Life

Turns out I started a post on August 12th and then left it as a draft until now.  Rather than adding whatever I thought the post was lacking (including pictures), I guess I'll just publish it now and hopefully do another post soon.  So the below is all from three months ago:

Well, life gets in the way of my blogging.  I guess that's good - I'd rather live life than write about a boring one.  But there are just some things that I feel need to be documented, as long as I have a blog and such.
We've been in our house for a year and I still have about a million projects that I would like to do to decorate and add function, but we are really really loving it here.  The best part of the house is still its location.  Living so close to family is the best...seriously the actual best.
Palmer is growing up way too fast; she turned two a month ago.  She is my funnest and cutest and favorite little friend.  She says funny things all the time and has such a strong/fun/emotional personality.  We haven't really made any new progress in the potty training department, but since she's barely two I'm not stressing about it too much.  She did actually poop on the bathroom floor today so I'm not sure if that's a step in the right direction or in the wrong one...
She knows most colors now and almost always gets them right.  Sometimes she mixes up pink and purple and also yellow and orange, but she is really good at them.  She knows the basic shapes.  She's also learning how to count, but we're in the very early stages of that.
Somehow she's gotten even more clingy and attached to me.  And somehow she's still kind of the most inconsistent sleeper.  She actually does fine with sleeping; I very very rarely have to go into her room in the night and she goes down for bed like a dream 98% of the time.  But she rarely sleeps as long as her body would like her to sleep in the mornings and at naps.  She's an emotional girl that needs lots of sleep, so her shortened sleep leads to lots of emotional days.
She's still a very picky/finicky eater, but I feel like she has gotten the tiniest bit better about trying things she thinks she doesn't want to eat.  She still loves her cookies and treats.
She definitely went through a growth spurt a couple of weeks ago and is noticeably taller now.  She hasn't gotten her two year molars yet, but she's got the rest of her teeth that come in before those molars.
Some funny things she's said recently:
My dad was dumping a bunch of ice into a cooler and it was fairly loud and Palmer said, "Oh goodness!"  I'd never heard her say that before and it was so cute.
When something isn't quite how she'd like it to be she'll say, "Oh dear."
Her automatic answer to almost anything that you ask her is always "uh uh" while shaking her head "no".
She loves to bring us random things and show us all excited while saying, "What's this?  What's this?" over and over.
When she does something she's proud of she proudly exclaims, "I did it!"  When she finds something she's looking for she says, "I found it!"
She's started saying prayers at night when we prompt her and it's the cutest thing I've ever been a part of in my life.  She also sings along a few words to some of the songs she's heard a lot when we sing to her at bedtime.  
Whenever she hears a toilet flush she starts clapping and exclaims, "Yay Mommy!" (or whoever just went potty)
She absolutely loves her aunts, uncles and cousins.  If you say the name of one person in a family she'll go through and name every other member of the family.
She's obsessed with animals and loves to make animal sounds and loves to visit Grandma and Grandpa's petting zoo next door :)  She's also becoming obsessed with bugs and dirt.
She's OBSESSED with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and life is good for her if Mickey is on the TV or on my phone.
She loves the pool, but she usually doesn't want to stay in the water for more than a half hour.  She prefers to wrap up in a towel and then eat lots of snacks and play in the sand with Bryir.  We did a two week Mom & Me swimming lesson course at the beginning of the summer.  She wasn't so sure she wanted to learn new things, but she really did get more brave and try new things.  She'll now blow bubbles with her mouth in the water.  She'll float on her back or stomach (with me holding her) and kick her legs.  If I warn her that she's going to go under the water then she lets me dunk her and usually comes up with a smile on her face.  She loves going down the slides too.

Stuff to Remember

This post may end up being long (and boring for most) with picture overload, but there's so many little things that I want to be sure not to forget about Palmer.  She's such a funny and stubborn little goof and has such a unique personality.  I just love her so much.

She usually does a pretty good job of not making too much of a mess when she feeds herself, but this time she had yogurt all over her face and up and down her arms.  She was pretty proud of herself.

At 22 months Palmer:
*is the WORST eater imaginable.  I think that this girl does not feel hunger.  Some nights when I put her to bed I feel like she's eaten about three bites of snacks and nothing else.  She is getting pretty good at feeding herself and she loves the independence that she feels with that, so sometimes she'll eat quite a bit when she's given full freedom to do it herself, but sometimes that isn't even enough to get her to eat.  Luckily she loves milk, so she gets some calories and fat from that.  The doctor told me to give her Ovaltine for the vitamins, and she LOVES that.  I switch it up between Ovaltine and Carnation Instant Breakfast mix.  One day she started calling her sippy of chocolate milk "tuppy" and it has stuck.  So any time she wants her chocolate milk she asks for tuppy now.  It's pretty dang cute.  She also usually loves yogurt.  Greek yogurt is a staple of her diet.  One time a few months ago when I was feeding her yogurt I was saying that it was nummy and ever since then she asks for "nummy" when she wants yogurt, so that's what we call it now.

*is an EMOTIONAL girl!  She can go back and forth between goofy happy and throwing herself on the floor sad and then back again before you realize what is going on.  She is obviously an only child and is used to getting her way all the time.  I am trying to keep her from being a crazy spoiled thing, but between her strong personality and the fact that she doesn't have any siblings it is hard to tell her no.

*is a medium sleeper.  She usually wakes up once or twice in the night and fusses a bit.  Some of the time she settles herself back to sleep pretty easily, and other times it's just easier for me to go in and make sure she's ok.  I never take her out of her crib; it's literally a 10 second ordeal to just make sure she has her binky and is not laying on top of any of her cuddly toys.  She goes back to sleep right away and life is good again.  She never sleeps as long in the morning as she needs, which is frustrating.  She wakes up around 7:00 and is very tired and emotional all morning long.  For about two weeks she slept until 8 or 8:30 and she was a whole different person.  It was so nice!  But that ended as abruptly as it began and now she is back to not enough sleep.  She goes to bed super early, anywhere between 6:30-7:30; we've tried putting her to bed later and even earlier to see if it helped, but around 7:00 seems to be her magic time.  She also has a hard time napping as long as she needs.  She usually naps about an hour and a half and wakes up grumpy and emotional.  If she naps over two hours it makes all the difference in the world.  Shortly after my last post she decided she was a one nap a day kinda girl.  Every once in a great while when she is really tired in the morning she will request a morning nap and those days are such a breath of fresh air.  She will NEVER go for it if it is my idea for her to take a morning nap, but the one or two times a month that she asks for it I am happy to oblige.  She is a very light sleeper and any sound in the universe wakes her up.  If she wakes up at all during a nap, there is absolutely no going back to sleep.  **UPDATE - I started this post a couple of weeks ago (don't judge, I'm slow) and now she is getting up between 6:00 and 6:30 every day...awesome.  BUT she has actually been a little less emotional and tantrumy the last week or so, so I'm ok with less sleep as long as she can handle it emotionally.

This was my day on May 23rd.  The top picture shows what my living room looked like by 9 a.m. even though we woke up to a clean house.  Some days I feel like it's her goal to take out every single one of her toys and spread them throughout the house as much as possible.  Today she hasn't taken out a single toy.  The bottom picture shows what she did all day - cry and tantrum.  She got up way too early and napped way too short.  Today she got up even earlier (5:48) so we're in for a good one I'm sure.

*will not go to sleep unless she has her Cosmo pillow pet, owl pillow, two lovies, stuffed Elmo, stuffed Lion, and of course her blankie so she can rub her fingers on the tags.  She always tries to get us to let her take books and her milk to bed, but that's where we draw the line.

*LOVES cookies and treats!  She asks for cookies and treats all day long.  She's definitely my child when it comes to junk food, especially chocolate :)

*talks all day long.  She is getting really good at telling me what she wants or what is wrong.  She says funny things already and I absolutely love her little voice.  She is turning out to be quite the polite little thing.  She says, "thank you" and "you're welcome" (sounds like "a welcome") and "please" ("peez") a thousand times a day.

*thinks she owns mine and Taylor's phones.  She can navigate herself all through the phones and the apps.  She loves to watch her shows on my phone.  Her favorite shows are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins and Sesame Street.  She also LOVES to take pictures and video of herself.  And she loves to flip through and look at the pictures and watch the videos over and over.  If I was as cute as her I'd want to look at myself all day long too.

Here's a very small sampling of some of the pictures she's taken of herself.  They almost always end up as pics of her forehead.

*wants to be outside all day long.  I really really want to put in some grass this year, but we are having a major drought and we don't want to get sod laid just to find out that the city is going to implement water restrictions and have our expensive new grass die.  Taylor keeps promising me that we're going to get a sprinkler system put in soon and after that we plan to fence in our backyard.  So then I can at least let Palmer go out and play in the dirt.  We're very lucky to be next door to my parents and my sister so that we can go play in their yards a lot!

*has the weirdest obsessions.  #1 weird obsession is with ceiling fans.  She's not mesmerized by them like tiny little babies are, she just LOVES them!  She can't handle being in a room that contains a ceiling fan and it not being on.  She gets SO excited when she can turn a fan on and points out every fan in every place that we ever go.  She loves our fan in our living room so much that she has a hard time leaving it when we go somewhere.  She used to cry and reach for it and say, "fan fan fan" over and over when we had to leave.  Now she just blows kisses to the fan and tells it goodbye.  Today she went as far as saying, "Bye bye fan.  Miss you.  Love you."  Cutest and weirdest thing ever. She is also obsessed with my mom's turtle.  When she walks in my mom's house she immediately starts asking for the turtle and wants to be able to see it at all times.  She used to have a really hard time leaving my parents' house because she couldn't handle leaving the turtle, but she has eased up a little bit on her turtle love recently.  She used to be very scared of the turtle.  I think she would still freak out if she had to touch him, but she LOVES to look at him!  Speaking of that, she is afraid of funny stuff.  My parents have a squishy little toy lizard thing that FREAKS Palmer out!  She starts breathing heavy and does whatever she can to get far away from that thing.  She used to have the same reaction to the turtle and to a toy turtle that my mom has.  She got over those, but she still gets freaked out when she sees a little turtle bath toy of hers and won't let me put it in her bath with her.  She HATES vacuums and has the same heavy breathing freak out whenever she can see a vacuum.  It doesn't even have to be turned on, but oh man if you do turn it on she may as well be being chased by a big scary animal.

When you tell Palmer to smile for a picture you never know what you will get.  But it's usually something awesome like this face.  How can something slightly evil-looking like this still be so sweet and cute?

*is further away from potty training than she was three months ago.  Three or four months ago she was getting really good at telling me when she was about to poop, and sometimes told me when she was peeing, so I started pulling her pants and diaper off quickly and putting her on her potty.  She actually did poop in her little potty twice and in the big potty once and peed in her little one once, but none of those times was smooth and easy.  She always kind of fought it and climbed off the potty multiple times before anything happened.  Each time seemed a little more traumatic than the last for her.  And after a couple of weeks of trying she just stopped telling me altogether when she was doing her business; and now if I ever ask her if she wants to go on the potty she automatically tells me no.  So we've taken a little break from the potty training thing.  I mean, she's not even two yet so it's fine, but she had me excited there for a bit; I really thought she might be a super early potty trainer.

*has the oddest little bedtime trick she has to play each night.  So Taylor and I put her to bed together as long as we're both home.  We read scriptures with her, say a prayer and then sing a couple of primary songs while she cuddles on my lap with her sippy of milk.  So then when Taylor kisses her goodnight and goes to leave the room she always says, "milk" and hands her milk to him.  But then as he's walking out the door she yells, "milk" again and makes him bring it back to her.  On the nights when Taylor cuddles her and I leave she sends the milk with me and makes me bring it back to her.  She laughs like it's hilarious every night.  She started doing that at least a couple of months ago and without fail does it every night. 

*has 12 teeth right now (I think...there may be more that I haven't discovered yet).  She's got her four front teeth on top and bottom and four molars.

*her middle toe is the longest.  She has the cutest little feet and toes I've ever seen (even though they're ALWAYS dirty and sweaty and stinky), but I always notice that her third toe is the longest and I think it's weird.

*her eyes stayed blue, but they're a little darker of a blue than when she was a baby.  I'm not sure what color of hair she's going to end up with.  It's always been kind of a dirty blonde, so maybe it will lighten or darken up, or maybe it will stay dirty.  Her hair has a little bit of curl, but not enough to really hold the curl all day long.  By the end of the day it's always kind of scraggly but luckily she pulls off the scraggly look very well :)

Putting Desitin on her baby after changing her diaper

*is starting to know her colors.  She still gets them wrong as often as she gets them right.  But quite often she knows blue, purple, pink, yellow, green and black.  She also knows the difference between one and two...sort of.  She knows that one is one and I think she thinks that two is anything more than one.

This girl loves baths and bubbles!

This day she took a red crayon to her bedroom door and the cream colored glider chair in her room.  This is a picture of her "helping" me to wipe it off the door.  You can't see the red in the picture, but it was there.  It came off the door easily.  The chair took some serious work to get clean.  EVERY time she colors she ends up coloring something she shouldn't...the couch, the coffee table, a non-coloring book, the dishwasher etc.

Crazy morning hair!

Cute Mason and Palmer at our Easter picnic.  Don't mind my finger in the bottom corner.

Palmer and her best buddy, Bryir.  They were so cute this day with Palmer pushing Bry in the doll stroller.  Palmer LOVES Bryir and Cheyna.  She would go live with them gladly if I would let her.  On the days that she is going to play at Bryir's or Bryir is coming to play at our house I can't tell Palmer until right when it's time or she sits there and begs for "Bya" and Cheyna nonstop until it's time.

Palmer loves dirt.  We went to the Bluff cemetery to try to clean up the grave-sites of some of our ancestors and Palmer literally just rubbed dirt all over her face.  It didn't help that the wind was blowing like crazy, but most of this dirt was her own doing.

My cute little gardening helper.

How cute is she with Kristi's glasses?

I just love this picture.  This is a classic Palmer smile, with her little nose scrunched up.  I think she looks so much like her cousin Lexi in this picture.

She discovered Robin's Egg candy at Easter and loved them!

What has Palmer been up to?

Well I've been a pretty big slacker about posting any Palmer updates.  There's a lot of stuff I feel like I need to document for my own sake; because I have such a bad memory this is the only way I'll be able to tell Palmer what she was like in her second year of life.  As usual this post will be long, but I've got seven months of stuff to document for myself, so I realize I might be the only one that ever reads this entire post (although I bet that Kacey and Cheyna will cause they love Palmer like their own - and also I'm not sure if anyone else reads my blog).
Palmer is 19 months old today.  She is my absolute best friend and so much fun.  She gets more and more fun and silly every day.  She is learning and growing so much and I love watching her learn and figure out new things all the time.

This picture was taken yesterday after church.  You can't see Livvy and Palmer's skirts very well, but they are cute homemade skirts that say "LOVE" across the front.  Heather made one for Livvy and then kindly helped me make one for Palmer.  Cute cute girls.

At her 18 month checkup last month she weighed 20 pounds, which was around 3rd percentile if I remember correctly.  They couldn't get a good height measurement on her because she wouldn't stand up to be measured; she just wanted me to hold her.  She's definitely a little short for her age, but not crazy short.  They didn't measure her large noggin, but whatever size it is, it's just perfect.
She didn't really show any interest in walking until she was around 14 months old.  Within a couple of weeks she was walking pretty well, and by 15 months she was running all over the place.  She loves to be a big girl and walk/run everywhere we go.  She has recently decided that crawling up and down the stairs is no fun, and she insists on walking up and down them.  It scares me to death, but she hasn't had a fall yet.  Her little legs are so short that each step takes a lot of effort, and she has to balance herself with one hand on the wall, but she does pretty well with it.  She climbs on EVERYTHING.  Our kitchen table and chairs are too high, but if we go anywhere that has normal height tables, she always finds her way on top of them.

Wearing Kacey's glasses and looking very intellectual.

I just discovered her first molar today.  It's on the upper left side of her mouth.  I have been feeling like she was on the verge of busting out a molar on her right side for months now, so it was a surprise for me to find that one.  The matching one on her right side feels like it is super close to breaking through the gums also.  She still just has the two teeth on the bottom, and now has her four front teeth on top.  So seven teeth counting today's molar.
She is not really eating any better than she was in my last post.  She mostly just treats food like it's a nuisance that she doesn't have time for.  She definitely has her mom's sweet tooth though; she will never turn down cookies, cake, candy, ice cream etc.  She also loves peas and most fruit.  She has started shunning bread most of the time, but she'll still eat my mom's bread.  She loves milk, chocolate milk and water; she usually turns up her nose at juice, and that's fine by me.  Every once in a great while we catch her in just the right mood and she'll eat without making a big fuss, but that is rare.  Very rare.
For the most part Palmer is a good sleeper.  She took after her mom and dad in that she is a very tired girl and needs more sleep than the average person.  All of her little friends are down to one nap, but Palmer still requires two naps most days.  Within 2-3 hours of getting up in the morning she is ready for a nap.  On the days that I've kept her up and done the one nap thing, she is basically a beast for a couple of hours leading up to the nap, and then she ends up napping for only about an hour and a half usually.  So she wakes up not well-rested, and usually ends up cranky by bedtime.  But she is getting to that awkward middle area where her body seems to be transitioning to thinking it just needs one nap, but she's not used to that schedule; so many days her body fights two naps, or like I said, if we do one nap it doesn't work out so well.  I'm sure that soon we'll be doing one nap every day, and I'm just hoping that she learns to sleep as long as her body needs to get rested.  It's good that she usually wants to go to bed, because every once in a while when she decides that she doesn't want to sleep she FIGHTS it big time!  This is one stubborn girl.

I took this picture at about 5:30 tonight.  This is what she looks like when she doesn't get her full two naps.  Today was a one nap day, and you can see it in her eyes in this picture.

She is talking more and more every day, but that being said, she's not super interested in talking.  If you catch her in the right mood she'll repeat whatever words you ask her to say, but most of the time she just smiles her sly little stubborn smile and won't say whatever it is we try to get her to say.  Her favorite words are: hot, Mommy, Daddy, puppy, Grandma, Grandpa, bye bye, ni-ni (ni-night), bink, hi, no, no no (while waving her finger back and forth), cookie, cracker, and the hybrid cackie (cracker and cookie mixed - this is what she calls graham crackers and nilla wafers), teeth, shoes, poop (while touching her bum), pat pat and blastoff (from Little Einsteins), belly, coat, snow, cold, milk, bread, baby, Kristi, Carcar (Carter), Cam, By-by (Bryir), Piper, bath, seat, please (pronounced "peez" and always whispered; I'm not sure why but I have never heard her say "please" in a normal volume).
She loves to play with her friends, but is a very typical 1 1/2 year old.  She steals toys from them, hits from time to time, screams when they touch something that she wants etc.  Overall I think she does pretty well though.
She used to throw a pretty good tantrum, where she would throw herself on the floor and cry HARD for a couple of minutes.  She would hit me or herself.  Any little thing could set her off.  It wasn't awesome.  Luckily that passed pretty quickly.  She still has a smaller version of tantrum, but it's much less frequent and less intense.  She still hits others or her own head if she gets frustrated sometimes.  I don't love that obviously.
She still loves baths and would probably take 10 a day if I would let her.  She loves animals and calls all animals puppies.  When you ask her what owls say, she says the cutest, "hoo hoo."  She loves to go bye bye and would leave with any stranger without giving me a second look if they will take her out of the house.  Needless to say we're excited for warmer weather soon (hopefully) so we can get out of the house more.  She loves to give kisses, mostly to her toys and animals, but she'll usually give kisses to people too.
Palmer loves to dance and has recently been experimenting with new moves.  She's got a pretty good variety of dance styles and they are all awesome. 

She is still not super cuddly, but is becoming more and more so as time goes on.  She is still a little mama's girl, but loves her daddy a lot.  She started going to nursery a few weeks ago.  She did great the first week, and it has gotten a little worse and harder each week since then.  We now go to church at 11:00 and that time is very hit or miss with her random nap schedule.  Sometimes she "sings" little soft songs and it is so sweet and cute.  She loves to cuddle her baby dolls and stuffed animals and push them around in her doll stroller.  She loves her toys, but seems to get bored of a toy quickly and will move from toy to toy every couple of minutes.  By the end of the day my living room and her bedroom are covered with every toy and book that she owns.  She loves books a lot lately, and will bring me 100 books a day to read to her.  She doesn't really let me read them though.  She starts flipping through the pages quickly and sometimes she'll jabber and tell me the story - so cute.

Reading "Baby Night Night" - by far her favorite book these days.

She doesn't let me get anything done in the kitchen.  I can't cook or clean with her on the loose.  She insists that I hold her.  I end up having to put her in her seat and give her snacks if I want to get anything done in the kitchen.  Needless to say, I haven't been cooking or baking nearly as much as I would like...which is probably good for my waistline.
Palmer only gets a binky at nap and bed time.  She does just fine with that.  If she sees a binky she'll ask for it, but then she'll quickly say "ni-ni" like she understands that it's for ni-night time only.  She sleeps with her blankie, two lovies (usually Violet (purple bear) and Minnie Mouse, but sometimes Sage (green elephant) or Eeyore).
She HATES to have sun in her eyes.  I am making a note of this so that I remember how badly she hates it.  If we're ever driving anywhere and the sun is shining in her eyes she will cry like her world is ending until we turn away from it.
She loves going grocery shopping with me and insists that I hand every item to her first and then she'll throw it into the back of the cart.
She won't let me change her earrings.  She's been wearing the same turquoise earrings for months now, and there's no end in sight.  She got a whole bunch of new earrings for Christmas, but we have yet to see any of them in her cute ears.

Halloween.  Taylor and I were Sheldon and Amy from "Big Bang Theory" and Palmer was a cute little cheetah.

I'm sure there is stuff that I'm forgetting, but I guess I can always come back and add more if I think of anything super important.  I could just sit and watch this girl all day every day, and I guess I pretty much do just that.  She is so spunky and so sweet.  We love her so much!

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!