Magical Mornings and My Sweet Valentine

Mornings are just the best. The first thing Stella and I do before anything else is get the woodstove going. The fire is typically raging by 7ish. After she helps me carry (the small) pieces of wood over to the stove, and  crinkle paper our imaginations run wild. We both play endlessly in our pj's while of course I am enjoying my morning cup of coffee. Lately Coffeemate snickerdoodle has been am-az-ing. We play with toy after toy in front of the warm fire after the morning sun shines in. As much happiness as these mornings bring for me, they remind me of a sadness lurking over that we won't be able to have these forever. Each day she grows older, and each day is one less day that she is going to lay in my lap and read a board book, and one less day we will get to build with blocks and one less day we will play in her pretend kitchen and make pretend cake and tea.

We were pretty much housebound on Valentine's Day because of the snow and single digit temps! What happened to ground hog's day and the next few weeks being mild?! total bullshit! It was ever sweeter because Valentine's Day was on a Saturday. So all three of us spent the day together which started off with a sweet Valentine's Day heart shaped pancake breakfast. 



I will admit I skipped the heart shaped cookie cutters and did them free hand- so they are definitely not my best work, but they tasted just as good! And my Valentine? Couldn't be sweeter...

We continue to work on the potty thing. She is understanding the potty process more and more. We have had a couple potty success stories and a few potty stories gone wrong. I am pretty sure there will be many many more of them ;) Best was this week...Rick had just walked in from work and shedded his thousands of layers. Stella looked at him and said "Paaa" which is potty in her language. Rick asked her is she wanted to go on the potty and sure enough she said Yea. Don't ya know?! The kid sat down and went pee pee on the potty. Yep, just like that!! Because we make such a big deal when she goes, she automatically claps when the word potty is mentioned. 

A few other happenings from this week...

we made these delicious fresh chopped strawberry coffee crumb muffins...

had an ice cream sundae (fix your own toppings) party after dinner this week... Stella had a blast putting on her own toppings. I think our favorite was the fresh baked chocolate chip crushed cookie pieces...

i'll take 2 10 please?!

Last but not least...this cheesy face gets me every time...