I’m sick.  Boo hoo.

Eirinn has been grumpy and her nose has been leaking like a faucet for the past couple of days.  Teething right?  Did you know that teething has become a contagious ailment?  Apparently, what we thought might be teething turned out to be a nasty cold.  And Eirinn’s generous.  Oh, don’t touch her toys, but if you’re in the market for some disgusting sick germs, she’s got ‘em and she’ll share ‘em. 

So here I am, at home, miserable, and pregnant (read: unable to drug away my misery).  I’ll save you a rundown of my symptoms, but just believe me - I’m sick.  Boo hoo.

After weeks of eating completely healthy 100% of the timemostly healthy 85% of the time, something was bound to give.  I had turned myself into a regular Betty Crocker in months previous, after all, so a stick of pure butter, several cups of sugar, and a couple of egg yolks were bound to find their own way into a bowl, mix themselves together, fload their way into the oven and bake themselves into cookies.  And wouldn’t it be rude if I didn’t eat them all after they went to so much trouble?  I think it would be terribly ungrateful of me not to eat them all.

Ok, so no magic cookies, but after reading this, I felt compelled by the power of Jesus to whip up a batch of my World’s Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookies.  By the way, how much do you have to change a recipe before you can officially call them  your own?  ‘Cause I’ve done quite a bit of tweaking to this recipe and I feel rightful in calling them “my” cookies.  Especially when they are so darn delicious and irresistable.  Just ask Carly’s husband.

Carly called them Devil Cookies, which I completely disagree with.  Not only are they not Devil Cookies, but I think they were sent down by a higher power, in a gift basket, with a card signed “Enjoy - G.”  I’m just saying…they are that good.  In fact, I’ll be right back…

*burp*

In an attempt to escape doing puzzles for the entire morning on Saturday, Eirinn and I decided to make these together.  It went much better than I expected.  Nothing “accidentally” broke.  “No one” had a fit.  And I think she enjoyed herself.  Mostly she watched me while asking “You need this?” of every measuring spoon, mixing utensil, and ingredient.  She helped me pour in the chocolate chips, receiving a handful of chips as a reward.

  She was an excellent chocolate chip pourer.  She didn’t spill one.  Or at least she ate up her mess before I saw it.

  Then we waited the long, torturous 15 minutes of baking time.  That heavenly smell was enough to send Eirinn into madness.

  See?  This is what she was driven to do while we waited.  Soccer in oven mitts.  Not an act of a sane person.  Is anyone else mesmerized by the Doras on her pants?  They are hypnotizing me into eating more cookies…

  And the prize for waiting?  Yummy cookies.  Well, at least yummy, melty chocolate chips.  She ate the cookie part about two hours later.

This morning I was packing my snack suitcase (I have a lunch bag for snacks and a completely separate lunch bag for my actual lunch) and Eirinn saw me picking out mandarins.  Of course, Eirinn being Eirinn, asked for an “orange”, even though she knows and I know and she knows I know that she doesn’t like “oranges”.  Or mandarins.  But whatever.  I didn’t have time to explain that to her, so I just gave her one to play with.

First she threw it.  I told her it was not a ball.  She quickly turned this into a rule, shaking her finger, sing-songingly saying “Not a ball!”

Then she tried eating the rind.  Why her face didn’t screw up into a clenched little sphincter due to the bitter and the gross, I don’t know, but it didn’t.  So Anonymous Husband took it away from her.

When he left, I gave it back (don’t judge, I was busy and it was occupying her).  She then proceeded to throw the mandarin in the coincidentally perfectly mandarin-sized space between the fridge and the cupboard.

Seriously?  You really have to throw food in there?  There are starving kids in China. 

Couldn’t she be normal and throw crayons or shoes or rodents behind the fridge? 

To be fair, I can see the appeal - toddler in possession of forbidden fruit (literally), gap just big enough to fit fruit, busy mom not watching as closely as she should.  But, come on, let’s not waste the food.