Her Eyes Are the Sky, Her Skin is the Clouds, and She Loves Crepes.

"Mommy, what are the lines around your mouth from?"
"Those are smile lines. Every smile in my life has made them a little bigger."
"I don't have them."
"You will when you're older and you've smiled and smiled and smiled."
"I'm going to smile so much so when I'm your age they'll be super big. What are those lines on your forehead? Are they smile lines?"
"No, those are worry lines. Mommy has had lots of worries and every time I worry, they make more lines."

Cupping my face with one hand and running the fingers of her other hand over my forehead, my little one looks concernedly at the lines and says, "You don't need to worry so much, mommy, everything is okay and you're a good mommy. I love you so much."

My daughter.

I have written an ode to Charles so it only seems fitting that my daughter has one, too. But really, what has precipitated this is the amount of times in the past week where she has caught me off guard with her wit, cleverness, and her sweet honesty.

Maybe I'm just realizing with sudden clarity how grown up she has become in the last few months. I was told that kindergarten does that to kids, but I guess I didn't believe it until it happened in our family.She has opinions now. That aren't the same as my own. When did that happen?Every year for Christmas, she has worn a red dress. Four Christmases, four red dresses. It's just what we've always done. But this year, while we were just taking a quick glance at starting our Christmas dress hunt, she ran over to John and I holding a navy blue dress up to her body and saying she loved it. That she wanted this one to be her Christmas dress.

I immediately said, "but you've always worn red."
"I know, mommy, but I love it."

Then I got quiet and looked at her happily slowly turning with it pressed against her as she imagined it puffing out around her as she span. Dresses that flair out are what it's all about, of course.

She must have seen the sad look on my face and she lowered the dress slowly, and said sadly,

"It's okay, mommy, I can look for a red one."

And she started to walk back to the rack where she found it.

My heart.

Tears started to sting my eyes. I crouched down to her and asked if she would really, really like the dress and her eyes lit up and her smile covered her whole face. I told her that I was only a little sad because red dresses have been a tradition so far in her little life, but if she was happy, I was happy.

She had her picture taken with Santa last week (I KNOW, it was mid-November! It's getting earlier every year) and she wore her blue dress. As she twirled in front of the big mirror in my room, admiring herself, I told her that the blue was perfect with her skin and she beamed.

"You were right to pick the blue, baby, it's beautiful on you."
"Thank you, mommy, I know. That's why I like to wear blue."
"You can wear all sorts of colours, your skin looks beautiful in everything."
"I always look beautiful in everything because of my smile. My smile makes me beautiful. And I'm always going to smile."

My sweet wise one. I hope you always do.

My tiny princess also does the dishes. I suppose I'll keep her.

Almost four years ago to the day, we had taken Charles to the dog park and as I was pushing ten-month-old tiny bean around in her stroller, an older gentleman passing us by stopped to remark to her,

"If your eyes were any bluer and your skin any whiter, I would mistake you for the sky and the clouds."

What an apt description for our wee one. Not only for her physical appearance but for her soaring imagination and boundless wonder. Sometimes I feel like her feet may be planted on the ground but her mind is far away in a wonderful place.

I've painted her to be rather saintly so far, haven't I? Almost ethereal in her manners and view of the world. Don't be fooled, she's a mischievous little turkeybutt.

I have a confessional backstory to this next tale. I have used the same pillowcase for years. Like five or six years. It was the softest piece of fabric I've ever owned. However, over the past six months or so, it had started to unravel and fall apart. It was completely threadbare. John mocked me ceaselessly about it but I just couldn't find a suitable replacement for it. And it was fun to goad him by saying it was too bad I had such a cheap husband who could buy stuff galore for his own hobbies but couldn't afford to buy a proper pillow case for his wife. But I loved that pillow case and everyone knew it.

Last week, when John and tiny loon had been snuggling on our bed while I was slaving away making dinner, a tiny hand got caught in the threads of my pillowcase and as she tried to pull her hand free, she ended up tearing a huge strip off of it, leaving behind a pillow "sleeve" rather than a "case." She looked shocked and then gravely said to John, "we just won't tell mommy about this," and she tucked it underneath. That little stinker!

I have now replaced my pillow sleeve and since then I haven't been sleeping well at all. I hate change.

I love seeing her mind tick.

I love watching her work through something hard and struggle. As terrible as that may sound, it's really true. Because when she's struggling, she's learning. And that beam of pride emanating from her face when she figures it out is worth it. That internal pride she feels at her accomplishments will always worth it. When she climbs up on something too high, she has to figure out a way down because I'm not doing it for her. We had a lovely time last summer when she climbed into the keyhole window in our front porch-area-thing (?... I don't know what to call it) and although her screaming caused an audience of neighbours to gather, I refused to help her down physically. I walked her through it step by step and she eventually got down on her own, once she stopped panicking. And now she can get up and down off of things with confidence.

She is also reading more than ten new words a day now. She may yell at me and demand that I tell her what something says, but if she doesn't try to sound it out first, I'm not helping. And the result of my not helping? She's figuring it out on her own. I may seem cruel (what parent ever wants to see their kid in distress?) but she's excelling.

My little love surprises me daily. The other day, a series of unfortunate events caused us to be running for home from a hike as fast as her little legs would carry her for almost a kilometre. Without prior warning. The poor little bean. What started our day of calamity was the plan to head out to my grandma's for the day and since idiot Charles won't stay out of her fish pond, he's not allowed to join us, but I wanted him to have a good walk before we left him in the house all day. However, I had been trying to finish some cleaning that morning before we took off and that lead us out on our walk later than I had wanted so we were moving moving moving once we were out there. We had been out for about half an hour when Charles smashed himself through a bunch of bramble bushes while trying to say "hello" to another dog. After that, I told little person that we had to hurry home so I could brush the poky bits out of his fur before they created mats and she happily complied and hurried her pace. Then I stopped in my tracks.

I had left the stove on.

I had been making lentils for smoothies for our drive to my grandma’s and in my hurry to get out on our walk, I had forgotten to shut them off and that was about forty-five minutes ago. That sensation when it feels like your blood runs cold is super neat. I told my mini that we needed to run as fast we could all the way home because “Mommy made a stupid mistake.” “Stupid” is a bad word in our house but me saying it startled her enough to know that something was wrong. When I explained that I had left the stove on and that the food could burn or start a fire, she kicked her little legs into high gear and didn’t slow down.

Bless her little heart. As we ran, she kept bursting out with phrases like “but it’s such a nice house, I don’t want it to burn,” and “I love all of my stuffies so much, we need to save them.” She ran farther than I’ve ever seen her run before in one go, even though she complained of her breathe burning in her chest. She’s never experienced exertion like that in her tiny life.But we made it and the lentils weren’t even the slightest bit burnt. I’m still not exactly sure how I got so lucky. With the lentils or my sweet tiny Olympian.

Kids’ little brains are wonderful. She asked me last night when the world started to have colours. I had to ask her three times what she meant, both of us getting increasingly frustrated, until I figured it out: She had been looking at a lot of black and white pictures at school for Remembrance Day. The World Wars are something that happened a long time ago to her. Ergo, the world used to be black and white because why else would pictures look like that?

I love her.

So in honour of my sweet bean, my cheeky love, my little pain in the butt, I’m sharing one of her favourite recipes to have for a special treat breakfast: crepes.

Although, personally, I think she eats them all wrong.

When I was growing up, crepes were for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas because they were essentially an indulgent dessert: super sweet crepes piled hiiiigh with fresh cut fruit and mounds of whipped cream. Oh yes. We would eat a tub of Cool Whip in one breakfast. Those were the best days.

I think she was two when my husband and I made her those crepes and she did not like them at all. She didn't like whipped cream. Even the real stuff. It's only within the last year that she'll eat it. Weird child.

Her favourite filling for crepes isn't all the fresh fruit and cream but strawberry yogurt. I defrost a cup or so of frozen strawberries and mix in a cup of plain Greek yogurt. Sometimes I add a splash of vanilla. And that's it. She'll eat so many of these yogurt stuffed crepes in one sitting I'm afraid she'll explode. The amount of food this tiny person can eat in one sitting is terrifying. But considering how active as she is, never sitting throughout the day for longer than ten minutes, not even to eat a full meal, I can imagine that much food is needed. Even when she's sitting she's wiggling!

Ah, to harness the energy of childhood. I'm sorry, is it my naptime yet?

Recipe for Crepes Serves 2 in my house

1 1/2 cups whole grain flour (I use sprouted spelt)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. maple syrup or honey
2 tbsps. melted butter or coconut oil

1.) Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl then add the rest.
2.) Beat with an electric mixer or whisk until smooth.
3.) For each crepe, melt butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat.
4.) Pour 1/4 of a cup of batter in while rotating the pan until the batter covers the bottom.
5.) Cook until light brown patches appear on the bottom.
6.) Flip and cook the other side.
7.) Serve with AAAAALL the fixings or strawberry yogurt.

Note: these are just standard crepes, but I've been working the kinks out of some vegan ones. I'll hopefully be sharing those soon on my Instagram (@a.new.view.nutrition if you're not already connected with me there).

Our parenting journey with our daughter has been a wonderful adventure. My husband and I are so proud of the little person she's becoming is. She's amazing. Our whole world.

You may have noticed that my posts are happening with less frequency. When I started this blog, it was ironically during a time when I was starting to distance myself from social media and the wasteful hours spent looking at a screen. Now, I often shut my cell off during the day while my mini is at school so I can get things done. We even have a landline again so I can still be in reach without that damn cell phone being around me. I have found myself all too often sucked into a unproductive black hole when there are so many things I want to accomplish. I will be making more of an attempt to update my blog more regularly while still avoiding my phone. I hate my cell phone so very, very much. I'm not joking when I say I'm looking into flips phones. It aches my heart to know that the very technology I hate so much is what I'll one-day-soon be relying on heavily to run a business. It's just the way of the world now.

Ugh, send me back to the 90s.

Did you think you were going to make it through a post without seeing Charles?

Are you crazy?