Jonah has been taking more and more interest in our activities in the kitchen. While he can be happily be playing with his trains in the living room, he tends to come running into the kitchen at the first hint of any activities that might be going on. He insists on getting up to see what is going on on the counter top, which can make it difficult to get any of the cooking done.
Spreading out the dough.
Hey - someone has to make sure the sauce passes inspection.
Most of the time, we are able to accommodate his interest by allowing him to sit on the counter and "help" as appropriate (this does not work well if the preparation requires a lot of knife work or if there are many ingredients competing for space on the counter); occasionally we will also allow him to stand on a chair to watch or assist. Increasingly, we try to find ways to encourage his interest and allow him to help us out by practicing counting and pouring, learning ingredient names, stirring, and the like.
He LOVED licking the beaters when we made cupcakes for day care for his birthday last month. He will often snag foods from the cutting board that he refuses to later eat from his plate (vegetables, for example). And he was fascinated watching the zucchini shred in the food processor yesterday. Of course, this can get very messy, and it can also be a bit time-consuming, but it can also be fun and rewarding and I hope that we can raise a child who is comfortable in the kitchen and who enjoys cooking as much as we do.
While the grandparents were visiting for his birthday, we made pizza one night. Jonah had helped prepare pizza before, but he was particularly interested in becoming involved this night, and we had two pizzas to make instead of the usual one. Needless to say, we were in for double the trouble!
Normally, Jonah isn't too intent on eating the ingredients for the pizza (other than the shredded cheese, which is how he now prefers to eat his cheese), but he wanted to try everything from the get-go this time around. For the first time, as we spread out the pizza dough, he ripped off pieces to eat (we kept this to a minimum!), and he sampled the sauce as well. And then came the toppings - once that shredded cheese came out, we had difficulty keeping his hands off the pizza. At one point, he grabbed a big handful out of the middle of the pie! He tried the pepperoni, as he usually does, but spit it out (as usual). The red peppers were okay. Black olives - not interested in those either.
Sampling the toppings.
By the time we were finished getting the two pizzas ready, Jonah was covered in sauce and everything else. What a mess! The pizza still tasted great, and fortunately there's Oxiclean. And we had some great laughs and made some great memories!
Check me out - I'm still stuffing food in my face!
It's been another crazy couple of weeks and I've gotten behind with the blogging. Ben was traveling for work and I was pretty wiped from dealing with an intensely opinionated 2-year old (who might that be?) so didn't have the energy to start a blog post at 9:30 in the evening. Hopefully we can catch up a bit again this week before I'm the one who turns the table and heads out of town for a few days.
Jonah started his birthday day off by opening a few presents from us.
We knew he would have plenty of them to open at his party on Saturday
and that would be a lot for him to get through and focus on. Plus, it
just seemed like he ought to have at least something to open on his
actual birthday. He'd received his main gift - an Imaginarium train
table - a few weeks prior, as we'd found it at a garage sale and there
really was no way to hide it from him. But we still had a few things for
him to open, and boy did it take some convincing to get him to take any
interest!
You mean I pull on the paper, like this??
He had some Little Mr. and Little Miss books to open, as well as a Lorax quilt that I made from some panels available from Robert Kaufman Fabrics. He passed over the books pretty quickly (but has since given them a fair amount of interest), but took great interest in the Lorax quilt, even climbing on the table to get up close and personal with it (we indulged the birthday boy):
Whoa - what is this - Lorax?????
It's soft and cuddly!
Cool - there's more on the front of the quilt!!!
I'm going to play on this right away!
I had to leave for a quick appointment with the eye doctor, but Grammy Sweets took Jonah to see the construction equipment and work going on over on 67th Street. We'd stopped by to check it out the day prior, but nothing much was going on that day. On Jonah's birthday, there was plenty of activity and he was thrilled to have seen it all.
From there, we headed to the Milwaukee Public Museum to see the butterfly exhibit, some of the other displays, and a movie about the sun and moon in the Planetarium. Jonah did really well during the movie and the presentation before it that talked about the stars that are visible in the Wisconsin sky this time of year. It was really funny when he realized that there was an "E" on one wall (to indicate East) and yelled out "M" (he tends to get them confused). Moments later, he realized there was a "W" on the opposite wall and had to yell that out too ("W" is his favorite letter, other than perhaps "J").
Look at that butterfly on Grammy's purse! (It later landed on my arm and didn't want to leave.)
The remainder of the day included a nap, reading, painting with his watercolors, and video chatting with his cousins, amongst other activities.
Video chatting with Alex and Grant!
The day concluded by watching the Dr. Seuss video Gerald McBoing Boing
(or has he says, Bang Bang) until Grandma and Grandpa Gregg arrived
from Ohio. We don't watch it often, so it was a real treat, and it
always gets some laughs from Jonah.
Grandma Gregg got the honors of
reading and putting him to bed! Happy second birthday, my precious
little bear!
To date, it has been a pretty lackluster year for snow. While we don't want to get tons of the stuff (especially when I am traveling for work), we have been hoping to at least get enough to allow Jonah to partake of different snow related activities. No, we aren't going to get him on skis yet (particularly here in the flat lands of Wisconsin), but we'd like to build a snow man, take him sledding, make snow angels, etc. Particularly because he loves to be outside so much, even when it is cold out.
On Friday we got about 4-6 inches of really heavy snow, which stuck around long enough for us to get out sledding this morning. I wish I could say I had thought of it, but Michelle made the suggestion as a possibility yesterday. Unfortunately, a hair appointment mix up prevented us from getting out until today.
So after Jonah had his morning snack, we bundled up to head to a little hill where we've seen kids sledding in the past. Thankfully the hill was extremely quiet at that time in the morning. It was also very bright, and we were thankful that he kept his sunglasses on.
Prepping for the Oscars tonight? "No autographs, please!"
We were actually the first ones to the hill this morning, but another family arrived right after us. We used the sled that Grammy Sweets sent Jonah for Christmas. It is a little wooden sled that got some comments from other kids ("What a cool little sled!") later in our excursion.
Well, to say Jonah loved sledding would be an understatement. From the second he started moving down the hill, he had a HUGE grin on his face.
"This is fun! Let's go faster!"
Of course, Jonah had it easy with Michelle and me pulling him up the hill. We would take about three runs and trade off to give each other a turn. He had fun either way. At a couple points, Jonah would get up and walk around to stretch his legs a bit. He even tried going up the hill once.
Down the hill with Mommy.
Down with Daddy.
Jonah makes his way up the hill... He got about half way.
When we got to the bottom, Jonah would often say "Up!"
I also captured a couple quick videos, but I think the photos capture Jonah's smiles a little better. You can be the judge, though. Here are the two runs I captured.
Jonah certainly seemed to enjoy his first experience sledding! We look forward to future adventures in the snow.
