Aw Shucks

So I’m heading out to Utah for my super squee nerd event – Nerdtacular 2012. Between work and getting ready I was once again bad about blogging earlier this week – hopefully the new Art of Subtlety pictures from yesterday (and a few more upcoming Wordless Wednesdays) will make up for it.

But before I left I wanted to share the latest chuckle brought to us by Soapfi!

As mentioned and pictured before, Soapfi loves her vegetables. Especially corn, with corn on the cob making her head almost OMG explode even more than SWINGS!

She loves it so much that she actually chose a side of corn over french fries when we were at Denny’s the other day. It was Tuesday so kids eat free, Daddy was playing hockey, Mommy is a crap-tastic cook at the best of times, and Original Grand Slams are on sale for $2.99! I quickly decided – let the world judge, we’re eating dinner for about $12 (half of which was the tip because the dude worked hard and it’s not his fault we ordered cheap food!), and she gets crayons too! She ate the entire side of corn with unbridled enthusiasm and delight to while singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” between spoonfuls. Which means Mommy actually got dinner AND a show for $12!

Last night Soapfi and Daddy were shucking corn for dinner, Soapfi was *SO* excited about the prospect that when Daddy turned his back, for what he estimated was three minutes, to get more things out of the fridge and put the meatloaf in the oven he came back to the table to find this:

Yep – she had taken a whole bunch of nibbles out of the raw corn, of course she had to sample all three just to make sure they were equally delicious!

My Carnivore

For the most part we are still pretty lucky (knock on wood) with Soapfi not being a picky eater, and she even loves those frozen mixed vegetables (once they are heated up of course!), and has been known to devour an entire bowl and still want more.

Recently she has been on a Spaghettio’s kick, or as she likes to call them “Sketti-yo-yo’s”. But woe be the person who gives her plain ol’ Spaghettio’s, as Mommy learned earlier this week.  Soapfi tore through her bowl howling in dismay that there were only TWO mini-meatballs. Silly Mommy hadn’t properly stirred up the new can to evenly distribute those nuggety pieces of processed meat goodness between the current and future portions.

Apparently any self respecting person would know that it’s *really* the mini-meatballs that are the important part, because she’s top of her food chain damn it!

Goats *Not* On The Roof

Our vacation was very low key, besides actually making reservations for a place to stay we did *zero* planning (as evidenced by the whole ferry fiasco on the trip home). Our trip was really meant to be a chance to get out of town and let Soapfi spend time with her Godparents and their daughter (henceforth known by her nickname Penzilla (the reference to Godzilla is purposely ironic as she is so tiny & sweet)). We stayed in a two bedroom suite with a full kitchen so we could have family style meals and the shorties could be together constantly.

The grown up ladies had a few spa days (yeah!), the boys had a few rounds of golf, and the little ladies demanded we get the hell outta the suite at least once a day even though the adults were perfectly happy to sit around watching hockey or reading our Kindles!

So on one of the days the boys were golfing, Soapfi’s Godmother (henceforth known by her nickname KK) and I decided to go check out the Old Country Market in Coombs, whose touristy gimmick was having goats on their roof. We bundled Soapfi & Penzilla into the car and headed north in search of goats.

We found the market, but despite all the advertising along the roadway, in the travel brochures, and on their actual sign, no goats were on the roof. But the did have cookies and all kinds of fun wooden toys inside the market, so they were amused…. for about 15 minutes.

We wandered around the general area and found a strange little courtyard full of a mishmash of statuary and a rusted out shell of a car with plywood seats. So we spent about 45 minutes letting them climb all over everything. They even had one of those mini-carousels you can still find outside of KMart. For a mere Loonie they had two full minutes of joy going around in a circle riding garishly painted plastic horses that didn’t even move up and down.

We did eventually find the goats, they were out back in their winter home, turns out they only live on the roof in the summer, we were just a few months too early.

In the end though, all that mattered was that they had cookies and ran around enough that they conked out for naps as soon as we got back to the suite!

Adventurous Eating

A few days ago I had brought up the subject of adventurous eating while extolling the virtues of Soapfi’s current lack of picky-ness. And since it’s the way the universe tends to work, the next day I was noticing that the Food List Challenge was making its way around my little group of FB friends. One of those “100 things you should do before you die” deals with a food theme. I was absolutely shocked that I personally had managed to try (not necessarily enjoy, mind you!)  67 of the 100 things on the list. 100% of the credit for that number being so high goes to my husband!

What was even more shocking to me was that Soapfi has already racked up *20* items on the list (holy crap!). And I’ve even got photo evidence for three of them – Pocky, Borscht and Haggis!

Daddy is thrilled!

 

Angry Peas

Knock on our wooden heads, but we have been extremely lucky when it comes to Soapfi and picky eating. She really isn’t all that picky, she’ll try just about anything, actually loves to eat vegetables, and so far we’ve managed to convince her that yogurt is better than ice cream. Sure, she goes through phases where she prefers one thing over another, has an obsession with chips and crackers, or will eat something for a week straight (bananas) then not want a thing to do with them the following week. She has spurts where she eats like Joey Chestnut at the Nathan’s 4th of July extravaganza, followed by bouts where you’d think she was trying to make the pinweight class for the Baby Boxing Olympics.

Daddy is thrilled with the general lack of picky-ness for two reasons. The first being that it doesn’t entail any extra cooking. For the most part, if we’re having it, she’s having it. And the second, and most important reason, is that Soapfi is on track to be his partner in crime when it comes to adventurous eating (he jokes that his biggest disappointment is that I don’t like sushi). Soapfi loves nothing more than to sample whatever Daddy is attempting to eat, and as a result sriracha, cayenne, wasabi, and jalapeno have all been tasted and declared yummy.

When she does doesn’t feel like eating, I don’t really consider that picky, since we can usually manage to eventually get her to nibble on one of a few “go to” favorites – cheese, yogurt, strawberries, or spagetti. Other times she just gets an idea in her head that she wants something specific and nothing else will do. We had one of those nights last week. She didn’t eat much all day, and since dinner was going to be heated up leftovers I asked if she would like pizza or chicken korma. She didn’t want either, which surprised me, I had assumed she would go straight for the “pizzas”.

Nope, she wanted peas. Okay, peas it is. She devoured them like she was on a mission, but even though she had specifically asked for them, she sure seemed angry about it!

It’s Always Chicken

Soapfi likes knowing the names of things, sometimes to an alarming degree of specificity. She is delighted to point and call out “truck, car, bus, bike, moto (motorcycle)” whenever appropriate. She is learning her musical instruments and is starting to differentiate between a saxophone and a trumpet, a guitar and a violin. She most definitely knows the difference between a live chicken and a live duck, and will cluck or quack appropriately.

I say live, because once an animal becomes food, in Soapfi’s world, it’s all chicken.

We sat down to dinner last night, a wonderful platter of short ribs and some noodles with veggies. The exchange when something like this:

Soapfi: “Chicken!” (Mommy mistakenly thinks she is asking for something else for dinner.)

Mommy: “We aren’t having chicken. You can have some of these short ribs.”

Soapfi: “No, Mommy.”  (Mommy mistakenly thinks she is saying no to the short ribs.)

Mommy: “Would you like the noodles then?”

Soapfi: “CHICKEN!”  (Accompanied by a lunge and a death grip on a piece of short rib.)

Small interlude while Mommy extracts short rib, cuts it into Soapfi friendly pieces and removes the bones, and returns the rib meat. The soundtrack to this interlude would be Soapfi crying “more chicken” and sniffling when she wasn’t allowed to play with the knife.

Mommy: “This isn’t chicken, it’s beef.”

Soapfi: (With obvious exasperation) “No, Mommy, chicken.”

No wonder she has been so good about trying new things, she thinks it is chicken. I plan to take full advantage of this for as long as possible.