fort reno and some bon mots

The fort is still a work in progress. Which is great as far as a father-son activity goes, because really at this age, process is so much more important than product. Hubs says to the Little Dude, "Hey, after breakfast, how 'bout we go outside and work on The Fort." And the Little Dude happily packs back his oatmeal, allows himself to be dressed in the suitable amount of layers for the weather and off they go, across the back yard with a wagon full of tools. This fort has progressed from a mere raised floor, to something that has walls of a sort, and inexplicably, a steering wheel. And now, to accommodate the encroaching wintery weather, we bring you, a roof! Yeah, I'm not so on board with the plastic covering, and would have preferred real shingles, but this is Hubs territory and as he noted, I don't exactly welcome advice from him when it comes to my quilting and stuff. Also, we're pretty much just making this from scrap, as a proper fort should be, so we use what's at hand. And as Hubs also pointed out, no one will be chewing on the roof. So fair enough. 

And as I said, process is where its at with a three year old, and he was just happy to be outside, banging with a hammer and making stuff with his dad. 

But I'll tell you when he was REALLY happy, was when I came out with a plate full of cookies, hot out of the oven. You should have seen the look on his face. There is a particular, glowing, full face smile that small children get when in the presence of fresh baked goods. It is a wonder to behold, and the reason why its so tempting to buy their love with food. 'Cause boy, does that ever work!The cookies one of my favourite recipes, Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies. They ring all of my bells. And all of the Little Dude's too. (Sorry about the fuzzy picture. It would have been in focus, but I had The Baby strapped to the front of me in his carrier, and he was all craning his head around to see what was going on and kept bumping my camera hand.) Turns out this seat by the fort's steering wheel is the perfect place from which to distribute cookies.

Which went amazingly fast. There were one-and-a-half for each of us, and they were gone in a matter of minutes. And who am I kidding, the Little Dude totally had two all to himself. And it was only a half an hour until lunch time. Hm, bit of bad planning there, but totally worth it.

Because its lovely to sit outside on a cool fall day, in a fort that your built yourself eating warm-out-of-the-oven cookies with your favourite people in the world. 

And this is unrelated, except that it is also about my kid being cute, but he told me the most hilarious thing today. I was web surfing and there was some random picture of a cat in the sidebar of the blog I was reading, and the Little Dude pipes up. "I want that cat!"

"oh really," I reply, not really paying much attention. And then he launched into the most awesome little story; the kind that makes me sad I don't have constant video surveillance in my home. I wrote down as much as I could of what he said, but missed a bunch, but what I did manage to get is all straight out of his mouth. And it goes a little somethin' like this:

"I lost a cat this morning. Her name was "Happiness Cat". She was always happy when I teased he and flopped her on the floor. But then she ran away and I said "Don't go Happiness Cat!". But she went away to find food for the winter. And she found it, and it was a really good meal."

All I can say is that if we ever do get a cat, it most definitely will be called "Happiness Cat".

Comments

[Alyssa]

I love your new banner! If you like those cookies, try these Chocolate Pecan puddle cookies. They are a real hit! http://www.underthehighchair.com/2010/06/chocolate-pecan-puddle-cookies.html