Crawling, Squash and Peeing Outside

Well, Erin is now crawling like a pro. It's slow at times, but she is definitely finding out the mysteries under the computer desk, how it smells inside Daddy's work boots and every clear scrap of cellophane that has been camouflaged in the corners of the living room. She has not ventured off the carpet yet. I guess hardwood floors are harder on the knees than we had previously thought. I caught her eating a 3x5 note card, so she is now paper free and swinging, with some Puffs in her tray.
Ian woke up with a tummy ache and a need for extra loving, so he got 1/2 of a Kid's Tums, a cup of juice and some pretzels and bundled up on the couch with Mommy's special fuzzy socks on. Don't worry. They are grey. And OLD. And the treads are almost worn off on the bottom and I've had them for years. But they are fuzzy inside and go up to his knees, so they are Magic Socks. Thank you very much.

Well, I was making supper last night, which is always interesting when you have two days to go before a grocery trip and you are on the last legs of the offerings in your freezer. So we ended up with fried chicken drumettes and the startings (can't say fixins, truthfully) of a squash casserole. My favorite squash casserole has the stove top stuffing in it, but I live with my darling husband, the chief eater of meals (besides me) who has been incurably burnt out on numerous things, including stuffing, through his culinarily traumatic childhood. Add to this list beanie weenies, meatloaf, sloppy joes, tuna casserole and anything else that could possibly have onions in it. We don't DO onions in this house, no ma'am. Not that I'm an onion lover, but I do like green onions in some stuff. Chris likes them sparingly, like if he sees them in the fridge, once a year.

Back to the squash casserole. I have the added bonus in my life of having the cookbooks of three separate churches. My home church from 10 years ago, my Gramma's church of 5 or so years ago and our church here, from a few years ago, but hey there is a rocking Women's group here and they ALL cook. Thus my never-to-be-traded pizza crust recipe. he he he. The reason why we will never order out again. Oh. Yeah.

I also have my own binder of a collection of recipes. And more on the computer that haven't been printed out and stuck in the binder. So I finally decided on the recipe for the squash casserole and cut up the squash and started cooking it. I figured I could substitute bread crumbs for Ritz crackers, a house staple since we have kids. I looked in the cupboard for the cream of chicken soup I always keep on hand and realized that I'd already used it for who knows what. So here I am, in the middle of cooking this recipe and I don't have a key ingredient. I decided to take a leap of faith (we leap a lot around here). I grabbed a can of cream corn and got out some sour cream. The sour cream was to mask some of the corniness and the cream corn was to preserve the texture (not because 'cream of chicken soup' and cream corn both have the word cream in it--give me a little credit here). So I made the thing and it was good.

Good enough, may I boast, that Chris ate it (badum ching). He said it he wouldn't mind having it again (though I'm sure he didn't mean for breakfast the next morning). That is the ultimate Pass/Fail in our house. This variation got a big thumbs up. Yeah, it was corny. And somewhat mushy. I should have added more cracker crumbs. But I DID have it for breakfast and I still give it a thumbs up.

I must add at this time that Ian is having fun being potty trained. He is enjoying the boy part of himself that has the freedom of peeing outside. Now, since he has shocked and traumatized poor Ms Geraldine, the old lady across the street, he is working on the other neighbors. Nothing satisfies him but to pull his pants and underoos down to his ankles and then pee for hours (it seems like hours to the embarrassed mother who is trying to teach him discretion (ha ha)). Everything is fascinating. The fact that you can make funny pictures, the fact that if you point it up it goes farther, etc. Groan! We'll hope he learns how to at least turn his back before he's 6.