Pumpkin Deliciousness

I've made these yummy bars a couple times this fall because they are so yummy and go so fast! Here's the recipe (it's from Martha Stewart so you know it must be good).

Happy Fall/Christmastime Everyone!

Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Squares

Prep: 30 minutes
Total: 2 hours 30 minutes

Makes 24

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin-pie spice---If you can't find pumpkin-pie spice, substitute 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, 3/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon each allspice and cloves (all ground).
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 package (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan, leaving an overhang on all sides. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, pie spice, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium-high speed until smooth; beat in egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in pumpkin puree (mixture may appear curdled). Reduce speed to low, and mix in dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
3. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Bake until edges begin to pull away from sides of pan and a toothpick inserted in center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool completely in pan, use a serrated knife to cut into 24 squares.

I'm 1 month old!!

Hiya kids, it's Rye here. Mom let me write on her blog as a special present on my one month birthday! Can you believe I've been here for a month? Yea, me neither. Believe me, this wide world takes some getting used to. But I'm enjoying things so far, with the exception of naptime.

Don't get me wrong, I do love a good sleep (I'm my mother's son after all) but the whole falling asleep thing...yea not my favorite. But that's pretty much the only time I'm fussy. It's also when I do my best tricks. Like the time I got out of my "burrito"* yep, I wriggled out and then took a tour of my crib. I was in the other corner when mom came up to check on me. But I topped that one when the next day when I manged to get out of the burrito and my pants and I was half way out of my diaper when Mom came in. Man, you should have seen the look on her face!
That's pretty much how I spend my time, playing tricks on Mom, hanging out with my monster friends and overall just being the cutest baby the world has ever seen. Well, I better go, it's almost my naptime, but before I go here are some recent pictures of me. Mom said I had to post pictures if I wanted to blog, so here they are.

Here's one right after I'm born, just for context so you can see how much I've changed. Oh, and that's my Dad. He's pretty much the coolest Dad a boy could ask for. I sure do look little in this picture...wow!


Here's a picture of me hanging out on my boppy.** I was giving Mommy my "are we done here yet?" look, she gets a little long winded with the photoshoots some time.


Oh, here's a good one. I do this when Mommy does Yoga. You know it's never to early to work on your core.

Here's a close up of my fingers. I hear that the girls go crazy for baby fingers, so here they are...


Here's one taken today of me snuggling with Daddy, which, is pretty much my favorite thing to do. Oh, and as you can see I have my Dad's forehead.


...and my mommy's eyes. They are still blue at this point (Mom keeps asking me if they are going to change, like I have a clue!) but the shape is definitely Mommy's.


And, last but not least here is what Mommy calls the "glory shot" from today. No idea what that means but she said I had to include it.


Ok, well that's it for me. Love to all my peeps, or Mommy's peeps at least. My sleepytime bear is calling my name...

Baby Lingo
* Burrito is baby speak for how you wrap up babies super tight in a blanket so they can't get out.
**Boppy is a "u" shaped pillow that's for us babies.

Funny Feet on a Friday

Odd fact: Rye has Trevor's feet, except for the second to last toe (the little piggy that had none, if you figure out toes by the nursery rhyme) on his left foot, which is mine (and my Dad's). Odd, huh? I didn't think you could mix and match with toes, but apparently you can. I'm glad he got my crazy toe though (they bend in, you can't really tell in this picture though). I had a dream while I was pregnant that he had my crazy toes, glad he got one of them.

TP

-VS-

Ok, random question here. (shocking, i know)

I have always assumed that the proper and generally accepted way to put toilet paper on a dispenser is with the end of the roll coming off the top, not the bottom. It has come to my attention though that some people (who are wrong, oh right this is supposed to be unbiased) actually PREFER it to come from the bottom of the roll.

So, I figured I would do a highly scientific experiment and pose the question on my blog. So I ask you, blog world, do you prefer to pull your toilet paper from the top of the roll or the bottom? And, did you grow up thinking your way was the "correct" way?

I await your response.

Birthday Becky

Happy Birthday to the only person in the world who knows what ALL these mean:

-"here's the thing"
- "It doesn't matter WHAT i put here"
- "Take 3E!!"
-"Flying Sherbet"
-"Thanks Lisa!"
- "Bombi?"
- "Somewhere down the line...after your gone from sight..."


Love you, crazy cousin o' mine!

p.s. sorry to the rest of you who don't get any of these inside jokes.

Monster Attack

The other day Rye was getting sleepy before his nap....


We tucked him into bed and he started snoozing peacefully.


Then all of a sudden out of no where an evil scary monster snuck up on him!!


Thankfully, one of Rye's super monster friends interceded to protect him.


Rye never even knew what happened, he slept through the whole thing while his good monster friends protected him.


Thank goodness for that monster room! One less thing to worry about.

Little Baby Rye

Let's start things off with the worlds cutest picture...


Now that that's out of the way...here are some updates from our 2 week pediatrician appt as well as some more adorableness.

As of 2.5 weeks after his birth, Rye was up to 7 lbs 5 oz! Quite an accomplishment I am told. (Trev called 6/15 and I called 7/2...naturally I won ;)

Here's a pic w/ Dad...


And w/ Mom...


And another family shot.


Can't believe that tomorrow he will be 3 weeks old! Crazy. I had my first time away from him yesterday. I went to the chiropractor and Trev met us and drove him home. I was sitting in the waiting room and it dawned on me...this is the first time I'm away from him. Shouldn't I be upset or panicky or....something? Nope. I was cool. Totally cool. No biggie...surprising I know. But yea, that's how i roll, playing it cool. Besides, I save my crying for the important stuff like...running out of wipes at 3am or discovering pee all over the 4th outfit of the day...yea, only the big stuff. Sure.

Ok, more pics soon. Heidi told me that blog updates are more important then dishes or laundry so fingers crossed there will be more delightfulness soon!

2 weeks old...

Here are some shots of baby Rye on his 2 week birthday. Here he is after a walk in his stroller...lolls him to sleep every time.
Cutie Pie..


Rye thought it would be cool to do a series of shots featuring some of his funny faces.

SHOT #1

SHOT #2

SHOT #3

SHOT #4

SHOT #5


Rye got tired from his photoshoot and took a snooze on the sofa...


Happy 2 week birthday Rye.

Pictures and thoughts from the hospital

More pictures are on Heather's Blog. Check them out if you need a Rye fix (you know who you are).

Here's a brief recap of the whole birth labor experience. Ok, maybe a couple quick thoughts would be a better description. There's no way to capture the whole experience...

- Thursday October 22nd 8:30am first contraction
- 8:45am my water broke (I remember thinking, what?! this isn't supposed to happen, what am I on TV?! (those things only happen on TV/movies right?)...everyone told me only about 15% of mom's water breaks before they go into labor...lucky me)
-8:50am called Trev who came home
-8:55am called Emily to give her a heads up (she was my labor coach with Trev) she thought i said that the water broke in the house and it wasn't until Trev called her later that she realized that MY water broke :)
-9:00am called the doctor to tell them my water broke. Apparently they didn't believe me either so they wanted me to come in and get checked.
-10:00am packed and ready to go to the doctor to get checked. Now my contractions are pretty intense and about 3-4 minutes apart.
-10:15am I call the doctor to suggest that maybe we should go to the hospital instead since the contractions are every 3 minutes and pretty intense. They immediately agreed.
-10:30am we get checked into the hospital and the real intense back labor begins. They check me, I'm almost 6cm. Everyone goes into "holy cow this could be a fast one" mode. I'm excited because this means i get my epidural soon. :)
-11:00am we get the last room (apparently a popular day for giving birth) and I get my ever so much appreciated epidural. Thank you for modern medicine!
-11:30am Feeling good! Amazing how much better I feel, still having really intense contractions but feeling so good, so very good.
-2:30ish pm 10cm! it's go time... the pushing begins
-4:39 pm Rye Caedmon is born!!

It's funny because around 8:15 that morning I remember thinking, wouldn't it be wonderful to go into labor after a great night sleep...thank you Jesus, less then 8 hours my sweet baby was born.

p.s. I give credit for the fast labor to drinking raspberry tea. A couple different people told me that drinking raspberry tea (hot or cold) makes your labor faster and easier and, well there you have it. I highly recommend it.

Mama's Baby