Small Holidays Matter to Moms

This morning I dressed the girls in green. Nothing fancy, in fact, Madelyn's shirt was actually teal. At about 4 pm I saw a Pandora notification on my phone suggesting that I try their St. Patrick's Day station. It reminded me that I like Irish music, and while we listened throughout the rest of the day, Mads and I "jigged" together on and off. I'd had nothing special planned for St. Patrick's Day, but while I fixed dinner I debated with myself: to make a St. Patrick's treat or not? Dave and I are trying to be good - no treats, no dessert, as little sugar as possible on weekdays. But pretzels would be ok, right? I found this recipe from one of my favorite food sites and though the cinnamon sugar edition sounded amazing, salt it would be for us this Tuesday (some upcoming weekend though...!). I dyed the dough green and we made clovers. Madelyn was a great helper :)

Love this girl!

Proof that I was there

And so was Anna, watching the action from her swing

Today I learned that boiling pretzels in baking soda and water gives them their famous flavor and chewiness.
It worked - they tasted like pretzels!

Madelyn basting the pre-baked pretzels with egg.

They look like clovers, right? :P

(Haven't fixed the colors or the exposure on the pictures yet, but hey). So here's the thing. I'm a some-of-the-holidays person. Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July...those holidays are big deals to me. Little holidays, like Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, April Fool's Day, etc. have never been much on my radar. What I'm discovering, though, is that as a mom who is home all day, every day, I look forward to things that break up the normal. On Valentine's Day this year, I had a two-year-old who loves hearts. So the girls wore heart outfits that day, we made pink heart pancakes for breakfast, cut out red and pink paper hearts and taped them all around our kitchen and dining room, made heart-shaped PB&J sandwiches for lunch, and made heart-shaped pizza for dinner. And though I hadn't planned anything for St. Patrick's Day, it came and I realized I wanted to do something to make this day different from yesterday and tomorrow.

That might have meant that instead of doing the dishes after dinner we made even more of a mess, but Madelyn and I had fun. And we had delicious pretzels at the end of it - win :)

In other happenings, it did snow once this year in Utah. We made our only snowman of the season that evening, because we knew it would melt the next day (and it did):
 

Madelyn is only occasionally interested in Anna (we expect that to change as Anna becomes more interesting), but sometimes we have sweet moments like this:

 And though most of my attention is demanded by my two-year-old day-to-day, I love quiet moments with my sweet little one...

...who is smiling and "talking" now. Her coos make me melt.

Hard to capture her smiles (the camera distracts her). These are the best we have...

Happy St. Patrick's Day moms. And everyone else too :)