Autism Inventory & Other Weekend Activities

NBD, we only had the BUSIEST WEEKEND EVER!  Holy carp!  This weekend was intensity in ten cities.  Friday night the Dotytron had a Doty sibling special dinner with Ehmdo and I had my friend E over.  I made us chilaquiles with black beans and hominy topped with tostadas, sour cream, scallions, chopped salted avocado mixed with lemon (I was out of lime) and there's a fried egg (or two) hiding under there as well.  I really, truly, love chilaquiles.  And I really, truly really like new friend E who is not only a crack dodgeball player, but a crafter, an eater, and a stylish lady who knows a lot about environmental toxins and is doing good things with her life, unlike a certain buckshot shorty.

Mama Dread strikes again.  New weekend activity - the bin of beans.  I picked this up from some Montessori parenting blog.  Ideally, there should be a LOT more beans in there...I'm going to go to the bulk barn sometime and get more.  The beans can be reused, which is nice and he had a grand, grand time picking them up, scooping them with the cottage cheese container, letting them run through the funnel, sifting his fingers through them, and piling them on his fat feetsies.  It's a pretty good activity and pretty clean, as far as kid's activities go.  You can just vacuum/sweep up the errant beans that get dumped outside the container and there you go:

Saturday we woke up EXHAUSTED because the whole family has a cold and the Big Yam opted to wake up at 5am.  So we were grumps.  R & R came over in the afternoon and brought us tonnes of mutton-based delights from Babu, which were delicious, my favorite being the mutton roll, which is their mutton, rolled up into a chubby log that is breaded and deep-fried.  Of course, the Big Yam, being the little Tamil tiger that he is, ate a million samosas and mutton rotis and rolls, even though they were pretty incendiary.  I don't know where he comes from sometimes.  He LOVES Indian/Sri Lankan food.   Then we posse'd up and headed to The Artist Project, to check out independent, unrepresented artists and support our dear, dear friend S, who was the winner of the Un-Tapped artist competition and exhibited her beautiful, ethereal loom panels:

Then we went back to our house with R & R and ate a million Turkish pizzas (pides) and I made us churros and these chocolate budinos with a salted caramel (which broke down and got runny!  BOOOO!), topped with whipped cream, and Momofuku milk bar chocolate crumbs.  Once I dial in the dessert (reduce the sugar, use a salted caramel that's more stable and firm), this dessert will be a winner.  Thick, rich, creamy, cold with texture from the crumbs and a nice balance of sweet and salt:

Then we took the autism spectrum inventory, which was hilarious and fun (it's especially fun to do it in front of your partner, as it's a self-assessment and lead to some spirited back and forth between me and the Dotytron).  We're not on the spectrum.  I scored in the slightly high range for a female and the Dotytron was in the normal range for a male.  Some of the questions are hilarious, though.  The Dotytron isn't detailed-oriented enough to be on the spectrum.  LOL!  

R was telling us this story that involved coming home and surprising her hubby by putting on "something cute."  At that point, I interrupted to say, "what do you mean by 'cute'?"  and R kind of gave me a weird look, and said, "you know...something cute" and the Dotytron had to intervene on my behalf and say, "it's a fair question for Karl, because it would NEVER occur to her to put on something that wasn't sweats.  When you say "something cute" she's envisioning a hot dog costume or like a chicken suit."  LOL!  So true!  I have a problem being seriously sexy or wearing something that's slippery.  It's just not in my lexicon.  I can't do it.  The fact that the Dotytron knows me well enough to know that I had NO EARTHLY IDEA what the subtext for "something cute" meant was really endearing.  

Sunday morning I made us this dish that I stole from a restaurant near m ywork.  They call it "eggy hammy cheesy" and it's precisely that.  An english muffin, spread with dijon mustard, topped with aged cheddar, melted in the oven.  Topped with chunks of ham, and topped with a fried egg.  DELICIOUS.  I sided it with oven-roasted grape tomatoes tossed with garlic and fresh thyme which is one of the Dotytron's favorite things in the world, strangely.

Then I parted ways from my family and went to get my bangs trimmed with Lolls and SMcKay before we headed to our friend N's baby shower.  N is the cutest preggo ever and her baby shower was so fancy!  Everyone was so lovely and the food was great and the games were fun and her Nonna is the most adorable woman ever.  I was so glad I was invited to share in it with her and her friends and family.  I can't wait to meet this little wee one!  

The Big Yam continues to learn things at a staggering rate (or so I've convinced myself, using my own personal metric of "super-genius" as my guide and not reading a single thing about child cognitive development).  He's learned how to say "7" and "8" in Cantonese and "ten" in English (he actually LOVES his flash cards, which is all kinds of awesome).  He says "roll" for this song, Roly Poly, he makes the appropriate sounds when we're reading this Robert Munsch book he loves, he says "go!" and "brown bear" and when you ask him what a lion says, he says "roar."  But it's the cutest, most muted, matter-of-fact "roar" you've ever heard.  Evidence in the video below.  He's wearing an outfit gifted to him from Auntie TPat in Vancouver:

We've also instilled the Pavlovian response in him that when we put him on the potty, he pees like, 90% of the time, thereby proving that my "reward" (he gets 1 square of toilet paper and we all clap and say "yay!") that SMcKay thought was the lamest thing ever, is working!  I'm sure nicer mums would give stickers, or candies, or some other real treat, but if your kid thinks 1 single, measly square of single-ply, scratchy eco-toilet paper is a reward - why fix it?  

Tonight the Dotytron is off doing professional development and then possibly going to a concert with Momma D.  So it was just me and the Big Yam.  Lots of stories and songs and being ridiculous.  I love 12 months plus.  It's just the best age.  He's FUNNY.  Like, intentionally funny!  And he doesn't really have enough of a sense of agency yet to be super-obnoxious or obstinate or willful.   So the past 4 months have just been a lovely, lovely time of him being a sponge of learning and a big goofball.  

I made us a dinner of packaged tortellini mixed with baby spinach in an alfredo-y cream sauce for dinner, with brussels sprouts, in awareness of the fact that our days eating brussels sprouts in 2012 are numbered, if the warm weather continues apace.  It was delicious!

Fin.