I’m always finding new things I need to wash crayon off of: tables, dolls, windows, floors, and now the fridge. Wes was never into coloring, but she definitely likes it. In the video you can hear her call the letters on the magnet, “B.” That’s what she calls all letters now.

Wes locked himself and Carissa in his room. I convinced him to open the door, and I walked in and found…

Carissa is getting very good at jumping. Especially on beds.

Carissa is fascinated by cats. She says, “Kitteee!” when she sees one and wants to pet it. Our cats, though, are not kid friendly.

Carissa turned 18 months, but sometimes when I see a particular expression on her face I’m reminded of how she looked when she was first born.

Just got an air popper. Best investment ever.

Somebody got into the cookie jar.

Tonight Wes ate dinner like Carissa usually does, bib and all.

He is also mastering the skill of climbing.

Carissa is picking up on puzzles. She’s getting good at matching pictures and making the pieces fit.

I’m working on getting Carissa a passport. The specifications for a passport photo are very specific: normal head angle, neutral facial expression, clear image, white background, good lighting, etc. You can take the photo at home by yourself, but I thought it’d be easier to just take her to the store and have them both take and print the pictures on site. I took Wes in to this same store for his passport photo when he was about a year old, and it was easy.

This time, it was the opposite of easy.

The second we neared the photo department it was like Carissa smelled strange people (the two photo attendants) that were going to ask her to do strange things (like look at a camera and not cry), and she instantly made it clear that she wasn’t going to have any of it.

After a few minutes of me holding Carissa up to a white background and her crying profusely while the (male) photo attendant said over and over, “Can you calm her down?” I decided to call it quits. We went home and later in the afternoon I had John sit with her against one of our many white walls to photograph her myself.

It went much better. The passport website has a free tool that lets you resize your photo to the proper dimensions. I took it in to the store and they printed it for me.

Viola. And soon we can travel the world.

On Saturday I usually plan out my dinner menu for the upcoming week, and then I get groceries for it. If I’m organized, I try to compose my grocery list by section: produce, dairy, cans, frozen, etc. Then I walk around the store with my list and pen in hand, crossing off each item when I put it my cart.

This weekend I couldn’t make it to the grocery store until 10:30 pm Saturday night. I went through each section, starting with the dairy and working my way around the store. Finally I had just two more stations to visit: meat and produce.

My week’s menu revolved around chicken: a fauxtisserie chicken (whole chicken cooked in the crock pot) for Sunday night, then using the leftover chicken in a white chili the next night. Later in the week I was planning to make chicken tacos with homemade tortillas.

Chicken was very important.

So when I showed up to the meat department at quarter to 11 at night with a nearly full cart and discovered that the store was completely out of fresh whole chickens and chicken breast, I was pretty put out. I wandered around for a little bit, trying to work out some way to adjust the menu in my hand to work without chicken, but it just wasn’t happening.

I finally settled on a bag of frozen chicken breasts to use for the chicken tacos, an already cooked rotisserie chicken to use for the chili, and, at the very bottom corner of the freezer case, I discovered a row of Cornish hens that I decided to try instead of the Fauxtisserie chicken.

I’ve only cooked a whole chicken once, and you know how that turned out. I hoped I could pull off Cornish hens all right.

I pulled them from their wrapping (and I have to say, they are so cute!) and wiped them with a damp cloth. I mixed a couple tablespoons of soft butter with 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley, and a little dried rosemary and basil and then I smeared it over and inside the hens, trying to get it under the skin. I popped a little bit of chopped carrots and onions inside the cavity and rubbed the hens with a lot of salt and pepper. Then it cooked for a little over an hour at 350 degrees until the meat registered at over 170 degrees inside.

When it was time to eat John admitted he was nervous that the hen would be more like rooster, which he had too much of when he served a mission in Central America and didn’t care to ever taste again.

Which made me nervous, of course.

But, to my relief, the Cornish hen tasted exactly like a miniature chicken, all tender and garlicky and buttery and yummy.

Success.

This might not be the most flattering angle of the hens, but I had to document. (And, yes, I think I accidentally cooked the chicken upside down again.)

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This is Carissa eating her own dinner. No qualms about messiness.