Me: Hey look! Dad loves this Christmas song. It’s his favorite one.

J: I think what dad likes the most about this song is that lady!

Joseph came home with a recipe for apple cookies he printed out at school. He has been excited to bake for days. The recipe was two stapled and cut pieces of paper (he cut off the white parts of the page because they were blank). We guessed at the missing part of the recipe and he got started.

He read, measured and mixed everything himself. Then he recruited Maddie to get them on the cookie sheet: “You plop them and I’ll tell you if you need more dough, then I’ll shape them and space them. They have to be 2 inches apart.”

He thought they should bake for an hour but I suggested 10 minutes as a good starting point.

A long 10 minutes to wait…

One swift Tom Sawyer maneuver later and Maddie has begged to do the next batch herself while Joseph has retired to the family room to work on a puzzle.

And the final product! They sure taste healthy!

The proud baker.

Bakers.

Joseph thinks they are delicious.

Declared “World’s Best Cookie”

Faker! (She didn’t like the apples in them.)

But she can put on a delicious cookie face on command anyway.

Then things got silly.

I asked Joseph to recap one of the 2016 presidential debates:

Trump had water. Hillary didn’t have any. He kept drinking it.

I had orange juice mixed with ginger ale!

Trump said, “Wall.” That’s it. “Wall!” (No he didn’t, really?) Yeah and “Wrong!” When Hillary was talking. Just: “Wrong!” Hahaha.

Trump looked a bit dazed when he first came out there. (How did Hillary look?) She looked…nice. She was smiling a lot.

Joseph walked by with a pretty severe limp. I asked what was wrong. “My leg reaalllly hurts.” Why? “Oh, probably just too much muscle.” Yep, must be it. I showed him the photo.

So if you have 4 cookies across by 5, how many do you have? (blank stare) Think of four 5s…five and five is… “Ten!” And another five and five… “Ten…twenty!” Right…20…so if we do 5 pans, we’ll have… “Five twos…” Or two fives… “100 cookies!” 

“You tied a knot in my brain and my brain untied it!” 

Now if you make 4 tiny pans of 4 tiny cookies… “16!”

I made Peruvian chicken, with yellow rice and black beans on the side. The rice had turmeric, coriander and saffron in it (three flavors the kids aren’t used to), plus cumin and cinnamon, so I wasn’t sure how it would go over. I asked them if they liked it. 

“It’s really good, mom!” said Maddie. 

Joseph said, “It’s good! It tastes like a Christmas thrift shop!”

(Yum?)

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We welcomed new little sister, Annika Eileen, on May 19th. The kids spent a lot of time watching and feeling my growing belly (“baby movements time!” followed story time in the evenings) and imagining what it would be like when she arrived. 

When the day was finally here, Noah asked Joseph if he wanted to go to the hospital to see the baby. He said, “You mean see her–in real life?!” 

You’d be hard-pressed to find two prouder or more doting siblings than these two.