Rubber Ducky, you're the one

You make bath time lots of fun
Rubber Ducky, I'm awfully fond of you.....

Going totally bananas

I have two banana-related recipes that are too good not to share..... Both recipes are from Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks, but one (the banana bread) is from the 1960's and one (the banana chocolate chip bars) is from the year 2000. Whenever we have a couple of bananas sitting around getting ripe, Andrew gets a gleam in his eye and starts subtly hinting that it might be acceptable if I use them to make some baked goods....

Banana Bread (like my mom still makes):

Ingredients:

1/3 cup shortening (buy the Crisco sticks of shortening-- they're the easiest!)

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup ripe bananas, mashed (about 2 medium or 3 small bananas)

1 and 3/4 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream shortening and sugar together, and then add the eggs and mix well. Add the bananas and mix well. Sift together dry ingredients, then add to mixture and mix well. Bake 45-50 minutes in a 9x5x3" loaf pan (greased on bottom and 1/2 inch up the sides). Bread stores best (once it cools) in either foil or a zippered plastic bag.

Banana Chocolate Chip Bars (perfect to bring to work-- they are always a big hit):

(The font looks wonky from here on forward because I copied and pasted this from an e-mail I had sent, and this dumb blog program makes it impossible to fix text issues unless you're good with html, which I am not....)

Prep: 20 minutes
Bake: 25 minutes
Oven 350 degrees

3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2-3 medium)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 6-ounce package (1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1) Grease a 15x10x1-inch baking pan; set aside.

2) In a medium mixing bowl, beat the butter or margarine with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt; beat till combined. Beat in the egg, bananas, and vanilla till combined. Beat in flour till combined. Stir in chocolate chips and, if desired, nuts.

3) Spread in the prepared baking pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven about 25 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack. Cut into bars. Makes 36 bars.

Nutrition facts per bar: 117 calories, 5 grams total fat (2 grams saturated fat), 16 mg cholesterol, 92 mg sodium, 17 grams carbohydrates, 0 grams fiber, 1 gram protein.

****

In other news, I was going through some clothes back in the deep dark recesses of my wardrobe while Sonia took an epic nap the other day, and I found some interesting items. First, I found work pants in 4 different sizes-- that's what happens when you lose 30 pounds, go through 9 months of pregnancy, re-shed those same 30 pounds, and then get pregnant again 3 months later. Second, I found my old t-shirt that says "I'm the Evil Twin"-- too bad it's horrible faded and misshapen (I donated it to the bag of rags we use for cleaning). Third, I found this:

When I was in 3rd grade, my maternal grandmother (aka Meem) crocheted matching sweaters for all of her grandkids who had been born so far (Niki, me, Jordan, Lindsay, Jake, and possibly Ben, but I can't remember if he had one or not). I am so excited to have Sonia wear this cardigan some day! It's a seriously awesome sweater-- there's a zipper and everything, and it's far superior to anything I have crocheted to date. I wonder if my siblings and cousins still have their sweaters....

Some more fun outfits

Sonia seriously has the coolest wardrobe.... I love to play dress-up with my little baby doll! These pictures contain just a small sampling of the adorable outfits this child has.

From the Richardsons (yes, that's the ND leprechaun!):

From the Nelsons:

From Auntie Niki, Uncle Corey, and Charlotte:

From the Hallfords:

Cousins

Sonia is so lucky to have 2 1/2 cousins! (The 1/2 is for little Peter-in-the-belly who is due to be born in mid-December.) Even though Nicholas (Andrew's sister's son) is only 4 weeks old, he and Sosi have already shared clothes with each other. We love these fabulous Little Stomper pajamas....

Sonia in May 2009 (1 week old):

Nicholas in September 2009 (3 weeks old):

Because they aren't the same gender, Nicholas and Sonia won't have too many more chances to share outfits, but Sonia will probably be a recipient of hand-me-downs from Charlotte for many years to come. Charbunkle has already shared a lot of clothes with The Great Sosini (thank you so much, Niki and Corey!). These overalls are just one example.

Charlotte in June 2008 (2 1/2 months old):

Sonia in August 2009 (3 months old):

Charlotte and Sonia are genetically like half-sisters, so they are starting to look a bit similar, too. Check out their cheeks! You might notice that in these two pictures, both girls are wearing brown with pink polka dots, but they aren't the same outfits.

Charlotte in July 2008 (4 months old):

Sonia in August 2009 (3 1/2 months old):

Sonia vs. Rice Cereal

Oh, my. Sonia tried "solid food" for the very first time today. Rice cereal was not an instant hit.... We'll try a few more times over the upcoming week, and if she's still not feeling it, we'll put it away for a while and come back to it. We're in no hurry! But it was still pretty fun to try.

She looks kind of excited at first....


Here comes the airplane into the hanger....


Not a fan!!!



Andrew took a video of Sonia's first few spoonfuls....

Mad skills!

Sonia finally agreed to show off her new rolling over skills for the Flip video camera. She only rolls over about once or twice a day so far, but she thinks it's hilarious every time! Margie Cat makes an appearance, of course, showing off her booty to the camera. Oh, Marge....



Speaking of Margie and mad skills, I also managed to capture a short video of the cats wrestling. No worries-- it's definitely just playing-- two minutes after I took this video, they were licking each other and acting like the best of friends.



In other news, Sonia will be trying rice cereal for the first time today. Gotta go get the duckie bath tub ready for the aftermath!

Also, Shakey the Octopus has suddenly and unexpectedly lost his mojo; he no longer makes her smile! She saves all of her smiles for people-- especially ones who make really silly faces and noises at her.

Tummy time videos

Charlotte requested them, so here they are! Because this blog also posts as a note to Facebook and embedded YouTube videos don't show up there, I'll embed the videos and then hyperlink the video titles.

Video #1: Sosi being cute




Video #2: Sosi and Bobo fighting over toys



Video #3: Sosi almost rolls over! She actually did roll over right before I took this video, but of course she didn't repeat the trick after I got the camera rolling....

4 months old, and all is well!

Sonia had her 4 month "well baby" visit to the doctor today, and she is doing great! 15 lbs even and 24 inches long.... Dr. Murphy was very happy with Sosi's growth and gave us the green light to start feeding the little goofball rice cereal. Stay tuned for a video of that experience.... I'm sure it will be pretty darn messy!

Here's a picture of us from brunch yesterday.... Sonia slept through most of it!

Father and Daughter

The game yesterday may have had an outcome that was less than desirable, but at least Andrew and Sonia had some nice bonding time!

It took a lot of smiles from The Great Sosini to cheer her daddy up after that game, but she did achieve her goal.

Weaning the kid off of the swaddle

We're starting the process of weaning Sonia off of being swaddled when she sleeps.... I started small by swaddling her with one arm out during one or two naps per day. That seemed to work pretty well, so I tried out a sleep sack ("wearable blanket") yesterday. Success!! The nap was just as long as it normally is. I'm still so desperate for sleep that I'm not willing to try it at night yet-- I'll wait until she has some more napping success with her sleep sacks. But I'm encouraged! Today, she took another nap in a sleep sack, and she slept great. I snuck in her room and took this picture-- it was pretty dark in there, but the shutter stayed open long enough to take a decent picture. It was hard to stay still, so the picture is a bit blurry-- sorry about that!

Venus in blue jeans

These jeans (a gift from my buddy, Renata) look so hilariously cute on Sosi! Thanks to her round little belly, these 6-9 month sized jeans fit her pretty well. As my Aunt Toni says, Sonia's a chubber-chunker!



Sonia has cracking us up a lot lately.... She has started "talking" to us, and she likes to do a lot of her talking practice while I'm on the phone. What a silly goose! I'll try to get a video of it this weekend and post it, because Sonia "talking" is pretty darn funny.

Sonia's four month well-baby visit is on Monday.... We've been working a ton on Sonia's neck strength this week to make sure that the doctor will give us the green light to start her on cereal. I'm dying to know how long she is now, too. She is long enough that I'm starting to put her in 6 month pajamas. Yesterday, I took Sonia to meet the one month old daughter of my ND Band buddy, Sandra; next to cute little baby Valerie, Sonia seemed like a moose!

Long-lost cousins?

We think there's a suspicious resemblance between Sonia and Uncle Julio of Uncle Julio's Hacienda.



If only she knew how to make yummy fajitas like Julio does....

Sosi meets her godparents

Sonia got to meet her godparents, Mike Gonzalez and Emily Buser-Gonzalez, this weekend! They drove over to Lisle for a quick visit after they went to the ND football home opening game (versus UNR). Sosi and Emily had some fun this morning practicing cheering on the Irish.... I whipped out the Flip video camera and caught this dangerously cute video:



We then ran to Uncle Julio's Hacienda for a quick brunch before John Ely (who was visiting us this weekend) had to fly home to Florida. Unfortunately, I don't think we got one picture of Ely! But we did get a picture of Gonzo introducing his goddaughter to TexMex.


Did Sonia have a smelly diaper?

Happy little Irish fan

Sosi needed a bath before she got to wear her ND jersey (a present from the Uharts) for the very first time.

"Gee whiz! I hope that Jimmy Clausen kicks some booty in the game today!"

Sonia's dad is a major goofball....

Go Irish! Beat Wolfpack!

Duck duck silly goose!

When Andrew's father heard that we were naming our daughter "Sonia", he replied, "Like the duck in 'Peter and the Wolf'"?


And so, our love of duck baby stuff began. There is no shortage of adorable ducky products & clothes available for children, so we have purchased and received (as gifts) a good number of ducky-related items. So much fun! I am very scatterbrained these days, so I don't have pictures of all of this fun ducky gear, but the other day, I did take a few pictures of Sonia's ducky bath stuff.

Theoretically, I should have waited until Sonia can "sit up unassisted" to use this inflatable ducky bathtub that the lovely Joslyne and Zoey sent to Sonia, but I just couldn't! Yes, it took effort on my part to keep Sonia sitting upright (she kept wanting to straighten her body out and slide down deeper into the water), but we had a very fun bath, and Sonia seemed to enjoy it a lot. Thanks to Joslyne & Zoey for this hilariously awesome tub!! When Sonia took her first bath in it the other day, I was the solo bath-giver, so I wasn't able to take any pictures during the bath. So, just pretend that Sonia is in the buff in this picture:


The ducky bath tub fits nicely within a normal tub, so it's a cushy way to introduce your baby to the big bathtub without the annoyances of trying to keep her from bonking her head on the sides of the tub. The tail is angled, so she was able to lean back against it. The bottom of the tub is non-slip, but that doesn't help when Sonia does her 2x4 impression (which apparently she inherited from her father-- he used to pull that trick when he was little!).


I love that the duck tub has a suction cup attached so you can hang the duck up out of the way!


Andrew bought this plush duck bath toy for Sonia when she was just two weeks old. It quacks!


I bought this duck towel for Sonia right after she was born.


Here's a really old picture of her all wrapped up in the ducky towel.... She looks highly suspicious!


I just realized that I failed to get a picture of the cute little ducky washcloth that we used during the bath, but I think you get the general idea....

Busting out all of her tricks

Sonia was on a roll earlier this morning! She was smacking her toys, kicking like a madwoman, and sitting up in her Bumbo. Now she's snoozing in my arms after falling asleep 2 ounces into her 6 ounce bottle. Whoops-- I thought she was hungry, but I guess she was sleepy. Or maybe she was both.... Anyway, here is some video evidence of her antics earlier this morning: