Tastes like Chicken

Upon her first taste of halibut tonight, Avery said "It's got a little chicken in it."  Ha!

Silly Girl

I recently downloaded pix from the camera and came across this series of photos that Jon must have taken one morning when Avery woke up.  She's a funny one.  She really does have a great sense of humor which is so fun to watch develop.

The Many Uses of Rice

One of my favorite things to buy at Trader Joe's is their frozen brown rice.  It take 3 minutes to have hot, tasty rice on the plate.  Avery has found another use for it.  She likes frozen rice much more than frozen peas for the treatment of everyday bumps and bruises.  We don't have ice in our freezer usually, so she has chosen the next best thing.

3 to 2

My friend at work and I have a friendly, although competitive food rivalry going on.  We each bake something in a specific realm and the NICU staff vote on whose is best.  I will say, I am leading, 3 (pumpkin cake, cheesecake, flourless chocolate cake) to 2 (peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies).  Jessica has recently gone "gluten-free" and so rather than make scones for our competition as planned, we decided upon flourless chocolate cake.  I found a recipe on foodnetwork.com, one of my go-to websites, for  Tyler Florence's Chocolate Cracked Earth.  

Katie gave me the idea of making a pretty design with powdered sugar and cocoa powder.  I tried different ideas one some mini-cakes I made, but none looked too good.  Jon had the idea of putting the CHLA logo on the cake, since I was making it for people at work.  He found the logo online, exacto-knifed out the design and held it for me while I sprinkled on the sugar.  I won, thank you Tyler.  I also made a raspberry sauce which I think seriously contributed to my win, thank you Ina.

When I arrived at work and opened the mini-fridge to insert my cake, I saw Jessica's cake and I was sure I was sunk.  She had this wonderful ganache on her cake, this may have been her downfall, some said it was too rich. I think there is no such thing as too rich when it comes to chocolate and I loved her cake. I thought it was super delicious.  I did not win by a landslide, it was a close one.  

I look forward to our next workplace dessert war, I mean friendly competition :).

Transferring

My sister has been reading up about Montessori principles and informing me of things I can do for Avery to learn about her senses.  This particular activity has to do with sound and touch.  Transferring dried beans between 2 different vessels.  She insisted that Lucia loves it and could do it for hours.  Avery quite enjoyed this activity too, just like her sweet cousin.  Now if I could just keep her from trying to feed the dried beans to Quincy, who by the way, she calls "Renty" nowadays.

Dance Parties

Avery loves to have dance parties lately.  She shows us the moves she learns at school.  She insists that we both join in.  I am actively looking for an actual dance class for her, so she can be a better dancer than either of her parents are.  Here are 2 pics of her and daddy dancing away.  

Beware the Silence

One recent day when I worked, Jon emailed me these pictures saying this is what happened when after some time of silence I went to see what Avery was doing.  She got these stamp pens over the holidays and decided to paint those little feet.  She thought it was pretty funny.