Wake me up when February ends

Troy can no longer bite into an apple

He bravely asked Daddy to pull out his other top front tooth last night. He is one tough kid. No fear.

Unfortunately our loser of a tooth fairy forgot to leave him any money.

He was really anxious tonight about making sure the tooth fairy will have another chance to come, and was so mad when Nolan wouldn't go right to sleep.

As for me, I hang out with these two all day. Nolan loves his little pal Zoe, who has grown to probably twice Nolan's size. She has gotten so strong, too - it's all I can do to restrain her when visitors come to the door or when I insanely take her with us to the bus stop. She does love to run with me in the mornings though and can now go 3 miles!

So in an effort to make my weeknights a little easier, I've turned over Monday night dinners (one of our busiest nights) exclusively to the girls. For Christmas they each got an American Girl cookbook - Kate's is "Cooking" and Brooklyn's is "Baking." Which means Brooklyn is always eager to spearhead dessert, and Kate cooks dinner by herself. Here she is with her mini strawberry cheesecakes.

I'm still teaching her that when a recipe calls for butter, you can't just disregard the measurement and put in the whole stick. She's done that more than once now. We're working on it.

Here was Kate's dinner: Homemade chicken noodle soup (yes we even made the egg noodles from scratch!), garlic bread, and peas. 

I am loving this new arrangement apart from the two minor caveats: the insane amount of dishes these girls can pile up, and the fact that this means we eat dinner no earlier than 8 pm. (Okay, I exaggerate, but usually definitely after 7!!!)