Just Another Weekend

Huge parts of Friday felt like an April Fool's joke.

Plan: Put Ellie to bed and have nice (er, pizza) dinner with my husband.
Reality: Baby refused to sleep.  Passed Ellie back and forth in order to get dinner together.  Let dinner get cold while begging Ellie to sleep.  Finally, I put her in the baby carrier and rocked the carrier, which kept her asleep for all of an hour.  During that hour of sleep, we ate a very quiet dinner and while cleaning up, I spotted a can of sweetened condensed milk in the pantry.  I wanted dessert.

In what could be described as an unusual move for me, I checked to ensure I had all the ingredients on hand prior to making fudge at 8:00 on a Friday night.  (I've made fudge exactly one other time in my life.  No clue why Friday night was fudge night.)

Chocolate?  Check.  Vanilla?  Check.  Crushed nuts?  Check.  And since the milk inspired the whole thing, of course I had that.  I melted the chocolate, then opened the can of milk.

Nasty.  Enter spoiled sweetened condensed milk.  I dumped it down the drain.

Which left a dilemma.  What exactly should one do with melted pile of chocolate to make fudge when one of the ingredients is spoiled?  Easy.  I sent Matt downstairs for the official chocolate cookbook.  (A wedding gift full of great ideas that could cause some serious weight gain.)  The problem was, every single fudge and candy recipe called for something important we didn't have.  That stupid sweetened condensed milk.  Rice cereal.  I love just dipping fruit, pretzels, etc in chocolate, but all we had were clementines.

The resulting creation was essentially a really big candy bar, with a weird texture.

And then, Ellie woke up again, which is what she proceeded to do all night long... Wake up.  She slept some in our arms and some in the swing.  When it comes to sleep, Ellie is on or off.  She either sleeps through the night or decides that babies don't need sleep. Friday was "no sleep."  There was lots of flailing about, kicking, and other excitement, but very little sleep.

(Babies need sleep.  So do parents.)

I've revised my elf theory.  I now think the psycho squirrels in our neighborhood are sneaking her some kind of caffeine, maybe Red Bull? If you've ever seen our local squirrels, you understand.  They are aggressive, they eat Halloween candy and pumpkins, and I spotted one going to town on McDonald's once.  

They stayed away on Saturday night though, and Ellie slept like a champ - Eight hours straight! Maybe all three of us will be free from dark under-eye circles for Ellie's big day.  Ellie is being studied in her natural habitat today, by a nature photographer!  Perhaps the photographer will also snap some pictures of a giant elephant with our hungry hungry hippo.  (Ellie has been eating like a hungry hippo.  And FYI, hippos kill more humans each year than any other wild animal.  Avoid real hippos.  We hope Ellie isn't quite that dangerous.) Crissie's work is amazing, so we look forward to sharing the photos. 

Otherwise, it's been a pretty chill weekend, as we've tried to recover from Ellie-insomnia.  We took a walk, we went to Chili's for dinner.  Nothing too crazy, just the stuff of life.  Stuff that I wish I had my camera for.  Stuff like spotting a dude driving a truck towing a barbecue.  Think that's normal?  Did I mention the barbecue was lit?  And I'm fairly certain there was a pig being roasted in it.  While the guy was driving.  Driving.  Safety first, people, please, don't drive and grill.

(All the excitement of the walk wore Ellie out.)