Perhaps envious of cousin/nephew Sebastian's brand new play kitchen, we fashioned Danica a little temporary oven and stove-top. She's been eager to "help" us cook for a while already, and she took to having her own station immediately.
She concocted at least a dozen variations of pretend soup out of all the ingredients I could muster up in a couple of minutes: sausage (wine cork slices), noodles (pieces of string), strips of meat (cardboard strips), and carrots (orange cardboard circles).
She insisted that we sample each pretend meal as soon as it was ready. "It's done! Watch out, it's hot. Blow on it." Even more importantly, we had to thank her: "say xie-xie, Daddy!". "Mei guanxi". Her own real dinner was delayed by at least an hour while she continued to serve herself and us, but she didn't seem to notice. She alternated between pretend bites of her pretend food and real bites of real food. I don't think she got them reversed at all, but you never know...
