Christmas Cautions

Christmas can be a dangerous time. The number injuries from bad combinations of water, electric lights, and dry Christmas trees goes through the roof. We've avoided those perils so far, but below we have a couple of pictures of Helen caught in risky behaviors.

In case any of you are worried about Helen eating the infamous poisonous poinsettia - According to the Madison Poison Control Center, a 50-pound child would need to ingest 500-600 poinsettia leaves to suffer ill effects of any significance. Another risk at Christmastime is food poisoning. Luckily for us, we caught ours before we ate it. Unfortunately, it had already stunk up our refrigerator. Good thing the temperature dropped outside so that we could just transfer everything to the porch.

Mom, Dad and Hannah made it to our house safely, albeit a little cold. They were wide awake when Helen woke up in the middle of the night. I wonder if they noticed that I wasn't really awake when talking to them. They have since moved on to Iowa for a couple of days.

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

For Ryan's birthday I made him a delicious chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting and covered with some chocolate ganache.  He has been trying to let me eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

The story of Ryan's birthday dates back to last year when Ryan got a shredder for his birthday.  All last year he campaigned for a shredder and even enlisted the help of my brother Craig to talk about the merits of his "roommates shredder." Whether or not Craig actually had a roommate with a shredder has yet to be proved. Anyway, I gave in and got him a shredder for his birthday.  

But, three months ago this shredder became disgruntled with it's normal diet of addresses and went after my curtain.  The picture was not included because of its' graphic nature.  Once again we were left without a shredder and our risk for paper cuts on our hands increased exponentially as we began manually tearing up our addresses.  Thus the search began for a new shredder for Ryan's birthday.  Please note that I found something that won't eat the curtains on its' own.

In fact, this shredder is silent and does a much better cross-cut.  

First Meal

On Saturday Helen had her first experience with semi-solid foods. It was hard to tell if Helen or Ryan was more excited.

Helen didn't know what was coming, but she was more than happy to help put the spoon into her mouth, as it is one of her favorite things to do. Ryan decided that she was not helping very much so he gave Helen her own spoon to play with. This only complicated the situation.

Somehow a little bit of rice cereal still made it in her mouth despite the amount you see on her face. Surely you can also see by her expression that it was not nearly as sweet, warm and delicious as what she's used to.