Bribery

Aaron was playing “Hop my stool” with Hannah when he broke one of her stools. One goes in the bathroom so she can reach the sink, the other in the kitchen, so she can reach the bench to help me bake stuff.

Hannah made up “Hop my stool.” Basically, you stand on one stool and then jump to the other one.

These particular stools were apparently not made for adults. Or maybe just for adults jumping on them.

So we went off to Kmart to buy Hannah another stool. Her monkey stool stood the daddy jumping on it test, but the plain boring blue one, did not. Hannah picked a new pink stool with a butterfly on it. Just like her monkey stool, only it was a butterfly. Good choice.

I needed some things from the supermarket while we were at the shopping centre, so I pushed the ridiculous shopping trolley that has 4 turning wheels instead of just the front two towards Coles. We had to pass an ice cream shop on the way.

Hannah: “Mommy, can I have some ice cream?”

Me: “It’s almost dinner time sweetie, plus you didn’t eat any lunch, so you can’t have ice cream. How about I buy a tub of ice cream at the supermarket and if you eat all of your dinner, then you can have some?”

Hannah: “Ok Mommy!” She was quite excited by the prospect. “But don’t give me anything yucky for dinner. Only things I know I like.”

Sigh. Bribery backfires when your kid is too smart.

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

Do you want to cut yourself?

Let me just put this into context, so you don’t think I’m some sort of depressed emo. And so you don’t think Hannah is ridiculously strange. Although sometimes she is. That’s toddlers for you.

I made the kids some fish sticks and vegetables for dinner.

“What’s this fork for?” Hannah asked me as she held up her plastic-handled, metal-pronged Dora The Explorer Fork.

Dora the Explorer Flatware Spoon & Fork Set

“I thought you might want to use it with your vegetables. You don’t have to, you can use your fingers.”

“Oh. Can I use it to cut my fish fingers?” That’s what they’re called over here. Fish Fingers. Not fish sticks. In case you were confused. I explained to Hannah why they were called fish fingers a few minutes before this conversation(because they are made of fish and look like fingers. I think that is quite relevant to this conversation).

Fish Sticks

“Sure.”

Of course I thought she’d do what normal people do and cut it on her plate. But she is 3. So she didn’t. She picked up the fish stick, held it in her right hand, and then started cutting it with the her left (she’s left-handed).

“Careful sweetie, don’t poke yourself. Put it on your plate to cut it.”

She was still in the fork-is-a-knife mode, so she said “do you want to cut yourself Mommy?”

“No, I certainly don’t! That would hurt!”

“Why.”

Sigh.

“Because I’d be bleeding and getting cut hurts.”

“Can you cut you and then eat you?”

I stifled my laughter-mixed-with-shock/horror “No Sweetie, we can’t eat ourselves. Or anyone else. We don’t eat people.” Did I seriously just have to tell my daughter that?

“We could cut you up and then put you back together again.” I think perhaps she’s been doing too many jigsaw puzzles. Or cutting too many fish fingers.

“It doesn’t work like that Sweetie. If you cut me up, then I’d be gone forever.”

“Then God would have to make a new Sheri,” she said with glee. I’m hoping the glee was because she called me Sheri instead of Mommy, and not because she wants a new Sheri.

“It doesn’t work that way either Hannah!”

Giggling, she told me “That’s quite a story!”

Seriously, where does she come up with that stuff?

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

Smoked Salmon and avocado rice paper rolls

Some days, it’s just too hot to put the oven on.  So for dinner, I made something that didn’t involve the oven, the stove top, or even the microwave.  And, they’re super delicious….

Smoked Salmon and Avocado Rice Paper Rolls

Ingredients:

-100g rice Vermicelli noodles

Rice paper roll wrappers

-Rice paper wrappers. The large ones, not the small ones (number depends on how full you fill them. When I make this I make 7 rolls)

-Smoked salmon (again, amount depends on how much you want to put in each roll. Some like a lot, some like a little)

-1 Avocado

-Sweet chilli or Poonsin sauce (available from the asian section of the grocery store) if you don’t like chilli

Sweet chilli sauce and poonsin sauce

Method:

1. Make noodles according to packet instructions (mine said to put noodles in a bowl, pour boiling water on them and wait 2 minutes. Drain them and rinse with cold water)

2. Wet a paper towel and spread it out on the bench (counter)  

3. Put 1 rice paper wrapper in a bowl of warm water until pliable.  About 20-30 seconds.  If it starts folding and sinking to the bottom, it’s been in too long.  It may take a couple of goes to get the right timing (it took me a while anyway, but now I can do it right every time)

4. Spread soaked rice paper wrapper on wet paper towel.

5. Put desired amount of noodles on to rice wrapper as indicated on the packet (in a line in the left third of the wrapper). If you put

Wrapper, rice noodles, sauce, salmon, then avocado

a lot of noodles on, you will have a larger roll, less noodles for a smaller, more compact roll.

6. Drizzle with chosen sauce. You could put the sauce on the side and dip the rolls in the sauce, but I find that a bit difficult. All the innards fall out of the roll every time I try to do it that way….

7. Put smoked salmon on top of sauce and noodles. Amount of salmon is up to you. I like mine to be just one layer, covering the top of the noodles and sauce.

8. Add some avocado on top of salmon. Amount is up to you. I use 2 slices in a line.

9. Wrap as per packet instructions (there will be step by step instructions with illustrations on the packet).

Repeat steps 3-9 for each roll. If not eating straight away, store rolls on a moistened paper towel (on a plate), with another moistened paper towel on top, cling wrap on top of the paper towel, and put it in the fridge. Eat within 24 hours.

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

When blueberries backfire

I have been taking the patient approach in getting Hannah to eat her dinner; putting it in front of her and if she wants it, she eats, if she says “done” and tries to get down, I put her down.  Without dinner.  She does get milk before bed time though.  I don’t want to force her to eat because, well, let’s face it, you can’t actually force someone to eat something unless you shove a tube down their throat and then throw the food in, I don’t want her to develop a bad relationship to food, or use food to gain control (or think she is in control), and I don’t want her to dread meal time.  I read a book that said toddlers will never starve themselves, usually they are eating a lot more than we realise as they are constant grazers, and they don’t need as much food as they did before because they grow a lot less.  Fair enough.

The other day, Hannah wanted me to put together the wooden train set she got for Christmas.  “Train!” she told me.  I, on the other hand, was trying to get her to put her pants on.

“Put your pants on, and then I’ll make the train for you.”  I told her.

“NO!”  “Train!”

“No train until you put your pants on.”  I calmly told her.

“No!”

This went around a few times and then something amazing happened:  She came over to me, sat in my lap and stuck her foot in the air so I could put a pant leg on it.  Just like that, she let me put her pants on.  Then I put the train track together.  Everyone was happy.

And I got an idea….

I made Hannah hokkien noodles with vegetables, egg, and a little bit of honey soy sauce for dinner (which is delicious by the way, thanks Romana for the idea).  I put it in front of her.

“Done!”  She exclaimed while trying to get out of her high chair, without so much as smelling the delicious dinner I slaved over the stove to make for her.

“Do you want a blueberry?”  I asked her.

“Blueberry!”

“Ok, I’ll give you a blueberry if you eat one bite of dinner.”

“NO!”

“Do you want a blueberry?”  I asked her again.

Photo courtesy of bewellbuzz.com

“Please.” She said with her cute little face.

“First eat one bite of food, then you can have a blueberry.”

She opened her mouth, and ate a bite of dinner.  I gave her a blueberry.  I gave her another bite of food, then a blueberry.  Soon, she had eaten her entire dinner.  I was ecstatic.  I’m pretty sure she was too, blueberries are her favourite.  That was the first time in her entire life that she has actually eaten egg.  She doesn’t like egg.  She doesn’t like chicken.  Or beef, or fish.  She pretty much doesn’t like any sort of protein unless it’s hidden in pancakes in the form of wheat germ.

We did the same thing the next night, and she ate all of her dinner.  I’m really onto something.

Or so I thought.

I tried to give her something other than the noodles the night after that.  I made her some Vietnamese rice paper rolls with a tiny bit of  teriyaki chicken, grated carrot, grated cucumber, some sort of little noodle that looks like glass, and avocado.  She took a bite, then promptly spit it out while making a face that conveyed grossness.  She wouldn’t eat it anymore.  I wouldn’t give her a blueberry.  She got really upset.  I made her some more noodles like she had eaten the previous 2 nights.  Nope, didn’t want that either.  Wouldn’t eat anything (except for blueberries, which I wasn’t going to give her if she didn’t first take a bite of dinner).  Stalemate.  She got down with no dinner.

Sigh.  Now I’ll have to think of another way to get her to eat her food.  Any ideas?  Or maybe she will go back to bribery as long as it’s something she doesn’t hate.  At least she drinks V8 juice (watered down of course).