I got to see my daughter's ballet recital costume today.  She's going to be a mouse!  It is so adorable it's rediculous.  I love the fact that they aren't doing anything to grown-up looking for the pre-K age group.  We had to help them try the costumes on to make sure they fit, and I was that mom-- you know the one:  the schmoopy one holding up the entire class while snapping tons of pictures on her cell phone.  But it was worth it.
    
    When my 17-month-old wanted out of bed, I actually got her to say, "Up!" instead of just climbing me like a beanstalk.  That is quite the milestone for her.  The last thing she learned to say before that was "Help!", which she loved to yell while hanging off of our giant bed to get her father's attention in the mornings while he was getting ready.  It cracked me up that it was solely a bid for Daddy to look at her.  If I attempted to offer any assistance, she would shrug me away and look at me like I was sticking my nose where it didn't belong.  Somebody knows exactly what she wants!

    My husband was using the internet to learn card tricks to impress the older daughter.  He successfully performed several, including one that involved putting the cards on the kitchen floor, sprinkling salt on them, and then kicking them around.  It was a pretty cool trick and our daughter enjoyed it.  But then my husband leaned over and told me, "I think I got some salt on the floor."  Ya think?!?!?

    As for me, my sweet tooth has been the driving force in my life recently.  Today it caused me to innovate just a bit, seeing as how a snow storm prevented me from going anywhere to purchase ingredients, and I would like to share with you my discovery:  heavy whipping cream and NesQuik (with just a touch of vanilla extract)  make a mighty tasty facsimile of chocolate mousse.  Scoop some of that fluffiness on a fresh baked peanut butter cookie, top it with another, and it becomes a frakkin' delicious dessert sandwich!  Later, I thought about how I apparently had all the necessary ingredients to make homemade peanut butter cookies so maybe I didn't need to go off the deep end with my inner Julia Child... but isn't there a bit of madness behind all true genius?  Okay, so I'm reaching.  I just occasionally get the random need to create in the kitchen without a recipe.  It usually results in the kind of snacks or meals that you actually don't tell people that you ate-- just like you don't tell many people that you still eat FlufferNutters even though you are about two decades too old to consume things like that without embarrassment.  But, seriously, try the NesQuik mousse sometime.

And that was my day.  Stay classy, San Diego.

CL