Forster all rolled up

I used an old Nutella jar.  Is there anything Nutella can't do?

A few weeks ago the awesome ladies at the cooking blog Our Best Bites did a post on homemade fruit roll ups.  I know what you're thinking - Reva follows a cooking blog??  Even though I hate cooking, these ladies do a great job of making it dumbed down enough that I can understand them.  That's kind of amazing.  So when I saw this post, I remembered that we had a pile of about-to-turn strawberries in the fridge that would be perfect for this.  And if I messed it up, they were destined for the garbage disposal any way.

And people, it worked!  To the point that it actually scares me - Forster can eat a roll in about 3 seconds and act like a drug addict begging for more.  Thankfully I know exactly went into them so it's a pretty guilt-free treat.  I don't sweeten them at all so they are just straight fruit.  I was telling a friend at church about how proud I was (even though it's only 2 steps, that's still a huge deal for me!) and she told me her mom used to make these out of applesauce.  Applesauce??  Forster is a apple addict!  So I made another batch with a banana and peach that were about to turn, and added enough applesauce to give it the right consistency.  Voila!

Last week my mom sent me a box of plums from her backyard in Colorado.  They were crazy delicious, but Forster wouldn't eat them, and Solei wasn't about to help me eat the entire box.  But I knew how to get them into their adorable bodies!  I pureed them up and Forster has been gobbling them up like a fiend.  I even let him have one for dinner.  Why not?

The reason I love this is because whenever I buy fruit, the kids will eat the first bits but there are always something left that goes bad because they're bored with it.  Problem solved!

Let's be honest, I mostly wrote up this post so I could spam it with pictures of Forster.  He's so much dang fun, I couldn't help myself.  When he's happy, it's crazy infectious.

So to spread just a but more of that joy, here are some videos I took of him yesterday (since I realized the last videos I'd posted that weren't for atreblemaker were 6 months ago!) .  The first is one of him reading one of his favorite books to you:



And this one is one of him watching a video of him and Solei from a year and a half ago.  It never fails to make us smile, and it never fails to put him into a giggling fit.  If you listen closely, you can hear him whining up a storm when I turn on the camera, but 2 seconds later when I turn the camera on him and he's watching the video, he's nothing but giggles.

Forster turned 2!

I just realized I'd forgotten to post anything about Forster's 2nd birthday!  He didn't know what was going on, but he seriously loves attention so he was in birthday heaven.

To start off, I decorated the living room to surprise him.  Solei even helped me blow up the balloons!

It's amazing how exciting a bunch of balloons can be.

Solei was as always a fantastic help.  Forster has begun to say her name and when he's lonely or excited, he calls out for her to join him.  It's fantastic!

Of course there was cake.

Then, that week for my Young Women's activity, Jared was at a stake priesthood meeting, so the girls came over and threw a party for him.  We put a mattress on the floor in the toy room, we cut the balloons down and covered the mattress and floor with them.  It was wonderful mayhem!

My counselor Jenna brought over her kids too, and Forster spent the rest of the night jumping off the couch onto them.  They were good sports about it :)

He is such an affectionate, lively little boy and we are so blessed to call him ours!

The end!

First day of school...yay?

We figure we should be good at this- 2 years ago she went to a daycare/preschool 2 days a  week.  Last year she went to a preschool 3 days a week.  So you'd think just adding one day to a grand total of 4 days a week for for 4 year old kindergarten wouldn't phase me.

Wrong.  I bawled my face off of course.  Who wouldn't miss her????

Forster was feeling a little down too.

A little tickling cleared that right up.

Cookie postcards

I got to participate in 2 performances Peter and the Wolf sponsored by our local library a few weeks back.  It was so well done and fun to play, that I was just thrilled to be invited to play with them.  Imagine my shock when I went to the library last week and they announced that as a thank you for playing, I was getting AN ENTIRE YEAR OF NO LIBRARY FINES!!!!!!!!  Which was welcome, since I had over 9 bucks in fines already that week :)  So I decided to keep one of the books that was super late and spend some more time with it.  Since it was FREE!

Check this out - cookie postcards!  You make some shortbread cookies - the recipe the book called for was alright, but I'm sure there are better ones out there.  This was:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 8 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup sugar

roll out a bit of dough...

Cut them into rectangles and place them on a greased cookie sheet.  Cook them at 325 for 10-15 minutes.  Let cool completely.

I made some wee cups with foil and put a few drops of food coloring in each.

Paint!

That says "I *heart* mom"!!

That was so easy WE could do it!

FHE = AOK

Boy howdy is it humid here!  So our family home evening this week took us to a really awesome bit of Wisconsin nature - Pewit's Nest

 Oooooooo!

 Sand!

Hot but happy, and homebound.

thwth!

Solei made her very own panpipe this morning!  She found it in the book, read the instructions, and made it all herself while I was distracted and trying to do the dishes.   I was shocked!!  I put up a post on ATreblemaker about it.  This girl never ceases to amaze me.

All about Forster

A few weeks ago Forster's speech therapist was asking me how many words he has in his vocabulary, and I could remember about 5, but during the course of the session I kept adding to the list.  She said that's fairly common - and a list will help us understand where he is now and give us some hope for all the work we're doing, so I'ma gonna make one.

If you are just tuning in, our dear boy is talking just below the state benchmark so we get therapists in here like we are some cool club.  They keep saying he's such a physical kid that he doesn't care about the verbal yet, so we have to try harder to get him to introduce new words into his diet.  It's very cool to have these nice therapy ladies come in and get charmed to pieces by Forster.  WE think he's pretty fabulous, but it's lovely to see him sharing the wealth :)  He really doesn't care very much about verbage, he spends his entire day trying to get people to jump, run, play and wrestle with him.  Solei, by the way, is much closer to the ground than Jared and I, so the poor thing usually has a hysterically giggling Forster jumping on top of her.  It's so dang funny that even she laughs about it.  Sometimes :)

I took this of him just as he jumped on me - notice how his face is saying "AAAAAAANNNNDDDDDD...  ATTACK!!!"  This is pretty much the look I see all day long.

So here's the word list I can think of.  I listed it phonetically because it's way cuter that way - and brownie points to anyone who can understand what these all mean!

Reh-ee... seeehhh.... GO!
nana
peaaaa-sh
Jesuh
bah-uhl or bah bah
up
dow
no
yeah or yeh-shshsh
oh-tay
bawl
awl duh
uh, tee-oo, fee, fohhr, fie, sih, seh-en, ey... (he loses count at this point and after he fumbles around for a few words trying to remember nine, he yells:) TEH!!!!
aynk oo
mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama
dada
oh no
why
oh mahh
no....s
mahw
eeee-r
jooos
coooo..l
hi
buh bye
chow chow (okay, that one is actually Portuguese, but he still uses it when he is with our Brasilian friends!)

(and these 2 are sound effects)
chooo choooo!
chirp chirp (Solei loves this one.  She tries to convince everyone he's actually a cricket)

There are plenty of things he'll say if you tell him to.  And when he parrots back "I love you" - you know he means it.  His hugs are the most honest, awesome hugs that were ever hugged.

Oh, and he has proven my theory that if you read Dr. Seuss' ABC book to a child ad nauseum, they'll learn the alphabet ahead of schedule.  Since he's not talking as soon as Solei was, I'd just assumed everything else would be at a slower pace (I know, I'm still a novice at this parenting thing).   I didn't realize anything had sunk in until we were at the library a while back and he started picking up the wood letter blocks and telling me the name of each one.  I started screaming and bawling.  The librarians know me, so it wasn't  huge surprise.

he will NOT stay still lately - the only way I could get a picture of him smiling was if I let him chew on one of Solei's barrettes!

He'll be 2 in just over a month!  We've got Solei who is full of sunshine, and Forster who is full of mirth.  You couldn't ask for a better pair!  We are seriously lucky... and so are you, if you come visit :)

We love to see the temple....

We hit the ATL this last week and had an amaaaaazing time.  One thing we got to do was head to the temple to take pictures of the kids like I did with Solei back in 2008.  This was Solei then...

And this is her now:

Here's one I snagged of a very tired Forster: