Gingerbread and Games

Last Wednesday I braved having both boys at home for the whole day for the first time. The timing was perfect in some ways as Mylo had his 3-month jabs the day before, he obliged with a 3-hour morning sleep (unheard of!) so that Noah and I could have great fun making and decorating gingerbread. Not quite the traditional gingerbread men though, as we only had cat and aeroplane cookie cutters!

Noah is going through some real sensory exploration of late, and he can frequently be heard asking: 'Can I taste it?' or 'Can I smell it?', so there was a good deal of flour (yuck!), butter and sugar (OK I get that!) consumed before we had even made the dough. I did draw the line at him trying baking soda and ground ginger though! After the dough was made, we had to refrigerate it for half an hour (till 8.45am). Whilst waiting for the half hour to pass, we spent some time learning about how slow the minute hand on the clock moves, coming back every few minutes to see that it had moved from the 4 to the 5, 5 to the 6 etc. I think it was the longest half an hour Noah had ever had to enudure!

Then we baked the gingerbread and ate one still hot from the oven with our morning coffee/fluffy. Mmmm! Whilst waiting for the gingerbread to cool, we had some fun making a ramp and tunnel out of a box, played football outside, and lay on the ground imagining what shapes the clouds zooming overhead were.

My chief taster covered in flour!

The decorating was again another learning experience, as we chose blue and red food colouring for the gingerbread, which meant we could also get purple too! Noah helped putting the smarties on, although I think it was very much 'one for the gingerbread, one for my mouth'!

After Noah's nap, I had to hustle both boys out the door to Noah's first dental nurse appointment. We had practiced what was going to happen (i.e. keeping a nice wide open mouth and not being concerned about things being poked and prodded) in the bath, so Noah sat very still and obligingly for the nurse. His teeth are looking good (no holes), but she did say he has a bit of an overbite (as do I), and asked if Noah sucked anything at night....hmmm 2 monkeys ever since he was about 4 months old?! Since the visit, we have been making a concerted effort to put George the monkey x 2 to bed on Noah's little couch in his room beside his bed rather than having them in the bed with him. He has coped very well with the transition, although has been wanting to cuddle/suck them more during the day, and has woken up a bit upset in the morning wanting them. And since he has always stayed in his bed till we come in to get him, I think he has thought he can't get out of bed to get them. Bless. So we might have to put one George at the end of the bed so he can greet him in the morning and have cuddles...and then we still get an extra half an hour or so sleep!

Once we'd departed the dental nurse with a stamp on each hand, we dropped in on my friend Tanya and her two girls for an hour or so to round out our first official M.N.M day together. Tiring, but fun!