First Signs of Spring [Photo]
We found little flowers blooming over the road on our long walk yesterday.
Despite the current cold snap [do you see how many layers Mini-MI's wrapped in?] the plants have decided it’s sunny enough to get growing. Spose they know best.
Related articles
- Look to nature for early signs of spring (guardian.co.uk)
Parents Who Hid Child’s Gender for Five Years Now Face Backlash
When Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper had their son, Sasha Laxton, five years ago, they decided that rather than make a big splashy “It’s A Boy!” announcement, they’d keep the news to themselves. Instead, they only told a select number of relatives that little Sasha was a he; to everyone else the child was referred to as “the infant” and described without gendered pronouns. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Laxton told her local news outlet, Cambridge …
Winter Gingerbread Porridge Recipe (for Toddlers and Grown-Ups)
This porridge is lovely on a cold day because it’s warm and fruity and biscuity. It’s a special happy winter recipe that makes you feel all glowy and full of solstice cheer.
You can add pretty much anything you like to it; this recipe is reasonably healthy, though if you’re an adult trying to lose body fat then you might want to use lower fat milk and go easy on the sweet bits. Sorry, did I just type that? Call an exorcist; I may not have much time.
To serve 1 hungry toddler, we used:
- About 40 g of porridge oats
- About 125 ml of full fat milk
- About 20 or 30 g of gingerbread (we used Organix mini gingerbread men)
- A small handful of raisins or sultanas
- About a teaspoon of apple with the peel left on, chopped into fairly small bits
- About half a teaspoon of orange or lemon peel, grated
- A pinch of ground cinnamon
What to do:
- Put the oats and fruit stuff and cinnamon into a microwaveable bowl [Note: if you don't like microwaves, put it in a pan instead] and stir it all together a bit.
- Set 2 or 3 gingerbread men/pieces aside, and break the rest up into toddler-bite-sized chunks. Throw the chunks into the bowl and stir them in.
- Add the milk and give it another quick stir.
- Microwave it for a minute on full power; stir it, then nuke it again for another 30-60 seconds. [If you're using a pan, bring it to the boil and keep stirring for 2-3 minutes.] Watch it in case it overboils, but don’t panic – it will bubble a lot, but it thickens up as it boils and is unlikely to spill over unless your bowl is really full.
- Take it out of the microwave [or off the stove] and stir it for a good minute while it cools.
- Stick the spare gingerbread men/pieces in the top for decoration.
- Check the temperature’s OK, then eat it.
Bath with Baby (the place, not the verb (the bath, not the baby))
This week we’ve been in the lovely [rainy, chilly, yet pleasantly not at all like our rainy, chilly home] city of Bath.
The joys of travelling with a toddler in tow meant that I had a meal plan, a huge grocery shopping list, and an even huger packing list before we could even think about leaving the baby-proofed comforts of our flat. Playpen, sleeping bag, travel mattress, twice as many clothes as seemed necessary (because she’s always twice as grubby as you think). Every toy we thought she might not sleep without, yet she still hasn’t slept through the night the whole time we’ve been here.
Now that we’re here, of course, we don’t need half that shit. We will, however, be needing a new suitcase to take it home again. Oh well.
Meanwhile, this is my office for the week. Likey?
15 Safe Ways to Entertain a Baby (or Toddler) in the Car
We did a roughly 12 hour trip each way on our jaunt to Echternach, and Mini-MI suffered all the indignities of a long hot day in the car admirably. There were times when some of these ideas came in bloody handy, though.
BTW, when I say safe I mean it in a relative sense — nothing is truly safe when you’ve got a one-year-old with you.
- Books. Preferably soft ones, to prevent injury when they’re thrown at your head.
- Music. Mini-MI will be happily distracted for up to half an hour at a time if there’s something to listen to.
- Pulling faces. Doesn’t matter if you’re no good at it, they’ll show you how.
- Water games. On a hot day it’s particularly good – just drip a bit of water on the baby’s head or arm, let them do what they like. Give them the beaker and leave them to it if you can…
- Singing. Any kind will do, especially if you’ve got no other music.
- Hand signs. Vulcan, Gangsta, Rocker, Surfer – all genres welcome here. You copy them or they copy you; this is an easy one.
- Food. Let’s face it, this is one of the easiest distraction tactics in the world. Something that takes a while to eat is best.
- Hunt the Food. When your darling little one drops half-chewed snacks into the mysterious cavities of the upholstery & luggage, you’re gonna play this one anyway. Might as well play for laughs.
- “Look!” (like I Spy, but for younger infants the objective is just to point out the window at stuff. Mini-MI likes spotting bikers on the road.)
- The paper fan. Fold a paper sheet in zigzags, pinch one end and fan the other out, waft it at your offspring. Cooling and entertaining.
- “Where’s your…?” (like Look! but pointing at bits of your body)
- Drawing. Provided nobody gets stabbed with a crayon, this could occupy a whole 20 minutes before the upholstery’s at risk.
- Clapping hands. Mini-Mi absolutely loves the power trip of grabbing our hands and clapping them for us, or you could play pat-a-cake if you remember how.
- Winking and blinking. Younger kids typically haven’t figured out how to wink yet, but they’ll give it a damn good try.
- Sleep. Yes, OK, you can’t make this one happen. But it’s the longest period of quiet you’ll have, so make the most of it when you get it.
Related articles
- Gadgets that Create Road Trip Bliss (drivenct.com)
Baby TV: Won’t somebody please think of the children?
Baby TV, at first glance, seemed like a great idea. 24 hour broadcasting, no advertising, just developmental programming for the under-3s.
A couple of the shows I watched were OK (with the volume really low, at least – all that singing is hard to take at times). There were some nice short animations that I found quite appealing. And I figured the lack of advertising would make Mini-MI a bit less likely to start demanding happy meals and branded character merchandise.
Then I started picking up on the odd thing here and there that set my teeth right on edge. My most jaw-dropping OMG-they-didn’t moment thus far came from Learn with Baby (2006), in which the twee but slightly breathy voice-over lady enthuses, “There are many different shapes of eyes: slanted… big… and small!”
That’s wrong wrong wrong on so many levels. Except the ones where it’s not even wrong, just bollocks. I mean, for a start, none of those are shapes. Slanted is an orientation, big and small are sizes. All of them are relative measures referring to the rendering or presentation of a shape, hence not to do with the shape itself. It downright pisses me off that they’re leading ickle babies up the geometric garden path.
And did they get Prince Philip to script this? It might as well say, “There are big and small versions of normal eyes, then there are some weird people with slanted ones.” I should sue them for the injuries sustained in dropping my jaw to the fucking floor.
They’re lucky I’m British and accustomed to hearing that shit from our noble prince consort, so I just switched to a different channel.
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