Milestones and meatloaf

There have been a few minor milestones this week that I wanted to make sure that I captured. Here's Reina's first ponytail! If she's anything like her mother, ponytails will (fortunately? unfortunately?) become a big part of her fashion strategy. (Aunt Vicky's going to love to read that sentence!) Anyway, Reina's hair is finally getting long enough to pull back all around and she even willingly let my try this little experiment. I think it makes her look very grand and mature. Look at the hair color? The next time I get my haircut, I'm going to take her with me to the salon and tell the beautician to make my hair look like Reina's. I wish! The other milestone this week is that Will is finally no longer wearing Pull-ups at night. I know, I know, another post about bodily functions. This is a pretty big deal for us though. It's taken him quite a while to get the hang of it and we're not totally in the clear yet, but last night he made it the whole night without any accidents and I'm hoping for the same thing tonight. Man, he's going to cringe when he reads that sentence in a few years. MOM! How embarrassing! With Reina's accelerated potty training plan, we could be a diaper free house by summer. Hard to imagine...

I have several New Year's Resolutions this year and most of them fall under the exercise/weight loss genre but one of my goals is to cook something new each week. We have been in a pretty big rut meal-wise for the last few years, well actually since March 19, 2007, but that's beside the point. We eat fairly healthy food but we don't change it up. So I decided that if I could cook one new recipe a week, maybe we'd find some new favorites to add into the rotation. Last week was the bœuf bourguignon and while it was delicious, the 6+ hour prep time makes it not incredibly practical for everyday meals. Sunday, I tried the meatloaf recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks cookbook which was a very thoughtful birthday gift from my very thoughtful sister. Despite the evidence presented in this picture, the meatloaf turned out pretty well. It's definitely not a low-cal recipe (BACON!) but it was tasty and the kids liked it too. Next week, I think I'll try something with chicken. We are getting crazy around here!