Beautiful Lunches, and Other Fun!

Wednesday 12/8/10 - Princess was sounding snorky-nosed, and the last time we went to ballet a few weeks ago she sat in the lobby begging to go home, so we skipped it this week (plus I haven't paid for this month yet!) She had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, since if we were going to ballet we wouldn't have time for anything else, but was asking for pancakes. She kept asking for pancakes hours later, so I decided to make them for lunch!

To make them more exciting and healthy, I dumped in a jar of pureed sweet potato baby food. I forgot to add less water to the mix to make up for it, so the batter was a little runny and the pancakes were super moist. To jazz it up, I let her look through my cookie cutters to make shapes out of the pancakes, so she chose some animal cutters I got from Daiso.

Squirrel and 'Pingu' (penguin pancakes.) First of many.
She also ate several pig and elephant pancakes.

Bowl with syrup for dipping.

After nap, she asked for a "byoo-fuh nunch" [beautiful lunch] so I decided to do a fun snack. It's a bigger snack than I'd normally do that close to dinner because on Wednesdays we have Little Gym from 6 to 7, so dinner starts later.

Vanilla chocolate cake ball, green beans, Ranch,
olives with ducky pick (her choice,) sliced string cheese, pretzels and star crackers (from a Chio Maxi Mix.)

She went for the cake ball first {Gasp!}

She ate everything except the green beans, which she ended up coming back to after dinner as a bedtime snack.

During nap I had gone to PortableNorthPole and customized a free personalized video from Santa. I played it for her while she ate. She was kind of spooked. Not in a bad way though. And she nodded when he asked questions, so I know she's okay.

Santa: "Have you been working on
sharing your toys better?"
Z: ...

Thursday 12/9/10 - We were an hour late to the MOMS Club cookie exchange, and I was getting antsy, since I wanted to show off my Cake Balls. But after eating her Cheerios, Little Z asked for yogurt. So I gave her honey-flavored Greek yogurt with honey on top. Then she asked for seconds. And thirds. No amount of cookie promises would deter her. And I felt like a terrible mother, wanting to deny her more breakfast so that we could go get cookies!

We ended up going late, and luckily, they hadn't exchanged cookies yet. I hadn't read the memo, and thought that it was 2 dozen cookies plus printed out recipes, like last year. Newp. FOUR dozen cookies, and no one else brought their recipes. I had put 2 cake balls (1 of each white and dark chocolate) in little holiday baggies. Luckily there were only 7 people exchanging, so it was easy to divide everyone's dozens by the 6 people who hadn't brought each kind! There were little meringue doves, oatmeal chocolate chip, chocolate chip, frosted sugar cookies (my favorites. Omnomnom.) Some kind of buttery sugar cookie twists, and peanut butter cookies.

I let Z have a peanut butter cookie, since I generally don't like them, so wouldn't miss it! Then she asked for a heart cookie, which I finally figured out was the dove meringues. They look like heart shapes on the back! She then tried an oatmeal chocolate chip and ate about half, before trading me for a twist cookie. A few nibbles of the twist, and she was back for another peanut butter cookie. I knew the lady who brought the PB cookies had made more than 4 dozen and didn't want to take any back home, so I let Z have a few more from the leftovers still on the counter, so I wouldn't have to bust into my stash, now safely out of eyesight and reach of little fingers.

After cookies, it was time for lunch. I was jonesing for a McDonald's Sweet Tea, but the Princess said she didn't want a Happy Meal, she wanted to go home. Fine. I didn't push it, since I had turned the wrong way to go to McD's anyway.

Just for fun, I decided to do another muffin tin lunch.

Ranch and ketchup, Chicken Nuggets, Sweet Potato Fries,
Green Beans, Mr. Apple, Greek yogurt with honey, Apple Slices.

I made Mr. Apple happy, since I figured she wouldn't
eat the apple slices, and I was mostly right.

She ate everything but the apples (well, she ate one slice.) And she left a sliver of nugget, but I hardly think that counts. Either way, an amazing amount of food for someone who ate cereal and the equivalent of at least 1.5 of those adult-serving-sized yogurt cuppies at the grocery store (I get the large tub) for breakfast PLUS 3-4 cookies right before lunch!