She said, "Merry Christmas ... Best family ever."

Then she thought for a minute and said, "We've got SOME daughters."

Indeed.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Saute the onion and celery in butter until golden and soft. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, crumble the cornbread. Add sauteed vegetables to the crumbled cornbread, along with the chicken broth and yogurt. Mix well. Add the sage, thyme, poultry seasoning and pepper and combine until well-blended. Pour into a large greased lasagna pan and bake for one hour.

4 1/2 tsp egg replacer
6 TBSP water
3 cups corn meal
3/4 cup brown rice flour
3/4 cup oat flour (for gluten free, substitute brown rice flour)\
6 tsp baking powder
3 tsp sugar (make this 6 TBSP for sweet corn bread)
4 TBSP canola oil
2 TBSP melted butter
3 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 C). Grease 9 x 13 pan or fill muffin cups with paper liners. In a small bowl, beat together egg replacer and water. In a separate bowl, combine cornmeal, brown rice flour, oat flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Add egg mixture, oil, butter and water; stir until smooth. Spoon batter into pan or muffin tins (1/2 cup for each muffin).

Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes (10-15 for muffins), until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Isabel, too, is hitting more and more milestones. She is just amazing. She started walking last week, and I don't mean just the 3-4 steps she has been doing for the last month. Now she is walking 15-20 steps, and it is only a matter of days, I can tell, before she chases Kate down the hall. What is really impressive, though, is not her late walking skills, but her really early speaking skills. She blows me away. She is up to four words in a sentence, and I can tell she understands absolutely everything I tell her. She has so many words I can't make a guess...150? 200? I have no idea. She is like a parrot, and comes up with 5 or more new words a day, clear as day. Today she correctly identified every animal in Brown Bear, some with their colors. She now refers to the book by name, Brown Bear, and can say the animal noises that go with most of them too. She loves to read, and insists on about 20 books a day. Her other favorite thing these days is the Penelope Peapod baby doll Kate gave her for her birthday. This baby goes along with us everywhere, and tonight she actually tucked the doll into its crib. She even stopped nursing to give her baby a drink the other day, which really cracked me up. Of course, now that Kate has figured out how attached Isabel is to the baby doll, Kate steals it from her and hides it. Then Isabel bursts into tears and calls for Mommy.

Kate's play is getting more and more imaginative, too. Her pull along dog was misbehaving the other day, and I heard her giving it a stern talking to and time out. She came back and told me what her dog did (I think he hit his sister?) and she told me how he got a time out. I reminded her that he needed to be let out of time out, so she went back in there and told him he had to apologize to his sister.

She is also embracing the female gender role with gusto! She has decided that girls only wear dresses, and she refuses to wear anything but a dress. No skirts, either, just dresses are allowed. It was such a battle every morning, because how could I have known the switch would be so thorough. She absolutely will not wear a skirt or pants. She also hates tights, so this is a challenge now that the weather is turning. She has been convinced to wear footless leggings, but she prefers to be free of such encumbrances. Furthermore, the dresses have to conform to her sense of style, which is fluid. I make sure she shops with me when I buy dresses, otherwise I only have a 50% like ratio. Even when she chooses the dress, at least 25% have to go back because she changes her mind about them. I have never done so many returns. Then there is the shoe issue. She will only wear her pink sparkle shoes, regardless of what dress she has chosen for the day. Then her hair has to be done every day. She requires either one pony tail or two, plus decorative clips - up to 12 at a time. I have no idea why she became so girly, but I suspect Cinderella had something to do with it.

Ingredients
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup oat flour
3/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 ounces M&Ms

Directions
Heat oven to 375 degrees. With a mixer, combine sugars, sour cream, butter, oil and vanilla until well blended and fluffy. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix until soft dough forms. Stir in M&Ms with a spoon.

Drop heaping teaspoons of dough onto cookie sheet two inches apart. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until the cookies are slightly brown.

Makes 18 cookies.

Oat and Buckwheat Egg-Free Pancakes
Serves 4

1/2 cup oat flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer, + 2 TBSP water, beaten in small bowl
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup water
2 TBSP melted butter

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients, stirring until evenly blended. In a small bowl, combine the Ener-G Egg Replacer mixture, buttermilk, water and butter until well mixed. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until flour mixture becomes wet. There will be a few lumps; do not overmix. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Pour the mixture onto a griddle or pan over medium heat using a 1/4 cup measure. When the pancake becomes bubbly, flip with a spatula and cook until done on the other side. The pancake will be darker than usual due to the types of flour used.

Isabel is having a blast with her new walking skills. She is up to 6 steps in a row, and now surfs around the walls of the house, making short 3-5 step transitions when necessary. She is talking up a storm, with so many words I can't keep up. She is really jumping by leaps and bounds with her communication skills, too. She wanted to nurse this afternoon, and told me "I want nur, I want nur." When I told her we would nurse in a little while, she started pulling the sleeve of my shirt up, and then took the sling, which I use as a nursing cover, and started pulling it over her head, repeating, "I want nur." It was like she was saying, "Can't you see I'm willing to go under this thing for some milk?" Yesterday she started saying, "I want sit!" while tapping on the couch or the chair in the living room. Then when I helped her into the chair, she said, "Big girl!" Of course, as soon as I turned my back, she toppled out of the chair onto the floor. Fortunately she is made of rubber and doesn't seem to have even a bruise.

Kate is on a dress kick. Pants are out, dresses are in. She won't even wear skirts because they all fall down, elastic waist or not. She is just too skinny. She loves cotton twirly dresses. She likes to spin around and watch them flow. I guess this goes back to the princess thing? They all wear dresses except for Jasmine.

We decorated our yard for Halloween. That night, someone stole a bunch of our decorations and removed light bulbs from our orange strand of lights. Sometimes I hate New York.

About a month ago, we were walking in the park with the girls in the stroller. Kate and Izzy were asleep, and Izzy woke up and wanted to be carried. I carried her for a bit, then tried to put her back in the stroller, when she reached up towards me and yelled "I want Mommy!" I looked at Joel and asked him if I heard her correctly, and he said he thought the same thing. A couple of days later, she did it again, this time much more clearly. By the end of the week, she was saying "I want Mommy" frequently, and added "I want ball" to her repertoire. Now she says "I want rice," "I want pizza," "I want ride" and "I want drink." Today she learned strawberry, nose, ears, meow, banana, yogurt and no. The phrase that I love the most is, "Mommy, eat eat eat." Now she has added her order to the end of the request for food and today it was "Mommy, eat eat eat strawberry," and then later, "Mommy, eat eat eat banana." It kills me, because Kate never really asked for food much, but Isabel thinks about it a lot. She asks me for food at least 5 times a day and it's not always the same request. It is nice to know what is on her mind so she's not disappointed. One less thing to worry about!

Today Kate made a new instant friend. We went to Back to the Land after school to get some of Isabel's wheat free cereal bars for our daily stroller rides in the morning. Outside, both Kate and Isabel wanted to eat one, so we sat down on a bench outside the store and ate our cereal bars. Then a little boy, Ezra, who is 2, joined us, and he and Kate hit it off instantly. They played on the bench, and then Kate invited him to join us at the playground. Turns out his family is moving to Park Slope next month only 4 blocks from us, so after chatting for an hour or so while the kids played, his mom and I exchanged numbers and made plans for a future play date. How nice would it be to know more people in our neck of the woods?

We also found out yet another family from Kate's school lives on our block, for a total of 4 out of 60 something kids from her school live on our block. Now that is weird, especially since we live 2 miles from the school. We should have a block play date!

Now I'm researching car seats because Isabel has about another half pound before she can turn around and face forward, and a month ago she was at the height limit for her car seat. We are planning to give Izzy Kate's old seat and get a more toddler one for Kate, but I'm not sure I like most of the ones I find. I think she needs the harness, so we're limited, and she doesn't weigh enough to go purely booster anyway. I found a couple of toddler booster seats that have 5 point harnesses, and the only one I like is the Britax Frontier. The others seem to hard to force her to sit in for extended periods of time. Part of me is debating just going with one of the other Britax models that don't convert into a belt booster, because who wants to give her the opportunity to unbuckle? The Marathon weighs 6 pounds less than her current seat and the Frontier and has better looking patterns. Oh, what to do?

We've had a fun-filled birthday weekend. Kate had a fabulous time at her princess tea party, and she had 14 guests. They played dress up and had tea sandwiches. She got some great loot and has been playing with it non stop. She has been wearing her tiara everywhere, because it is important to always keep your tiara on. I had to talk her into leaving it in the stroller at soccer practice this morning.

Yesterday Kate had her three year visit, and we had to knuckle down and get her shots so she could start school in a few weeks. She had the Hep B and Chicken Pox vaccines, both required, and the only ones she had done without. So far she has had a light fever and her arms are both sore. She was really brave and well-behaved, and didn't cry at all. She got behaving balls for that.

Isabel has been diagnosed with an egg allergy and a slight wheat allergy. Yesterday we went to the store and bought an egg replacement powder so we can adapt our cake recipes. We'll find out from the allergist if we have to go gluten free as well. Our appointment is on the 26th, we had to wait for the doctor to come back from vacation and then we had to come back from vacation. I read somewhere that dealing with a child's allergies can be more stressful than dealing with cancer. I can totally see that. Already she is stealing things off plates that she shouldn't have, and she got hives from head to toe at the ice cream shop when they used a dirty scoop to get her water ice, which should have been egg free. Now I know, but it's stressful trying to navigate it all, especially when the slightest error can send you to the emergency room and can even cause death. Eggs are all over the place.

My sister told me about an article in the Washington Post last week about a child with an egg allergy who almost died when Chucky Cheese told him their mozzarella sticks were egg free when they were not. Each exposure to the allergen can cause a more severe reaction than the last, so how many chances do you get to screw it up before they go into anaphylactic shock? Continued exposure can aggravate the allergy and keep them from growing out of it. Most kids grow out of an egg allergy, thankfully, and I really don't want her to be one of those statistics that didn't. I have to say, though, that when I thought it was milk and not egg, I found it harder to feed her dairy free than egg free. Since we found out, we have had one more hives episode, from Annie's macaroni and cheese. Apparently it has egg in it, but it is not listed on the package. It just says it is processed in a facility that processes egg products. Great. She is apparently really sensitive to it.

So we will do what we can. I am trying to limit my eggs, too, since I am nursing. When I talk to the allergist I will find out if I need to be completely egg free too. I would guess so? Who knows. If that's what she needs, then I'll do it. I will miss ice cream, though. At least I don't have to go dairy-free!