Baking with Ellie

I had such a fun first with Ellie today. We made cookies (sweetened with bananas this time)! Ellie enjoyed dumping things into the bowl and loved turning on the mixer. It was a bit challenging to keep her out of the batter, but giving her the spoon that we used with the peanut butter seemed to help. And she did a great job cutting out the cookies -- hearts for her Valentine's Day party at school.

This was an especially significant first for me because it made me remember an afternoon when Ellie was just a few weeks old -- I was walking laps around the driveway (as I did almost every afternoon), bouncing a screaming Ellie, trying not to cry myself (mostly because I know the neighbors were tired of hearing it), and praying that Damian would come home and soothe Ellie (as it seemed he was the only person that she would stop crying for). I had totally run out of soothing things to say to Ellie, but was still hopeful that talking to her would help (singing was out of the question since I was so tired that the only song I could think of was "jingle bells" and in my sleep deprived state, I thought it made me a bad mother to sing "jingle bells" in February). I remember looking at her -- her eyes squeezed shut, her face purple from screaming -- and saying out loud "someday you're going to like me and want to spend time with me and then we'll do fun things like make cookies." I don't think it made her feel any better, but it helped me. I just never would have guessed that "someday" would arrive so quickly!