15 Months!

Kenna is 15 months old today! I was looking back through some of our old posts and saw this little month-by-month photo montage that I made for her at 6 months, that I meant to redo at her birthday, but between Thanksgiving, then her birthday, then my birthday, that's a really busy time for our family so it never got done! This is probably the kind of thing that only mommies really get a kick out of anyways. It's so easy to get sentimental when your wee one becomes a not-so-wee one so quickly!

Less than 1 hour old:

2 Weeks:

1 Month:
2 Months:
3 Months:
4 Months:
5 Months:
6 Months:
7 Months:
8 Months:
9 Months:
10 Months:
11 Months:
12 Months:
13 Months:
14 Months:
15 Months:

Kenna also apparently has the distinct honor of having her 15 month "birthday" on the same day as National Pancake Day, February 23rd. Who knew? So of course we headed out to IHOP for our free short stack to celebrate along with all the other pancake-loving and carb-loading revelers, and for Kenna to have her first taste of pancakes.

She went first for the big scoop of butter, as we thought she might.
Then she picked up the whole thing and started eating it like a sandwich.
I think she was worried we would take it away.
Mmmm pancakes!
Shoveling it right in... we've been having to work hard at teaching Kenna not to toss food that she doesn't want on the floor, and it can make for some really messy restaurant experiences, but I kid you not, there was not a single pancake scrap on the floor when we left. She ate two entire pancakes!
It seems that Kenna may have started a bit of a love affair with pancakes, just like her Mommy.
And with maple syrup (dipped on the spoon) just like her Daddy.

Look-Alikes!

I was going to use these pictures as a wordless Wednesday yesterday, but I thought they needed a little explanation. And oops, it's Thursday already! (Truth be told, I've been meaning to post these pictures for months now!)

It has been no secret since day one that Kenna has looked just like her Daddy. We've made all the jokes about it (that the Mommies do all the work and then the babies look just like their Daddies), heard people call her Matt's mini-me, etc, and it has never bothered me for a minute! I have however, also joked that I needed to start carrying some of my baby pictures around to "prove" that she's mine! Literally from one week old, she has been the spitting image of her Daddy:
So here are some pictures of me that I thought looked surprisingly like Kenna:
This one was Christmas of 1983, when I was just a few weeks old- probably not much older than Kenna was in the picture above with Matt!
Me and my grandfather on the Dean side, summer of 1984. This picture makes me smile so much because this grandfather in particular was famous for feeding his grandkids things they shouldn't eat (like chocolate chip pancakes) and I think all of the Dean grandchildren have a picture exactly like this of us on his lap, in just our diapers, eating something with him. My bet would be watermelon! I think the resemblance in this one is striking!
This is one of my all-time favorite pictures from my childhood. The back of the picture says July 1984, so I was a little younger than Kenna is now. We were swimming in my great and uncles' back yard pool in Florida, which they still had up until I was in college and they moved onto a houseboat. And yes, that cutie patootie wrangling the giant float is my brother Jason.
In this one I think I was closer to 2 years old, also one of my absolute favorites of me and my Mom. We were all at Disneyworld/land (whichever one is in Florida). It will be interesting to see if Kenna ever gets that much hair!

I'll have to see if I can get some pictures of Matt as a baby, to see if she looks like him as a baby as well. I do know he had us both beat with those gorgeous dark curls! (I'm guessing this is 1983-ish as well, 2 years old).

Juice or Coffee?

Juice?
Or coffee?
It's a common question in the Brogli household. Coffee usually wins with Mommy too!
Kenna has "her" cabinet in our kitchen where the only things in it are safe for her to play with... tupperware, plastic colanders, nalgene bottles, and this travel coffee mug that she loves. rather than childproofing the whole house, we try to use this system as a way to teach her what she is and isn't allowed to touch... if she goes for the cabinet with the sponges and trash bags etc. we tell her no, but then we have a cabinet to direct her to that she is allowed to play in. It definitely takes more supervision, but works well when we are cooking or putting away dishes for her to have something in the kitchen that she's allowed to play in. She also loves her fridge farm, although she mostly likes to push the button for the song to play over and over!

We've noticed that she loves any toy that plays a song... on her rocking horse she will stop rocking if the song stops playing, she pushes the ball popper button continually to make the different songs play, and she completely wore out the battery on a book that plays children's hymns. She would literally sit on the buttons to make them play over and over!

She is still such a people person, and loves to be in the action of wherever we are!

Sunday School Valentine's

This week I got the opportunity to host one of our Sunday School classes ladies lunches. We do this every month, and it's a great time for us ladies to get together, and for those of us that have kids to let them play together. We've gone to the park and people's homes, and it is always such a fun time! Since it's February, the theme was of course Valentine's day, and one of our fabulous moms made cupcakes for the kids to decorate with sprinkles and candies. We had something like 8 ladies and 8 kids under the age of 4... well, 9 if you count Angela's pregnant belly which we definitely do! We haven't had that many little ones all in the house since Kenna's birthday!.

It was loud, fun, and a little wild, and we had seriously some of the most delicious chocolate cupcakes I've ever had in my life, and some really cute pictures of all the kiddos at the end of the day. It's always so nice to swap stories with these girls, and to see our kids have such a great time too. Thank you all so much, I can't wait for next month!

Ladies in the living room

These were seriously the cupcakes from heaven!

Peyton and Maddie making friends.Carson goes for the icing firstSorry Jennifer, I did not mean to take a picture of you spilling the sprinkles!Little boys like three little birds on a wireKenna digging inPeyton and Haley (our newest littles) barely made a peep the whole time!Seriously, does that get any cuter?Sweet little girly girl!Carson, Georgia, and Jackson playing ball

(PS- Katherine, I stole some of your pictures from facebook- if any of you would like these, please feel free to "steal" them!)

French Onion Soup

Here is an easy, simple, and cheap (the trifecta for me for recipes- if it's not quick and simple I probably can't make it!) recipe for French Onion Soup I made today! I have been craving it all week, and so I put together some things we already had on hand to try to make some.

Ingredients:
1 box chicken broth (or beef or veggie)
1 envelope brown gravy mix
2 large onions sliced into 2inch-ish slivers
a bit of olive oil and black pepper
Cut up your onions, and sautee them in a bit of olive oil right in your soup pot. I added some black pepper here because I love things to be peppery, but if that's not your thing you can skip it. It shouldn't need any salt because the chicken stock and gravy mix are so flavorful!

Cook the onions until they are brown and squishy. This is the secret to great French Onion Soup! Fancy cooks call it "deglazing" I call it "demoralizing." Seriously- cook them until they don't even look like onions anymore. Here is a great recipe (for a much more authentic soup if you have more time) that shows how the color of the onions should change. Stir, stir, stir, don't let them burn!

Once the onions are brown, add your packet of gravy mix and cover the onions in half to a third of your box of chicken stock (you could also use beef or veggie stock, whatever you have). Bring to a boil and let simmer for awhile.

Serve into your bowl, top with cheese, and enjoy! My favorite is to put a big slice of provolone on top (you know the deli slices that are already round and bowl-perfect!), but I used mozarella today since it's what we had on hand.
This recipe made 2 medium sized bowls of soup, if you're making it for more than 2 people you may want to double it or even triple if you want a big old pot full. If you want it to be truly authentically French, shove a big piece of crusty, crouton-like French bread down into the bowl, then cover with gruyere cheese and bake it a little until it melts.

Perfect for lunch on a cold and blustery winter day like today!