building sites

Great excitement in our house this week, at least for the smallest member. A backhoe moved into the empty lot across the street and was digging a huge hole and loading dump trucks with dirt. All very exciting for our boy. He's been inspired to build his own Lego creations - a very large container ship with dock and loading truck, then that was taken apart and a locomotive was created, then a garbage truck, then a wind turbine transporter ship and finally a cruise ship (complete with passenger doors, cargo doors and an icebreaker snow plow). In between we have train crashes on the wooden railway or the battery CAT train set.

the backhoe

building the lego container ship

The weather finally warmed up enough for us to brave the outdoors wearing summery type clothes - shorts and capris, albeit with sweatshirts over top and I finally have more plants in the garden - some containers of flowers as well as summer squash and herbs. It still needs to be a bit warmer for the tomatoes, beans and basil. The boy was helping me load soil into the containers, digging holes for the plants with his excavator and then watering everything with the help of his elephant watering can. But then he had to experiment making brown water (regular water with dirt added) and running his battery train set outside. But it was lovely to be outside.

And in honour of summer type weather, I changed up our Sunday supper. Served potato salad instead of oven roasted potatoes. And I made mayonaise myself to go in the potato salad. Yum.

Mayonaise (from Luisa at Wednesday Chef)
1 egg yolk
salt
1 garlic clove, minced
anchovy paste equivalent to 1 anchovy
1/4 lemon
1/3 cup sunflower oil
2 tbsp olive oil

Put the egg yolk into a wide mouth jar and whiz with an immersion blender for about 30 seconds. Add the salt, garlic, anchovy paste and juice of 1/4 lemon and whiz briefly. While whizzing slowly add the oil in a steady stream until the mixture is creamy and emulsified. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Potato Salad (adapted from the Tomato Fresh Cafe cookbook)
6 red potatoes, scrubbed and diced in large dice
salt
1/4 red onion, diced finely
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 large spoonful sour cream
2 large spoonfuls mayonaise
1 tbsp dill weed
salt and pepper

Boil the potatoes in salted water until al dente. Drain and cool.

Meanwhile add the minced onion, mustard, sour cream, mayonaise and dill to a large bowl and mix together. Add the cooled potatoes and toss until coated. Taste and season with salt and pepper as required.

musings from the laundry room

How is it that laundry accumulates so fast? And how does one small boy go through so many clothes? And get them so dirty? And I thought I still had a few years before I had to check through the pockets but tonight I found a stash of pennies in a small boy's jeans pocket, so I stashed them away in his penny jar. T is doing a great job of finding and collecting pennies; his penny jar is almost full!

T's new favorite videos are from the library and they need to be returned (3 videos to the library, 1 book to daycare, 1 sweatshirt to preschool - all to be done tomorrow). Our boy loves to borrow things! Anyway - new favorite videos - Mighty Machine series. He loves these machine stories.

D finds the voices hokey, especially the Newfoundland accent on the log skidder! But they are great for T to watch on rainy evenings while I make supper. When he's not helping me that is. His tasks today were looking for the carrots in the stew and putting the unused carrots back in the fridge for me. Then it was back to playing with his backhoe and waiting for the earthmover to be fixed (the earthmover's bucket came off in transit and has to be glued on, but unfortunately a small boy is so anxious to play earthmover and backhoe that the glue hasn't had a chance to set and the repair isn't holding...)

And now it's quiet. There is the drip, drip, drip of the rain on the drainpipe outside, the hum from the laundry in the dryer, a small boy curled up in his bed, sound asleep, the aroma of stew cooking for tomorrow night's supper and a mug of hot tea next to my computer. Life is good.

bye bye soo soo

The soo soo fairy came a visiting at our house last night. And left T a backhoe.

He's very excited and as I write this is snuggling up with D and the backhoe on his way to sleep. We have been soo soo (soother) free for 4 nights now - something I did not imagine was possible. We came up with the soo soo fairy a few weeks ago and have been talking it up with T since then but left it up to him to make the decision. Until I looked at his soo soo the other morning and it was completely toast. So it had to go and we didn't have any others besides his baby teething ones so it was crunch time. We didn't say anything about the soo soo fairy until last night - just that his old soo soo was destroyed and had to be thrown away and there weren't anymore soo soos - just his baby ones. Fortunately he didn't want his baby ones - he's a big boy (yes!). It hasn't been too bad, T is sleeping as usual, the only crisis was Wednesday morning when he was crying and wouldn't be soothed. He was scared about something but the soo soo coping mechanism was gone and we have to help him with that piece. But the soo soo is no longer required for going to sleep! And last night we tucked the baby soo soo under his pillow for the soo soo fairy and tonight (we forgot to check this morning) T found the backhoe. Complete little boy joy! And proud mummy and daddy!