Picklebums

September 2, 2010 | Filed in: Muski,Number 4,The Twindaoes

We called the baby ‘Number 4′ before he was born.
Then he became known as ‘Quatro’ while the world waited for us to decide on a ‘real name’, but now that he has one, he is rarely if ever actually called Noah!

We call him “No No” or “Noey” and even “Nobody”.
Some times he gets “No-bo” or “Noob” or “Noo-bi-do”.
A friend’s little girl calls him “Baby No Name”, which I am quite taken by.

Yes…. we are attempting to scar our child for life with his many terrible nick names. But it’s ok…because we are scarring all our kids equally when it comes to nick names.

Morgan was named ‘Muski’ by the girls when they were waiting for him to be born and iot has totally stuck. We took a long time to name him too and while the world waited, the girls added to his nick name with loads of variations until he became known as …
“Morgan Muski Butterfly Marshmallow Poop Face”

Of course we also shorten his name… to ‘Morgues’.
Yep, his nick name means the building where they store dead people.
Now that’s gonna scar!

And the girls?

Izzy’s name is really Isabella but no one ever callas her that.
She gets called “Bizzy” or often just “B” which seems to confuse people because of course Izzy starts with an I not a B, but it makes total sense to us.
Sometimes she gets call “zipper” and quite often “feral Sheryl”

Zoe gets “zoob” or “Zobo” or “Zoo-bum”, because in true Aussie style, if your name is already short then we’ll lengthen it instead!
And a derivative of that? “Goober”…. lovely.

And then there are the multi use nick names…. because I often can’t remember which child I gave which name to, so it’s easier just to call them all…

Chooky Bum, or just Chook
Snookie La
Bood, or Boodie
Stinky
Oliver Boliver Butt (A prize for those who know which Dr Suess story this is from)
Pickle Knickers (say it out loud it makes your lips feel happy)
and of course.. Picklebum!

Surely I am not the only one who is scarring their children with terrible nick names. Please share and make me feel better!

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This all sounds blissfully domestic, but it’s not exactly all monogrammed wooden spoons and frilly aprons. You see I have this other child… A sadly neglected three year old middle boy child, and he desperately wants someone to play with him. If I leave to his own devices while I get on with things he’s been known to seek out a play mate by waking the sleeping baby, or worse, destroying something in the girl’s room. So rather than picking up the pieces afterwards I find it much easier to be proactive and find ways that he can ‘play’ with me. Lucky for me he still thinks cooking and cleaning are fun!

So today we got dinner going and put on a load of laundry but there isn’t many ways he can help with those things, so we made Pita Chips.

Pita Chips have to be one of the easiest, yummiest, ‘use up your left overs’, treat in the world, and there is lots of things little hands can do to help.

I used the pizza roller to cut up the pita bread into ‘chip-ish’ shapes (the girls are able to do this safely without help, but Muski can’t quite manage to keep his fingers out of the way of the sharp bits yet) and Muski put them on the trays. It’s kind of like fitting together a pita puzzle, trying to get the chips on the tray with as little space between them as possible but no over laps!

Then I gave them a quick spray with olive oil and we sprinkled them with salt and some mixed herbs and baked them in a low oven (about 100C) until they were nice and crispy (takes about 10 minutes, maybe less, maybe more, keep your eye on them).

And that’s it…. now you have a bowl full of yummy crunchy herby chips, and a happy boy!

For more easy things to cook with kids you can check out my guest post at Childhood101. We’re also joining in with We Play this week – so head on over and see what everyone else has been playing!

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“What does that say Mum?” she said pointing to a post title on a blog.
I looked at what she was pointing to and tried to distract her but it was too late….
“S-E-X-T-ing…. does that say ‘sex- something’?”
“Yes” I said hoping a quick and simple answer to the question was where it would end.
“Sex what Mum?”
“Sex-ting” I reply still going with the simple answer idea…
“What is sexting mum?”
Now the particular blog post I was reading was talking about the dangers of sexting and how to educate and talk with your kids about it… but they were talking about teenagers, not 6 year olds!! There were no tips on how to explain sexting to a 6 year old!

Lately their reading has just come on in leaps and bounds and the magic of reading has opened up a whole new, wonderful, world. Suddenly they can read all kinds of things – random signs and billboards, headlines in the local paper, the back of the cereal box…. All these things that we, long time reading adults, take for granted. All these things that as a parent, I never paid any attention to, until now…

E-gads this is going to mean a whole new kind of difficult questions isn’t it!
And I guess there will be no more secret spelling of words like ‘i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m’ and ‘l-o-l-l-i-e-s’ between the father figure and I.

Reading sure is magical, hey.

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