and he was so excited I could only get it half built while he was awake and had to drag all the pieces out to the garage to finish up while he was napping. He loves to put all his buddies in, leaving very little room for himself.
He's also been really into identifying shapes lately so we made a colorful shape collage with our Nanny, Jessikah
and a coral reef collage
But he wasn't the only one making things this week. I feel like my toddler food ideas have been a bit stagnate lately so I got all creative with fig-hoisin-soy marinated chicken wings; goat cheese, zucchini, kalamata olive pizza; grilled turkey, pesto, cheese sandwiches (the waffle iron is AWESOME for this)
and sausage-spinache-brown rice balls with dipping sauces.
Unfortunately, I think Joe and I were more enthusiastic about most of the items than Taran, but we'll just keep trying new things. I've found that sometimes he's more enthusiastic about trying things if he has a hand in cooking them. Here he's having an almost angelic moment helping me make marinated, baked tofu.
Sadly, three minutes later he was hurling tofu everywhere so the moment was incredibly short lived. Then again, after tasting it, I don't blame him. So much for using recipes. I tend to be more successful with freeform cooking.
On Saturday it was rainy and cold (I'm not sure we ever reached 50° ) so we hit the North Market in Downtown Columbus. I love markets like some people love museums - the colors, the smells, the happy, milling people - my favorite thing to do. It's got a weekly farmer's market outdoors on Saturdays and the indoor part is open all week. There are cheese, wine, meat and produce vendors, small stalls selling prepared foods with everything from Vietnamese to Polish, Indian curry to ice cream (almost entirely sourced ingredients from local farms and incredible flavors like lime cardamom yogurt and Plum sake sorbet).
For some unexplained reason, we haven't brought Taran here in over a year but now I think this will be our favored rainy day spot. There's an upper level
with tables that runs in a big square all along the perimeter of the market with railings so that you can look down at the action below
and it makes for a fantastic toddler exercise track. On our first lap around the track we stumbled upon two guys playing the blues and they let Taran jam out on the drums while they played backup.
He was a bit entranced by the whole experience
but I think dazed expression aside, he actually enjoyed himself.
Today we had a play date with some of the kids that he's met at the library story time. It's not easy keeping a roomful of toddlers happy and we definitely had a couple of hairy moments when everyone wanted the same toy at once.
But after we pulled out a few tutus and instruments, a good time was had by all.
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