New Cooktop!

Today was our best ever summer camp drop-off. Emmie has obviously been fine, but Addie has still been a little clingy most mornings, and takes some special coaxing from the staff. But today, I just hugged her and sent her towards the door and then got back in the car, and she just walked off like such a big girl! I was so proud of her!

We were trying a new route home tonight after camp, and Addie was like, “Mama, can we got to a Little Free Library?” And then legit as I was starting to tell her, “No there’s not one on our way home,” I looked over to my left at a stop sign, and could literally see one two houses down! So obviously we stopped, and we each found a book we wanted!

And finally… TA-DA! Look at this beautiful new cooktop! Technically, it’s been installed for a while (you can see on the left side of the stove where he had to install an extra strip of wood to make it fit properly; it’s not beautiful, but it’s very sturdy), but not totally hooked up underneath. Jeff finally got the last of everything taken care of a couple of days ago, and I planned to finally cook on it for the first time tonight.

I made a very simple Rana chicken alfredo meal that Addie picked out at Aldi the other day, using a new pan from IKEA that I got specifically for this induction cooktop. I loved the stove, and I loved the new pan, and I’m so glad to finally get back into my usual cooking, and not rely on all the other kitchen options, like crock-pot, air fryer and oven.

Cooking dinner tonight took literally like 15 minutes, since all I was doing was warming up that pasta meal, putting together a Caesar salad kit, and microwaving a steam-in-the-bag broccoli… But during that time, Addie told me about 10 times how starving she was. But then literally in the final 3-minute stretch, she told me, “Mama, I’m already really tired.” So I told her we’d plan to get her to bed early tonight. And then she fell asleep! So Jeff, Emmie and I ate our dinner, and watched an entire episode of Celebrity Jeopardy All-Stars, and let her sleep for about an hour right there on the couch!

She was more than ready for dinner when I finally woke her up at 8pm, and she cleaned her plate, I got her seconds, and she cleaned everything again!

They were both a little wired then, and it took a while to get everyone settled down and chill. We tried going through our normal bedtime routine with Emmie, while we let Addie stay up later with Daddy, but both of them were still kinda crazy by 9:15pm. So I brought them into the living room and settled them on the couch together. Pennie hopped up to join them, and I put a slow, sleepy lo-fi video on the tv. We played the quiet game a few times (with a few losses in between rounds), and then eventually Addie gave up and fell asleep again. When I left them, Emmie was almost asleep, just very slowly petting Pennie’s head. So Jeff stayed there with them, so I could come blog.

Probably gonna paint my nails in some patriotic colors now, if we can get the girls relocated out of the living room…