), but after squinting at his cast photo online a few times, I think once they're not in the dark / rain (which may never happen, because: Scotland), it's going to turn out to actually be red hair, albeit a little duller than what I always imagined on Jamie. After watching the show, I pulled out the book for a re-read yesterday and I think I'm going to enjoy it all over again. Suddenly I'm wishing I hadn't purged the second and third books in a book clear-out a few years ago, though honestly I don't know that I'll have time to wade through three giant novels.

5. We had what will likely be our last playdate of the summer this morning, and what also will be our last regular playdate with a group of friends we started building when Nico was a wee bitty baby. I met one of the other kids and her mom at our breastfeeding group and we've been getting the kids together for several years now, once a month on Mondays. It was so bittersweet to see them playing together so well after so long, knowing that by September three of the five kids will be in preschool on Monday mornings. We're hoping to meet up for some Monday afternoons instead, and I'm really hoping that works out.

Last Monday we had a last summer playdate with another friend of Nico's, a kids / mom family I really, really like and only met about a year ago through a mutual friend who has since moved away with her two kids exactly my kids' ages. This keeps happening to me! The still-local little boy is going to Kindergarten this year and will be in school all day from now on. I'm hoping we can meet up on some school holidays and that his mom and I can keep in touch and keep our toddlers playing together. It all feels very sunrise / sunset at the moment, though. To assuage my melancholy, here's a video of Elliott from this morning:



We were at a little garden with a fantastic constructed creek that the kids can wade in, a place I stumbled across less than a month ago and have taken the kids to twice already. Nico told me today he wants to go to the creek every day, so I think we have a winner on our hands. So far our summer has been gleefully wonderful and it probably deserves a post of its own but for now, I think it's bedtime.

The precious is lost

I was getting the kids ready for a pool party yesterday afternoon and set my wedding ring on Elliott's dresser while I put on his sunscreen. I let him run around in his room in his diaper while I went to put on Nico's sunscreen and mine, and it was quite a while before I remembered I'd left the ring where he could reach it. Of course when I went back it was gone. We were in a hurry, so despite my creeping sense of slightly forlorn dread, we left and I figured I'd look for it later. When we got home, I picked up all the toys and books on Elliott's floor and looked under all his furniture and found nothing. At this point I'm thinking he either swallowed the ring or dropped it down the air vent. Is it awful that I'm really hoping he swallowed it?

It's just a plain white gold man's wedding band - which I wanted because it matches MB's ring - so it would actually be really easy to replace. But of the three rings MB has given me, the wedding band is the one I'm most sentimental about, the one I'm most attached to. It's the symbolism, you know? This was the ring he put on my finger when we stood up in front of God and everybody and promised to love and honor until death do us part. And so begins Poo Watch 2014. According to a friend whose daughter swallowed a hair clip last month, if he did swallow it I should see it again around day three. So on Thursday in time for our tenth anniversary, perhaps?

Stinker.

Reading:  Blackfin Sky by Kat Ellis

Playing:  Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits (1991-2001) by Barenaked Ladies