I’ve decided those are the 2 most important words regarding birthdays.  I know there are some of you out there who still wallow in the delusion that birthday cake is some decadent gift from god, but you people clearly haven’t had these cookies.  See the recipe below?  That’s what I’m talking about.  Alton Brown (the geeks’ cook) took the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe and modified it three times for three variations, including this one known as “chewy”.  Tessa took this and modified it slightly by adding pecans (on my request), and dark chocolate chunks instead of chips.  These things are heavenly.  But at 5 Weight Watcher’s PointsPlus points each, they are also evil.  For comparison, there is more enjoyment in each one of these cookies than can be found in an entire birthday cake.  And an entire birthday cake has far many more points with the enjoyment spread over many days.  I am a strong believer in moderation with food, so if you are going to eat something that’s technically bad for your body in fairly small amounts, it’s best best get the most out of every bite.  With that said, I reiterate, F|_|(|{ Cake.  Long live birthday cookies.

Lex went to a bowling birthday party today. He was VERY excited! For the bowling and the cake :) I stuck around, at his request, and it was fun. The kids were great and it was nice to get to know his classmates a bit.

Nice form, eh?

The birthday boy had fun at the bowling alley!

As usual, the arcade was a big hit.

I made Eve stay home. She was angry, but Alan did a good job of entertaining her. A little reading, a little Starfall, a little nap, a little gaming... fun with daddy.

My friend came over yesterday and taught me a few things about photography. About aperture and stuff. I’ve been playing with my camera and making adjustments trying to improve my photo taking skills. Someday I’ll be more scientific about it, but for now it’s just point, shoot, and hope! :) Here’s what we’ve been up to lately.

Like my new banner? I read a great tutorial from Sarah at Clover Lane. She’s so smart! I’ll be on the lookout now for free background paper for future headers :)

Now if only Picasa had guidelines so I could line my pictures up! As a past Photoshop guru, the imprecision of Picasa drives me nuts!

We had a really nice day today. Alan went back to work, but Lex had the day off. Rosy left, Amanda came to work, but the kids and I just chilled. I turned down invites places and canceled company plans and I think it’s exactly what they needed. We spent a lot of the day doing this:

Eve won Sorry (I think this was actually yesterday... I lose track!).

Apparently Lex won Double Sorry, but I didn’t get a picture of that.

Lex built the solar boat today.

They spent A LOT of time with these trains today. By the end of the day they were playing together nicely, like they were actually friends. Like they should! It reinforced my plan-canceling day.

Lex's homework this week was to make a "Family snowman." He came home with paper plates and needs to return with a snowman. I think the "family" part meant we all got to help. Eve and I let Lex lead the way and we all worked together.

Overall a very nice day. One that ended with two happy kids in bed and asleep by 7:30pm! Now let’s all hope that everyone goes to school tomorrow, happily. I hear rumors of a snow day though…

Friends are good, right?  You want kids to have friends, right?  They are supposed to drive you crazy, right?  Right?!

My kids are driving me crazy these days with behaviors I can track directly back to their friends. Eve has been full of the baby talk lately. Baby talk, baby behavior, baby, baby, baby. My “baby my baby” plan works sometimes, but more often I find myself annoyed and asking her to please, please use her big girl voice. We had a playdate last week with one friend and I realized that the baby talk Eve now uses is exactly the same as how her friend talks, and how her friend’s mom talks to them both. Ugh. This week we had a playdate with two kids from her class and I noticed that they both use baby talk. I guess maybe I’m just spoiled at how verbally advanced she is. Perhaps most three year olds do still talk with baby talk. Ugh. I really like when she uses real words. Really!

Our neighbor came over the other day.The three of them played for about an hour and at the end both of my kids were making fart jokes and calling each other “big fat poop heads.” Lovely conversation. We now have a “potty talk belongs in the bathroom” rule. I guess kids will learn such stuff, but it bugs me when I can so easily track it back to their friends. Maybe that’s a good thing though, maybe it would be worse if I didn’t know their friends and had no idea where the behavior was coming from.

Lex came home with a note yesterday on his sheet. He was really upset and kept telling me he was very angry about it. Apparently he was calling other kids names. “Big fat…” is what the note said. His teacher had him apologize to the other kids and she said it took him a lot of effort to do so, but afterwards he was fine for the rest of the day. I’m not sure if Lex was angry at his teacher for the note or at himself for the behavior. Either way, I don’t think he’ll do it again. I was secretly happy it happened because I’ve been asking the kids all week to stop with the name calling, but they don’t care. Clearly I need a better strategy, or a teacher to back me up! It was nice for him to get a chance to understand why I’ve been asking them to stop and to see that other people also have a problem with the behavior.

A friend yesterday was telling me that she’s working with teenagers who are homeschooled and she said they are super well behaved and studious and polite and and and…  It made me wonder if exposure to bad behavior, like exposure to the chicken pox, is best had when the child is young and still moldable by a loving parent.  Or is it better to wait until a child is older and potentially able to make more mature decisions…  Love and Logic says it’s best to help kids develop those critical decision making skills (like don’t call classmates poop heads) when they are young and the consequences are still small.  My mom says “small people, small problems.  big people, big problems.”  I guess I’d rather have them learn these behaviors, and their consequences, now when they are young.  I’m hoping it will result in polite, well behaved teenagers.  I can hope, right?!