Holding My Breath

It has been a minute or two since large crowds made visions of the very worst nightmares dance through my head. "Come here, Alexis," I would say. "You have to hold my hand when it's busy like this."

And she would work her way through a sea of people to oblige, but begrudgingly.

The girl has an independent streak a mile wide, even as she spends her every waking moment trying to crawl back in my uterus. Heck, she spends a lot of her sleeping moments doing exactly that. Still, she wants to explore the world and she wants to do it a few feet behind or ahead of me. She clings and she clings and she clings, but she also puts more and more distance between herself and me.

There is no doubt that she doesn't need me to guide her through her every day.

She walks to her bus stop alone. If I peak out the door as she skips down the sidewalk, she'll yell back, "Mom! Go to work!"

Alexis closes the door to her bedroom every morning and acts as if I have committed a horrible sin if I walk into her room. "Mom! I'm getting dressed!" she'll say. She doesn't need my help. She doesn't want my help.

"Why are you here?" she'll ask between dance classes. She wants me to drop her off and leave so that she can be her own person for two hours as she dances and tumbles with her friends.

Yet as we walk through a crowded store, she slips her still chubby-knuckled hand into mine. Old habits die hard and she has spent all of her walking days being forced to hold my hand in a crowd.

But still.

Each time we're in a crowded place and I reach out my hand to grab hers, I hold my breath. The day is nearing when she won't slip her hand into mine and the day is nearing when I won't be able to say that she HAS to.

The day is nearing that she will be able to navigate a crowd without me, and that is when I will know she isn't a baby any more.

I hold my breath. I'm grateful every time those chubby little fingers intertwine with mine.

Sometimes I'm Right

It was supposed to be one of those weekends you wish you could skip, one of those weekends so full of Important Things To Do that you'd rather fast forward to the part where they're done and maybe go to work because you need a vacation from your days off. On that list was a trip to the dentist complete with a root canal and a birthday party featuring approximately the entire population of screaming Yinzer kids.

So. You know. Painful. It was supposed to be a very painful weekend.

Can I please have it back so we can have a do-over following the plan? PLEASE?

The only way things can go from root canal/birthday party to worse is if you are awakened by a short person whimpering, "My belly hurts." That is most definitely how you can go from bad to worse in a hurry.

Alexis whimpered the words at the buttcrack of not yet dawn o'clock Saturday, and frankly I wasn't totally shocked. She had stayed up entirely too late the night before gleefully making cookies with a friend. There were lots of sprinkles involved. Lots and lots and lots of sprinkles.

Not pictured: the 829345103409135 sprinkles that fell on the floor and the approximately 243569246 sprinkles that wound up in Alexis' mouth.

I know. I KNOW.

The kid doesn't like sweets. We are all aware of this fact. Could you tell her that, please? She doesn't seem to be able to remember it at times, so she goes and tries to act like a normal kid and she mainlines sweets. The last time she did it there were Tootsie Rolls involved and it ended in puking.

"My belly hurts." Massive quantities of sugar. I know this story well.

Which is why we told the kid to suck it up and try to sleep a little longer. It sort of worked, I think. Maybe. I'm not sure if she was actually asleep or not because I was getting kicked in the face and it was way too early o'clock and really my brain doesn't show up for work under those sorts of conditions.

A few hours and a miserable dentist appointment later, Alexis seemed ... OK. Not quite right, but not really terrible either. One minute she was complaining she felt sick, but the next minute she was running around the house chasing a very scared Muppet-faced puppy. So we piled into the car and headed for the birthday party.

All the way there, Alexis went back and forth between "My belly hurts" and "I can't wait for the party!" She was fine. Then she wasn't. Then she was. And then she wasn't. But maybe she was?

The birthday party was at one of those giant bounce house emporium-type places.

So.

So I made an executive decision and ran the gift in and then ran back out to the car to take Alexis home. I decided that she would be benched for the day because if ever there was a place where the stability of a kid's belly shouldn't be tested, I think it's at a bounce house.

I called it right.

We made it less than a mile before The Sick took over and Alexis started suffering from what turned out to be a 24-hour bug.  She was mostly fine, except for the times when she was, you know, puking her guts out.

But at least she wasn't puking inside a bounce house.

Dreamy Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

I can't believe I'm about to admit to this, but those cookies I keep taking to functions? You know, the Chocolate Peppermint/Chocolate Peanut Butter/Chocolate Nutella ones? They're all the exact same cookie recipe.

Sorry for those of you who know what I'm talking about and who are feeling betrayed right now. It's just that, you know, once I figured out that I had the most perfect chocolate cookie recipe ever on my hands, I had to figure out a whole bunch of new ways to use it. I think I'm up to about ten variations right now.

There's the Dreamy Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich version.

And the Dreamy Chocolate Peppermint version (my personal favorite).

And sometimes I end up in a hurry and wind up making the plain old Dreamy Chocolate Cookie version.

Same recipe. In fact, I posted a different version of it last year around this time. Maybe sometime I'll post even more versions of it. Like, the Nutella one. That's definitely a good one.

For now, here are the basics for the peppermint variations.

But first, here's a fun fact for you. The difference between these two cookies?

Obviously they look different, but how did they end up that way? The one on the left was cookie dough dropped by the spoonful onto a cookie sheet. The one on the right is also a teaspoonful of cookie dough, but to make it prettier, I rolled the dough into a little ball and then flattened it with the palm of my hand.

Same cookie. Dramatically different results. Both taste amazing, but one looks purtier and stuff.

The pretty version works best for making sandwich cookies.

No matter how you shape them, they freeze well, have a fantastic shelf life, and taste amazing. Win. Win. Win.

Dreamy Chocolate Cookies

(Makes approximately 36 cookies)

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups flour
2/3 cups baking cocoa
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2. Mix the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl at low speed.

3. In a separate medium mixing bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together.

4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg/vanilla mixture and mix at low speed until well combined.

5. Drop the cookie dough by heaping teaspoon onto your cookie sheet. If you want smoother/prettier cookies, roll each spoonful of dough into a ball and then flatten with the palm of your hand.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

7. Allow the cookies to cool for 1-2 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack.

Icing/Sandwich Filling (optional)

2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
1 teaspoon butter, softened
Crushed candy canes

1. Mix the powdered sugar, milk, butter, and peppermint extract in a medium bowl with a hand mixer at low speed. Add more milk if you want it runnier or more powdered sugar if you want it thicker. It's your choice.

2. For the Dreamy Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich cookies, find two baked cookies that are close to the same size. Place a spoonful of icing on the bottom of one cookie and then squish another cookie against the icing. Roll the edges in crushed candy canes.

3. For the Dreamy Chocolate Peppermint Cookies, spread a small bit of icing on top of the cookie. Pour crushed candy canes into the palm of one of your hands and then take the iced side of the cookie and smoosh it into the candy cane pieces.

4. For the plain Dreamy Chocolate Cookies, find a small cookie cutter with a wide edge (plastic ones often work best). Place the cookie cutter on top of the cookie and then dust with powdered sugar by using a flour sifter. Take the cookie cutter off and you should be left with the outline of the cookie cutter.