Conversations with my chatterbox

A random monologue on Granny's garden:
Granny has a duck in her garden. Aunty Suse bought it for her birthday. Sometimes it rains in Granny's garden. Granny has new swings.

This dialogue with E playing all parts I overheard whilst lurking hopefully by her bedroom door to see if she had gone to sleep yet:

Hello, Olephant.

Would you like a biscuit?

Yes, I would like it.

Let’s eat it, Olephant.

Careful, Olephant, you’ll fall down.

Whilst pretending to be Curious George on the trapeze swing at Granny and Grandad's (and fortunately, I might add, not in the park or somewhere else public):
Granny, I want to go in a cage. Put me in a cage, Granny! Put me in a cage and lock it with a key! I want to go in a cage with a balloon on my hand!

(2 years and 5 months).

(With apologies to Kylie from Octavia and Vicky for stealing her post idea.)

Left to her own devices ...

... E decided to wear her hat inside and show her toys a good time.

Suburban Day

A play at home. A two minute walk with the pram to the shops half a block away. A hair trim for E so her fringe would not constantly be in her eyes. Other than running around the hairdresser when we arrived yelling "running away!" she behaved perfectly. She sat on my lap and the cloak went around both of us. She was fascinated by the actual fringe-cutting (fortunately only two minutes' worth) barely moving throughout.

We then crossed the road to the lovely local cafe, where I had promised E we would have morning tea if she was good during her haircut. Seeing as she had been very good, I relented to her demands for both orange juice with a straw and a biscuit. They kept her busy for long enough that I got to have a pot of tea and most of a newspaper. I love tea at this particular cafe; they use tea leaves in a little teapot, and fine bone china cups that look as they belong in a display case rather than in a modern cafe.

We then crossed the road again to the playground. When E first started enjoying playgrounds this one was too big for her as it involves a ladder rather than stairs and has a rather steep slide. She has always lacked both fear and sense so far as playgrounds are concerned, and is now big enough that the ladder is no obstacle at all.  

Lots of slides later she requested "going home?" and I was ready to oblige. At home we spent the rest of the morning in the garden, she in her "little pool" and sandpit, and me attempting to handwater the berries, tomatoes, herbs and hydrangeas. So far this summer the twice weekly sprinkler plus handwatering on the days I am home seems to be keeping them happy. For lunch I offered "Daddy pasta" (bolognese made by D) which was rejected despite initially being demanded, and a toasted cheese sandwich, which she ate about two bites of. I decided she was full of orange juice and biscuit and could just have a big afternoon tea.

"Sleepy time" involved 15 minutes of patting and wriggling, but did eventually take place. The afternoon involved more of the same in the garden and inside with books, puzzles and "watching Bop."

A suburban day. The kind in which we didn't venture more than 200 metres from our front door. The kind I hoped for when we left our inner city apartment pre-baby. The kind I definitely enjoy now (albeit in moderation).

* There are photos on my private blog for anyone interested.

Little E and her Beloved Bop

Little E has a not-so-secret love. She begs for him morning, noon and night. She would gladly spend all day with him but her (electronic) access is doled out in strictly measured doses (usually when Mummy is preparing her lunch and dinner). She has memorised the names of all his friends and can recite his numerous biographies. She mispronounces his name with all the earnest enthusiasm that only a toddler can muster. Her devotion is, frankly, driving her parents nuts.

Spot the dog came into Little E's life via the loan of several books. After several hundred readings in the space of a month or so, I attempted to give them back. Upon seeing the enthusiasm that resulted from me producing the books from my bag and putting them on her bench, Lovely Friend E declared that she was not going to be the one to deny Little E such pleasure. And so the books remain on extended loan, and E's enthusiasm now extends to the DVD which I bought her thinking it might buy me a minute or two of peace every now and then. Although she does enjoy a wide variety of books, E will always return to Bop. She will sit and look at them by herself with concentration that is very impressive for someone not yet two years old.

So, regardless of the ever diminishing levels of Mummy and Daddy's sanity, innocent little Bop brings Little E such pleasure it's hard to begrudge him. Other fans may enjoy this site I discovered today: http://www.funwithspot.com/au/

All the mornings of childhood should be like this

On Monday Little E and I had a lovely outing, just the two of us. We drove to Hillarys Boat Harbour, which is about 25 minutes up the coast. It was an easy drive with no screaming. When we got there, she consented to go in the pram and remained in it until we got to the child-friendly beach. There is a playground there that E loves that is just hard enough to be challenging for her but not so tricky that my heart is in my mouth every moment (given she has neither fear nor sense so far as climbing is concerned). She clambered up the ladder and through the tunnel, stopping at every window to gleefully "peek boo!" everyone on the outside.

The beach itself was about as stereotypically beautiful as anyone could hope for; clear, clear water with barely a movement of waves, white sand, not too hot, crowded but not excessively so with happy families at vac-swim classes. I am crossing all my fingers and toes that this morning will have got E over her beach fears. They certainly weren't in sight as she pranced and splashed and we did dozens of ring-a-rosies, giggling every time she splashed down. We had a mid-swim break to sit on a towel whereupon she insisted upon feeding half her strawberries and grapes to me, after which she actually demanded to return to the water.

Then it was time to wash the salt off ("shooow-a time, shooow-a time!") and put dry clothes on. And then the highlight of the morning for E - ice cream time. She hoovered her way through an extravagantly priced strawberry gelati ($4.60 for a child sized scoop?!), smearing it all over her face as any self respecting child should. After that she announced "home time? Eli watching Bop?" (Bop=Spot). And seeing as it was a conveniently timed request, and she was very pleasant about getting back in the pram, we made our way back to the carpark, and then home.

At home she did get a few minutes of her beloved Bop whilst I produced cheesy pasta, and then she went to bed without fuss.

A lovely morning all round.**

** Followed by a completely feral afternoon in which she screamed every time the little friend who had come to visit touched one of her toys, barely wanted to move from Mummy's lap, and then got put in her room for repeatedly touching the DVD player after being told not to. Sigh. Such are the inconsistencies of toddlerhood.

Christmas Eve dinner for a tired, happy toddler

It's 5pm on Christmas Eve. So far today Little E has eaten two fried eggs, bacon ("ham! ham!"), two pancakes with raspberry sauce, gingerbread ("biccies"), chips (also biccies), rice crackers (little biccies), miniature chocolate Christmas brownies ("cakey") and mountains of watermelon.

It's dinner time. She's tired. I need something fail safe. So here it is. Cook in the microwave cheese sauce to put on pasta, and a plate with some cucumber and tomato.

Microwave cheese sauce for pasta or potatoes or whatever else

1 heaped tablespoon of butter

1 heaped tablespoon of plain flour

1 cup of milk

1 cup of grated cheese

Chopped parsley or chives

 

1. Put the butter in a microwave proof jug or deep bowl and zap for long enough that it melts (30 seconds in our microwave).

2. Add the flour and whisk vigorously until it makes a thick, lump-free paste.

3. Add the milk a little at a time and whisk vigorously until the liquid is lump-free, scraping down the sides with a spatula if necessary.

4. Zap in the microwave for two minutes then take out and stir.

5. Zap another two minutes then take out and stir again (you may need to do this again depending on your microwave - it should be quite thick by this point).

6. Stir in the cheese, zap for a further 60 seconds.

7. Stir in the herbs.

8. Serve on pasta. Freeze the excess in small portions in sandwich bags or ice cube trays.

I've used it as the base for baked macaroni cheese and I reckon it would be good on baked/boiled potatoes. I've also seen recipes that involve baking leftover cooked rice with cheese sauce and cooked vegetables.

I would post a photo of the result but again it was served in the red Ikea googly-eye bowl and no one but a toddler would think it appealing. That said, our toddler just devoured her bowl of without complaint and demanded seconds - a happy household all round. We're set to repeat today's excesses tomorrow.

Merry Christmas wherever you are.

Swings & roundabouts

Image from www.weheartit.com

I am completely resigned to the notion of "this too shall pass" when it comes to babies sleeping - or not, as the case may be. Until this morning I hadn't thought about applying it to the seemingly random and definitely annoying eating habits of the same sweet and fickle little creatures. I've been whinging away about Little E's mercurial temperament in relation to all things food over the past week or so (see here and here if you think that misery deserves company).

As of today she could be a different child. She ate porridge and fruit for breakfast, snacked throughout the morning on her usual rice cakes, cheese and fruit, but was distracted quite easily and happily on the occasions I thought she was bored rather than hungry. She managed a trip to the library without demanding food in the middle of it, then consented to sit in a high chair without screaming and struggling to get out at a cafe, where she shared my fruit juice and raisin toast. She did pour water in her lap and spent the rest of the morning looking as though I have very unimpressive nappying techniques but that is a separate issue! Back to the library for Rhyme Time where there was enough going on that food was the last thing on either of our minds. On the way home she accepted that we had run out of snacks and spent the drive completely absorbed in attempting to take her shoes and socks off. At home it was lunch time and she ate half a toasted wrap with cream cheese, avocado and turkey.

She is now napping and all I can say is that I would like to put an order in for a repeat of this morning rather than a repeat of last week.

Are you paying attention, oh mighty food gods?

Today I am grateful for ... pikelets

Pikelets of the gourmet variety from www.taste.com.au.
Mine don't look quite this impressive.

 ... seeing as Little E has decided they are a food group all on their own. 

Meal times have become a bit fraught lately. She won't sit in her chair - or if I insist, she attempts to climb out of it, heart-stopping Houdini style. She wants to snack constantly, tugging at the freezer door (the only one she can reach, and which has a baby lock on it) demanding "minga minga minga" as though she has not been fed for weeks. She will eat pikelets, or frozen vegetables, or rice cakes/crackers with hommus/cream cheese, or sliced cheese. That's about it. She's even off fruit, which if I'd heard a week or so ago I would have laughed at. The constant snacking is perpetuating the annoying cycle because I think part of the problem is that she eats so many snacks she's then not really hungry when it comes to meal time.

Yesterday for dinner I offered E:

* Boiled egg: doubly offensive because it had to come off a spoon, and being fed from a spoon is, like, worst ever nightmare territory - she would not open her mouth, shoved the spoon away, and when (even though I knew it was a bad idea) I tried to persist, she grabbed it and rubbed it in her hair;

* Mini raviolis (which a week ago she could not get enough of) - she ate two;

* Frozen vegetables - she ate a few bits of carrot and maybe three peas.

It is making me feel like some crazy bag lady who alternates between mumbling to herself and then bursting out into loud, unexplained rants.

I keep reminding myself that it's not the worst thing in the world; after all a homemade pikelet has nothing dreadful in it and incorporates a fair amount of egg and milk.

And I have a few strategies to attempt this weekend and next week:

1. Distraction. Instead of giving in to the demands for constant snacks, offering a book or something else fun. Hopefully she will then be hungrier at meal times.

2. Trying some savoury pikelet recipes; the old sneaky vegetable technique.

3. Maybe trying some other finger food that is similar to pikelets, little fritters or something. I just need to work up the enthusiasm to cook stuff even knowing that it will probably be rejected.

So there we are, gratitude for the old one cup of flour, one cup of milk, one egg (plus at our house at the moment, some mandatory mandarin rind).

This post is part of Maxabella's Grateful Saturday.

Ode to Frozen Vegetables

Praise you frozen vegetables

yellow orange green

frosty crunchy packets

in my freezer lurk unseen.

A minute in the microwave

round and round you go

exactly the attraction

I'll prob'ly never know

but Little E will gobble you

when all else is refused

her bowl will come back empty

nothing to re-use.

Oh lovely frozen vegetables

never hit-and-miss

nutritious frozen vegetables

you make me feel like this:

The sausage roll fiend

Recently we had afternoon tea with lovely friend Em and her Little H (two and a half) at Lawleys, a local bakery/cafe. We preceded it with a play in the park but then E started yelling for food (fair enough as I tend to give her dinner by 4:30 at the latest as that seems to be when she is hungry and if she doesn't have something approximating dinner at that time then she winds up eating fruit and cheese and rice cakes and then not wanting dinner when I offer it an hour later). Anyway, I should have known that the box of grapes was not going to cut it food-wise and wound up buying a sausage roll for E and I to "share." The quotation marks are because E loved it so much she ate about three quarters of it and when we got home her little tummy was all distended with the quantity of meat and flaky pastry she had managed to shovel into it. So I decided that I better learn how to make the things myself.

I wanted a recipe that didn't involve commercially produced sausages, just mince and this one from Kidspot looked promising. I used veal and pork mince because that was what I could find at the supermarket, added a big stick of celery as well as the carrot and onion, and left out the salt and pepper. I wouldn't attempt it without a food processor, but with one it was pretty easy, and they worked out really well. I did them in two batches and only thought about the fact that they would freeze better uncooked after I had put the first batch in the oven. I thought we'd have trouble getting through the 32 I cooked, but pigs that we all are they are disappearing pretty rapidly! They are a big hit with E and D and I had a sausage roll dinner the other night and enjoyed them too. Here's what is left: