decadent

We had another fabulous day today that started about 4:55 am. Baby's alarm clock has been going off earlier since we moved her to the big girl bed. Bless her heart. I tried keeping her up a little later tonight, but that just didn't fly at all. She kept saying, "Mommy, (insert her name) tired." I kept trying to change the subject and talk about more exciting things and she'd raise her voice and say, "Mommy, I sleepy!" "Bed!" I ended up keeping her up about 20 minutes later tonight and she was pitiful by the time I put her down - she cried, which she rarely does, off and on for about 30 minutes until she finally went to sleep. I'd almost rather just let her get up early because it just seems tacky to make her stay up when she's ready to go to bed. We'll see in the morning if this torture made any difference, but I'm not holding my breath.

The last month or so I've changed her nighttime routine to include saying the Lord's Prayer. For about the last week she's been saying the last couple of words of every phrase with me. Today in church she said just about the whole thing when we prayed it as a congregation. I was so excited I wanted to jump up and down and run the aisles, but seeing as how that's not a tradition in my church, I just quietly beamed from my pew.

At the end of about 97% of the services we end with the same song. It's upbeat and I'd never heard of it before we started going to this church (which really is saying a lot - I know a lot of hymns!). Anyway, out of the blue today she started singing with us... and sometimes matching pitch! I can hardly wait for her to sing with me. She sings with me some now ("Sing" is her favorite - circa Carpenters), but she's getting better at matching pitch if it's a whole note.

After church we hit the grocery store for some staples and then we went out for lunch. I took a gift card that we'd received for VD. I'm back on the Weight Watchers wagon, so I knew ahead of time what I could get -- and it was really good. At first I didn't think that Baby was going to eat, but she scarfed most of it down. This girl could eat her weight in oranges if you'd let her. Anyway, when it came time to pay I put the gift card down and the lady came back later to say that it was empty. I laughed and told her it had been a gift from my mother-in-law. She thought it was funny, too. Baby laughed, but that's only because she likes to laugh when everybody else does.

So our adventure after nap was baking a practice batch of oreo chocolate cake. I like to cook, but I'm not a baker. I don't do sweets. This is a recipe that Sister sent me - it's complete chocolate goodness. And the icing , oh the icing, homemade icing, had crunched up chocolate in it, too. This is the first time I've ever used confectioner's sugar in my life, and I liked it. I've got a half dozen cupcakes iced in the fridge to take to work tomorrow to see if they're worthy for a birthday #2 celebration. The rest of it has been frozen. If it's approved by my distinguished panel of coworker judges then I'll have one of the four birthday party celebrations done.

I took the obligatory pictures of Baby licking the beater, placing cookies in the baking cups, and using the wooden rolling pin. She really wasn't as into the whole cookie/chocolate/icing/sweet thing as I thought she would be. After supper tonight I tried to ask her if she wanted to try some of her cake and she was certain that she didn't. She wanted a popsicle, specifically a green one. She settled for red and I'm thinking that I should have more of those when we have our parties because she's more likely to want those. At about 30 calories a pop compared to all of the chocolatey goodness in the cupcakes, I'd much rather let her have a green one.