Lunch Ideas: Cruskits

An old favourite! Cheese and tomato slices on Cruskits sprinkled with black pepper. My little one devoured the tomato in record time and I ended up having to share the tomato from my Cruskits!

Lunch Ideas: Omelette triangles

Today's lunch was a sneaky attempt of adding some more vegetables to my little ones diet.

I bought one of those frozen cubed vegetable bags and it lives in the freezer as an easy filler for lunches/snacks/dinners. I could claim that I make my own diced variety from fresh vegetables, but lets face it, I'm not that amazing. I usually avoid the kitchen at all costs, but there are moments where I wish I was super organised and had fresh options. My little one does not notice whether I had help from Coles or whether I spent an entire afternoon stocking the freezer, so I spend more time thinking up ways of filling her little belly with yummy meals to make up for those moments I spend wishing I was a super mamma.

Lunch was a mix of egg, diced vegetables, diced frankfurter and grated cheese. Cooked, cooled in the fridge and served in toddler friendly triangles.

Lunch ideas: Salad Rolls

My little one helped prepare lunch today, she dragged a chair up to the kitchen bench and started eating before I even had a chance to put together our salad rolls! I sliced large chunks of tomato, cheese and meat, then finely sliced lettuce and onion. Glued together with a smidge of mayonnaise and Ta-da! Yummy salad rolls!

Rolls are lots of fun for toddlers, they are big enough to easily grab in two hands and eat as a whole thing or a fun finger food dish. My little one decided to taste all her toppings individually then she had a blast putting the last of the toppings back on the bun and finishing up with a traditional roll. I think the bite of diced onion made her eyes pop a little, but she kept going back for more.

The recycling man and his truck

Apparently trucks and cars are fascinating even from a young age. My little one runs to the window in excitement whenever she hears the recycling mans truck coming down the street. She climbs the couch, standing on tiptoes to wave to him as he goes by.

This morning I had a few bags of recycling to take to the curb and could already hear the trucks coming. I gave a bag to my little one and we took the recycling to the bins. We each had bags to carry so we were not holding hands close to the road, and normally this kind of freedom would mean she would be running to explore. Luckily there must be a tiny bit of caution in her little bones and she stayed close. 

We got all the recycling in the bins and she kept peeking from around my legs to try to see the truck. I decided we could wait at the fence and wave. Little arms wrapped around my neck, she leaned as far forward as possible and her little face lit up with excitement as the truck came closer. She waved to the recycling man and he waved back. More excitement. Fascination came next when the truck scooped up the bin and tipped it inside. A few more waves and the recycling man and his truck disappeared. 

I am constantly amazed at how such mundane, everyday things are so amazing to my little one. Such happiness and joy from waving to the recycling man, checking out his truck up close and just having a new experience.

Lunch Ideas: Mini Pizza

Oh no! Basically out of all my staple food items for lunch, what to do?!?! I rummaged through the freezer and found a measly two mini pizza bases. Would it even suffice!?!?! Chopping up a tomato, dicing onion, grating cheese and then a minute or so in the oven to warm everything up nicely. Yummy!

Baking Fruity Muffins with a toddler!

I have been trying to think of more activities to do at home to keep my little one entertained and decided to make fruity muffins. I am not a fan of baking nor am I particularly good at it, however my little one loves being in the kitchen and helping whenever food is involved. She often gets shoo-ed out of the kitchen when dinner is prepared because she does not have patience for waiting or understand how hot appliances can be. I thought baking muffins together might let her experience being in the kitchen in a safer, more interactive and fun way. She loved it!

My little one loved mixing the ingredients and became possessive of the spoon, she was so patient putting the patty pans in the muffin tray, she enjoyed pointing to which patty pan needed filling with muffin mixture and then sat staring intently at the oven door while the muffins baked.

One thing I should mention is how fast baking is with a toddler. There is no dilly-dallying around otherwise flour ends up all over the table and morning tea is added to the bowl. Lucky for us, morning tea was just pieces of additional fruit that had not been eaten yet.

Another note: Goods baked with a toddler are not intended to be shared with anyone who is squeamish about eating something the toddler has put their finger into (toddlers are expert taste testers)

If you want the recipe for these particular fruity muffins, just scroll to the bottom of the post (after all the photos). 

Fruity Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cup of Self Raising Flour

1/4 Cup of Sugar

60gram of melted butter

1-2 Cups of finely chopped or purée fruit ( I usually use a 1:1 ratio of solid fruit and purée fruit)

1 egg

1/2 Cup Milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 Degree Celsius 

2. Combine Self raising flour and sugar in a bowl.

3. Mix through melted butter

4. Add finely chopped fruit and stir through purée fruit

5. Whisk egg and milk and add to mixture

6. Bake in individual patty pans in oven for 20minutes or until a skewer comes out of the muffin clean

Date night!

Date night, how do you ever find the energy anymore? I spent an afternoon browsing ideas for date nights 'in' since I felt like doing something special with my husband but last minute babysitting would not really happen. My little one helped and kept poking the computer to move to a new screen. According to her, changing to a new screen is the whole point of using the computer. Only one thing for it, Mamma must read really fast!

I found inspiration and stored my favourite ideas away for later. When my husband got home we started preparing for a fun lounge room picnic dinner/movie date. We all drove to the supermarket and browsed the DVD isle, found a horror and a comedy on sale and picked them up. We collected picnic foods next, hotdogs, French fries, soft drink, chocolate milk etc. It was fun, going to the shops on a mission to splurge and indulge.

My husband cooked while I bathed our little one then we all met in the lounge room on the picnic rug. It was getting close to bed time for our little one and she was a little overwhelmed by the freedom of eating dinner on the floor. She did laps around the picnic rug, taking turns sitting on each of us, trying everyone's food and basically having a ball. I would say it was relaxing, except that she kept trying to pour tomato sauce everywhere and wanted to eat everyone's food but her own.

Our little one was so tired she ate the bare minimum (which is rare for our food lover) and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. We had the rest of the evening to ourselves! It is so rare to have so much time in the evening now days. I will remember to wear her out in advance, next time we plan a date night in. 

Being sick

Being a parent and being sick is one of the hardest things to do. Even with the sweetest child, being sick is an awfully hard thing to do with little ones. Life does not pause for sickness, neither does a toddler. Nappies needs changing, bellies need filling, books need reading, and fun needs to be had. After a weekend long migraine, no matter how hard I wanted to be a fun mum, there was no way I could do it. I could barely move my head to look at my little one, let alone be the chirpy, fun person my little one is used to. Daddy to the rescue, he took the day off, took me to hospital and played dolls, read books and made sandwiches. He is truly the best.

Dropping me off at the hospital my little one did not mind looking at all the new things to see, listen to all the new noises and stare wide eyed at all the medical do-da's. She waved bye bye and was such a good girl for Daddy.  When I got home I got lots of kisses and she kept pointing to the bandage from the drip and tell me it was 'poor' 'poor' 'poor'. The next day, back to my normal self, I could not help but laugh at my little one walking around with my medical ID bracelet on telling everyone she was 'poor'. I think it might be the very first addition to our dress up box.

Operation: Bye bye dummy

Operation: Bye bye dummy might be a louder process than I thought. So far my little minion has trilled, called out loudly for attention, babbled enthusiastically and now whinging quietly as she repetitively presses the music button on one of her bed toys. 

Our plan was to get our toddler to a point where she could self settle and get a good quality sleep before we began to remove the dummy. So a month or two of perfect bedtime routines, great sleep and a generally great sleep hygiene we knew it was time. Anxiety sets in, we are purposely disrupting a perfectly fine sleep routine in hopes of removing a teeny tiny object. 

Sigh. I remind myself that she doesn't actually need it, she can self soothe now, her new teeth are forming, she keeps popping them and it would be incredibly difficult to get rid of once she is older. 

Be strong, Mamma, be strong. 

Our general plan is to attempt to remove the dummy for daytime naps at first to judge how attached she is, then, once prepared for the battle, cut all the ends off and let her see that they are too broken to use... On a weekend. When daddy is home for backup.

Be strong, Mamma, be strong!

Lunch Ideas: Bacon and Mushroom Sandwich

Having a toddler really makes you honest about eating healthier. Grabbing a burger for lunch sounds easy and quick but there is that little part of being a mamma that makes me want to try harder to resist unhealthy fast foods and set a really good example. There are days that peanut butter sandwiches just will not do, it's these days the frypan comes out.

Sandwich Idea: Bacon and Mushroom strips with cheese on a bed of crisp salad, add mayo/tomato sauce to taste.