One-On-One

With Samantha in school four mornings a week, I have been trying to spend some special one-on-one time with Sophia while Jack takes his morning nap.  Some days, Sophia wants to watch a particular show and I will sit there and watch it with her.  Other days, we try to play outside (at least while the weather is still cooperative), do puzzles, read books, do crafts or bake.  The possibilities are endless.

On Friday, I went to "Plan B" for our morning activities.  I had originally planned a quick trip to Meijer for the bare necessities, but Jack needed an earlier nap than usual and the weather was rainy; frankly, the last thing that I want to do is haul kids and groceries in and out of the pouring rain if I can avoid it.

I had decorated my house the afternoon before while the kids were napping, so Fall was in full swing around here.  I decided that we needed some good, old-fashioned baking with cinnamon and nutmeg so I decided to make some zucchini bread from the squash that Steve had brought home from work.  And Sophia would make the perfect assistant.

Sophia was SO excited about this.

She handed all of the cut up pieces of zucchini to me so that I could feed them into the grater attachment on my mixer.

Once I was finished grating all of the squash, Sophia dumped the mixture into a large bowl.



She used the spatula to "stir" the mixture.

And then, before I knew it, she had decided to sample the squash!  She really wasn't a big fan of it ...

Adding applesauce.  (Her responsibilities were endless and she accepted each "job" with enthusiasm).

Grinding up the walnuts.  This was a tricky chore, but she was insistent on doing it herself -- so goes the life of a two-year old.

Adding the walnuts to the mixer.



Ready to be baked.





While our loaves of bread were baking (and filling the house with the most wonderful fragrant smell of Fall), I had another special job for my little helper.  She was in charge of putting all of our Fall holiday clings on the windows.  When I had decorated the day before, I specifically saved this task for Sophia.  It was a treasured job that the girls relished in all last year -- taking down window clings from previous holidays and putting up new ones in anticipation of upcoming events. 





And Samantha?  Well, there was no jealousy at all when she came home from school that day.  She was so excited to see what we had done while she was away.  And just to be sure that she didn't feel left out, BOTH girls helped me again the next day to make more loaves of bread and muffins (a little bit of zucchini goes a long way!).