Easter Bunny Snack

Healthy Snack: Easter Rabbit Treat

 

       While perusing Pinterest for springtime heathy snacks,  I noticed that using a cookie cutter to create an Easter rabbit shape out of bread could be lots of fun for my girls to eat and "simple" to make.  I hoped to embellish the Easter bunny's face with carrot whiskers, raison eyes and nose, and cheese ears (using a miniature egg cookie cutter to cut out the cheese). 
       The finished product looked more like a mouse than a rabbit to me, but maybe I just stared at whole-wheat veggie rabbits for too many hours.  By the time I was done creating 25 Easter bunnies, too many hours had elapsed for me to think that they looked anything but rediculous and also they started to seem like a bit too elaborate to be worth it (although I did remind myself that I had once made my nephew Darius an entire two-foot wide pirate ship complete with a hand-carved cheese treasure chest with blueberries inside for his own one-person daycare snack so at least it wasn't as over-the-top as that!) 
       Part of what ended up making it take so long was realizing that I needed to cover each rabbit with damp papertowel so that the bread and cheese wouldn't dry out before we arrived at the party--and they still were nice and moist the next day but the stiff decorative cupcake holders did mishapen a bit from the dampness.  All in all, I think they turned out fine but if I did it again, I think I would do it for a smaller group so I didn't have to create quite so many--or at least I would buy grated carrot so there wouldn't be so much chopping.  Although, that said, I'd probably make them again next week if my girls wanted them :)  

Robot fun

A Day in Robotville



Robot snack made of bread,
cheese, and cucumber

       Liliana loves to play with her wooden robots so yesterday morning we created a robotscape from fabric, blocks, and foam flooring.  She really works to carefully stack the acrobatic robots.  While we waited for cousins to come play with us, we continued the fun by constructing a robot snack made of bread, cucumber, and cheese.  Liliana especially requested a "happy robot" with "robot toes."
       Robots are such great gender-neutral toys.  Since Liliana and Vera Rose have no brothers, I'm sometimes worried that they will become too "girly" but days such as yesterday, make me reassured.  I was just so lucky to have a brother as one of my siblings because I played lots of trucks, cowboys, etc in addition to my dolls and "play house" and I want my girls to play with such stereotypically "boy" toys, too (in addition to all the gloriously pink dollies and play cupcakes!) 
       I'm thankful that some of my earliest toys were Playmobile construction sets (complete with tiny orange cones and pipes), miniature tractors, and a huge crane.  I want to foster a love for everything in my girls--just like my parents did for me.  And kudos to my Grandma (my Dad's mother), too, who lovingly sewed clothing for a "Little Boy Blue" doll for my brother, back when it wasn't even common to view men as caregivers.  Little Boy Blue never became Jeremy's favorite (how can you compete with Cowboy Bear?!) but I thought it was such a beautiful gift of love which promotes the idea that gender does not need to be the most defining characteristic of a child.  Do you have any suggestions for raising a child to look beyond gender stereotypes?  If so, I'd love to hear them!



Yes, the blue robots are stacked two high! 
A happy accomplishment--oh, I love how children find such happiness in tiny things!