One and a half years

Mr. E turned one and a half last week!  He had a cold at the time, but he's just about back at one hundred percent now.

Fun facts about 18 months - E is

• 25 pounds
• 34 inches tall
• loving pouring, and hence bathtime
• just starting to climb up on to furniture
• very fond of the learning tower
• quite good at saying "no"
• beginning to talk beyond mama/dada/no, such as "mana" for banana and "no" for snow
• getting molars
• tons o' fun!

A pancake ten days in the making

I recently decided that I would like to try making sourdough bread. This idea stemmed partly from remembering some yummy sourdough that I made with my mom in grade school as part of a class project, and partly from reading that sourdough baked goods are easier to digest than non-soured versions. Not that E, Hubbo, or I have any problems that we know of with wheat, but if I'm going to make bread at home, might as well try to make sourdough! I learned that even some gluten intolerant people can eat sourdough bread made with wheat flour.

The catch though, is that the health benefits only come from recipes that sour all of the flour, and most recipes I found online don't fit that bill.   "Traditional foods" enthusiasts (a.k.a. people who follow the ideas in that Nourishing Traditions book I mentioned awhile back) do sour all of the flour.  I signed up for a self-paced traditional food-style sourdough eCourse to get me started.  So far, it's been just what I was looking for.

About a week and a half ago, I started my very own sourdough starter with some whole wheat flour and water.  Here it is after a few days (bubbles = good).

My course advised letting the starter develop for a week before using it for anything and waiting several weeks before using it for anything that needs to rise, like bread.  Now that my starter is old enough, I used it for the first time today to make a "skillet pancake."

The scale isn't so obvious here, but this pancake is 12" in diameter!  You just pour all of the batter in the skillet at once to make a giant pancake.  Much easier on the cook that way.  The recipe called for a 10" cast iron skillet, but the closest thing I had was a 12" stainless steel frying pan, and that seemed to work out well.  It tasted pretty good to me, although not noticeably sour, especially for a whole wheat pancake.

E in the tower*

Here's Mr. E checking out the pancake from his learning tower - normally the tower would be right up against the counter, but I had just moved it to take the pancake out of the oven.  I just got the tower for him last week on craigslist (these towers show up pretty frequently on craigslist around here), and it's been a big help when I'm cooking.  He loves to see what I'm doing, and now he can see from the tower.  The first time he stood in it, he realized that he could see the entire counter on his own and his face absolutely lit up!

* "E in the tower" is a reference to the book Powerborn which contains a painting called "Tais in the tower" that I think of every time I talk about E's tower.  The book has really amazing artwork, and the story is pretty good too.

Fine motor skills, the Ikea edition

Now that we've gotten our new carpeting - thank you previous owners who could not housetrain your pets - I've been starting to set up the loft area. While I was putting the Ikea bookshelf back together, Mr. Muffin wanted to help put some of the pegs in.

He put in a few extra too!  This was a great unplanned every-day-life-as-learning activity, à la Waldorf style.  After putting in all of these pegs, and a few more, E had really improved his technique, realizing how to hold the pegs in order to put them in.

I also recently finished this book sling for the playroom (a.k.a. dining room) from this tutorial.  With the books displayed this way, the cover art is visible to E, so he can see which book he's picking up.  Hopefully the book sling decreases the pull-every-book-off-the-shelf-to-find-one mess and frustration. 

The plan is to only keep about four books in it at once and to rotate them periodically.  It's a bit too tall for the small boardbooks we have, so those are kept somewhere else (not as neatly...).

Close up

Side view

E helped me make cookies this morning too.  He's keen to watch the stand mixer mix, and lately he's been in to other noise-making kitchen gadgets like the coffee grinder and food processor.  When he sees them, he says "RrrRrrRrr!"

Cubbie cap

It seems to me that baseball cap + small child = cute overload.

You can see E's teething necklace very clearly here.  It's made of amber and I got it from Inspired by Finn back when he was about six months old or so at the recommendation of mamas I met at my local LLL and babywearing groups. I'm not sure if it really helps with teething, but it definitely doesn't hurt.

We had our biggest snowfall of the year so far overnight, all of 3 or 4 inches, I'd say, and E was out helping me shovel again this morning.  With snow boots!

I started knitting a pair of these socks for myself last weekend. I'm making them in to knee socks and don't expect them to be finished before the fall. I've wanted to make them forever - or at least since the pattern came out in 2006 - and I'm glad they're underway, size 0 needles and all.

One more picture of a cutie in a cap!

This picture was totally back-lit when I took it, but through an editing menu in my camera itself that I don't fully understand, I was able to improve it quite a bit.

Little shoveler

Lots of news! Teeth #7 and 8 have come in, now E has 4 on top and 4 on bottom. He's also become fond of Daddy recently, good news for Mommy :)

Here the little guy is reading a book by himself (that's also a new development, instead of always bringing his books over to us to hold them for him).

It finally snowed (a little), and Mr. Muffin helped me shovel today. He was even entirely bundled up - hat, winter coat, socks, shoes, and MITTENS.

E is eating with a combination of hands and silverware these days.  Some meals he's keen to use his fork or spoon, and sometimes he's not.  The spoon is especially tricky, because of course the food tends to fall off if he turns it upside down, but the past few days a lot more of the food has been making it to his mouth on the silverware!  It's fascinating to watch him learn to do these kinds of things that are so easy to take for granted.

Happy New Year!

Hello there! Mr. E is getting closer to really talking every day now. He says "mama" and "dada" quite often, although he doesn't always seem to mean mommy or daddy when he says it. E will also make the first sound of a lot of words, like "m" for mail or mouth. He also has the two baby sign language signs that we taught him down pat - "milk" and "more."

In the four months since he got it for his birthday, E has become an expert at Hammerballs:

He's also still really in to buttons (this toy has a button on top where his finger is):

We've been playing inside a lot lately since it's winter and the little guy really doesn't like to wear his winter coat or mittens.  We did make it outside this afternoon to watch our first real snowfall though!  E liked it, at least until his hands got cold, ahem.

A busy day, E also met my Pullip doll, Bubbles, and he was fascinated!

Bubbles

She's the first doll I think he's seen, at least up close.  He would touch her nose, then my nose, her mouth, then mine.  I showed him how her eyes close, but he didn't care for that at all.

Fifteen months and settling in

Wow, E is fifteen months old today!

It's now almost a month after we moved to our new home, and we're slowing settling in. I took this picture awhile back from the kitchen table. (I do have to admit it was rather strategically framed and timed - we're not living in nearly as remote a location as it might appear.)

E is in the midst of a put-things-in-and-take-them-out phase.  For a long time, he has been helping me empty the silverware out of the dishwasher, but recently after we finished he wanted to put it all back in the dishwasher basket!  Here is his work of modern art: every piece of our silverware (minus the knives) fit into one of the baskets.

We spent a little while drawing together this morning.  Well, I doodled and he mostly moved the block crayons in and out of their tin.  It was fun for both of us!

He is also really in to walking backwards now, especially if he can sit down on something behind him when he bumps in to it.