Christmas Trees!

Rolling the cone in the toppings.

Continuing the arts and crafts theme, Jonah and I had a good time at the end of November making Christmas trees out of sugar cones, white chocolate, and a variety of decorative toppings, including miniature M&Ms, coconut, and sprinkles. I'd seen the idea on Pinterest or on one of the blogs that I follow and thought it was a good seasonal activity for his current skills and abilities.

In an attempt to rein in the messiness, I plated the various toppings and let Jonah roll the ice cream cones in them, as the white chocolate itself was relatively hot and I wasn't sure he was able to handle spooning it on the cones. He enjoyed rolling the cones for a while, but the sugary foods soon won out (and stuck to his hand as he touched the white chocolate). It quickly became an opportunity to eat as much sugary stuff as possible, which is fine for a "special treat."

At first, Jonah tried to be sneaky about eating the toppings. Which is pretty hilarious. There is nothing "sneaky" about a 2.5 year old. (He currently likes to "hide" right in plain sight of us.) But I pretended to ignore it for a while. Eventually, he didn't try to hide it and his face and hands became increasingly covered with the sweets. The nonpareils were especially bad for sticking to his hand and he resorted to shoving his entire hand in his mouth to eat them. What a mess he was by the end, and what a great time we had!

I'm not eating this coconut, Mommy!

I put our trees on a small table near the front entry, amidst some stuffing arranged to look like snow. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of this (or I can't find them right now), but it was nice to walk by the trees every day and be reminded of our fun time together. I think this is a project I'll keep on the list to do again in the years to come!

Oh, you caught me, didn't you?

Open mouth, insert hands.

Look at that messy face!

Our finished "forest."

In the Kitchen

Spreading out the pizza dough.

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!

Am I in trouble yet???