Today Jonah is four, which I cannot believe! Tonight for the first time he picked out his very own birthday dinner. I forgot to warn Big J that we are having hot dogs and mac and cheese for supper tonight...
Jonah can now also chew gum, at least he is allowed to but there doesn't seem
to be much "chewing".
Another milestone that is marked today is that we are DONE with "sippy cups." We have been singing a made-up song for months entitled "Bye-Bye Sippy Cups." He is not very excited but taking it like a "big boy." This weekend we hope to go to a "big store" (IKEA) and and pick out some new big boy cups.
We also have blue hands today after making the final handprint for the front of our pre school scrapbook!
Of course we had a CARS party this weekend with our families complete with racing, a race track cake, and many, many CARS presents! He also learned the official way to open presents (see above picture) where all wrapping and tissue paper are thrown into the air and over your shoulder. A special thanks to my brother for teaching him that skill. Now if you could just teach him how to pedal a bike or zip our coat, that would be much more useful.
Anyway, Fabulous Four, here we come!
FOUR!
Singles Club for Socks
All of the single socks in our house congregate here, in the moose basket in my laundry room.
When we moved I weeded the pairless socks out of our drawers and turned them into rags or discarded them. We've been in our new house for barely 4 months and the basket is full.
I was happy to find a sock that had been missing in little J's dress-up box (my fault, its a little close to his dirty clothes basket, I can understand the confusion).
I searched through the box in hopes of find more socks but was sadly unsuccessful.
I'm really led to believe that it is this house, and not just that "our dryer is eating our socks". My mom says that we have a black hole and I often hear myself saying, "there will be a prize if you find daddy's hat (or your shoe, or the camera cable, or the laptop battery)." Some of these things have been found but some are like the missing socks, lost in our mysterious black hole.
Under the Kitchen Sink
Here it is, my new garbage disposal. I take back most of the things that I've said about my husband not being very handy (many of you may remember an earlier post, entitled
The Washing Machine Saga). It only took him 3 trips to the store and I was without a sink for just half a day! I am not complaining because I missed this modern convience since we've moved into our new house that was without one. He even rushed home on his lunch hour to add the missing pipe so I would have a sink to use when I cooked dinner that night! My hero!
Now our trash smells much fresher and clean-up is much easier.
Ode to Hummus
I've had a request for our hummus recipe. This is the ONE thing that Jake makes in our house, so here is his recipe. I will say that his version is a little too strong for me, I would use have the garlic and not so much of the spicy spices. But then again, its his recipe that gets all the rave!
Jake's Hummus recipe (adapted from Betty Crocker)
1 15 oz can garbanzo beans (reserve liquid)
3 T. lemon juice
1/2 c. sesame seeds
1 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, cut in half
spices to taste (Jake likes to add a few of the following: cumin, crushed red pepper, tabasco sauce, olives and olive oil; some people enjoy celery salt or worchesire sauce)
Blend seeds, garlic and reserved liquid in blender.
Add everything else and blend again.
Add beans and blend until smooth.
My guys perfer saltines or tortilla chips for dipping!
Also, sesame seeds are expensive unless you buy them in bulk at a health food store. You can also replace the seeds with tahini (sesame seed butter) but we're not cool enough for that.
Imagination Cracker
My husband and my little boy both love hummus. If you aren't familiar with it, hummus is a spread made from chickpeas blended with other things like sesame seeds and garlic. They love it. Little J will also just eat the chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans) straight from the can. Today he was doing just that for lunch when he decided that he would rather have hummus. So I made a little batch for him and he said it wasn't very good (I don't make it as well as daddy, but in my defense, we were out of sesame seeds). He ate some other things and then requested some pudding that we had mixed up to eat tonight. I put the hummus in the fridge and gave him a little bowl of pudding. He later asked for the hummus again, which by the way, looked JUST like vanilla pudding. I thought I would remind him that in this particular bowl, it was hummus, NOT pudding.
Then he picked up a saltine and said, "with this imagination cracker I'll turn it into imagination pudding! Mmmm!"
Big Snow
I want to play in the big snow- Jonah 
Jake shoveling our stairs. We lost track of how many times he had to
dig himself in and out of the driveway!
We don't need sand to use our sand toys!