Pattern recognition

Tonight I made some lovely peach cobbler. We had some peaches that were attracting fruit flies and, rather than gorge myself on delicious peaches (mmm, yummy) I decided to make peach pie. But then I realized peach pie involves pie crust and changed my plan to cobbler.

Anyway, cobbler or pie, the peaches needed seasoning, so I added a little bit of sugar (probably 1/3 c) and a little bit of fresh-ground nutmeg (maybe 1/8 a tsp) and then hunted around for the cinnamon, because what's a fruit pie without cinnamon? Now, for years we've had one of those big 8 oz containers of cinnamon. We finally worked out way through it (mostly courtesy of Sylvia and a few concoctions created while my back was turned) and replaced it with a much smaller container. But of course, after years of looking for the same container, I still look for that container.

We have another, very similar container in our spice cabinet.

Full of reddish powder.

Made from hot chilis.

Guess what I used on the peach cobbler?

On the plus side, should I ever make it up to Alan's chili-fest, I have a recipe to share!

Boatloads of personality

Sylvia likes knives, so much so that I have to be very careful to put away knives after using them. Well, this evening I left out a paring knife after cutting up a peach. Sylvia picked it up, so I yelled, "Put down the knife!"

Apparently inspired by Derrick's trip to Australia, she told me, "That's not a knife!"

Whatever kid.

We tried to feed Sylvia a sausage for dinner. She turned up her nose in favor of a roasted green bean sandwich. As in, green beans on a bun. With mustard.

Paul loved the green beans too, and was seriously fond of the French fries. When he finished off what we'd given him, my young man with an increasingly large personality pushed his plate over to his dad to request more food, then pulled it back when it was full. Such a good communicator.

Determination

Both my kids are determined, though in different ways. Sylvia wants to know why everything is the way it is. If you've spent more than 5 minutes with her you know what I mean. She peppers everyone with questions, from "why do birds lay eggs?" to "why do I have to eat with a fork?" and everything in between. Which is to say, she's both curious and requires an explanation for why she has to do things before she'll do them.

Paul hasn't reached the why stage yet (being non-verbal and all). His determination comes out in other ways, often involving wheeled or circular objects. For example, this morning, after signing time at the library he wanted to move the teacher's wheeled cart around. He would NOT be content with playing with the wheels, or just pushing it back and forth; no, he had to push it to the door for her. Fortunately, once she was out the door he quickly forgot about the cart.

This afternoon he climbed up the child safety gate I put up to keep him out of Sylvia's room during nap time. After dinner he decided he just had to turn the knobs on the washing machine and fussed until I moved a stool over for him to stand on. Once up he was quite happy for some minutes, just rotating the knob. Before bed he did the tupperware sorting toy six or seven times (with much assistance, of course) before getting bored with it, lasting much longer than I did. The kid's got some serious concentration skills already.