Perfect Moment Monday

I Capture
Perfect Moments.

I'm a first-time participant in Perfect Moment Monday, but since I had a few this past week, I had to record them. First, my mom got out some gingerbread dough and asked Peanut if she'd like to help make cookies. Cookies?! Of course. Peanut is fascinated by Christmas and winter themed shapes these days. Gingerbread men, snowmen, Santa, sleighs, nutcrackers, Christmas trees, reindeer - there's a world of shapes and objects that she has just learned the words to describe. Additionally, she was tempted by the word cookie.

They rolled up their sleeves and I mostly supervised to make sure that (a) Peanut didn't fall off the extra tall chair that she was standing on (caught her once as she headed towards the floor noggin-first!) (b) Peanut didn't eat all the dough before it was baked! She had the best time dragging the cookie cutters through flour and then pressing the shapes into the dough. She loved that my mom had small, medium and large sized cookie cutters. She even tried rolling the dough with the rolling pin. We had a great time watching her fall in love with making cookies. At the very end there was just enough dough for one last small cookie. My mom handed the ball of dough (the size of a walnut maybe) to Peanut and said, "Go to town". Instead of picking up the rolling pin, she popped the whole thing in her mouth! My mom and I couldn't stop laughing.

Then yesterday was another sweet and perfect little baking moment. I waited until Peanut was down for her nap because I wanted to make some Skor bars and knew that they wouldn't interest her. It had snowed the night before, so I had a lovely view of a dusting of snow outside on the trees in the backyard as I worked in the kitchen. The kitchen was warm and I had the radio on, playing Christmas tunes of course. My mom sat with me and helped out a little, but the recipe is pretty simple and really it was just a way for the two of us to spend some time together, to relax and make some chocolate-toffee confections to satisfy my cravings.* I was perfectly happy and content and fulfilled at that moment.

Oh, and one last perfect moment to share. My mom and I went to Barnes and Noble to do some shopping the other day. Peanut was at home napping (thanks to my husband!) while she and I snuck out. We're both readers, my mom and I. It's no surprise then, that we found ourselves wandering around that store for over an hour. At some point early in our visit, I caved and bought a peppermint mocha. It was heavenly and made for the perfect moment! Books! Coffee!

Hope you're all having some memorable moments lately!

*Speaking of cravings, while some cookies were the order of the day yesterday, I find that I am ravenous a great deal of the time now. The nausea seems to be dissipating just in the last couple of days. Even for the last couple of weeks, I've been feeling good for 75% of the day, and then not so much for the last bit, but that hasn't kept me from having an appetite either. I was nowhere near this hungry for any part of my first pregnancy. I'm starting to think that I may be growing a boy - simply based on how different this feels, but I don't *really* have any sense about the baby's gender.