Nuts for Soup

If it's hot and it's liquid, it's on the menu! Jonathan is a little "Soup Nutsy" these days. When he wakes up in the morning, he asks for soup before he's even out of his PJ's. He wants soup for lunch and soup for dinner. When he's hiding by ducking under the coffee table, or wedging himself between the playpen and the sofa, he'll come out if we offer him some soup.

He's pretty good using a spoon to polish off a bowful of Daddy's garlic mashed potatoes, but he still needs a lot more practice before he'll be able to handle broth. We're all eating together these days, and Chris and I aren't willing to spend all of suppertime keeping up with his appetite. So we bought a package of diposable straws, the widest we could find. This is important because otherwise the noodles get stuck and we spend all evening blowing them back out. We pour the broth into his mug, warn him "Hot! Hot!", drop in a straw, and let him at it. He gives a big "Ooooohhhh!" when we set the mug down. A minute later, the mug is empty and he's asking for more.

Soup just isn't soup without noodles; fortunately, just about anything counts as a noodle. Today he polished off the wonton dumplings and was left with unadorned broth. As he got to the bottom of the mug, he started delving for noodles with his straw and coming up empty. He gestured towards my long carrot threads that come as a garnish with my pad thai. I gave him a small handful and he placed them carefully on the tray. He picked out one five inch-long thread and carefully lowered it into the bowl. Then he drank down his soup, secure in the knowledge that there would be something tasty to fish out at the end.