Poor Cinderbaby had to sleep in the ashes.

So in Fiona news, she’s started counting things, “one, two, two, two, two….”

She’s currently practicing for her future career as a drummer.

All she really wants to eat are Trader Joe’s Chicken Drummets.  And some frozen fruit.

She was running around the house wearing her new hat on her head with an oven mitt on her foot and carrying Elmo, her best friend.

After that Elmo used the mitt in a bed on the kitchen floor.

Fiona and I have had a bad cold for the past few days and so we’ve been mostly lying low.  She did go to her friend Thomas’ house to play for awhile Friday morning.  She didn’t like the sand box, but she liked playing with his blocks and the cat.

She and I went to look at some apartments that afternoon, and I’ll be checking some more out today and tomorrow.

Also, there is a contest to win cloth diapers here.  I’m entering because we don’t have enough covers right now!

I just sewed up a sweater I knit 4 years ago, part of my attempt to finish projects before we move!

I’ve been on a baking kick lately, for some reason (no idea why this would strike when the weather is in the 90’s!) mostly from this book, which is pretty amazing.  So far we’ve had several batches of the basic white bread, pizza on the olive oil dough, Challah and sweet rolls, several kinds of wheat, a white/rye blend and garlic potato.  Right now I have more basic white, potato and another wheat in the fridge and just took this out of the oven.

It goes really well with the other thing we’ve made recently, strawberry jam.

I went and picked the berries a few weeks ago while Liam and Fiona were sleeping and Liam and I made the first batch of jam that night.  We did the recipe from the box of pectin and it turned out great.  We don’t have any canning equipment, so we made the jam in the big stock pot, then washed it out to use to boil the jars.  The next night I made a batch from the recipe in this book on my own.  I feel like it didn’t turn out quite as well.  It’s a no-pectin recipe and I had to boil it for ages and it still didn’t quite set.  Also, I only got 3 jars full.  Still, it’s all delicious.

Last night I put together a starter for Amish Friendship bread.  We’ll see how it turns out next week.

We’ve been so busy lately!  Fiona and I went berry picking on Wednesday, but I didn’t think to bring the camera.  She really loved it, though.  She ate almost as fast as I could pick!  I went alone to pick strawberries on Sunday and we now have 11 jars of fresh jam.

We painted last week, and again today.  Here was Fiona’s masterpiece.

Unfortunately, it was lost in the bath.

And here’s one of her playing dress-up with my hat and gloves.

And in her new outfit from Grandma Lacey

And one of the two of us in MQT.

Other than that, lots of park visists, bread baking and book reading as we try not to overheat!

Bear, stick (for sticker), stuck, duck, quack, meow (which comes out meeeeeoooooowww whenever we see a cat), milk, juice, yum-yum, why (for water), hug.

She proto-counts going “one, one, one” as she sorts toys.
The cutest is when she says “thank you mommy”

Fiona is gaining more words everyday now, so I thought I’d record a few before I forget.

Her first word was hi! which she started saying around her first birthday. That was followed by hot, ball, cheese, apple, and woof. She’s recently started stringing two words together, although I think the first time she did this was actually with “there she is!” which she would say when revealing anything during a game of peek-a-boo. And which, of course sounded more like “dare eis” but had the right intonation. Her next phrase was “thank you” which she uses all the time, when you hand her something, she hands you something, or she wants something you have.

Other real words now include bye, kitty, doggie, meow, yay, wow, whee!, uh-oh, where did she go? and hat. She also has a few in Fiona speak, like “ba” which means “I need a new diaper or will in a few minutes”, “be” which may mean button or banana, depending on the situation. She also signs for eat, more, cheese (sometimes in that order), bird, and nap/sleep.

And we’ll end with a picture of Fiona eating an apricot. Just because.

On Monday I kicked Liam and Fiona out of the house for a while so I could do some cleaning. I set up all Fiona’s musical instruments in one corner and she’s been playing with them every day since. We had some nap issues this afternoon and in the middle she took a break for a quick jam session.

This was the only photo I could get before she came running for the camera. So sleepy!

And she did take a nice long nap in the end.

No wonder Fiona’s been so fussy lately.  She’s getting 3 molars!