A Nora-ism

Last weekend Eleanor had a visit from her Nanny, my cousin and my cousin's two boys. One night we decided to take the kids to the park to run off some steam and feed the ducks. My cousin was driving us all in her new, huge, Suburban. As Nora was lifted into the back seat, she pointed at the DVD player and uttered excitedly " Look, it's a TVD!

The New Cook

Eleanor has quite the busy schedule these days. She goes to tumbling on Tuesdays and has cooking classes on Fridays. Today was her second class. Her Nanny was visiting for the first class and went with us. The teacher (who looked like she was twelve!) wanted to do something nice and easy for the first class, so they were going to make Kid Salad. Here Eleanor waits, not too happily, to go get her supplies.
The idea was to take a marshmallow, some raisins, part of a cherry, celery, half a canned peach and a piece of lettuce and arrange it on the plate to look like a girl wearing a skirt. Here Eleanor's Nanny starts putting it together.

And that was pretty much as far as it got. Eleanor started eating the "body parts" and we had to stop.

This week, I decided to feed her before class so she could actually finish her dish before it met an untimely end. Today she made "Easy Veggie Squares".

Basically, this is a piece of flattened crescent roll dough baked and topped with Ragu and veggies. It was actually pretty good. Eleanor, carb conscious as always, ate the Ragu off the bread and all of the broccoli and cauliflower.

While she likes the class okay, she really enjoys running around the run with the other kids during down time. The teacher obviously hasn't worked with little kids a whole lot. She expected a bunch of 2-4 year olds to patiently wait for 15 minutes while the dough baked. With nothing to do. And a lot of open, empty space. Yikes!

Tumbling

Yesterday was Eleanor's very first tumbling class. She loved the trampoline and the foam blocks, but she was a little timid. She wouldn't grab, much less swing from, the bars. She crawled off of all the equipment instead of climbing or jumping. All in all, I think it went pretty well for her first visit.