The Potato Thief

The other day I went grocery shopping, it was getting late as soon as we got home and so I threw open the bag of potatoes that we had just bought, scrubbed some and got them in the oven first thing. Then I started putting away groceries. I found out a little later that Charlie had 'helped'. The little potato thief had got into the bag of potatoes and grabbed a few out and 'put them away' for me. Behold the spots we now keep our produce:

The lazy susan:

The drawer:

The diaper bag:

Now is this the face of someone who's naughty?

Nahhh!

O Christmas Tree!

The first Christmas that John and I were married, and had no money, and lived in Cedar, I bought a little 3 foot tall artificial Christmas tree for our apartment. We decorated that and we used it for the next 4 years. After all, we were going to head to one of our parents houses anyway for the week or so around Christmas, and it was just for fun and being festive. Then started what turned into two years of living WITH parents during the festivities, fun fun. So as we set out to decorate for Christmas this year we realized we had never ever bought our own Christmas tree!

So this year it was our whole family's very first excursion to buy our own tree. The first snag we knew we were going to run into is that John and I have very different opinions about what a Christmas tree should look like.

For me, I like the classic, see them everywhere, obvious kind of Christmas tree.



For John, his family and his grandma always had a different kind of tree, thus that is the one that looks likes Christmas to him. He likes this variety:



Before I spent Christmas with John when we were engaged I had never even seen that type of tree used before. I was not its biggest fan. To me it reminded me of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree:



Despite our differences of opinion we set off. We scoured the nursery for something we could agree on. Luckily, Charlie and I wanted this tree right off the bat:


And we got Dad on board!!!



Good thing Charlie was due for a nap when we got it home and it was time to decorate. I have a feeling he'd have been a little TOO helpful. We put it in this corner being hopeful that we can somehow seal off that front area from our little monster. We'll see how it goes!

When he woke up Charlie gave us his seal of approval. He thought the decorations were so lovely he wanted to pull them all off and put them in his mouth for closer inspection....

Good thing we got unbreakable ornaments!

Thanksgiving

We went to John's sister June's house for thanksgiving this year. This was Charlie's very first Thanksgiving that he got to actually be outside my stomach and eat the meal himself! June lives out in Nevada, close to Lake Tahoe with her family. We had never been out to visit them before, so it was a fun time. Cousins Samantha and Ethan were so excited to meet and play with Charlie. Charlie loves attention so he was a willing participant. June made all of Thanksgiving dinner for us and it was fantastic!




Charlie ate some sweet potato and stuffing and a little mashed potatoes, and made a large mess. He seemed to think it was okay, but what he really loved was the second night when we ate pizza, haha, he honestly ate probably 3/4 of a large slice of pizza entirely by himself.


After Thanksgiving we went and spent one day exploring Lake Tahoe and the shops and town up there. Evidently we learned that Lake Tahoe is the 2nd deepest lake in the US. It is deeper at its greatest depth than the Empire State Building is tall. That was really impressive to me!

Work Hard, Play Hard, Then Sleep

We have such a boy on our hands. I keep saying it, but it totally surprises me how he just came with this personality, I swear we're not consciously encouraging this...


The door knob on our bedroom door broke awhile back (leaving me locked inside in fact) and John got started fixing it last weekend. Of course there was something about a hammer and tools that made Charlie feel like he HAD to be involved, literally I tried to pull him away multiple times because I felt it was a little dangerous, but he was desperate to hammer with daddy:

Since the fall came, John and I had to face the un-fun task of putting down the swimming pool. It was a multihand job, so we put Charlie down and hoped he'd entertain himself for at least a little bit. The boy found something to do.... why am I not surprised it had something to do with a stick and dirt...?

Sometimes it's a hard job being an Aggie fan, but mostly we manage to have fun no matter the score. Even though he has to sit which he doesn't like, mostly Charlie doesn't seem to mind too much going:

(The BYU blowout, that was super fun to be at, see how excited Charlie is!)

Charlie likes to jump so hard when he plays in his jumper that one of these days I think he's going to just rocket out of it all together.

A child prodigy at piano playing perhaps?...


After a long morning of getting dirty, bleeding, jumping, hammering and what not, sometimes you just can't wait till nap time for a little shut eye:

(I found Charlie like this at like 9:30 in the morning, he doesn't usually take a nap until almost 10:30, so I figured he must really have been worn out! I even picked him up out of here and put him in his bed without him waking up. That's sleepy!)

Cupboard Diver

I mentioned earlier that Charlie had cupboards figured out in about two seconds. So we had to move anything poisonous or hazardous pretty quickly. And on some of the cupboards there are childproofing things, but on others we don't have them. As it's not our house, we didn't want to permanently install anything, and the ones you don't install are a PAIN to open and close even for adults. So yeah, we just moved some stuff out of his reach, but you can't move EVERYTHING. Consequently I spend a lot of time throwing things back in cupboards all over the house. (Yes, it's why they look disastrous.) At any moment you're liable to find charlie playing in:

The Tupperware cupboard!

The table linens cupboard!

And his very all time favorite... The pots and pans!!!!

I don't know how kids figure this stuff out, it's so classic it's cliche, but with zero encouragement or help from us, Charlie got into this cupboard, pulled stuff out, and started doing this....

It's a good thing we think he's super cute and funny.

Fall is for baking

And I tried this new recipe, and had probably my 1st ever total pie crust success!!!

I tried the pear tart because we had pears to use, and it seems like you can only eat them so fast fresh, and they just manage to go bad, which stinks, cuz fresh pears are amazing, but this little ditty was pretty darn yummy as well! For all those people like me for whom their pie crust technique just leaves something to be desired, I suggest this tart.... I think you could easily do other fruit too. The crust is more chewy, but still soft. But the added chewy and softness means the dough is actually just a ton easier to work with than pie crust....




However, my pie crust technique is veeerrrryyyy slowly improving. I ran to grab the camera after I rolled and laid this pie crust in, and told my husband I had to document probably the first time ever I didn't have to patch my crust together...


Yay for me! Maybe one day I won't get nervous at the very idea of pie crusts, haha. We'll see! This particular crust contained a peach pie, because we also had peaches that needed using and people coming over. I should have taken a picture of the after, so you could see how delish, but I forgot. Too excited about the crust I guess!

9 Months!

Seems like in the time from 6 months to 9 months Charlie has changed more than ever before, not in looks but in all his new skillz! :)

Height: 28.75 inches ~ 70%
Weight: 20 lbs 10 oz ~ 55%

Stuff about Charlie:

• Crawls like a mad man, in the last 3 months we went from rollings, to army crawl and to weird mixed crawls, and finally to crawling more traditionally and even more quickly, watch out if you open the fridge!
• Stands up on anything and everything, cruises around on it. This included the beginning stage of falling OFF everything and banging his head, which was fun. Now he's a pro and can get up and down with skill.
  
• Now has other sounds he's added to his 'hi dad'... including mom! Yay! Says, 'eye-yi-yi' a lot.
• Entertains himself better and better.

• Can climb all the stairs all by himself.
• Likes to play with wrappers, paper, cell phones, garbage cans, anything it's clear we don't want him to play with.
• Can open cupboards (more in a later post) and get out all the contents (don't worry mom, we moved or locked up the hazardous stuff, so now it's mostly just a mess).
• Loves sweets - likes his fruit babyfood the best, but also likes the veggies and mac and cheese one. A co-worker of John's gave Charlie a circus peanut, evidently it was like Charlie's favorite day, EVER.
• Loves tomatoes or tomato products such as spaghetti sauce.
• Likes to feed himself, but by that I mean scatter the food all over the tray and watch what happens when he throws it on the floor. (But he has SUCH a good time!)
• Is more reserved around strangers than he used to be. Becomes a little shy and unsure if someone he's unfamiliar with smiles at him or tries to interact.
  
• Still LOVES his daddy. If it comes down to a choice, he knows who he wants and it's not me. Sometimes it's hard for me to hang on to him when daddy is close by, he'll totally try to abandon ship! When his daddy comes home from work he'll make a mad dash to get to him ASAP. And if dad talks before Charlie can see him, his head swerves all around looking for where it came from. I try not to be offended, because it's really quite cute!
  

(Found Charlie like this after dad brought him in.
John had been mowing the lawn with him in his baby bjorn,
but got too hot and tired, so was going to finish alone.
Clearly Charlie wanted to be out there with him still!)

Peach Days Is Peachtastic!

We really didn't do much for Peach Days this year other than treat ourselves to some peach related desserts. We walked around the booths for one part of an afternoon and then left and went to the Aggie game. I know, we're boring that way. But we didn't think Charlie would appreciate the parade yet as he hasn't learned that he cares about c-a-n-d-y. And we learned our lesson last year on that thing.... woah, overkill. So instead of telling you about that, I'll share a very tasty dessert, ala Alton Brown - They are really easy, quite quick, and really yummy!

Individual Peach Upside-Down Cakes

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
  
• 2 medium peaches, peeled
• 1-ounce finely chopped crystallized ginger, approximately 3 tablespoons
  (I've searched high and low for this in No. Utah and couldn't find it, it's just fine w/o, but I'd love to try it with it sometime!)
  
• 2.5 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 1/2 cup
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Whipped Cream or ice cream, for serving, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Divide 2 tablespoons of the butter between 4 (6-ounce) ramekins. Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter and set aside. Evenly divide the brown sugar between the ramekins; sprinkling it into the bottoms of the dishes. Cut each peach into 12 to 14 pieces. Lay the peaches on top of the sugar; evenly dividing them between the dishes and sprinkle with the ginger. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl whisk together the sugar, buttermilk, vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon of melted butter. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir just until combine. Pour the batter over the peaches; dividing the mixture evenly between the dishes. Place on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the cake reaches an internal temperature of 190 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer.

Remove from the oven to a rack and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of each dish and turn upside down onto a serving plate. Repeat with each cake. Serve immediately with whipped cream or ice cream if desired.

Southern Utah Trip

We decided to head down south to Cedar to see John's grandma for labor day. With John now working 4 tens it almost seems like you have to go away when you get a Monday off! Four day weekend!

We took Charlie to the super fun pool in Washington. I thought he would have fun in a pool that goes all the way to shallow so he could crawl around by himself, and he really did, it was so cute!

We went out to John's grandma's property in Bear Valley and joined John's Aunt, Uncle and some cousins there.


We picked some elderberries and brought them home and made syrup.




John's cousin Jocelyn and her husband had a little girl just about a week and a half before we had Charlie. This is the first time we were able to see cute little Lottie and Charlie side by side.

I Turn My Back for One Second And...

(Evidently there was an oreo within Charlie's reach. I had no idea.)

(Charlie stands up on this all the time, it rocks forward, and he just rolls right off the front.)

Kids are too quick of learners for their own good sometimes I decided. Charlie is prone to really jump head first into things. For instance he stands now. Well he's been standing for a few weeks actually, pretty much since the time he started crawling on his hands an knees. Well he started this trick, and started using ANYTHING to pull himself up on, before he'd thought through getting down at all. So he'd end up crying with a big bruise on his head about every day when he fell.

About two days ago we saw him get to the bottom of the stairs in our tv room and start going up and we had to go pull him off. Oh great. This morning I was just letting him climb up the stairs in front of me. Just two stairs up he looks up at me, I swear with the look that says he has an idea. His whole body goes rigid and his hands go up and he slides back down the stairs on his belly like a sled down a hill. I don't know if he had any idea that was what would happen, but he wasn't concerned and he didn't seem surprised - he just crawled away.

(Charlie crawling ALL the stairs later this afternoon... from bottom to top... yep. I'm the one hovering in the back totally freaked out.)

Am I in for a lot of broken bones and stitches?! Please say no, I can't handle blood.