Toy box

So Babies love garbage. When Aurora is done eating and I let her crawl around on the floor she´ll start eating whatever she dropped during her mealtime which - she clearly stated just seconds before - was over. Same concept applies to toys. We bought her many interesting, cute, funny, pretty and or early development beneficial toys (as seen on this blog). Does she love them? No! Would she rather play with shampoo bottles, empty yogurt containers, kleenex packs, bottle caps or boring old pens? Yes! Knowing this you can imagine what a great find this old plastic pipe was for Aurora. It is soooooooooo interesting. Whatever, girl, you just garbage-played your way out of toys for your next 4 birthdays. 

Plastic pipe available over www.garbage.ga for 0€ 

Utensils

Matt comes up with some strange ideas sometimes. One of these is a gymnastics ball. It turns out it´s a quite a cool thing to have when you have a baby though. In the beginning we used it to bounce Aurora to sleep. Now that she´s older she doesn´t really go to sleep like that anymore but it makes for great giggles to bounce on it for fun. When she´ll be even older like our friends son Eli who is 3 years old you can play giant football. And we also use it a lot as a desk chair. In fact I´m sitting on it right now.

ca. 15€ over Amazon.de

Display

Every year at the annual Bowles Christmas party we all bring a little gift and we play a game called gnome-game in Germany. Everyone draws a number and picks a wrapped present, then the next number gets to either pick a present or steal the one off of one of the other already unwrapped presents. It´s very fun and always ends up getting quite loud. Anyway, that´s how we got this little blue jay. I don´t remember who brought it, it´s odd since it´s a bird very typical for Canada and it was definitely no Canadian who brought it. I stole it from someone because I thought it would be nice to be able to tell Aurora about blue jays since that´s also the mascot for the Toronto Baseball team. When you press his wing he twitters. 

Closet

This is just a snapshot with a phone camera so excuse the quality but I realized that I never posted anything about her cool snowsuit Aurora got from her aunt for Christmas. Obviously we had her dad in mind when we found this at TK Max. This suit is the closest thing Aurora has to saying "I love you Dad" in binary. 

The other reason why I wanted to share this photo is the hat which has turned quite a few heads on the children front. Several young kids have stopped mid-step and said to their parents out loud "oh look at that funny hat, it has a cat face on it!". Seriously it happened more than once but in the exact same way! Apparently my taste in clothes is considered hip with the 4 to 9 year olds. I´m not sure if I´m going to take this as a compliment yet.

Dear Diary

Here I am on my trip to the lovely island of Mallorca. I went there for a week in February with my mommy and my grandma. It was nice and sunny and I got to go to the beach for the first time. Sand doesn´t taste as yummy as it looks though so be warned. Sea grass is less crumbly but has a strange aftertaste, not really worth it either. I also got to fly, which was a lot like taking the tram except there is not much to see out the window. 

Toy box

Matt picked up this alphabet teaching toy from the flea market before Aurora was born. It´s actually not super cool or anything but I think the fact that it´s second hand, vintage if you will, makes it special.The girls seem to start to develop an interest in it too although it´s obviously made for kids who can do a little more talking than our two rug rats. 

Utensils

We got one of these ghost lights to have a soft light in the baby for bedtime but as it turns out it´s also just an excellent toy in general. The other day Aurora and I were on our way home from the city and it was already dark and she was getting grumpy and we had to wait 10 minutes for a tram. So I put the light into her pram and she was happily distracted for waiting time. It changes colour so it can keep a baby busy for quite a while. Definitely one of my top 10 favourite things to buy for a baby!

Spoka nightlight over Ikea.de ca. 13€

Display

I don´t know how he does it but Matt comes home like once a week with different monsters in his bag. Like these two finger puppets. He already played out a whole little tea party with those two for her. The conversation mainly hovered around their plans to get together again soon for some unicorn blood. It´s not exactly a story for a 6 month old but she was laughing so I assume she inherited her fathers humour.

Closet

Auroras auntie Sarah got her this towelling beach suit. Obviously with awesome pirate octopuses on it. Sadly it´ll be too small by the time summer comes around so she has to wear it now. I admit it would be even cuter with naked legs, a sunhat and some sand under her bum but it is what it is. She seems to like it either way though.

Player

Our favourite thing to watch lately is, no not Aladdin and no not Cars, it´s Disney and Pixar Documentaries. It´s fascinating how an old tale or a simple story line develops into these adventures that are not just for adults. I recommend especially the Pixar documentary (we have it on the Wally DVD) or the movie called "waking sleeping beauty". Watch them and you´ll realize that it´s not just about making movies but about a huge piece of American history. It´s like watching the history channel but with pixie dust.

Fridge

One of the favourites in our house is apple pie. What I personally like about it is that it´s so adaptable for children. The Crust is made with just a little bit of powdered sugar and could technically be entirely made from flour, without any sugar. And the filling can be prepared with basically as much sugar as you like. It could also be made with honey or molasses instead of sugar. Inside there is lots of fruit although you´re having a cake, so something sweet, and if that´s not enough to trick your kids, to get them more involved and interested they could even choose their own fruit. 

Crust:
250gr. flour 

50 gr. powdered sugar

125 gr. cold butter

1 egg

a splash of milk

crumble the ingredients, form a ball, wrap in cling film and put it in the fridge

Filling:

4 big apples

50gr. butter

100gr. sugar (preferably brown)

1 tsp. ginger, cinnamon

or other spices you like

melt butter&sugar, add cut up apples simmer for 15 min

roll out two circles of the dough for your pie form, lay the first circle inside the form, put in the filling, cover with the second circle, connect the edges of the circles so the juices don´t drip out, poke some holes in the top of the pie and bake at 180 C for about 50 minutes.