Perfectly Pleasant Pancake Party

I'll admit it, I'm a carbie. Not just a lover of food, but a lover of carbs. Throughout the week I'm really quite an angel, eating my cottage cheese with mandarin oranges breakfast while I guzzle coffee sweetened with fat free hazelnut creamer, but when Saturday and Sunday hit, the first thing on my mind when my eyes open is my boyfriend Pancake. Occasionally his sexy exotic cousins French Toast and Belgian Waffle enter my fantasies, but mostly it's my Pancake, slathered in (lo fat) syrup with melty chocolate chips through and through. My husband has tolerated this love affair for years....initially he'd partake (oooh a threesome), but eventually he admitted that he's really not that hungry first thing and he'd rather saddle up to a hearty bowl of oatmeal or Special K instead, so we breakfast separately now. He has always, however, gotten out of making Pancake with the lame excuse that he's just not good at it. Not good at it?? It's a pancake. Take box of powder...add water....stir batter...put in hot skillet....flip. Not rocket science. I chocked it up to lazy in the mornings.

Well, a few weeks ago, he was feeling especially squirrelly and decided to make pancakes for all of us. Not only that, but we'd eat at the kitchen table - out of the reach of any television!! Sophie and I were truly so excited. Here's Daddy with his Giant Masterpiece (I guess we can call her Pancaka)...

....and Sophie with her GIANT pancake (Pancakette??)

She didn't mind the size, though. Pancakes are one of Sophie's favorite foods. Instead of breaking off little bites for her to feed herself, however, we decided to give her the whole thing and see what happened.

Not surprising. So, we took it away and cut it up like normal. She was so happy about the pancake that she kept holding her bites up in the air before eating them while dancing.

After breakfast, Mommy was on cleanup patrol. My little shadow decided that she wanted to help me. Here she is trying to figure out the bottom shelf of the dishwasher.

But Mommy didn't think that one all the way through. Although very strange to us at first, the fact that our stairs to the second floor are at the very back of the house off of the kitchen has been very advantageous for child rearing. Sophie is so enamored by everything else downstairs, she never makes it all the way to that back corner and has therefore never noticed the stairs. True, she goes up and down them every morning in Mommy or Daddy's arms, but she always forgets about them.

She found them, next to the dishwasher.

At least my deep-voiced "No, No" kept her just climbing up and down the one step, but I thought that I had created a monster. Luckily, she's forgotten about them since.

Lots more to post, especially about her trip to the hospital on February 8th, but I've got to keep things in order for my anal brain, so I'll leave you now with a picture of a game Sophie and Daddy like to play. He likes to fly her around the room and then bring SuperBaby down low for a fly-by snacking. Yes, that's popcorn being eaten with no hands. She's got some skills.