Granola

I keep reading about these toddlers who just love helping their parents.  They happily clean up, fold laundry, and set the table.  For the most part, this is not true of Baby M.  If I say, "Hey, do you want to help me with something" he will most likely answer "No" and go about his business.  If I leave an unfolded basket of laundry out it will soon become an upside down laundry "cake" in the middle of the floor.  However, there is one place where he does love to help, the kitchen.

The minute I start prepping something in the kitchen he is there shouting "I want to help yooouuuu!"  Of course, when I suggest that the best way for him to help me would be to pick up the crayons all over the kitchen floor, he is not interested.  He wants to crack the eggs, saute the veggies and chop the carrots.  I don't want to discourage his culinary aspirations so this lead me to seek out safe activities that he could help me with.  We ended up doing quite a bit of baking, which is fine, but we really don't need another batch of cookies in the house, even if they are the healthy oatmeal ones from Alicia Silverstone's cook book (which I must note are my favorite oatmeal cookies EVER).  So I was happy when I came across this recipe for homemade granola at wholeliving.com.  I feel a lot better about letting Baby M snack on granola than cookies, especially granola made with flaxseed meal, egg whites and natural sweeteners.  I love this recipe because we can easily customize it with different fruits and nuts and most importantly, Baby M can help with almost all the steps.  There is lots of measuring and stirring and not much contact with a hot stove.  He still fights me over cracking the eggs, but I win out most of the time.  Hope you enjoy it too.

ReDiscover Roller Coaster

Last Saturday our family visited ReDiscover in Culver City.  ReDiscover is a non-profit that recycles discarded materials to use in hands-on art and learning projects for children.  Every Saturday from 10am to 1pm their warehouse has drop-in art hours where your kid can go crazy with glue, wire, tile, fabric, wood scraps, etc.  The cost is $5 per project, and you can use as many materials as you'd like.

Our visit to ReDiscover was actually prompted by the fact that I finally convinced my husband that we no longer needed his AYSO soccer trophies from 1982.  After calling around I found that ReDiscover would accept the box of trophies as a donation.  So, after lovingly photographing all of the trophies, on Saturday morning we headed over to ReDiscover to drop them off and decided to stay and make some art.

The amount of materials in the warehouse was a bit overwhelming.  Bins and bins of fabric samples, plastic do-dads, wall-paper, ribbon, ceramic tile, wires, buttons, etc.  The staff person gave us a quick tour and while pointing out the boxes of wood scraps suggested to Baby M that they might be good for making a roller coaster.  From that point on Baby M was set on constructing a roller coaster.  And not just any roller coaster, a "very scary roller coaster."  So we helped him glue pieces of wood together and decorate it with stickers, fabric, beads, etc.  Ultimately we only took home a small section of the roller coaster, because we just couldn't manage taking home all 6 feet of his masterpiece.  We were there for a little under 2 hours and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  While we were working, several adult artists came in to pick up materials for their professional projects as well as a few other preschoolers and a 10 year old who was building an X-ray machine for a school project.  The mood was festive and cooperative and we never felt crowded.

Baby M is 32 months old and I don't think I would take a child much younger than this to the drop-in art at ReDiscover.  The area is not child proofed-- there are lots of potential choking hazards, a hot glue gun within easy reach and many of the materials requires the use of wood glue or wires.  This is not a place you go for your basic crayons, glue and poster paint art project.   But for preschoolers and older kids ReDiscover is a great chance for them to explore new materials, express their creativity and learn about recycling.

All Aboard! Surfliner to San Diego

For Memorial Day our family decided to take the train down to San Diego for the day.  Baby M loves trains and while we've ridden trains at parks, malls, farms, etc., we'd never taken him anywhere on a full sized train.   So on Sunday night we logged on to Amtrak.com and bought our Surfliner tickets-- 3 round trip tickets from Union Station to Solana Beach, where we would meet up with my family for a BBQ.  It turns out the tickets were a little more than I was expecting ($170 for the 3 of us) but at that point I had already talked up the trip to Baby M so there was no turning back.  

We arrived at Union Station 30 minutes before our train departed and parked in the $7 lot across the street.  Our train left right on time at 8:30AM.  Baby M loved seeing the big double decker train and the train tracks.  I loved the fact that we had plenty of room.  Our coach seats had so much leg room that the only way I could kick the seat in front of me was if I stretched my legs out and pointed my toes.  Baby M couldn't reach the folding tray table on the back of the chair in front of us, which the person seated there should be very grateful for.  Although most of the time there was no one seated in front of us or behind us.  The car remained pretty empty for the majority of the trip. We had brought our car seat along and it fit nicely on the floor in front of the seat next to me.  (There is no way to install the car seat on train, we just brought it to put in my parent's car in San Diego).  We rode past train yards, construction sites, recycling plants and Angel's stadium-- perhaps not terribly scenic, but totally interesting to a 2 year old boy.  Once we got down to Orange County we cut over to the coast and had a lovely ride along the beach.  We took a walk down to the cafe car, had a snack (they mostly had pre-packaged food items) and before we knew it the 2 hour 10 minute ride was over. 

Once in Solana Beach we walked down to the beach and Baby M played on a nearby playground.  As an aside, there was tons of free beach parking-- I couldn't believe it.  You never see that in LA!  Then we headed over to my parent's house for a traditional Memorial Day BBQ.  We came back to the station just before 7pm to catch our train home and were disappointed to find that the train was delayed.  We stood on the platform for 30 minutes watching the Estimated Arrival Time increase in 2 minutes increments until finally it held steady at 7:36pm.  Entertaining a toddler on a cold, narrow train platform is a challenge and this was the low point of our trip.  If we had known how long the train was going to be delayed we would have waited in the station, but since the ETA was changing every couple of minutes we were never sure.  Once the train finally arrived we were back home in a little over 2 hours.

Traveling by train is actually a great option for toddlers.  They aren't confined to the car seat, can walk around to the different cars, eat snacks as needed and visit the toilet whenever they want.  As parents you don't have to deal with surly security agents eyeing your sippy cup or a packed cabin full of harried passengers.   Since Baby M does fairly well on a 2-3 hour car ride, we probably won't take the train to San Diego too often, but I would definitely consider it for trips to San Francisco or other towns in Northern California.