Lela's First Giggle

Until today, Lela has yet to giggle out loud for us. She just turned 7 months on Thursday and it's about time we hear a little chuckle from her. Brady giggled at Marenda at only 3 months old, so we've been expecting to hear something out of Lela. She does smile and will make a sound like she wants to giggle, but it's almost like she's holding her breath. Marenda and I joked around and said she was going to have our "silent laugh". This is when we get to laughing at something together, but neither one of us makes a sound. Kind of hard to explain in words, guess you'd have to be there. Anyways, so tonight I was sitting with Brady and Lela on the love seat and Chad threw this soft Frisbee to us. I "bonked" Lela on the head and she obviously thought it was hilarious because she laughed out loud! It was adorable! Here's the video.

My Little Chef and Marshmallow Lover

Brady has always enjoyed watching me cook. He started asking me to "help" when he was around 18 months. I would sit him on the counter and he would pour ingredients into the bowl or help stir. Recently he's been "cooking" during his imaginative play. Whenever he cooks for us it's usually one of his favorites, like hamburgers or hot-dogs, or if it's a drink, it's usually coffee. When we take showers together, he talks as if he's on a cooking show while he's pouring water from one container to another and sits it on the shelf to cook, it's usually takes "4 hours"...his favorite words lately.

So this weekend we were inside majority of the time since it was rainy and Brady had a fever, and was not feeling so good. I decided to make a treat with him, because I knew it would make him happy. His favorite thing to eat is marshmallows (which I hate giving to him because it's nothing but sugar) but we've made them a special treat. We made S'more Bites, a recipe that I found on the bag of Publix marshmallows. Here's how you do it.

Take 18 marshmallows and stick a wooden toothpick in the center of each. Place the marshmallows in the freezer for about 10 minutes to harden. Melt a 12oz package of milk chocolate morsels in the microwave for a couple of minutes (I used Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate baking chips because it doesn't have dairy, so Brady can eat them). Next, crush several graham crackers in a sandwich bag. You'll need 1/2 cup of graham cracker crumbs. I can't remember how many crackers we used, I just happened to grab enough for 1/2 cup the first time. Next, take the marshmallows out of the freezer, dip them in the chocolate, then roll them in the graham cracker crumbs and place them on a piece of wax paper. 

Here's some pictures of our cooking experiment. 

*Funny side story about his obsession with marshmallows. We were in Kroger the other day and he was riding in the car buggy. We walked past the marshmallows, he reaches out and swipes a bag off the shelf and quickly puts it in his lap. He didn't ask me if we could get them like usual but just kept quiet. I guess he thought I wouldn't notice... we survived with only a short melt down when I told him we weren't getting them.* 

Here are some other ideas of how to use marshmallows from the Publix bag. I figured it might be a good idea to save these somewhere when Brady gets a special treat.

* Cut in half, top brownies during last minutes of bake time.

*Stir in fresh or canned fruit salad

*Spoon over tops of mugs filled with hot chocolate

*Add pretzel sticks for "octopus" legs, peanut butter and morsels for eyes.