One Thousand Words

SO.

The child I had surgically removed from my body an eon ago is now FOUR.

We decided to celebrate. I invited way more people than our apartment could comfortably hold and decided on a space theme since Niko is super into the idea of aliens and space exploration right now. Or he was. He quickly vetoed that and wanted OMG TRAINS. He’s still into Thomas and decided that Gordon would be his special birthday friend because Gordon is number 4 and Niko is 4. So I bought some Thomas invitations and we were set.

I set the time of the party for 1:00-4:00 because then we wouldn’t have to provide lunch or dinner, but then I went and blew literally $100.00 on snack-type food (crackers, cheese, crudites, dip, hummus). My MIL brought over her Pita (not the puffed up flat bread, but layered phyllo dough and cheese, or cheese and spinach, or meat, etc. If you’ve had spanikopita (note that pita in there) it’s similar to that but in a log or coiled or round) which was A-MAZE-ING.

I had big plans to spend the week before the party deep cleaning and organizing and getting everything awesome so the week OF the party I’d just have to tidy and maintain. Then I got super sick and spent that week horking out brown slime and complaining about how I wished I was dead, so none of that got done. And the house didn’t get fully cleaned. But I kind of stopped caring.

This was one of our decoration inspirations:

I handed the job over to Nesko while I frosted the cake THE MORNING OF THE PARTY because REASONS that were outside of my control. I also made a zillion cookies… a bunch of tiny engines covered in different colored sugars, and also larger cookies in the shape of an engine, coal tender (I put non pareils on top to be “coal”), a coach, and a caboose. Niko loved them and ate them like this: “oh hey train I’M GONNA EAT YOUR COUPLING NOW! nom nom nom NOW I EAT ALL OF YOU!!”

When he was done, it looked like this:

Well, actually, we hung a bit more crepe paper in swags on the front, but didn’t take any photos of that. I wanted more balloons all over the top but the balloons kept falling down. Nesko couldn’t figure out how to get them to stay up. Was our tape bad? Greasy walls? I have no idea.

Here’s the cake!

Gordon is a splendid blue engine with red detail. His number is yellow and outlined in red. So I carried that over to the cake. I was going to do a red circle around the cake but then decided not to risk shaky hands and a lopsided circle so I didn’t. I also didn’t level the cake so that red ruffle is hiding gaps in the frosting between the two layers. Niko said he wanted strawberry cake. This was a lie.

My camera is a piece of junk, a point and shoot that takes FOREVER to actually take the photo once you’ve hit the button, and which takes a long time to recover from taking photos. My friend Waldo, who is a photographer, used it and managed to get some good photos despite the limitations of the tool she was using.

I made 12 chocolate cupcakes, 12 strawberry cupcakes (as requested), and the cake is a layer of chocolate and a layer of strawberry. If I hadn’t been doing the “4″ thing on the cake I would have just made cupcakes. They are way easier to serve and eat then slabs of cake. We also picked up ice cream bars so we didn’t have to deal with dishing out scoops of ice cream, but then forgot about them. Uh. Duh. We currently have 10 strawberry cupcakes left over.

Some of the other kids “helped” Niko open his presents, for varying values of the word “help.” Everything he got was super thoughtful and something he absolutely enjoys. He got a bunch of books which was kind of a problem because he wanted to stop everything and read them. Presents? Who cares about presents? BOOKS.

Leah made this hat for Niko and I’m hoping that if I am really really nice she’ll make one for me too.

It was a really great time. Some friends were able to come in from out of town, we had some pretty good food even though I didn’t really cook anything.

I think next year I might have a party that’s just kids and make some pizza or something, and then have our adult friends come over the next day for some board games and happy birthday wishes and leftover cake. It was just too many people in our house and it got a little over whelming. It was SUCH a great time, though.

Technorati Tags: 4 year old, birthday, child, kid, parenting

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Niko came up to me today and asked what a Biyyo is. He has trouble with medial-Ls still so I tried to piece together what he was asking. Billow? Pillow? I told him I didn’t know.

“A biyyo is when you GET RIWEY LOUD JUST LIKE THIS!” he informed me.

“I AM BIYYOING MAMA BETAUSE I AM SO LOUD!”

He provided a few more examples of bellowing as I loaded the dish washer and then wandered into his bedroom.

Niko’s going on an adventure tonight! He’s going to try a sleep over at his baba’s house. Nesko and I are going to see “The Hobbit” tonight with a friend, but that should be wrapping up around 9 or 10 so Niko totally freaks out and MUST come home, we’ll be able to fetch him home at a reasonable time. And if not, we can grab dinner after the movie. Wish us luck. He’s never been very interested in sleeping anywhere but our house, but if we can get him used to sleeping at baba’s it’ll make life a lot easier for us.

Technorati Tags: child, parenting, preschooler

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I grew up in a kitchen with a parent who was a professional cook for many years, which means that a lot of very basic knife (and general kitchen) safety was burned into my brain from a young age. Never put knives in the sink. Never run with a knife. Always pass a knife to someone handle first. Never touch a knife blade. Dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives. Don’t use a too-small knife. I even know how to hone a knife on a whetstone. As I’ve said earlier, some of my earliest memories are helping my mom in the kitchen and I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t actively helping.

Our current kitchen isn’t very usable, for a number of reasons, so I’ve been doing the bulk of my cooking solo. Even though Niko is at that magical age where he wants to help and is capable of helping in some ways, I’ve been curtailing that because it’s just so inconvenient for me. And that’s a wrong headed attitude to have, frankly. So lately I’ve been asking him to help me load and unload the dishwasher, put his dishes in the sink, measure coffee into the coffee maker… and cut red peppers.

Yes, I’ve given my baby a knife.

A toddler stands on a wooden scaffolding called “The Learning Tower,” which raises her height to be safely able to work at a kitchen counter. Image taken from the Learning Tower website.

Several people have mentioned using things like the “Learning Tower,” which is a wooden scaffolding that costs quite a bit of money. If we had the money and the space for it I’d totally consider it, but as it is, Niko is very happy on his 2-step stepladder. We pull it right up to the counter and we practice handing a knife back and forth handle first, and then I give him strips of red pepper to slice in half.

We work on paying attention to what he’s doing, to the cutting board and the peppers. We work on how to hold the knife in his hand. We work on remembering that the blade is sharp. We work on how to hold the food steady. We work on not going too fast. And then he hands the knife carefully back to me and we put the peppers in a bowl, and he eats them all because red peppers are basically the bomb.

I know there are dull knives that people use for toddlers. There’s some plastic lettuce specialty knife that a lot of people laud for its dull blade and inability to puncture skin. I considered getting one of those, but in the end decided that with close supervision using a real knife was the better choice. Knives are sharp. I want my child very aware of that, at all times. I want him to know knife safety, and I want him to develop cooking skills that will last him through his life. If you have young children in your life you may very well make a different choice, and I’d love to hear what you have chosen or will chose. But Niko’s enjoying cutting up his own peppers, and he’s enjoying helping me, and he’s learning a lot while doing so.

How old were you when you started using a sharp knife?

Would you let a 3 year old use a knife?

What would you do?

Technorati Tags: child, cooking, kitchen safety, knife safety, parenting, safety, teaching, toddler

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Niko pre-haircut

Niko after his haircut

The hair that used to be on his head.

I cut Niko’s hair. It looks pretty awful. The great thing about hair, though, is that it grows back; and Niko, like me, is apparently descended from Victor Creed (WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP NERD ALERT NERD ALERT) so his hair should be luxuriant and shaggy again in… 2-3 days. Nesko went in and evened out the front a bit and he looks… kind of like a Vulcan? But tidier.

I also gave myself bangs. I… look worse than Niko does.

Somebody take these scissors away from me, ok?

(this has been another wordy wordless wednesday)

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Technorati Tags: parenting, toddler

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