The ULTIMATE Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get around to doing this post because it's one that I've been excited to do; I think I just knew it would be a little time-consuming.  Whatever it was that was holding me back, I finally got my act together so here we go.

A little back-story (this post will be long) - As long as I can remember I have absolutely LOVED chocolate chip cookies.  I mean, I just love cookies in general, and any sweets for that matter, but chocolate chip cookies are at the very very top of favorite treats list.  Fortunately, or unfortunately depending what way you look at it, Taylor also really really loves them.  During our married life I have made chocolate chip cookies the majority of Sunday afternoons, and plenty of other times as well.  It's hard to make a bad chocolate chip cookie, but I decided that I wasn't satisfied with just average cookies.  I decided to do an experiment to determine which chocolate chip cookie recipe should be my ultimate go-to recipe.  I started this experiment over a year ago.

I enlisted the help of Pinterest and started pinning lots of recipes that claimed to be the best.  I knew that I didn't have it in me to make a million batches of cookies in one day (due to having a newborn and working from home), so I decided that the next best option would be to make the different recipes over a couple of months, and label and freeze the cookies while still deliciously fresh.  I actually love chocolate chips cookies after they've been frozen, so I wasn't too concerned with having to freeze them.

So I set out to make the various recipes.  I ended up freezing cookies from ten different recipes.  I made a couple of recipes that I didn't even think merited being a part of the experiment because I knew I would never be making them again with how they turned out.

One of the scorecards

After I had all of my samples ready I called in my tasters.  Cami and Tiff and I did the experiment together.  Cheyna wasn't able to make it, so she did the test the next day with the help of Garrin and one of her sisters (can't remember which one for sure, but I think it was Sagan).  I had each of the bags of cookies numbered.  We each had a blank scorecard which was numbered from one to ten.  Each of the cookies was to be rated based on texture and also on overall flavor, and then there was a space to add any notes about the cookie.  We had Taylor bring us a cookie.  We would each taste the cookie and then write on our scorecard the scores that we felt were most appropriate.  After we had tried all ten cookies we added up the scores and compared with each other.  For the most part, we agreed on which ones we loved and which ones were not our favorites.  There were a few surprises where we had completely differing opinions, but in the end we were able to come up with our most favorite go-to recipe.  The irony is that I'm not even using that recipe in my CCC baking these days.  I continued to tweak and experiment and I've since come up with my new favorite.  I'll include that at the end of this post.

Some of the tasters

Obviously everyone has different preferences of what they're looking for in a cookie, so take this for what it's worth.  One thing that I did discover in this process is that the process by which you mix the cookies makes an even bigger difference in the final outcome than the actual recipe you use.  So if you use an awesome recipe with the perfect mixing process you just can't go wrong.

#1 on our scorecards was the Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.  I don't know if this is the actual recipe used for Mrs. Fields cookies, but I found this recipe online and decided to try it out.  This cookie got above average scores from all of us.  The texture was nice and chewy and the flavor was good.  A couple of us noted that it could possibly use a little more salt.

#2 was "The Best Ever Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies." This one did not live up to its name.  Most of us thought the texture was more cakey than chewy, and the flavor was a bit too floury.

#3 was Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies.  I know lots of people swear by pudding recipes, but we were not big fans.  It was too sweet, without the contrasting buttery and saltiness of other recipes.  And the texture was much too cakey for me.  I like some nice chewiness to my cookies.  But I should throw in there that Cheyna really liked this cookie, so if you have a desire to try it out, you just might love it like she did.  The cookies were really soft - I'll give them that.

#4 was a recipe I got from Tiff:
1/2 c. soft butter
1/2 c. shortening
2 eggs
TB vanilla
1/2 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. brown sugar
beat for like 3 minutes on high, until it's all very fluffy, then switch to a paddle attachment and add:
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
3 ish cups of flour. I always do a tester to see if more or less is needed
lots of milk chocolate chips I LOVE Guittard brand or whatever it is. The big chubbies.
This recipe scored in the top three for three of us, and not so well for one taster.  It seems that the flavors of butter, salt and brown sugar really stood out nicely in this cookie.

#5 is a recipe that I got from my brother-in-law Jeremy, and it's the recipe his mom (Cathy) uses.  I'm not sure where she got the recipe but here it is (I've been making these for a few years so I'm writing this down from memory; I hope I get it right - maybe I've changed it in my brain over the years):
1 C butter or shortening
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 - 2 C chocolate chips
Mix the first three ingredients together well.  Then add eggs and vanilla and mix.  Mix the dry ingredients separately and then add to wet ingredients.  Mix until just incorporated.  Add chocolate chips.  Bake at 375 for 9-11 minutes.
We loved the texture of these ones.  The unanimous consensus was that there was too much artificial butter flavor, and that was my own fault because I used a full cup of butter-flavored shortening.  Other than that everyone loved the flavor of these cookies.

#6 is the classic Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. However, I did mix it up just a little bit.  Before adopting Cathy's recipe this was the recipe I always used and I knew that I liked the results better if I made a few changes.  Here's the original recipe:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

• Directions: PREHEAT oven to 375° F.

  COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.
  
  BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. 
  

The changes that I made were to use 3/4 C butter and 1/4 C butter-flavored shortening.  I just really like what shortening does for the cookies (more on that later).  I also used 1 cup of brown sugar and only 1/2 cup of regular sugar.  And I also added extra flour because I feel like these cookies always turn out a little flat for me.
These ones were the ultimate winner!  Three of us gave these the highest scores.  And the other tasters had them in their top three.  These had great texture, great flavor and they looked pretty.

#7 was a recipe that was supposed to be similar to Ben's Cookies.  This recipe was Cheyna and her family members' favorite and scored mid to high for the rest of us.  These ones turned out kind of flat, but that was quite possibly my own fault, and not a recipe problem.

#8 was a recipe that is super super popular on Allrecipes.com.  It's usually called Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I had tried this recipe before and figured it needed to be included in the experiment because of its popularity.  I must not have done a quality job of mixing these because they got bad reviews from all of us.  They ended up kind of flat, and everyone made comments about the flavor not being awesome.  Better luck next time Big Fat Chewy Cookie.

#9 was a slight variation on Cathy's recipe from #5.  The changes I made were to use 1/2 C butter, 1/4 C regular shortening, and 1/4 C butter flavored shortening.  Everything else stayed the same.  Overall these got good reviews, but didn't knock our socks off.  Again, I think I must have cut corners on the mixing because this recipe is much better than the ratings show.

#10 is called Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies.  These ones ranked consistently high, and for most of us were in our top three.  A couple of tasters noted that they might be better with more brown sugar and less white.  They had pretty good texture.

Hard at work

The remnants of our labors

Ok, so as if this post isn't already long enough I'm going to write some of the things that I learned in this process and then I'll include the recipe that I am using now.  The way the dough is mixed is as important as the recipe in my opinion.  The most important part of this mixing seems to be in the first steps when you mix the butter/shortening and sugars.  Whether you mix by hand or with a mixer the creaming of the first three ingredients should not be skimped on.  Mix and mix and mix until the mixture is light and creamy and fluffy.  This leads to a nice chewy cookie, with an almost crispy outer cookie and still a very soft chewy center.  I like my cookies almost doughy in the middle, and I think a widespread problem in cookie making is over-baking.  Obviously this is my personal preference, but I like the tops of my cookies to be barely cracking with little to no visible browning.  The bottom of the cookie should be a little golden, but not brown.  I way prefer to bake my cookies on stoneware.  They're almost impossible to burn and hardly ever end up flat on stone.  Obviously they still turn out delicious on metal, but an extra minute in the oven can be fatal and they continue baking on metal after being taken on out the oven.  I think shortening gives the final "crust" of the cookie a perfect texture.  I used to add extra flour willy nilly to make sure the cookies didn't turn out too flat; I've now learned that a small amount of flour can really change the final flavor and texture of the cookies.  I still add flour if the dough seems too wet/if the test cookies turn out too flat, but I'm more careful about it now.  Ok, I think I've preached a little too much.  I am no cookie expert and I'm sure plenty of people prefer their cookies to be done differently than my preferences, but as a long time chocolate chip cookie lover these were my results.  

So the recipe I've settled upon these days is Cathy's recipe with only a couple of changes:

1/2 C regular shortening

1/2 C butter-flavored shortening

1 C brown sugar

½ C white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 ½ C flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 – 2 C chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix shortening, brown sugar and white sugar in a big bowl.  Mix those ingredients GOOD!  Like real good.  Then add the eggs and vanilla and mix those really well until they’re fully incorporated and the mixture is nice and light, creamy and fluffy.

Then dump flour, baking soda and salt on top (recipes always tell you to mix the dry ingredients together before adding to the wet.  I assume that’s a good idea to make sure it gets mixed more evenly, but I don't usually do that.  Mix the wet and dry ingredients just until incorporated (I think it’s best to not use a hand mixer for this because that can make the end result a little tougher of a cookie; that being said a Bosch or Kitchenaid with a cookie paddle attachment work great).  If dough seems too wet add a small amount of flour.  After it’s just mixed add the chocolate chips.  I like to use half milk and half semi-sweet and I probably use about 1 ½ cups total, but that part is completely up to personal preference.  I really like the big fat Ghirardelli chocolate chips, but normal size chips work great too.  Make balls and put them onto ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 9 -11 minutes.  Take them out before they seem done!  If cookies fall too flat, add a small amount of flour to dough before making more cookies.

ONE YEAR - how did that happen?

She absolutely loves her chair these days and climbs on and off of it a millions times a day.  Sometimes she likes to just sit in it "like a normal person" (that's what Logan said).

My sweet Palmer girl is one year old.  I am so slow getting this post done because life has been a little crazy lately.  I'll give my excuses quickly and then we'll move onto the birthday girl.  Our house is still not done, but my grandma's house sold so we moved in with my parents (bless their hearts).  I hate moving, so the thought of moving twice in such a short amount of time makes me want to cry.  We are living out of boxes right now because we don't want to unpack any more than is 100% necessary.  Luckily my parents are the best people in the universe to live with so that takes away some of the pain.  I've taken on some new coding work and I'm still trying to figure it all out so I've been spending WAY too much time coding lately.  On top of all of that I feel like I take about 100 calls and run back and forth to our house 100 times a day.  Our general contractor moved a couple of months ago and the house has turned into a huge source of stress for us lately.  I've almost lost all excitement about it ever getting done...maybe that's because I secretly don't believe that it will actually ever be done.
But let's talk about the good stuff - how in the world did my sweet little girl get to be one year old already?!  On her actual birthday I decided to take a break from the coding and spend more time cuddling and playing with her.  We went swimming, which is something we haven't been finding the time to do lately.  It was a fun time at the pool; lots of her friends (and mine) were there that day.  After her nap we went over to Heather's house and she helped me make cake pops for Palmer's party that was planned for the next night. 

I'm sad because this picture didn't capture Heston and Wyatt, but they were there too.  I think you get a nice shot of Nicole's lovely toes at least.  Heather and her kids showed up a little later that day too.

Seriously, how cute is this sweet little one year old?

The next day we had my family come to my parents' house for a little bbq and cake, ice cream and presents.  Palmer is so lucky to have so many people in her life that love her so much.  She has great family on both sides and received lots of happy birthday wishes from friends and family.  The party was fun, except that Palmer insists on getting her beauty sleep and got a little grumpy by the time we got her to bed that night.

The goodies.

By the time that it was time for singing and cake she was getting pretty tired and ready to be done with the festivities.

She started out a little tentatively, as seems to be the norm in this situation.

She slowly decided it was kinda fun to dig into the cake.

Clapping - you can see some cake flying off her hands.

Mmmmmm

Inspecting the cake from all sides.

After she'd eaten all she wanted she decided it was time to sit on the cake.

That is a cute messy birthday girl.

I am not sure how to sum up the last year except to say that it has been wonderful.  This little girl has brought more joy into my life than I ever thought possible.

Palmer is definitely a serious little Lyman.  Most people probably think she's just serious and mean, which is what everyone has always thought about my siblings and me upon meeting us.  She just stares at people with the most straight face most of the time.  At home we get to see the silly and fun side of her.  She squeals and giggles and teases.  She saves her real personality for the people she really trusts.  That's a definite Lyman trait.

For Christmas my parents told us they were going to rent a cabin at Zion National Park in June for all of us to spend a little time together.  The time came and we all headed to Zion.  The cabin was huge and amazing.  Every member of my parents' posterity was there except my oldest nephew, Kolton, who had to work.  We had such a fun time doing so many fun activities and just spending time together.  I sure love my family.

This is not the best picture, but she didn't keep the hat on for long so this is as good as it gets.  This was on the 4th of July as we sat and watched the parade.  Nobody does the 4th like Blanding - love it!

She is the literal definition of a nuisance these days.  She gets into EVERYTHING, especially if it's something she should stay away from.  She pulls herself up on everything and makes mess after mess after mess.  She jabbers all day long, but she has yet to start forming words.  She does say "mama" and "dada" but not on demand most of the time.  One day I was trying to get her to say "grandpa" and it seemed like she said it a couple of times...not sure if it was a fluke or not.

Palmer had a couple of weeks where she started fighting sleep big time.  She would scream and cry every time we would put her down for a nap or at bedtime, and sometimes the crying would last quite a while.  It was rough, because she had become such a good sleeper.  Luckily that phase ended and she's back to going down without much of a peep.  She still takes two naps a day, usually a little less than 1 1/2 hours each.  Yesterday she took a 2 1/2 hour nap, which is very rare for her.  She is sleeping about 12 hours a night.  She was really fluctuating on what time she would wake up in the mornings, but she's back to waking up around 7:00 most days.  BUT today she slept until 9:05!!!  What the heck?!  It was so great.  I went in two different times to make sure she was breathing.  She woke up all kinds of happy.  I'm pretty sure she's in the thick of teething and that's probably the reason for the extra sleep yesterday and today.  I'll take it.

On the note of teething, she has been a bit of a beast off and on for the past week.  She will just get upset out of nowhere and start screaming or crying.  It usually passes after a half hour or so and she'll go back to being ok.  I really hope those teeth pop out soon.  You can see that the top middle two are just trying to bust through.

She does a legitimate crawl now, except when she's really in a hurry; then she'll drop down to the army crawl because she is so much faster that way.  She absolutely loves to climb up the stairs so I follow right behind her up the stairs a few times a day.  She's not interested in walking still.  She has good enough balance that she could for sure take some steps, but any time we try to let go of her hands she just sits right down.  She's not having it.

She LOVES the dogs!  She giggles when she sees them.  She gives all her food to them.  She got bit by Ellie for the first time the other day.  She's got two little gashes right above her eyebrow.  I'm actually surprised it didn't happen sooner and I'm sure it will happen again.  She was torturing Ellie - tugging and tugging at her ears and tail and trying to grab her eyes and mouth.  I kept moving Ellie away from Palmer, and Palmer away from Ellie, but they kept finding each other.  Ellie wasn't smart enough to just walk away so she ended up losing her patience and snapping at Palmer.  Palmer was pretty sad obviously, and I was sad for her.  But to say that she's learned her lesson would not be true.  She has continued to torment the dogs since the incident and I have continued to try to keep them away from her as much as possible.

She can rock a pretty sweet mohawk.  She's got lots of hair on top in the middle and she's got a good patch of hair in the back of her head.  Josh and I named it the "mullethawk" and decided that instead of "business in the front, party in back" like a regular mullet, she just likes to party all around.

She has become a very finicky little eater, which is so sad for me because she's been such a good eater for the most part up until now.  It's completely hit or miss at mealtime these days...you never know when she'll eat or what she'll eat.  She loves to bat at the spoon and send the food flying, but even more than that she loves to open her mouth for a bite like a sweet little angel and then as soon as it's all in her mouth she lets it dribble down her chin.  The dogs stand there and beg for food and she loves to pull bites out of her mouth and feed them to the dogs.  She'll eat a decent amount about once a day and there's no telling which meal it will be.  She is totally loving fruit these days and that is something I can usually get her to eat, any and all kinds of fruit.  She also still loves yogurt.  She'll almost always eat my mom's homemade whole wheat bread; and who can blame her - it's honestly the best bread in the universe.

Letting her feed herself ends up in a huge mess, but she makes one darn cute mess.

As soon as she turned one I started giving her cow's milk.  She didn't hate it but was pretty skeptical with it for the first two or three days.  Now she just loves it and drinks it all day long.

She is a complete mama's girl.  If I'm not visible she's fine with anyone, but if I'm around and I hand her off to anyone else she usually fights and whines to get back to me.  A lot of the time she gets over that pretty quickly and will be fine with others, unless she's in a really bad mood.

Little Miss P-Tay is so loved by her cousins.  And she loves them back.  She squeals and giggles when they come around and loves to follow them around the house.  This little girl makes every day fun.  She's my best buddy and I love being her mom.  Happy first birthday to my favorite girl in the world!

Not a good picture, but this was taken on her birthday.  She got this doll from Taylor's parents and she likes it quite a bit.  She likes to give loves to the doll and bite its head and nose.

I could not get her to look at the camera to get a good birthday picture so this is what you get.
Oops - when I saved this post a couple of days ago, I forgot to include her stats. Maybe that's because I'm a bad mom and can't really remember them very well. At her one year check-up she weighed 18 pounds and some ounces...I'm thinking it was 18 pounds 10 ounces, but I may be wrong. I know she was right around the 20th percentile for weight. Her height was a little over 28 inches, which was also about the 20th percentile. I don't know how big her head was, but I do know that it was the 80th percentile! Love this girl!

T Minus One Month...

Even with food all over her face, I just think she is the prettiest little thing I've ever seen.

Well I think I've been putting off doing this post because I thought that Palmer couldn't turn one if I never blogged about her hitting the 11 month mark.  I guess I've come to terms with it now.  Don't get me wrong, I really do love watching Palmer grow and learn, but it's just going too fast.

These pictures were taken on the 11th.  This was while we were at Noelle's for a few days.  Her and Denver did lots of playing.  I think her hair is lightening up.

We took the kids to the park.  The babies played on the blanket, while the big kids played on the jungle gym.

This little girl is my best friend!  I love spending my days with her.  She could not be more fun or more silly.  I feel like she grew up a ton in the last month.  I also feel like she's gotten a lot taller and just looks older these days.
Palmer is still cruising around with her little army crawl.  She pulls up on her hands and knees about 100 times a day and sometimes moves forward a little, but then she drops right back down and goes back to the army crawl.  I guess she thinks it's sufficient for now.  She's pretty darn fast.  She's really good at climbing over, under and through obstacles.  She pulls herself up onto her feet on the side of the couch and on other objects a lot more lately.  She still doesn't seem very inclined to walk.  She's pretty wobbly on her feet and I don't think she'll be taking those first solo steps any time soon.
She jabbers at me all day and currently her favorite sounds are "oh" and "ow."  Sometimes she says them together and it sounds like, "oh wow."  She still says "mama" and "dada" here and there, but those aren't her favorite sounds currently and we're still trying to get her to connect those words with us.  Sometimes she "sings" along with music in the car.  I've been trying to teach her to dance when she hears music and sometimes she sways a little bit, but most of the time she just laughs at me when I dance for her.
She still loves her tricks.  Her favorite is probably peek-a-boo and she'll even play that when she's sad and crying.  She quite often starts playing it by covering her eyes without being prompted, especially when I'm feeding her.  She still loves to clap and wave "hi" and "bye."  She'll usually give five if you put out your hand in front of her and sometimes if you ask for a kiss she'll lean in with a big open mouthed wet one!  More often than not though she'll turn her head and let us kiss her on the cheek.
Palmer girl still loves to eat.  She's a good little eater, except at dinner time.  Actually she only gives attitude if I try to feed her food specifically made for babies.  She eats our dinner just fine, and as much of it as we'll give her.  But baby food...even when it's noodles, chunks of meat, non-pureed vegetables etc. she somehow knows that it's baby food and starts fighting it with all the attitude in the world after about five bites.  She loves to eat our dinner though and we're getting to where she eats a lot more of our food and a lot less baby food.  She also loves her some snacks.  Her favorite is graham crackers and they ALWAYS make her happy no matter how upset she might be.  She also really loves yogurt.  I think it's like dessert to her and she'll always eat her little baby yogurt with no problem.
No more teeth this month, but her two bottom teeth are coming in a little crooked (she can thank me for that) but SO cute!
We've been swimming a lot since the pool opened last month.  We like to go during the "mommy & me" time slot and we usually meet up with a bunch of her little friends.  She seems kind of neutral on the whole idea of the pool so far.   She doesn't love or hate it.  She likes to try to eat the water.  The longer we stay at the pool the more clingy she gets and sometimes she even gets super cuddly with me.  Of course I love that, especially since she is so not a cuddler normally. 





P-Tay loves bath time!  She insists on being on her stomach and just swims around like a crazy little fish for as long as I'll let her stay in the bath.  Seriously she goes from one end of the tub to the other, and back again the whole time and she's fast and silly about it.
We have recently decided she definitely has ADHD...hopefully she'll grow out of this.  She does not hold still or focus on anything for more than a few seconds.  She is constantly moving.  She has more energy than I will ever dream of having.
She is a great sleeper at night and usually sleeps for a little over 13 hours.  She takes two good naps during the day.  She does not like to travel!  She does not sleep well in the car, and just gets so super upset the longer we're in the car.  I can not wait for the day when she can be in a front facing car seat; it seems like she'll like that much better.  At the rate she's growing that could be quite awhile though.  She's still my petite little thing, no matter how much she loves her food.  She's wearing size 2 diapers.  I tried to move her up to size 3, but they didn't fit snugly enough so we went back to size 2.  She mostly wears 6-9 month clothing.  She still fits in some 3-6 month stuff, and can wear some of her 9-12 month clothes also.
We just love our little Palmer girl.  She makes life so fun!

Sorry for the creepy red eyes, but I had to include this picture because she loves climbing in there and playing.  She thinks it's so fun to climb in one side and out the other.  Sometimes she just crawls through, and others she stays inside and plays around for awhile.

She loves to lay her head down on her toys and cuddle with them for a few seconds and her exersaucer is no exception apparently.  She cuddles with her toys WAY more than she cuddles with us.

She loves to watch us do pull-ups and loves it even more when we help her do some of her own.

She can spread the toys all over the living room much faster than I can clean them up.

How cute are those little feet?!  This was when Palmer and I went up to Noelle's house with her for a few days.  Her and Denver sat next to each other on the ride there and stole each others' toys the whole time.  Like I said, Palmer is not the happiest traveler.

Ok, but seriously could she be any cuter?

Upcoming post teaser - the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe experiment!

10

This was right after Palmer got her ears pierced while we waited for Bryir to get hers done.

There's lots to tell about Palmer's happenings in the last month.  I'll try to keep the words to a minimum; I've been looking through old posts lately and I'm realizing that I have a lot of really long posts.
Palmer turned 10 months old two days ago.  How is this happening?  Here are some of the happenings of the last month in the life of Palmer:

*Got her ears pierced.  I always said I didn't want to pierce my baby girls' ears.  I thought I would just wait until they were old enough to ask for it.  Taylor really wanted to get her ears pierced.  He slowly started wearing me down.  On top of that, a few of Palmer's little friends started getting their ears pierced and it was so dang adorable and their moms said that they were glad they had done it.  So long story short Cheyna and I decided to take Palmer and Bryir to get their ears pierced.  Palmer had been a HUGE grouch for a couple of days so I was a little nervous, but I figured we should go ahead with the plan.  She HATED getting her ears cleaned and marked.  But after the piercings were done she cried for a minute or so and then she was just fine.  She looks so dang cute and hasn't played with her earrings at all.  She gets annoyed when I clean them but gets over it as soon as I'm done.

*The next day I found out why she had been such a huge grump.  She woke up with a nasty cough.  I didn't think much of it at first cause she was acting pretty happy and she seems to get coughs pretty often.  But then Cheyna reminded me that at the playdate we'd had a few days earlier, Palmer's little friend Jag had a very similar nasty cough and he was diagnosed with RSV a few days later.  So I quickly called the clinic for an appointment.  I took Palmer in and, sure enough, she tested positive for RSV.  Her oxygen level was good and so they told me to just watch her closely at home to make sure she didn't have trouble breathing and that she didn't get dehydrated.  For the first couple of days I thought it wasn't going to get too bad for her, but by about day three she really started acting miserable.  She never had trouble breathing and she kept eating enough to stay hydrated.  She had a really bad cough and had a never-ending supply of snot; she vomited a bunch of times and had a lot of trouble sleeping.  On Sunday she got really lethargic and had a pretty good fever so I got quite worried.  My dad came over and he and Taylor gave her a blessing.  I came really close to taking her to the ER that day, but she took a sudden turn for the better that evening.  It still took her a few days to really come around, but from then on she just continued to get better.  Oh, and she got her first tooth the day after testing positive for RSV.  Poor little thing.  Once she was pretty much over the RSV we got to enjoy a couple of days of rest and happiness, before she got sick again.  It seemed to be some sort of flu or something.  She had a fever for a couple of days and vomited a few times.  She didn't seem super miserable, but she only wanted me and would cry and cry if I left her side or handed her off to anyone else.  Needless to say, we did not get very much sleep for about two weeks; we spent a lot of time cuddling in the glider chair in her room.

The pictures in this outfit were taken on the 11th.  I included this picture to show how much hair she's getting on top.  She had just taken a bath so her hair was a little wet still; it's not greasy :)  Also, check out those lashes!

I just thought this was a cute silly face

In this one you can kinda sorta almost see her teeth...well at least one of them.

She wasn't very happy at first when I put her in this basket.  Her favorite thing to do is to pull out all of her toys and throw them all over the room.  Since she emptied out the basket it seemed like the right thing to do to put her in it.

After a second she decided it wasn't so bad in the basket.

Then she even decided she kinda liked it :)

This girl loves to be outside.  We are so happy that the weather is getting nicer so we can spend time outside.  She loves sitting on the lawn and running her hands through the grass and watching the millions of neighborhood dogs and cars go by.

We went to the circus in Monticello on Palmer's 10 month birthday with all of my family that lives in Blanding.  Here she is sitting on Aunt Kristi's lap.  She was happy as could be and completely entertained for about five or ten minutes.  For the rest of the time she was climbing all over her dad and me and really didn't care about the elephants and clowns.

Family picture at the circus...with an elephant bum in the background :)

Some of Palmer's brave cousins rode an elephant at intermission.

*Palmer's second tooth came in on the 10th.  So she now has both of her bottom middle teeth.  She seems to be kind of an average teether as far as her fussiness is concerned.  I definitely figured that a tooth must be coming in because she was extra fussy for a couple of days and didn't want to eat as much, but she didn't seem as miserable as I've heard of some other babies.

*Over the last couple of months I've gotten more into making my own baby food.  At first it just seemed overwhelming to do it, so I just did a very little bit here and there.  I've now decided that it's really not very time-consuming at all.  It's a great way to not let fruits and vegetables go bad.  If we ever have anything that is getting close to having to be thrown out I'll just make it into some yummy Palmer food.  It's a nice way for her to try different things, since store-bought baby food can be limited in the flavors you can find.  For the most part she still seems to like everything that I feed her.  We've tried some interesting combinations and she eats it all up.

*I said, "for the most part" she'll eat anything I feed to her.  She has really started to develop quite the little stubborn attitude.  Sometimes mealtime can become quite the messy battle.  It's not just at mealtime that her attitude comes out.  It's hard to really explain because for the most part she's still a happy little sweetie, but I think she's really just getting more aware of everything and when she doesn't want to eat/drink/play with something she lets me know by squealing madly and batting away whatever I'm trying to give her.  She'll fling her head back and arch her back if she's not happy with her situation.  I think I'm seeing the beginnings of her tantrums.  I'm gonna be honest, I don't love it.

*She's getting really good at copying my actions.  She'll clap her hands after I do it.  She'll raise her arms after me.  She loves to cover her face and play peekaboo.  She's finally mastered the army crawl.  She's getting pretty good at scooting wherever she wants to go.  Luckily it's not the fastest mode of transportation so it hasn't made my life too difficult yet.  Mostly it's just really cute.  She's not super into her binky.  She still likes it when she lays down for a nap or at bedtime, but lots of times she'll spit it out and fall asleep without it.  She very rarely uses a binky outside of her crib.  I was always planning to take it away, except for sleeping, at a year old but she's basically done that herself already.

*Palmer girl is getting VERY clingy.  I don't think she feels stranger danger; I think she just prefers me.  Quite often she'll cry when I hand her off to someone else, but she gets over it right away and then will be just fine with others, unless she's really tired.  She hates it if I leave the room unless she's really enthralled in a toy.

Ok this did not end up being any shorter than all my other long posts.  Sorry!  I just really have a lot to say about Miss Palmercita.  I could talk about her all day long - love this girl!

This was right when Taylor got home from work the day that we got Palmer's ears pierced.  I hadn't told him we were going to do it that day.  He noticed them right away and loved them!

Sad sad sad little RSV baby.  I can't even put into words how much I hated to see her so miserable.

Joshy came to Blanding for a week or two after he finished finals.  He loves the babies and they LOVED him too.  As soon as I would walk into my mom's house he would reach for Palmer and then hold her pretty much the whole time I was there.  She was always very happy to hang out with Uncle Squashy.