DiggerPerson.com

I just want to tell all of you mothers (and fathers) of young children and babies one important tip. Don’t train them to be picky eaters from the start.

Before Lucas was three, he had never seen a bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese that didn’t have peas, shredded spinach or some ground greens in it. And so green speckles were just a matter of fact and were completely associated with yummy things like a bowl of cheesy goodness.

This is what I do. Every once in a while, buy a bag of pre-washed greens (the darker the better…kale, collards, etc). Throw them in your food processor (raw) and grind them into almost a powder.

Then get a Ziploc bag, put the date on it,pour the greens into it and put them into your freezer. Now adding greens is as easy as sticking your hand into the bag and pulling out a handful of these finely chopped greens.

Whenever I cook things like a casserole, scrambled eggs, mac ‘n’ cheese, mashed potatoes, etc, I always put a handful of these greens into it. You can’t really taste them, they’re good for you and they get the little ones used to the taste and appearance of green vegetables. All good things!

For a toddler construction birthday part, rent a backhoe or a payloader and just park it in front of the house. Love it.

When it came time to make a cake for Lucas’s birthday, I wanted to make it myself. The problem is that I can’t do anything all perfect-perfect. I certainly can’t construct a cake that looks like a giant backhoe (or anything of the sort). And I really didn’t want to purchase a cake from Costco or Safeway, or whatever that had a bunch of food coloring and a stencil image.

Soooo, I thought to myself…what am I good at? The answer was easy. Doing things messily.

Here was my solution to the construction birthday cake dilema…a backhoe destroying the chocolate cake. I made little construction signs, little construction zone tape and let this toy backhoe rip into it. Lucas loved it and treasures the orange backhoe that sat on it.

So this is the thing I don’t get. I never even heard of a backhoe before 2004. Yes, I’d seen them but they were just a part of the landscape and were not something I’d noticed. But, somewhere around age one, Lucas began shuddering and muttering “Daht! Daht!” every time we’d pass one. (BTW, that was his way of saying, “What’s that called?”)

So, finally, one day on the bus, I turned to a guy next to me and asked (pointing to a backhoe), “What are those things called?” The rest is history. That was one of Lucas’s first words.

Anyway, I digress. The purpose of this blog is simply to collect ideas on how to have an “out of the box” toddler construction birthday party that’s not filled with Bob the Builder logo merchandise.