Monday brought me a feverish, snuggly baby, much like two weeks ago.

I wore him as he slept and cuddled and cuddled and slept.

I didn’t much feel like getting anything done, either.

For most of the day we walked around the [quiet] house sipping tea, looking out the windows, passing time.

Passing [quiet] time.

[Part of You Capture: Quiet hosted by Beth of I Should be Folding Laundry]

My lips may or may not have uttered a swearword (my lips, not me, of course) when I picked it up off the floor. It slipped through my hands and in an effort to catch it I sent it flying in a trajectory far more damaging than if I’d just let it fall.

Stupid.stupid.stupid.

$150 worth of stupid. What do you do when your baby is napping, you’ve just broke an expensive appliance and you don’t want to break it (bah-dum-ch) to the Hubs? Why, you make cookies, of course. Cookies cover a multitude of sins (and accidents). But these couldn’t just be cookies. These had to be $150 worth of awesomeness in a cookie. Then I would at least break even on the day.

The occasion called for Craisin & White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies.

Why these cookies? Well, among other impulse buys, our trip to Costco last weekend resulted in me being the proud owner of a 3lb bag of Ocean Spray Craisins. No, seriously. A 48 ounce bag of dried cranberries now sits on my counter because there’s not room enough for it in my cupboard.

I noticed this recipe on the back of the bag when I was loading it onto a dolly and rolling it into the house. I’ve wanted to make them ever since.

{not pictured: 2 eggs}

Below you will see that the recipe calls for old fashioned oats and I have shown here ‘quick oats’. I know they are not the same thing, but being that I  already stock this kind of oats for our fabtabulous no-bake cookies, I figured I’d give it a go with what we have on-hand. Spoiler alert: they worked just fine! (PS: O My Ginormity that’s a big bag of craisins.)

I softened melted (whoops!) the butter and added it to the brown sugar. Can you believe that I don’t even on an electric hand-mixer? I know! Everything I have mixed or whipped since being married has been by hand (you can contact me via email for the address to which you can send my trophies. Thanks).

{This is a pastry dough whisk. A non-electric-mixer owner’s best friend.}

After the butter and sugar are well blended and you have eaten some of it, add 2 eggs to the mix.

In a separate bowl, blend together the dry ingredients (flour, oats, salt, baking soda).

You probably know where this is going, right? We’ve got the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients all mixed with their like kind… time to break down the walls and put them all in one bowl.

{Yes, my whisk has Mickey Mouse on it and yes it is from Disney World. Also? No, those are not dirty dishes in my sink. Nope. My house is always spotless.}

The recipe says to do the opposite, but I added the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mostly because I had already put the wet ingredients in the bigger of my bowls. I just put 1/3 of the mixture in at a time and it was just fine.

Also, did I mention that I have 48 ounces of Craisins? This recipe calls for “1 6-ounce package” of them. Ha! 6? I have 8 sets of 6 ounces! My Costco membership and I laugh in the face of 6 ounces!

Just in case you, too, find yourself with a surplus of Craisins, I measured it out and 6 ounces is about 1 and 1/4 cups.

Add the craisins and white chocolate chips (or chunks) to the dough. I didn’t realize how much of a rule breaker I am, but even though the recipe calls for 2/3 cup white chocolate chips, I used a whole cup.

I do not regret this decision.

{Immediately after taking this picture, Mickey threw in the towel and I went with a folding motion using a spatula. This was much more effective. No offense, Mickey.}

At this point I was eating dough by the spoonful spooning the dough onto a baking sheet when OBaby woke up. I ran the plan by him and he said he was totes up for helping Mommy finish the cookies.

He is such a good thumb sucker helper.

I finished spooning the cookie dough into rows on a cookie sheet (which, I am totally OCD about, by the way. Note the ‘cookie used to be here’ smudges on the sheet where the cookie dough was before I adjusted the rows and spacing to be perfect.). I always use our cookie dough scoop for tasks like these. Picture perfect dough portions every time. You can meet him in this post.

Just pop these beauts in the oven for 10min at 375 degrees and consider your sins atoned for or something like that.

A last adjustment to the recipe: It says it makes 2.5 dozen, and despite the fact that I ate a lot of dough but I found it made exactly 3 dozen (probably related to the extra perfect amount of white chocolate chips I used).

If DanO asks, though, there were only ever 2.5 dozen. I swear. (Those first 6 are our little secret, m’kay?)

~~~~~~

Craisin & White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

INGREDIENTS:

2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 6-ounce package Ocean Spray® Craisins® Original Dried Cranberries
2/3 cup white chocolate chunks or chips

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Using an electric mixer, beat butter or margarine and sugar together in a medium mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs, mixing well. Combine oats, flour, baking soda and salt in a separate mixing bowl. Add to butter mixture in several additions, mixing well after each addition. Stir in dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on wire rack.

Makes approximately 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

{See, you completely forgot about the broken monitor, didn’t you? Cookies. Works every time.}

Good grief my kid is into everything. Well, I mean, I’m sure it could be worse but I feel like there is already a lot of adventure packed into OBaby’s little 15 and a half pound body. And I don’t mean adventure like the time he gagged on his hand and threw up all over our table at the neighborhood Italian place we had walked to for dinner last night…

although that was an adventure.

[Related: You would think I would have learned that there is no such thing as a quick, predictable trip out with a baby that doesn't warrant the bringing of the diaper bag. You.would.think.]

I’m talking about the adventure that I didn’t even know was already laying around my house. I just had to lay down on my stomach in the living room to notice it. Dog food bowls, for example. Endless entertainment. Springy door stops have been known to provide mommy with a chance to pour and scarf down a bowl of cereal, too.

But you know what else is adventurous on an epic level? Dust sweepers that Mommy has run under the various pieces of furniture then leaned up in the corner momentarily.

Did I say adventurous? I meant dirty. And gross. And something that no good mother would ever willingly let their child play with so that she could finish vacuuming the area rug (irony for the win!).

What’s that? A clump of dust on the back of my baby’s head? Hey. I’ll take dust bunnies over diaper cream any day. Or at least for now.

~~~~~~

A little post-post shout out to my dear friend Janell who got engaged this weekend. I am so darn excited for her!

Love you, friend!

{She’s on the far left here, a picture taken outside Wicked in Chicago during my bachelorette party circa 2007.}

Just a typical Sunday before church: my boys, checking what the best deals are at the local hardware store.

…Maybe we need some more sheet rock?

…O look! Insulation is 20% off.

…We could always use more calking.

As they say: like father, like son.

Although I have no idea where he got the pesky paper eating habit.

Daddy’s home.

I think it’s one of the Mommy universals: feeling kind of slighted by the fact that the child you spent your entire day feeding, entertaining, and cleaning up after is far happier to see someone else than he is to see you.

But secretly? Simultaneously? Nothing makes you happier than to see the man you will spend your entire life beside bringing such joy to your child’s face.

Daddies are so special.

I am head over heels in love with this picture. It’s mostly out of focus and I’m not sure what caused the apparent background haze, but I El Oh Vee Eeh love it. It is the very essence of last week.

I’m pretty sure you could search for the term “poor baby” on here and you would get 87 quadrillion hits from last weeks posts, but I’d like to add one more for good measure. My poor baby was sicker than sick last week. First he was stuffed up, then there was the crazy loud cough for such a little man, add on a fever that made him lethargic, and finally the week climaxed with a barf-all-over-Mommy event that ended with being diagnosed with TWO infected ears (not three, but almost).

OBaby was a mess, a stuffy, hacky, fevery, vomity mess, and all he wanted to do was cuddle. (As DanO said, “He’s got a fever, and the only prescription is more cuddles.”) I wore him around more than 2/3 of his waking hours (and most of his sleeping ones as well) for Monday through Thursday.

It was pure joy.

I mean, not in the sense that he was sick, my poor baby, but in the sense that all he wanted was Mama. So badly he wanted Mama, and my heart. O, my heart! A few times I put him on in the Moby wrap, grabbed my book, and rocked in the chair in his room as he napped. It was another one of those moments that I wish I could bottle up for later.

The way his head flopped onto my chest and was so happy to stay there. The copious amounts of kisses that I planted right on that sweet head of his because it was there in front of me, asking to be kissed. When he would pop up to look around but was happy to stay right there with me (instead of being his normal, squirmy self).

So yesterday, as OBaby was up, crawling his way around the house at an alarming rate, I mourned a little. For a week he was happiest to do nothing but hear my heartbeat with his ear on my chest. It was kind of like old times.

Now, though? Now he has discovered the corner of the dining room where we keep the dog’s bowls and last week is just a memory.

I think it’s time we had a little talk.

You see, I have been enjoying having this space to share with you all so much. It is the highlight of my day sometimes, to share this mothering adventure with you beautiful people.

DanO and I both invest a lot into this blog because it is a passion of ours. The prettiness you see here is all our brain child made possible by his graphic design and programming skills. Many nights (including last night) we put OBaby down to sleep and then come out and dink around on here together making little changes. Last night we added that fancy “contact” form up top so that you can reach me with the click of a button.

Isn’t that awesome?! I especially love that less than an hour after it went live, I received messages from there. It warmed my heart. I hope you will feel free to use it. I also hope you will be patient with me as I learn to juggle responding. My email is in desperate need of a Spring cleaning, but I assure you, I read everything.

But that is not what this meeting is about. This meeting is about the A word.

Advertising.

I have been mulling over this decision for months, literally months and months. From time to time I get an inquiry from a company that says “Hi! We’d love to advertise with you! What are your rates?” and I have to respond kindly with a “uuuuuuhm, drrrrrr, I dunno…” which is quite professional and always well received. This has, not surprisingly, lead to zero advertising on this here blog.

But! Some of these companies are great! Actually, A LOT of them are great! I get all excited about helping them reach you guys and telling you about their products, and then nothing ever comes of it because I don’t have any sort of formal advertising plan.

So I made one.

This does not mean that I blog for money. Please, you know I do not blog for the money. I blog for OBaby. I blog for these memories and these fleeting moments. I blog to connect with you, and with you. I blog because you might need to know that that lady on the interwebs freaks out and leaves her house in the middle of the night sometimes too. THAT is why I blog and no button anywhere on this page or money made through sponsorship will change that.

Promise.

I am so glad we had this heart to heart. I hope that you know my intentions here have not changed. I also hope that you know that the companies I plan on advertising with will be ones that I truly want to share with you. I only post about things that excite me and that I think are worth sharing, so it is only fitting that my sponsorship philosophy would be the same. Right?

You guys are the best. I knew you would understand.

Love,

AllisonO

Obaby and I start our day by reading a Bible story. We love the  Jesus Storybook Bible that we were given by sweet cousins and their two baby boys this summer. The book’s subtitle is “Every story whispers His name”, because the author, Sally Lloyd-Jones, uses each story to reveal the preparations God was making for the Salvation of His people. The stories and illustrations are beautiful.

Most mornings, OBaby wakes up next to me in bed, I nurse him, and we cuddle up to The Good Book. Weekends are extra special because Daddy gets to read the story. It has been so wonderful to have this time each morning. It’s hard to feel like the things I am doing right now as a mother will have a clear impact on who my son will be as a person (sometimes, I hope they won’t, you know what I mean?) but I am proud of this habit we are starting.

Last week I was reading to OBaby about Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. He was so moved by the Israelites’ trust in God’s promises (at least that’s what I think it was) that he reached over and tugged on the page until he heard a rip…

and his mother’s gasp.

It was hard, in that moment, to not be bummed. I love this beautiful book, but as with all things that we own, it is meant to be used. Perhaps more than anything else we own, it is meant to be used.

So I looked at my son, I looked at the ripped page, and then back my son, and quietly I hoped that this would not the last time that his Bible pages show their use. A Bible falling apart is the sign of an owner who isn’t.

Just sayin’.

Baby led weaning is going spectacularly. We hit the one month mark of solids and our confidence started to waver that this way of feeding him was even going to work because he didn’t seem to actually be consuming much. He would gnaw a little and when a piece went in his mouth his facial expression the very definition of horrified. He would thrust his tongue out until the food was good and gone, landing back on the tray (you’re welcome).

We decided to stick with it, though and not even a week later OBaby’s eating skill was clearly making leaps and bounds of progress. The look of horror is mostly gone (unless it’s a new food) and he actually swallows every now and again (as evidenced by poop changes (you’re welcome)).

Our very favorite foods are banana, peaches, pears, avocado, egg, and toast. Well, those are our favorites because those are the staples right now. Everything that he’s tried 3 times or more has become a favorite, especially last week.

This way of feeding OBaby has been good for our whole family. Sure it’s more convenient than having to spoon feed him, but I am also being challenged to use the food he eats at least part of our meal (with the exception of egg so far). This makes me serve a salad with avocado on it, when I might have otherwise rushed to just plate up the entree. We’ve had pears and peaches with dinner more times this month than we have since he was born. I feel like being so intentional about his healthy eating habits has had a directly positive effect on ours.

Isn’t baby lead weaning great? I don’t serve my son processed foods, so I end up serving DanO and myself unprocessed foods, too. Goodness all around.

We’re doing a bit of a solid foods hiatus right now to let his throat heal, but we’ll be back at it when he’s back at it.

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