Thinking in your head is hard!

A few weeks ago, when I was reading something on my phone, Sean asked me what I was doing. "I'm reading", I said. "But you're not saying anything", said Sean. "I'm just saying it in my head when I'm reading". Since then he keeps asking me if I'm reading in my head.

So I asked him, "can you think in your head?". He got a look of intense concentration for about 20 seconds, kind of like constipation and finally said, "no". But he tried really hard!

Top parenting tip for allergies.

Here's my top tip for parents of kids with allergies, like gluten intolerance or nut allergy. When they're old enough to understand the first Superman movie (but not old enough to know any astrophysics), tell them that you found them in a field, just like Superman. You discovered later that they came from an alien planet that was destroyed in an explosion. This planet orbited a star made of gluten, peanuts or whatever (a star made of bee stings might be pushing it a little), that's why it makes them sick, just like kryptonite makes Superman sick.

They'll want to know about their super powers, I have no advice for you here, it's going to vary from kid to kid, be creative.

Emphasise that it's a secret (or they'll probably get a kicking at school) and see how long you can keep this up.

Knock knock...

Who's there?

Santa... elbow.

Santa elbow who?

Santa elbow... face. HA HA HA HA HA

This is what happens, over and over, when your 4-year-old discovers knock-knock jokes. I'm not sure at what age they actually start to understand them but right now, they are the most hilarious thing in the world and 20 minutes of non-stop, similarly point-missing jokes is apparently a great way to pass the time. Funnily enough, he first one was "Justin", I was expecting "Justin Time" but no, it was "Justin... emm, emm... Leg. HA HA HA HA HA" and it went downhill from there.

Random Turkey Burgers

I'm minding the kids for a few days. So not only am I cooking, I have to cook things they will eat too. I bought some turkey mince with the intention to cook turkey burgers. Looking around the net for recipes, I found that about the most important thing about turkey burgers is all the other stuff you put in since turkey itself has very little flavour. So here's what I put in my turkey burgers today. They were tasty enough and the kids ate all of theirs which is fairly remarkable. I picked a few things that I figured would give them some flavour - salami, olives, garlic, white pudding and some random other stuff. I just squished it all up together in a bowl with my hands, shaped it into burgers and then grilled them. The amounts below are what I used today and in no way represent an ideal amount. It would almost certainly be better with more of some and less of another but I have no idea which.

• 450g turkey mince.
• Half a onion, chopped.
• 1 slice of brown bread, turned into crumbs.
• 1 egg white, beaten a little.
• 2 slices (12g?) of Aldi Salami Di Milano, ripped into small bits.
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped.
• Half an inch of white pudding (20g?).
• 8 olives in brine, chopped.
• Various herbs and stuff, I think it was celery salt, cumin, basil, thyme, salt, black pepper, Lidl Puszsta spice mix.
• Cheddar cheese, grated - I didn't use it but I saw it suggested and I'm putting it here to remind me.

I used half of that to get burgers for 1 adult and 2 kids and I cooked these really easy potato wedges which the kids ate too, despite being a bit burned.

Oh, there's also this which looks pretty good and I might try it at some stage.

Watcha doin?... Toilet. Daijoubu. Falling asleep in the bath.

Watcha doin?... Toilet

Sean likes to follow me to the toilet. He no longer tries to get a close up look into the bowl (putting his head right in the flight path) or grab onto the glittering stream. Now he runs in and looks up and shouts "Whatcha doin? [short pause] Toilet". I think it must be something he picked up in the creche because the phrase just suddenly appeared, shouted confidently on a regular basis. Now he uses it in other contexts. A fart results in a laugh followed by "whatcha doin? Chin chin". "chin chin" is Japanese for "penis" but clearly Sean has a slightly broader meaning for it or a horrible medical condition that we haven't yet noticed. I'm not sure he's even asking a question, it seems to just mean that something interesting is happening or he's just saying hello.

Daijoubu

"Daijoubu" is kind of Japanese for "don't worry, I'm OK", usually it's a response to someone asking you if you're OK. A few times a day, Sean will just suddenly say it without prompting. I turn around to find him upside down hanging off the couch or worse, half-way up the stairs and I can only wonder what awful tragedy he narrowly avoided.

Where's Riona for all this?

Why am I posting all this stuff about Sean and nothing about Riona? Riona has morphed from a cute and amusing, small animal into something much more like a small human being (yes I am in danger of anthropomorphising children). She isn't doing anywhere near as much funny stuff, stuff that betrays an almost complete lack of knowledge about the real world. She is, in fact growing up... but not too much.

For the 3.5 weeks I was in Japan, I think we pushed the kids too hard with trips out to this and that and a week in Okinawa. The result was frequent breakdowns from Riona and one total meltdown from Sean, who is usually the voice of calm and contentment in our family. Riona fought over ridiculous little things that were in hindsight, I think, protests at being dragged out here or there to meet some friends of ours. Sean's meltdown was on the way back from Kamakura, when he was just completely sick of being on trains and started screaming and screaming and screaming. I tried taking him for a walk in his buggy while still on the train. All that did was introduce a furious, screaming child to carriage after carriage of disapproving Japanese commuters. We had to change trains and Midori bought some sweets and just a single toffee square was all it took to return (poor) Sean to his usual happy, playful self. He spent the short ride home playing peepo with 2 slightly drunk business men.

The funniest incident with Riona was a fairly common case where she had a bath before bed and then didn't want to come out of the water. This time she was so tired and grumpy that she ended up falling asleep mid-protest. She was slumped in the corner of the bath (don't worry I was in the room with her). I took some photos of her but I'm pretty sure that posting them on the Internet will get me done for kiddie-porn. I'll just save them for my power-point presentation at her wedding.

Don't like dat vs jibun de.

This post might not be of much interest to anyone but me (moreso than my others posts).

About 2 months ago, Sean learned the phrase "don't like dat", usually accompanied by pushing "dat" away and sticking out his bottom lip. It's very funny to watch. It often actually means I've had enough - something he does like and was happily eating a few minutes ago will be declared "don't like dat" when he's full.

Children's language skills are very practical. The words and phrases they use are actually chosen not for their "real" meaning but for the outcome they produce. For Sean, if "don't like dat" results in dat being removed and something better replacing it (where something better might just be leaving the table) then who cares whether he really does or doesn't like it. The long term goal of communicating his preferences to us suffers a little but he's not really into long-term planning yet :) and up until now we've had to figure out his preferences from non-verbal cues anyway. So as long as we don't take him literally, this phrase serves its purpose perfectly.

Even for Riona, the word "why" is still just a button she can press to make me speak more about something. I often forget this and get frustrated with questions like "why is that a toilet?".

More recently Sean learned "jibun de" - "by myself" or as Riona used to say (or shout) "my do! my do!" (that's English by the way).

The problem is that both phrases now come out sounding mostly the same, so when you move some food onto his plate and he starts shouting at you, it's 50-50 whether he doesn't want the food or whether he does want it but wants to get it himself. For some reason I seem to get it right considerable less than 50-50. Poor Sean (for a while I thought maybe we should change his name to Poor Sean, it's not easy being small, adventurous and Riona's little brother).

No ni sai - how to ruin your child's second birthday.

The first of a few random snippets on what Sean says and does that I find amusing. For some reason, Sean's stock-phrases are much more likely to be in Japanese than Riona's were, maybe because Riona had full-time daycare in Ireland for a while and Sean never had.

Sean is almost 2 years old and still does a little bit of breast-feeding, mostly in the middle of the night. Midori is trying to end this and sometimes stops his attempts and tells him "mo sugu ni sai" which means "you're nearly 2" ("ni sai" means "2 years old"). Sean now gets grumpy and starts saying "no ni sai, no ni sai!". Sometimes just for divilment we'll say "mo sugu ni sai" to him to wind him up and it works. All good, innocent, infant-bullying fun.

What might be a problem is that Sean is 2 on Jul 15th and he'll be in Japan for that. I'm not sure what Midori is planning but he'll at least have a cake and the family around him, all repeating that dreaded phrase "ni sai, ni sai, ni sai" and he'll have a big grumpy head on him, shouting "no ni sai! no ni sai!".

I wish I could be there to see it! Obviously, I wish I could be at Sean's 2nd birthday anyway but he'll have lots more birthdays and it'll be a long time before he has another where he gets upset by anyone who mentions his age.

Good place for kids: Spraoi

I've been to Spraoi fun-world a few times now and so has Midori but yesterday I was so happy with the place that I need to tell to the world. It's behind Aldi on the Long Mile road.

Food

We started off in the cafe where 2 main courses were more than enough for 2 adults and 2 kids. The baked potato with pesto chicken was very nice and there was loads of it for €6.95 including coleslaw and a salad. Seemed quite healthy and fresh if a little bit too salty. A good lasagne with chips was €7.95; and another €1 for a can of 7 up. Later on in the play area we got 2 ice-cream cones for €1! I was shocked. 50c each makes them probably the cheapest ice-cream cones in Ireland.

While we were waiting for the food the staff were very helpful and even got a ball for Seán to play with. In fact all the staff are helpful and friendly.

Play

For toddlers there's a ball pit and for older kids there'ss a massive complex of ropes, padded bars, swings, balls, 3-storey high slides (one wavey, one spiral chute) and other cool stuff. You get 90m playing for €7 (adults are free and there's a weekday-morning discount) and it's supposed to be a few euro per hour after that but Midori says they have never charged her for any over-time. You can order food and drinks inside and there are chairs and tables (but it gets pretty busy at the weekend). If they had the energy for it, the kids would stay there forever. They love it.

Lost and found

The (rather stupid) highlight this time was me losing my shiny Nexus 1 phone after a bit of rough and tumble with the kids. It took me about 3 minutes to notice that it was gone and I got in quite a fluster. I retraced my steps but couldn't find it. I got Midori's phone and phoned it and lo and behold they had it behind the counter. That could so easily have disappeared, a big thanks again to the staff.

So if you have kids and you're looking for somewhere to go some day, I would definitely recommend Spraoi, for value, service and fun.

random kid stuff

Some things are better for kids to learn through experience. The fact that you can't grab hold of a stream of piss is not one of them.

Puzzle food

We discovered a great trick for eating out with small kids last night. We went to Lisa's Trattoria in Terenure for dinner. We'd been stuck in all weekend with coughs and colds and also me being on call which means I can't leave the house.

Sean was fairly cranky when we got there and we asked for soup for the kids ASAP, while we chose our food. When it arrived, Sean calmed down and ate the soup with hardly a word from him. He got a bit shirty again when it was all gone but then Midori's mussels starter arrived and this is the trick...

Midori gave Sean a few mussels and he set to work on them but mussels aren't the easiest thing to eat. For Sean anyway, there's a good minute of poking around to try and get the mussel out of its shell. Each one is a new puzzle and he quietly sat there solving each one for its little meaty reward. He was completely engrossed in it and when the mussels ran out, he went back and checked every empty shell to see if there was anything left. We ate our food in peace.

I can't think of any other puzzle foods that make kids work for each bite. I'd love to find a few more.

Sean also had a great time with my rigatoni. Each tube fitted nicely on a finger. He ate loads of everything. We also had a visit from a child of the family that run the restaurant. He played with Riona a little and at the end of the meal we got free coffee! I've been here three time and had free stuff twice! Lisa gave us free ice cream when we were there just after Sean was born. I think she likes kids and the little boy had a good time and told us we should come here every day.

Anyway, it was a nice food and plenty of it, although a bit pricey. The recession doesn't seem to have reached their menu yet. I think that explains why they were a bit empty while other restaurants on the same street were pretty busy.