Mini Me

This is to prove to my friend Stacie and all those who doubt, that Will really does look like me when I was a kid. I was so surprised when she said he didn't look like me. When I look at these pictures, it's like Will is wearing a dress and needs a hair cut.


It's not just me right? We have the same face shape, goofy smile, eye and hair color...

18 Month Update

Don't let this happy face fool you. He's been so sick lately! Well, in-between the stomach flu and another flu/bad cough, Will had some good times. Let's roll the pictures that remind us of the good times.
We were at Will's 18 month check-up today and I was filling out one of the many questionnaires. One of the questions was, "Does your child bring you things that they want you to look at? I really couldn't think of any time he did something like that. What does he do with all his toddler time you might wonder?
My friend Stacie asked me the same thing. I got to see my old roommates! Amy flew in from Illinois, and we all met up in Sacramento. It was great to catch up with everyone between all the distractions from the kids. Over at Stacie's apartment Will distracted himself with mopping the floor and playing with the Christmas decorations. (Christmas decorations are not Stacie's choice by the way.) And I realized, this is what Will does all day. He follows me around trying to imitate what I do. Sweep the floor, do laundry, find stuff we use and figure out what to do with it. He just started being able to play trains and cars by himself, but usually he wants to be with us.
He likes drawing. This incident happened when Britton wasn't paying attention, "for only one minute, I swear." It's cute and washes off easily enough.
He's great with laundry.
We'll finish up with a picture to remind us of the bad times. He lost a lot of weight during the couple weeks he was sick and just not himself. (He usually has a huge appetite.) He has some asthma so when he's sick we're supposed to give him this treatment for his lungs. I love the fishy face on the aspirator. The doctor today said his symptoms were bad enough for us to try to use preventative measures. So we'll be giving him a small dose every day to prevent inflamed and scarred lung tissue.
Other than that, he's doing great! His vocabulary is amazing, I have to brag. His mobility is fine. And he's pooping like no other.
His stats are 80% for head size, 43% for height, and 21% for weight. I told you he lost a lot of weight. Since he started out such a chunker it's hard for me to realize that he's actually a normal, even small-sized boy now.
Professional 18 month pictures will be taken soon.

Will's ABC's

I've been working on this video for a while. We had to take a break while Will was sick, but he's finally back to normal tonight and we got him to say the last words!
Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Britton

His birthday was actually about two weeks ago, but I've forgotten I have a blog lately. Britton's 27th birthday fell on a Friday this year, and despite all my attempts to convince him to have a big party, he was set on watching a movie with me and then getting together with family.
That made planning pretty easy for me. The biggest obstacle was how to wake up in the middle of the night without waking up Britton with some annoying, loud alarm. The answer is so simple! Drink 5 glasses of water before you go to bed. I have no idea how my bladder made it to 3 AM. But I blew up all these balloons and prepped birthday breakfast without Britton making a stir. I didn't realize Britton would probably want to sleep in on his birthday and such late night preparations were totally unnecessary. So Will was the first one to be surprised by the sea of birthday balloons downstairs.
Britton had his usual day at school, except that we met up with him for lunch. Later that night we attended a Chinese New Year party for our courtyard where I made everyone sing to Britton. Then we watched an engineering movie. I'm not kidding! It's called Flash of Genius. It also has some court scenes in there for you lawyer types.
The Olson clan came to our place for our smorgasbord feast of Britton's favorites. Papa Olson made small cable car sandwiches as an appetizer. Grandma-lita made Britton's favorite childhood snack, toasted cinnamon raisin bread with a slice of melted cheddar cheese on top. (Cheese and grapes go together.) Nana Olson made smaller versions of cheesy potatoes and green jello salad. I made a heaping dish of lasagna. Kelsey was also there, but we forgot to ask her to bring some kind of Mexican cookies. Alex sat on Britton's birthday balloons and popped them with a tack.

Notice the thoughtful gifts he received this year.
Hilarius no? It's RoboCut. A haircutting kit that attaches to your vacuum. The pants one is an Easy-fit waistband stretcher.
Ok, the real presents were new Shimano biking shoes from me, and a Havoc Heli and mini RC car from the fam fam.
Finally to finish off Carb-fest 2010, we enjoyed Britton's favorite cinnamon rolls made by our favorite neighbors.
Happy birthday Britton! I love you, you fantastic father, my humorous husband, and best friend.

The Week of Crepes

I am a big fan of crepes, but I hardly ever make them. Then one fateful day I became the owner of Crepes: Sweet and Savory Recipes for the Home Cook by Lou Seibert Pappas. I was inspired and vowed to cook nothing but crepes for an entire week. I made plans and got all the ingredients, but then other stuff happened and it became kind of crepe week. I made four different kinds of "savory crepes". Since I am not a great photographer I am going to let Jean-Blaise Hall do the work for me.
We start with Asparagus and Ham Crepes
I learned that making the batter in the blender is the best way to prevent lumps, and you should let the batter sit for at least an hour so the flour can absorb the liquid. It makes the crepes more tender.
Baked Egg Crepe Cups
Britton made these Saturday morning. Will didn't want to eat (see previous post) so I ate his too.
Tomato Crepes with Ratatouille
I added sundried tomatoes to the batter to give them extra yummy flavor, and then simplified the filling by buying a jar of ratatouille from Trader Joe's. Simple!
Chicken, Sweet Corn and Red Pepper Crepes
Britton made this recipe. Turns out he actually pulled off half of crepe week for me. He put some cilantro in the crepe batter and a little enchilada sauce on the tops. They're unusual, but tasty all the same. We call them French enchiladas.
I honestly can't BELIEVE I didn't make any dessert crepes this week. Putting all the effort into savory crepes took away my interest in dessert crepes. Sometime soon I hope to whip up some caramelized apple crepes and orange custard crepes. Yumm!

These meals were made possible by my long distance friend Rachel who sent me an official crepe pan for my birthday. (Or was it Christmas?) Darn December birthdays.

New Talents

Will has been really sick over the weekend throwing up everything most of Saturday and then battling diarrea explosiva today. (That's explosive diarrhea en espanol.) I snuggled him between pukes pretty much all of yesterday. The snuggling was nice, but the clean-up was not. And it was sad to see Will so lifeless. No cute words, no busy boy getting into everything and climbing onto everything. Today he was able to eat and started acting a little more like himself. He's back to practicing the piano and is quite the prodigy. Take a listen.



Ok, so his real talent is pressing buttons on the keyboard.

He's also into climbing up things. He loves carrying the stools around the kitchen so he can see what I'm doing on the counter. He also likes stirring things when I cook and says "hot" every time I open the oven. He's growing up! I love to see his progress and I hope you do too. Otherwise this blog is probably getting pretty boring for you.
He's becoming so independent. Here he is dressing himself. The red shoes are his favorite...
He likes to hang out in the refrigerator after a good workout of jumping on the couch. Nothing like a bottle of ranch dressing to quench your thirst.
He even takes care of the neighbor kid. And then he takes his milk and all toys away from him.

Christmas with the Cousins

We spent Christmas this year in Seattle (Renton) or (technically unincorporated King County). We had a great time, as you could tell from the previous fatty post. But food was not the only focus of our time there. There were plenty of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents to entertain, feed, and tease Will.
We'll start with cousin Hailey. Some of my friends and old roommates will be shocked to see this picture and realize that she's headed to high school next fall! I'm officially starting to get old.
Aunt Sara spent a good amount of time with the Willster. She probably fed him less cookies than most hence the sad face, but Will really does love his auntie Sara.

Matt was Will's favorite name to say during our stay there, and even a few weeks later. Cousin Matt was an expert at making Will laugh.
Matt also let Will play with his LightBrite! Will's new favorite toy.
Will didn't want to participate in the annual nativity. The kids did a great job this year with some fantastic costumes.
Christmas Eve was well documented by our paparazzi. But somehow we didn't get ANY pictures from Christmas morning, day, or evening!
I have to admit Will plays favorites. His all time favorite cousin, by far, is Natalie. She lets him squeeze her face, and mess up her toys. Will adores her and follows her around like a little, cute puppy.

Other stuff we did while on vacation was another murder mystery dinner. Here's the whole group "Cruising for Murder".
We didn't have an ugly sweater contest, but if we did, these two would have won!
We went to Snowflake Lane in Bellevue where there was dancing, holiday music, and fake snow falling from the mall. Will missed out because he was too tired.
We enjoyed some Washington nature going running in the neighborhood, hiking on Squak mountain, and exploring the woods behind my parent's house. I kind of miss being so close to wilderness.
Britton read, and cried, while reading The Christmas wish. Or was it called Christmas list, Christmas jars, Christmas shoes, Christmas orange, Christmas ice pick... It was some kind of Christmas noun.

Christmas Calories

Why does this happen every year? I know there will be all kinds of treats just sitting around within arms reach. I tell myself I ate all of them last year so I don't have to eat them all this year. Logic does not work during the holidays. The treats were extra scrumptious this year! I was amazed at all the different combinations of sugar, butter, chocolate, and flour we could turn out.

Here's a little tour of our impressive sugarland.
Sara made this fantastic fudge, and the secret ingredient is Dove chocolate! It makes it really smooth. It used to be a big pyramid of fudge, but was reduced to this by the time I took a picture of it.
We made cute homemade caramels! My nephew Matt is displaying them. Britton did a great job and I think they were pretty simple.
Sara also made some beautiful traditional sugar cookies.
My contribution and favorite of the treats were homemade marshmallows, covered in just enough chocolate to take them from plain ol' delicious to scrumdiddlyumptious. I wish I could take credit for this photography, but our camera died so this is just from Google images.
Will learned a few new words like cookie and chocolate. He had loving aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and even us feeding his inner cookie monster. He was SUCH a picky eater after Christmas! He's back to normal foods now.

After our trip to Seattle we went straight to Britton's parents house where we participated in a donut making production. We were happy this tradition was postponed a little this year.

To compact the fatness I didn't exercise much from oh, Thanksgiving until New Years. There is hope! In the form of an apple. Meet my most unexpected Christmas present.
ipod Touch I love you! There's an app called Lose It! that keeps track of your calories and exercise. It's just what I need to get into my Christmas candy detox program.