Legos picture

The Lego barn, custom built for John's circus elephant.


Anna's mother's day card.

A cake per week...

Adds up to a lot of cakes!

My first try at fondant!

A mock wedding cake for when Beth and Scott visited. The layers are 8" banana cake with lemon buttercream/lemon curd filling, 10" carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and 12" vanilla/chocolate cake with buttercream and ganache filling. Most of the banana cake is in our freezer, the grad students ate the carrot cake, and we took the 12" cake to home groups - what wasn't eaten was left or tossed!
This cake was an adaptation of a Martha Stewart recipe. It was really good, except for a big HOLE in the middle! I'm still perfecting the recipe - it came out better the second time with only a 2" hole. I'm going to try adding more liquids next time.

Large and small motor skills

Anna is really advancing in the large motor skill world. She crawls everywhere so we've started closing the gate at the top of the stairs again. She can pull up to standing, so we lowered the crib mattress. She likes playing with John's toys, especially his pull-leash dogs, but John hasn't played with those in months so it usually doesn't seem to bother him. She likes exploring everything with her mouth (AAAH!) and loves it when John fawns all over her. She even likes it when John sits on her, within reason. She makes all sorts of noises with her lips and loves being held by everyone.

John, on the other hand, is doing great things with small motor skills. His speech therapist (ST) suggested we put away our "chunky" crayons because he has the small motor skills (and desire) to use small crayons. He loves "writing" with pen, and again the speech therapist was impressed and suggested we refer to what he does with a pen as writing and what he does with crayons as drawing. I now ask John whether he would like to draw or write and he usually chooses to write. John tries to hold the pen in the correct writing grip and gets frustrated with himself when he realizes he isn't holding it properly. John draws little dots and squiggles which really do look like little letters.

I took the first "John built this" picture a few weeks ago. While the ST was here, he built a "barn" for some animals with towers on top. I didn't think much of it - I knew that John had carefully placed each brick, but he always does that. The ST, on the other hand, kept telling me of reasons why it was so neat. I think the picture will be one in a long line!

The ST (I fell like I'm getting a child development class with her!) told me that John is at a point where color introduction would be good. No problem, I was ahead of the game.

Last week, when we went to Firestone to see if we really needed a new radiator, John and I played a game. The tiles are gray, with black, red, and blue scattered about randomly. I stood on a black tile and told John to find another that was black and stand on it. So there was no confusion, I moved to another black one and repeated the command. He then walked to a black one and looked at me. He continued to at least five other black tiles before getting to the end of the waiting room, stopping and looking at me while standing on each one. My mother watched.

John's speaking is increasing a lot. He really is beginning to communicate well, though he still doesn't say "mama" and only a few words would make any sense to someone else. He can say "No", "Dog", "Vroom", "Baaa" (bark), "Choo choo", "Dada", and a few other things very clearly. He is beginning to repeat consistently, as long as I use short sentences and short words. He might try to say "Cow" but will not do anything for a word like "Giraffe."

Treating torticollis - Effects on Mama

When the PT started treating John, she told me to carry him in my left arm so he would look forward to the left.

I'm pretty strong now, but my left bicep is significantly bigger than my right. Weird.

Signs you've been baking lots of cake...

You take the cake out to fill and frost and can't remember what type it is. Oh well, that's what vanilla filling is for, right?

I tried a new vanilla filling recipe and Dan loved it. I didn't taste it before filling the cake, so when Dan came home from work I gave him a spoonful to try. "Do you like it?"

"It tastes like ice cream!"

Great! Cooks Illustrated always comes to the rescue!