Baker boy {Ordinary Moments 14}

When we were struggling to have a family, and secretly making promises with the Universe to please bring us a child of my own, one of the things I used to picture me doing as a mother was baking with my little one.

 

And, happily, it turns out that the First Boy absolutely loves making cakes.

 

This week, when I asked him what he wanted to do with his 'Mummy and Me' day he looked hopefully up at me and said 'Baking?'  How could I refuse this little face?

So off he ran to get his favourite recipe book, 'Easy Baking', and took himself off to the sofa to peruse the recipes, concluding that he'd like to make a Lemon and Blueberry Drizzle Cake.  Slight problem. We were fresh out of lemons and the blueberries were looking on the dodgy side, so instead we opted for some good old cupcakes.

 

I'd bought him a new oilcloth apron with little rockets on it, which went down very well.

Increasingly, the First Boy is interested in maths and numbers, so baking is the perfect chance to talk about measuring, the concept of more and less, and timing.

To liven the cupcakes up a bit, I thought we'd make them multi-coloured, so we split the batter into two and coloured half pink and half yellow, dolloping one spoonful of the yellow on top of the pink batter once they were in their paper cases.  Of course, that meant food colouring went all over his face!

When they were baked, we made a suspicious looking green buttercream and smeared that on the top, along with the obligatory sweetie decoration.  Actually, they did taste rather nice!

It's just lovely that he gets so much pleasure about the most simple of activities, and I get so much enjoyment from seeing him so happy. 

I'm linking up with MummyDaddyMe and the Ordinary Moments linky for this post.

An ordinary Saturday at the park

It's the ordinary moments like this that I want to remember.  Just a run-of-the-mill Saturday morning visit to the local park, a coffee and a push on the swings.  A game of hide-and-seek and some balancing on the assault course.  Sunlight dappling through the silver birches and a barely perceptible nip in the air, reminding us that the beginning of autumn is close.  Our little family of three.

The First Boy seems to be changing so much at the moment.  Over the summer his face has lost some of its chubbiness and has begun to take on the look of a proper little boy.  I can see flashes of the seven year old and the ten year old he's going to be some day.  And while this pace of change is exciting, it's also sad, as I know that we really are leaving behind his toddlerhood.

Not only the way he looks, but his sense of humour has really developed recently.  He will often shoot us a cheeky grin with a real glint in his eye and say 'Only joking!'  Over the summer he has become much more co-ordinated and daring, hesitating less and less with climbing and jumping, and insisting that 'I do it on my own, Mummy!'  He is so proud when he achieves something on his own that he previously needed our help with, like dressing himself or pulling the lid off a yogurt.

Independence is increasing quickly; I try to identify the right times to hold back and let him try something on his own, and when to step in and help. I don't always get it right, but we are teaching each other along the way.