December 9-16

I noticed something this week: Olivia reads books right side up.  She's reached a point where she will look at the pictures in her books without requiring me to be reading them to her.  It used to not matter which way the book faced, but she has recently (or perhaps not so recently, and I just noticed now) begun turning her books so that the pictures are appropriately oriented.  Along similar lines, when she puts her flash cards away in their bucket, she often takes care to position them with the picture facing her in whichever way she has deemed to be upright (the seal, for instance, is always upside down; it makes sense if you look at it).

My sewing machine is dying a slow and painful death.  It will be sewing along just fine and then all of a sudden... not.  The top thread is loose on the underside of the material.  Changing the tension doesn't help.  The best I can do is rethread both needle and bobbin and hope it fixes itself.  :(

I read once that taste buds change over the course of about 7 years.  This study is obviously not done on toddlers.  Olivia no longer has any interest in pickles, Cheerios are only so-so, cottage cheese is not only edible but delicious, and this whole week she chose lentil soup over pears and plums.  Lentil soup.  Full of veggies.  Over a fruit puree.  Two months ago we had to trick vegetable purees into her mouth and she'd spit out any whole veggies she could.  This week, though, it was lentil soup all the way.  I'm hoping this lasts until the end of Advent, as I have a couple more lentil dishes planned still.

And speaking of Advent meals, I decided to try something this year.  We are attempting to go all of Advent without repeating a single meal.  I've been wanting to try some new vegetarian recipes anyway, so this works out well.  In fact, when I sat down and wrote out my MONTH-LONG MENU (!!!), I didn't even get to put some of our more common vegetarian meals on it.  I listed them down the side in case we needed to turn to an old standby.  We did have hot tuna casserole already (for my birthday, of course) and this week did spaghetti for when Bryan's guys came over for man night, so that's two easy meals down.  But we've also tried three new recipes and look strong going into the second half of the month.  :)

Jacob's gift arrived in the mail on Wednesday.  It came all the way from China but did not have any Chinese stamps on the package.  :(  It DID, however, have the little customs slip that has to be filled out when things are shipped overseas.  I saved that to give to Jacob.  I'm also posting a picture here so you can see it.  I'd be worried about Jacob finding out what his gift is, but I think the only accurate information on the whole thing is our address.  Sorry, Jacob, you are not getting a 0.01 kg household lamp from us.


I introduced Olivia to the wonders of sitting on the heating grate and now she sits on it all the time (even when it's not blowing warm air).  It reminds me of when we used to sit on the radiators in the Zion house.  There are two downsides to her new perch: one, it has holes, so sometimes she drops things in it.  It does come up, but only if we move the television, so retrieving things is a bit of a pain.  Two, I can no longer stand over the grate because Olivia is busy sitting on it.  Luckily for me, we have other grates.  :)

One of the churches we attend semi-regularly (the Orthodox one we go to when we stay with Bryan's parents) is having a cookie walk on Saturday.  I decided to contribute some spritz cookies.  I used one of my half days off to get the kitchen to myself while Bryan and Olivia had a daddy-daughter day out.  This was necessary so that Olivia didn't eat all my batter before it became cookies.  ...Or all my cookies after they became cookies.  Anyway.  In the course of making 22 dozen cookies (that's one batch of chocolate and one of vanilla), I learned some things about spritz cookies.  Someone remind me that this list exists next December when I do this again.
-Cooking spray is NOT your friend.  I always figure it can't hurt to spray the pan.  With spritz cookies, it turns out that it CAN hurt.  If the cookies don't stick a little bit, they don't come cleanly off the press.  There's enough butter in the batter to ensure that they don't stick after baking.
-The square is impossible.  I tried and failed at about 5 cookies before giving up on the square shape and moving on to other choices.
-The ugly three-pointed shape is the easiest.  It's ugly, but works well and comes off cleanly almost every time.
-The ugly three-pointed shape is significantly less ugly in green.  I decided to make some green Christmas trees with the end of my vanilla batter.  After I got tired of fighting with the trees, I used the ugly shape to finish.  I had to fight with that one, too, but in green they look kind of like holly leaves, so they're not so ugly.
-Food coloring is exciting, but does strange things to the batter.  I don't think the 4 green drops I used should have changed the consistency of the batter, but suddenly the cookies no longer came off the press without a LOT of coaxing.  Even the ugly ones.
-Vanilla works better than chocolate.  It's also tastier.  At least this year.
-The press works better if you get most of the air bubbles out of the batter.  That's probably why the chocolate recipe suggests rolling the batter into a log before putting it in the press.  I shoved it in with a spoon, which worked just fine (especially when I started leaving the presser part most of the way down to start and slowly using batter to force it back up the tube), but I did feel a little like the boys in October Sky as they try to add rocket fuel without introducing air pockets.  Unfortunately, I can't find a youtube clip that shows that part of the movie.

More pictures:
My sewing machine problem.  Upper thread is red, bobbin thread is gray.  I changed nothing between sewing these two lines:

Look!  Fuzzy Chinese writing!  It's not fuzzy in person, but my phone camera isn't great.

Bryan was especially proud of his wrapping job on this present for me.  I'll never guess what it is:

Those aren't boots, they're slipper socks.  I put them on over her shoes to keep her legs warm during our walk to the store.