Little Helper

Sometimes it is hard to remember how long Alayna has helped me in the kitchen. Because of our gluten free diet there are a lot of opportunities to make something from scratch that most people would just pick up at the store. I think she started helping before she was two!

Every week we make a double batch of waffles to use as sandwich bread, for birthdays (including some of yours) we make cake or cupcakes and for a random weekend treat we will make brownies or cookies. Alayna loves to pick which kind of cookie: chocolate chip, chocolate-chocolate chip, peanut butter, peanut butter with chocolate chips, macaroons, or snicker-doodles. For the first time ever, we made cutout cookies. We bought a heart cookie cutter just for the occasion (Valentine's Day).


But, Alayna wasn't the only one who wanted to help this time. When it was time to roll out and cut the dough, Cavell pulled his chair up to the counter as well. He made sure our surface was properly floured (with rice flour) at ALL times. He also wanted to help transfer the cookies to the cookie sheet, but didn't understand that the turner was meant to go under the cookie, not thru it.

We have four other cut out cookie recipes to try. We will be making cookies for St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, and Independence Day to try each one and pick our favourite. I think my new little helper will have plenty of opportunities to learn.

Hair

Lately, Alayna and I have been following a few hair blogs. She loves to look at the pictures with me and then we choose what hairdo we will do. I thought I could share a couple we have done.

From this page

Can you tell this is a heart? Alayna let me do it for my birthday. Paul had the camera in Cancun, and the pics from my phone were not very good. The heart was really cute, but I didn't like how Alayna's hair went into the piggys (I didn't do the messy buns). This time we left off the piggys for Joy School. I was teaching the letter H, and the kids were passing out Valentines.

Alayna wants this different heart hair do for her birthday party.

We also did this hair do. The first day we did this I, again, did not like how Alayna's hair looked in the piggys, especially how they were pulled back together. This is probably why I didn't take pictures that day. But, I loved how the first two braids looked on the front. The next time, when her hair naturally parted in the back, I just added the other two braids in those spaces. Which worked out well, since I didn't know what else to do with the rest of her hair.





Even with all the fun we have been having with Alayna's hair, I still love when she wants to leave it curly.

self portrait

Mmm Mmm Good

Friday night, Cavell would have nothing to do with dinner (home made chicken enchiladas). He almost ate a black bean, but once a drop of juice landed on his lips, he clammed back up.

Immediately after dinner he got down from the chair, ran to the open windows, ran his fingers inside the window casing and licked them with abandon.

Yum.