Little Dumer News: Baking up some fun

Jumping fun!

Had a ton of fun with J-man today! First I took him to Gym Time at the local rec centre, a much better value at $2.50 than Kinder Cafe. And we are starting to feel the financial pinch a bit, so I thought I'd try it out. He loved shooting hoops and jumping on the baby trampolines. Afterwards we had lunch and came home. After some quiet time I thought it may be fun to have Jordy help me make cookies... Fun or disastrous. Fortunately it was the former. Check it out below:

Signing "big boy"

"hm, let's see, Mom says to ball it, squish it, put it down..."

Hey! Someone's makin' off with cookies!

Want the recipe? ( They really are gooood cookies!)
Little Dumer's Cookies
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I like crunchy Demerara, but regular brown is fine too)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups unbleached flour
(if I have it though, I use whole wheat - makes it virtually a health food!)
2 cups oatmeal (grind it up nice and fine in a food chopper first though!)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 bag milk chocolate baking M&Ms
1/2 bag your choice chocolate chips
(pick your poison: PB, milk chocolate, semi-sweet, butterscotch or even toffee chips!)
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Jordan, Mr. Christie's got nothing on you!

Set butter and shortening out til they are room temp so you can easily cream them with the sugars in a large bowl. Once you've done that, add the eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl mix all dry ingredients except the candies/nuts. Add flour mix to the butter mix. Once incorporated add the candies/nuts. Then, like Jordy, just roll 'em in a ball, squish 'em and then put them down on a cookie sheet! Bake at 375 for 8-10 mins.

Jordy is a total YouTube fiend! It is his bathroom entertainment of choice.

Mom just shakes her head, may have to regulate...

In other news, we're pretty much calling this potty training thing done. Jordy has had just one accident when we were out and about last weekend, and Mom takes the blame on that one, for not moving quickly enough. We have Pull-Ups going on at night and are okay with that. From what we read, lots of kids don't get night time potty trained until months to years after being day time potty trained. He's great at telling family he's got to go, but less so with his teachers. Seems the daycare ladies have it figured out though, while the pre-school helpers have not. It'll come around.

I have been trying to capture this Cygni face for a while! She often sports this huge open mouthed face which you can't really call a smile, but is a happy face nonetheless. Hard to see on this shot, but she has a cute and very distinctive crease under her right eye, on her cheek when she makes this face.

When Jordy had his potty accident we happened to be at the passport office, getting our kids their paperwork to travel so that we can perhaps let Cygni meet her Gramma and Grampa Young, Uncle Tommy and The Leatons sometime this year. We weren't exactly sure how to fill out the part of the application about Cygni's eyes. For a while we called them gray, but sometimes (especially in bright light) they look very green close to the pupil and light gray in the centre, with a dark blue-gray outer ring. Ooh, exotic! We selected hazel on the passport application form, but what do YOU think her eye colour will be when all is said and done? There is a poll in the right hand side of the blog page, let us know what you think! Mommy took her in for some shots last week and she is 15 lbs, 11 oz (just above the 50th percentile,) and 26 inches long (in the 75th percentile,) seems she may be a tall girl, hopefully she doesn't tower over Jordy for several more years (poor little man!) She has been drooling lots and it is quite possible we may see a tooth in a short time. I know, I know, I said that with Jordy and it took nearly a year....