Thursday, January 13, 2011

Charlieness

Tonight at dinner we had a little battle. Charlie refused to eat his chicken and wanted to be excused from the table shortly after we sat down. Oh boy. Keith set aside one small bite of chicken and told him he had only to eat that and he could go play. After lots of tears and pleading we were in a stalemate. Charlie wasn't complaining but he also wasn't eating. We did our Bible reading and things were starting to look bleak. What, I thought, if he doesn't do it and we're still here at 7:30? I should mention that I was not having a good attitude. I was down right grumpy and silently excused myself from having to take very much responsibility. Out of nowhere, Charlie held his hand out to us and asked to "pway." So Keith prayed as we all held hands. During the prayer of course, I realized I needed to confess my uncheerfulness and apologized to Keith after the amen. Not one minute later, Charlie ate his lonely, cold piece of chicken. And do you know what he said once he swallowed? "I want more."
----
And here's some other bits of Charlie-ness for you to chew:

Lately Charlie has been putting his toy kitty down for a nap on the bathroom scale, complete with a little fussiness from the kitty. I guess it is universally understood that naps should not go unprotested.

Charlie also likes to ask questions which he helpfully answers himself. Questions like, "More cracker? SURE!"

Whenever we get to a destination, he always very cheerfully calls out, "OKAY!"

The other day I said, "Charlie, you're so cute." He responded, "Mama cute." Bestill my heart.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Oh Taste and See

Today I decided to bite the bullet, stop being a wimp and let my toddler mess up my kitchen. Charlie is always intensely curious about everything I do up on top of the mysterious counter. And sometimes I'll create a little space for him to stir and pour imaginary food. But generally, it's hands-off the real stuff. Until this afternoon. I knew it would be messy but, really, it had to be done. We were out of cookies.

Charlie surprised me. I'm not sure what I expected, but he was really rather engrossed in his task. He painstakingly put sprinkles on the dough and experimented to his heart's content. It really wasn't that bad. He didn't even try to sample anything. The only hard part was getting him to keep the cookies on the cookie sheet after they were sufficiently rolled. They kept ending up back the in the sprinkles bowls. And of course the sprinkles all wound up in each others' bowls, and eventually (at the bitter end) all the sprinkles were poured (twice I think) onto the cookie sheet. But Charlie was very good about helping clean that up.


The cookies ended up ridiculously huge. They're supposed to be three times as small, because two cookies get glued together with (woweee sweet!) filling.
I think I was in a bit of a hurry and not caring much about size because I was hoping to avoid a complete deterioration of the process.

But Charlie doesn't care, so why should I?