Feeding Time at the Zoo!

Making & then the eating of dinner in our house is quite a stressful part of the day for me – it’s one of the reasons I took the BLW approach as puréeing and spoonfeeding, for me, would have added to that stress tenfold. But on days like today, the BLW approach isn’t much less stressful!

It’s not that I can’t cook or don’t enjoy it (as long as it’s savoury not dessert!), I can and I do but it is at that 4pm time when the “I’m hungry” cries, start ramping up a notch from Callum (Callum is always hungry!) and the “Mmmmmm, mmmmmmm” grunts start to get more insistent and my feet & legs get battered by Millie in the walker! It’s like she thinks, if she runs me over I might start cooking faster!

Most nights I cook for the children then eat later with Stuart but if Stuart is out/away I prefer to eat with the children to encourage them to eat & so I only have to cook one meal & get more of the evening to myself.

Tonight’s dinner time went a bit like this (with only some tiny elaborations):

4:00pm: Ooh got to get dinner on,  switch oven on & pull ingredients out of fridge

4:05pm: Notice the lemonade (which is laying down) is dripping as the lid hasn’t been done up tight enough by someone (again!), pull out salad draw and find a lemonade lake! Start drying up the lake.

4:10pm: Start preparing veg. I ask Callum if he wants to shell the peas – he says no & goes upstairs to play.

4:15pm: Remember that Millie is still napping & it’s gone past the dreaded 4pm cut off time which means she’ll not go to sleep until 1-1.5 hours after her bedtime (how do those maths work?)

4:16pm: Crash! Something has broken upstairs – I suspect the tea set.

4.18pm: I can confirm it was the tea set! The one from when I was a little girl that I gave Callum to play with. Fortunately, it’s not the first time parts of it have flown across the room (either accidentally as this time was or on purpose as happened when I first entrusted him with it!) so I’m a little less heartbroken than I would’ve been. I gather up the broken bits & put to one side to attempt to glue later.

4:23pm: Get Millie out of bed (bedtime is going to be hell!)

4:25pm: Feed Millie & put her down next to lots of toys

4:30pm: Get back to cooking dinner

4:34pm: Grunts & cries from Millie – I move her to her walker

4:36pm: I get back to cooking dinner

4:45pm: Grunts & cries from Millie – I move her to her booster seat in the kitchen with me.

4:55pm: Millie has kept up some grunts but less insistent but now, every time I move a piece of food she stretches out her arm to reach for it & grunts.

5:08pm: Dish up dinner & sit down to eat. Let out a big sigh but admire my lovely looking dinner of pork fillet medallions with a cheesey mushroom sauce, hasselback potatoes and Chantilly carrots (plus home-grown peas for the kids).

5:12pm: Pick up a carrot from floor

5:13pm: Pick up a fork

5:14pm: Pick up a piece of pork (this is not me with dyspraxia, this is Millie throwing stuff she doesn’t want – typical BLW behaviour)

5:15pm: I notice Millie is trying to use her fork properly & try to help her stab a piece of pork to keep her occupied so I can enjoy a bit of my dinner

5:16pm: Get Callum a different knife

5:17pm: Save the big piece of pork from flying across the kitchen & cut it up smaller.

5:18pm: Pick up a carrot, a potato and a piece of pork from the floor

5:20pm: Pour myself some wine!

5:23pm: Duck a piece of potato, get hit by a carrot

5:25pm: Get up to get Millie a drink

5:26pm: Scrape….crash! I was too slow to react as Millie pulled her plate across the breakfast bar, it falls to the floor & does not bounce (this time). They are square plates & two of the corners have flown to different sides of the kitchen.

5:27pm: I bend down to pick up the broken bits of plate & get pieces of pork rained down on me from Millie above accompanied by hysterical Millie giggles.

5:29: While clearing up plate & food mess there is a chorus of “I’ve finished my dinner & haven’t had puuuuudiiiiiing! I’ve finished my diiinner & haven’t had puuuuudiiiiiing!” from Callum. I politely beg ask Callum to be patient while I clean up the mess.

5:31pm: I notice the pool of meat juices around the bottom of the bin & have no idea how it got there. Assuming the bin bag has split, I now empty the bin to outside bin but find all is well with the bag. It’s a mystery! Callum pipes up again “I’m not talking to you, I’m singing to myself, [sings] Iiiiiiii’ve noooot had puuuuuddddiiiiiiiiing!” (I don’t even give them pudding every night!)

5:36pm: Get a fruit pot for Callum & a yogurt for Millie and wonder why I ever decided to eat dinner with the kids – I may have even got to taste it if I had eaten separately and neither of them appreciated it!

(my only elaboration was ducking the potato to get hit by a carrot! They went straight on the floor! Everything else was as it happened!)

(an hour & a half past Millie’s bedtime & I’ve just had to go into her to find her kneeling up in bed holding onto cot sides & waving at me – I can still hear her awake on the monitor)

Baking with a 3 year old

Created from a combination of cooking experiences with my 3 year old!

1. Get 3 year old exciting about cooking
2. Get out cookbooks to look up recipes
3. Find a recipe for biscuits
4. Go to get ingredients ready
5. Realise you don’t have right ingredients/enough quantity
6. (at this point, you could go ahead and make biscuits but to a fewer quantity than recipe adjusting the ingredients but, in my experience, this never works! I’ve tried several times)
7. Look up a new recipe.
8. 7 recipes later…child is looking bored and losing interest in baking
9. Find a cake recipe
10. Get ingredients ready
11. Give 3 year old eggs to break in bowl
12. Me: “A little harder…a little harder….NOT THAT HARD”
13. Fish out bits of egg shell and clear up egg from worktop
14. Say calmly to 3 year old “No don’t eat the egg, you mustn’t put your fingers in it”
15. Weigh out caster sugar
16. Me: “Stop putting your fingers in the egg”
17. Add sugar to egg
18. A little less calm “stop putting your fingers in, stop trying to eat it!”
19. Turn on mixer, 3 year old insists on holding it and turns it up to full power
20. Wipe egg & sugar mix off your face, 3 year old’s face, work surfaces and walls
21. Try the mixing again ensuring 3 year old’s fingers are well away from controls yet still holding the mixer
22. 3yo: “Is it done now” Me: “not yet, bit longer” (repeat times 30)
23. Weigh out and sieve flour
24. Child insists on holding the sieve and shaking it vigorously
25. End up looking like 2 snowmen
26. Wipe off as much of the flour as possible and add in a little extra to make up for what was lost
27. Turn back for a second to put sieve away, turn back to see toddler eating mixture
28. Slightly more raised voice “Stop eating it, leave it alone”
29. Fold in flour
30. Child adds in another spoon of unsieved flour while you are distracted with the folding
31. Child shakes in salt that you left out from gathering biscuit ingredients at step 4
32. Getting a little stressed “NOOOO, we don’t need salt in this recipe”
33. 3yo: “but I want salt”, Me (through gritted teeth): “no, this recipe doesn’t use salt, it wont taste very nice”
34. Wrestle salt off child as he is trying to add more salt
35. Go to get out cake tins – realise part of the tin you need is elsewhere after making a cake and taking it to a relative/friend a year ago
36. Make do with 2 slightly too big cake tins instead
37. [Shouting] “STOP EATING THE CAKE MIX, you can lick the bowl and spoon in a minute!!!”
38. Distribute mix between tins
39. Go to put tins in oven
40. Realise oven isn’t on
41. Set oven to required temp and wait
42. and wait
43. 3 year old starts shaking flour packet
44. You don’t clear it up and resign yourself to the pasty white look!
45. You DO put away ingredient packets you no longer need
46. Oven heats up and you place tins in oven
47. 3yo: “Is it ready yet?” Me “No, I’ve just put it in the oven”, 3yo:”I want cake, mummy, I want cake…Mummy, is it ready now, I want cake…can I have cake now?” Me: “NO, Not until the beeper goes off and when its cool”
48. Get ingredients ready for butter icing – remember from when you went to get ingredients for biscuits at step 4 that you didn’t have enough butter – still don’t have enough butter – use clover!
49. Help child sieve icing & cocoa powder into butter
50. Clearly having not learned from last time – end up now a white and brown marbled snowman!
51. Wrestle fork off child who starts stirring mixture before there is no dry mix left in the butter
52. Beeper goes off for cake, tip out the crispy biscuits (meant to be cake) onto cooling wire
53. “Mummy, I want to see cake, I can’t see cake, Mummy where’s cake, I want to see”
54. Once biscuit/cake cooled, spoon on mix
55. Poor yourself LARGE glass of wine, break off 2 bits of biscuit/cake, sod the cleaning, sit down and consume
56. Go to answer doorbell and wonder why the gas man gives you a peculiar look!