Picture-Perfect

Elsie and I have been doing an awful lot of photogenic and lovely things lately -- and not a lot of spending time on the internet.  It makes for a slow blog that is falling behind, but also for a pretty nice day-to-day existence!  Today I offer a bit of Elsie catch-up and lots and lots of pictures. Sorry it has been so long!

Lizard

Alligator

Halloween Monkey 

White dog with green stripes

Ever since our Halloween party, Elsie has been fixated on face-paint.  She often asks for it at random times.  I try not to say "no" just because it's messy and I'm too lazy to clean up.  Instead, I make sure we have enough time for painting, playing, and washing up, and then I say "sure" as much as possible.  She often likes to do her own.  She did her left-side on both the monkey and the "white dog with green stripes."

Pumpkin Soup

Kale

Beef Stew

The other big fixation has been cooking.  Elsie is so captivated by the process that she will "cook" in parallel with me for the entire duration of whatever I am making, be it an easy, 30-minute meal, or something much longer.  She used to just watch me, but after she reached out and touched a hot pot, I started giving her her own very real, very full-sized, but very room-temperature setup on the counter beside the stove.  I make my soups with pumpkin meat and onion.  She makes hers of pumpkin skin and onion papers.  I fill her pitcher with water when I add my broth.  I let her season her soup as she wants, and we spend a little time smelling each herb and spice, then I ask her what she thinks about the different smells. 

This weekend, Elsie took it a step further.  I found a recipe for a child's French yogurt cake via google (you dump out the yogurt into the batter, then measure all the rest of the ingredients with the empty plastic cup).  She still needs a bit more practice, but she was able to do almost the entire recipe by herself -- as is the intent of the recipe.  She totally loved the independence, but I'm trying to avoid a lot of simple carbs, so we're branching out.  

Last night, I let her prepare her very own little pot of soup, choosing which veggies would go into it, which rice, how much turkey, etc.  Controlling the process made a huge difference in her attitude at the table.  She ate the entire bowl!  This would be a common occurrence with mac and cheese, but was a most welcome surprise with turkey and escarole soup!  Today she dredged beef for beef stew.

And when the cooking is over, she pushes her chair across the kitchen to the sink, gathers up her play-pots and play-pans, and asks me to turn on the water so that she can wash her dishes.  How can I bottle this attitude and save it for when she is a teenager?

I love that Elsie is finding so many of her own new interests, but hub and I can't resist encouraging her to discover a few of our own.  Top of the list: walks in the woods.  I'm reading "The Last Child In The Woods" for a preschool book group.  Nothing quite like LCITW to motivate some serious bundling up and going outside.  (More on this to come)

She often needs some cajoling (and 15-60 min of frustrating changing-gears!) to get out the door, but is usually on board by the time the fresh air hits her face.  And Elsie and I were both enchanted when we stumble upon a field of milkweed pods and spend the next hour creating our own silky snowstorms.