Making a Gingerbread Train

Here's how it goes when you make a gingerbread train with a toddler:

First, to delay assembly, you tell the toddler that it would be nice to save the train for when grandma and grandpa arrive in three weeks (like the toddler would agree to that idea even if the grandparents were due to arrive in three hours).  What if we wait until Daddy comes home?  No.  

Because you don't have the right sugar to make the frosting, you mention the idea of going to the grocery store to buy the icing sugar.  Of course not.  So you make do with regular sugar.  While you make the gluey frosting, the toddler proceeds to unpack the gingerbread pieces from the box and nibble on most of them.  Fine (although you wonder about the ingredients now entering the toddler's body as they came from an item that is packaged loosely in a cardboard box, without any airtight plastic).  You are flexible.  It'll be cute to have a train that has his unique little teeth marks in it.

You try to follow the pictorial instructions, separating out the different shapes to make the engine from the ones to make the coal car.  Since the toddler continues to eat the gingerbread pieces, you don't have the time to distinguish the miniscule difference in size between the rectangles so you just start building.  You realize early on that you really need to hold the pieces in place while the icing hardens (this is either by design or you didn't make the icing thick enough).  You ask the toddler to hold a piece in place. No.  He pulls off the piece and takes another bite. You'll need to do the building yourself.

Meanwhile the toddler has lost interest and begins to play with other things on the table.

  

You finish the engine and ask the toddler to look at what you've constructed, hoping to verify that what you built actually resembles a train.  The toddler says, "train."  You are happy.

You move onto the coal car.  You realize that the engine didn't quite fit on its base b/c you used the wrong gingerbread piece for the base.  You will have a train with a small engine and a big coal car.  Then, as you build the coal car, you find that it isn't squared properly b/c you used the wrong pieces when building the sides of the engine.  Nothing additional frosting can't fix.

You decide to engage the toddler in the process again by having him "glue" some of the decorative candies to the train.  In hindsight, you KNOW that a toddler does not have the gentle touch to decorate the train without collapsing the sides so you quickly decorate with the candies yourself (seem to be missing the blue candies).

Finished.  You look at the picture on the cover of the box then look at your train.  You realize that the instructions asked you to make a tube to squeeze out the frosting for gluing and decorating.  While the glops of icing from using your fingers are functional, the train is admittedly not very pretty.  There is no way to decorated the train with icing using your fingers.  Fine.

An hour later, toddler climbs on a chair and pulls the decorative candies off the train.  Eats the  coal out of the coal car.

Two hours later, while you are in the kitchen area of the Great Room (just on the other side of a half wall that separates you from the table on which the gingerbread train rests), the toddler disassembles the rest of the train and eats more.  You decide that you don't want him to have free access to gingerbread cookies for the next week or two.  After chipping the icing off it, you give him one piece of gingerbread.  You toss the rest in the garbage bin.

Daddy didn't get to see the train.  It didn't even last long enough to take a picture of it.

Later the blue candies mysteriously appear on the table.

Changing Security Settings

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Camping on Moreton Island

We went on another camping trip with our friends, Madeleine and Joschka (Volker was ill at home).  Madeleine suggested Moreton Island since it is close to Brisbane (the ferry is 1/2 hour from our house and the ferry ride is 1 1/4 hours).  Moreton Island is a national park so we figured the camping would be pretty good.  After further inquiry, we also discovered that some campsites were within meters of the boat landing.  Sounded like a good trip with toddlers in tow. 

Tim agreed to come along despite his dislike of sand.  As it turned out, the trip was awful for Tim but I was thankful for his presence: unlike Joschka, Max would have been difficult for me to handle on my own at the times when I had to juggle gear and him.  Unfortunately for Tim, the flies were pretty bad and, unfortunately for all of us, since driving is allowed on all beaches in Queensland, we had a major thoroughfare on the beach near our campsite around the times of the ferry landing.  We all agreed that we would not camp at that spot again.  (Oh and Tim had a sore back so he wasn't walking very well).

Despite the beach traffic, I had a good time.  It was a hot couple of days so the beach was the perfect place to be.  Max loved walking in the water and along the beach.  I've heard the snorkeling is spectacular at the Tangalooma Wrecks (where we camped) but we didn't have proper gear to swim out to the reef.

There were a lot of group tours in "safari vehicles" (they reminded me of Tanzania).  When these groups departed the ferry, they immediately parked on the beach in front of our campsite so the tourists could snorkel at the wrecks.  In some ways, that would be the best way to see the island since one needs a 4-wheel-drive vehicle or a boat to reach most places.  I heard that some of the inland lakes are gorgeous, but it is highly unlikely that we'd make it that far with toddlers.

I took this picture as we were leaving.  I climbed that sand embankment so I could see what the center of the island looked like (forest).  Kids rode their boogie boards, wooden boards, and even cardboard down the embankment although they didn't usually walk all of the way to the top.  It's hard work walking uphill in sand!

This isn't a particularly good picture (my links above provide a few better ones) but it shows the area where we camped.  The shipwrecks were towed to this place to creat the reef.  I think there were three big ones in total.  The actual campsites were located  in the forest about 40 meters from the beach.

The Micat unloading cars at the Tangalooma Wrecks.  There was very little beach at the time so the cars couldn't go more than 200 meters down the beach.

Max enjoying a beach walk.

He wanted to wear the headlamp.

Ahh...naptime.  Actually, I had to take a walk with him in the backpack to lull him to sleep.  Fortunately, we were able to transfer him to the tent.  He slept for 3 hours!

Balancing: Joschka was particularly good at this.  He fetched Max from down the beach to show him this feat.  Pretty cute.

Those are the wrecks in the background.

One of the wrecks in the background.  Max fell in a tire rut in the foreground :-(  One of the many boats that docked for the day (some stayed overnight) in front of the wrecks.  They had the best set up for snorkeling.

It's hard to see but Max and Joschka are holding hands.  Joschka came to fetch Max then Max took the lead dragging Joschka to the shore.  Joschka is not much for holding hands so this was definitely a kodak moment.

Max and I playing in the water.

Destroying sand castles

Burying Joschka (Tim is in the background)

I don't think any of these pictures captured the beautiful colors of the water.  It was very clear and became blue-green in the shallower regions then bright blue in the deeper areas.  The beach was a gorgeous white sand.  Can you believe how close we live to a place like this?  It felt like we should have been on vacation somewhere.