Poor Caleb

I awoke this morning at "dag nasty o'clock" to hear a little voice saying, "Mommy, I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you?" It was Caleb. I asked him as he was crawling into bed with us what his dream was about, but he said he didn't want to talk about it. Good call. Turns out, it was about an airplane propeller cutting a kid in half. Yikes. I'm racking my brains trying to figure out where he's seen something like this. His viewing repertoire consists strictly of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel with a little PBS thrown in. He can't think of anything that made him imagine it. He knows that planes have propellers, though.

As I'm sitting here grilling him, I realize that we saw an ad for an episode of "Mythbusters" where they see if one airplane's propellers can slice another airplane. That was it. Mystery solved. We didn't even watch the episode!

He got a two-headed dragon for Christmas. It's a big semi-soft rubber thing that he has named Nightmare Chaser. He renamed him Night Chaser last night. I think he should have left the name alone - the thing must have gotten mad and refused to chase any nightmares.

On another note - I melted a spice holder to my stove top last night. The most irritating thing is that it was full of Homemade Gourmet Garlic Basil Seasoning. I had just refilled this 6-cup plastic container a week ago. I was making Mediterranean Chicken and put the container down on a burner that was still hot (but I didn't know it). We have a flat ceramic stove top, so it's easy to put stuff down on the burners. By the time I realized what I had done and had pulled the container off the burner, half of the spices were as good as gone. I melted a nice sized hole in the bottom - a lot of spices got mixed in with the melted plastic. Then I pulled it off the stove and more spices were wasted in the long strings of quickly-cooling plastic.

Steve came over (to supervise? to chide? I'm not sure) and watched me as I used a metal spatula to scrape the garlicky plastic puddle off my burner. I was expecting to have to throw away the spatula, too, but was pleasantly surprised when the garlicky plastic cooled quickly and came off easily. Hmmm. So I dumped the remainder of the spices in a ziplock and called it good.

Shifting gears again. Julie had spaghetti the other night. She didn't have the noodles, just the sauce. This was the result. If we had knows this was on her menu, she would have been nekkid. She's at the stage now where she only wants to eat "people food" - as opposed to "baby food." She still likes the fruit-filled cereal bars for breakfast and the little puffed-cereal-type finger foods, but those are the only non-people food she'll eat. She wants what everybody else is eating. I remember Audrey going through this stage. I think she hit it sooner than Julie did.

Last note before I sign off: Steve and I are going to a couple's Valentine's Day cooking class tonight. The men cook and the women sip wine and watch. I think I'll forgo the wine because I'm going to go work out after dinner. Chuck & Karen are going to come over and play with the kids. It's conference week (half days at the elementary schools), so I feel no hesitation about letting the kids stay up late. They are about to lay down for a nap, in fact. I'm going to pick up a few things around the house and make some phone calls. So this is it for now.