Merry Christmas, Conrad!

Merry Christmas, Conrad. Your own personal mini-me!

[Here's the background ... Every year for Christmas, my family rotates names for Christmas. (We have 8 kids in our family so it makes things much simpler.) This year, as part of Conrad's present, we gave Eric a mohawk. OK, I have to admit that it was a little unplanned ... our clipper was charging in an accessible location ... Eric started it, and I finished it; hence the comb-over, which Conrad has been calling the CoMo. And just the day before I had been at Costco chatting with this lady in (a very long) line. I was telling her something, I can't remember what, and she said, "Just wait until he cuts his own hair."]

Food! Feeding my family drives me nuts!

This is a vent-post. I love cooking, but I really detest cooking for my children. This is because a) they prefer plain chicken to delicious things like Avocado Mango Chicken, and b) even when they do like it, they only eat a bite or two. I end up throwing most of what I make away. Eric is just learning to express himself pretty well, and today came up with, "Mommy, this pasta is really good." And then ate one bite of chicken, two bites of pasta and a cooked carrot cube--you know, the kind from the mixed vegetable bag. Oh, and one section of a Clementine.

And gone are the days when Mikey indiscriminately stuffed whatever he could get his hands on into his face. Now Mikey, less than a year old, is becoming a very picky eater. And he has the manners of a monkey (typical of toddlers/pre-toddlers). When he doesn't like something, or when he's done, or just when the feeling hits him, he flings whatever food is on his tray onto the floor. And somehow he makes a circle around his highchair on the floor. Tonight he spit out the chicken that I thought I had managed to sneak into his mouth and tossed it on the floor. Here he is showing off his new eating apparatus (ie his teeth).