Christmas is Awesome!

So last year, the Bug was sort of indifferent to Christmas. She got that we went somewhere other than our house, she got it, sort of, that she got some new stuff and that people paid a lot of attention to her, but mostly she just got a bit over-stimulated.

This year, she doesn't really get the whole thing... I mean the whole Baby Jesus and Santa and Practising Commercialism with Reckless Abandon thing, but what she does get is OMG!!!!!! TOYS!!!!! (Also, the Caillou Christmas Movie... if I have to watch it one more time... but that's an entry for a different day, as is the goody bag she brought home from her Mother's Day Out from Baby Jesus' birthday party.)

She got her first gift of the Holiday Season today (that is, except for the Baby Jesus goody bag), and she wanted to play with that doll RIGHT NOW so I opened the packaging. The doll and accompanying pacifier, bed, blanket and pillow were secured in the packaging (shown postmortem) using no fewer than 4 different types of fasteners, at least one of which required a blade to get it undone, and all but one of which is a choking hazard.

Since I'm packing for our Christmas travels (pray for us... 500-ish miles in the car with a toddler), I'm making lists, and I have included the following Important Tool on my list:

My Mom's old Swiss Army Knife. Seriously. How else will I get through the presents? 

(It might be interesting to mention that none of the toys we got her have this sort of packaging on them. Further proof that I'm a damn dirty hippie.)

Toddler Food

So the Bug has hit a picky patch when it comes to eating. She subsists primarily on milk, air, and peanut butter smeared on the carb-de-jour. She will also eat tortellini, and so, inspired by the Noodle and Doodle TV show, I invented this recipe for the whole family.

Tortellini lasagna

1 20 oz package tortellini (I used Buitoni herb chicken tortellini just to get some extra protein in the child)
2-ish cups fresh baby spinach
1 32 oz jar pasta sauce
2-ish cups part-skim mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Drain.

Lightly grease a 9'x9 or equivalent baking pan. I used my olive oil mister to accomplish this task. Layer about half the tortellini, half the spinach, half the sauce, and half the cheese. Repeat.

Cover dish with foil, place in oven for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 5 minutes or until cheese on top is melty and goey. Enjoy. Assume toddler will reject immediately the spinach as though it were arsenic or toxic waste.

Oh, and I'm not a huge fan of Noodle and Doodle, because while the link I put above is right that it encourages cooking and crafting together, it also features a dude in a bus (awfully similar to a van), riding around with a puppet and a dog inviting kids to come do crafts in his skeevy van double decker bus, and eat the yummy food that his puppet helped him prepare. The dog's life is so miserable that he has a vivid fantasy life in which he is the owner of an all-dog diner and creates beautiful meals for a variety of interesting clientele. It was, in fact, one of Doggity's creations that inspired this particular creation.

A Parent's Perspective

We're watching 'The Wiggles' in the MomSnark household this morning, and I got to thinking about the mother of the guitarist in the group, Murray. I rather imagine that at first she was disappointed when he told her that he wanted to be a rock star, and then she was torn between being glad he had a paying gig and completely weirded out by the whole concept of The Wiggles when he told her he got that gig. Unless, of course, he set out to be a musical children's television star, then she was just so bloody weirded out by it she didn't know quite what to do.