Monday, December 04, 2006

Cookies, Gifts and Snot, Oh My

How did I do all the stuff I did for Christmas last year? Decorate the house, get a tree, bake cookies, entertain Kate, send gifts and not fall asleep at the dinner table? Oh, right: I had a baby, not a toddler. Kate is into everything, and it's putting a crimp in my desire to be Martha Stewart this Christmas.

I started out by signing up to bake cookies for the base Cookie Crunch, a cookie drive that collects homemade cookies to give to the airmen living on base over the holidays. Since I was already making a batch of cookies, I might as well just go balls out and make a double batch of Peppermint Chocolate Chip cookies, then whip up some dough for the candy cane cookies, find a recipe for yummy mint brownies, and make plans for oodles of sugar cookies. Right? Right. To add to this recipe for success, I thought, 'You know, we should have a little holiday gathering, play games, eat, drink and be merry.' Got to get the decorations all up before then, clean the house, make some food, buy some alcohol, rearrange the living room to accomodate people, blah blah blah. Am I stressed? No. Just waking up at 4am, wondering when I'm going to get all this stuff done.

And then there's the crib fiasco. Target. I love Target, but they are a Gigantic Corporation and thus have their problems. The one I learned about over the weekend: they don't have the crib I want in stock, none of the Tucson stores do, and no, they can't order one for me. What?! We went to Tar-jay yesterday to look at cribs, and to order one because I figured they wouldn't have one in stock. That's why I waited till now to get one. Because I thought they would ORDER one in for me. Something about central warehouse/delivery issues and no they cannot order one in, but I can surely call them every week to see if they got one in recently, right? OR, I could go online and order the damn thing on my own, which is what I did. So sorry, Target. Hopefully we'll get the crib delivered by the new year...

Saturday was football day; the last day of regular season play for college ball. We (really, I mean Tim - I ran around the house like a madwoman trying to make cookie dough, clean, etc) sat on the sofa and watched USC lose !, West Virginia beat Rutgers (I thought it odd that Tim wanted to watch this game, but apparently there was a chance his team would play the winner in a bowl game), and then stayed up to watch the OSU Beavers play Hawaii. Okay, Tim stayed up to watch, I went to bed. The game didn't even start until 10pm! I watched part of the first quarter and then decided it would be better to sleep. Then at 1:30am he came into the bedroom and gleefully claimed victory over Hawaii. I cheered groggily.

We decided to go to the late church service on Sunday, but then thought better of it when Kate appeared to be coming down with a cold. We put her down for a nap instead of going to church, and were so glad we did. She didn't sleep, but she did vomit all over her crib and we were happy that she didn't do this in the nursery at church. Poor kid. Poor parents! Gross, cleaning that mess up. Thank you Kate for doing it when your daddy was home!

Now it's naptime and I need to get baking. Damn, there's a lot of cookies to make.

2 comments:

Katie said...

I need the recipe for peppermint choc chip cookies. That sounds like pure heaven!!!

You are doing way too much! I am in awe!

Jen said...

Don't be in awe. I need help. Probably of the professional kind. This type-A personality of mine seems to have taken on a life of its own during this pregnancy.

For the cookies: it's so simple it's embarrassing. But so tasty. Just crush up some candy canes and mix them in with the dough. Bake as normal, but use parchment paper or some liner so the mint doesn't stick to your pan. You can also add peppermint extract, but be careful of that - it can get to be too much pretty quickly.