Sweetness

There were two reasons for us making these gingerbread men together today. P has been spending a day and a half each week at nursery for the last couple of months as I was planning on getting some part time or supply work. Then of course we found out about little brother or sister being on the way and suddenly it didn't make sense for him to be there anymore. He has loved his time there though, so the gingerbread men are his way of saying thank you tomorrow, his last session.
The other reason was that this winter I've been finding Wednesday the hardest day of the week to deal with as an at-home mum. Our friends aren't available for various reasons, there don't seem to be any playgroups on...even the library is closed. If there is a day of the week when being stuck indoors in a place that's a long way from most of our friends and family spells a bad mood, it's Wednesday. As P and I are going to be at home together for the whole week again after tomorrow, I needed to prove that, even on a Wednesday, we can have happy, creative times together.
I thought through the process of making the gingerbread men beforehand, as I wanted P to feel he was involved in doing as much as possible, without getting into tantrum-provoking situations where he wanted to do stuff that I couldn't let him. So I made up the dough in the kitchen while he charged around the living room on his bike, wearing the crochet hat (mine!) that he seems to have adopted despite it making him look like a flower fairy. Once it had chilled, we repaired to the dining table, where he delighted in spreading out flour (I think we could have just done that and not bothered with the rest!), gave the dough a good squidge, brandished the rolling pin we've had to remove from his cookery set on safety grounds (think Conan the Barbarian), helped press the cutter down and carefully pushed the currants in for eyes and buttons- to his own unique designs of course. A little mess, lots of fun and no tantrums. We managed a Wednesday where we both smiled all day.

Especially when he realised that there was a really easy, and tasty, way to use up all those spare currants...