Make yourself a dang quesadilla!

Natalie's lunch of choice (well, I guess it's my choice) is the quesadilla. Simple and easy, and I just discovered how amazing they turn out when I heat them in a cast-iron skillet! Lately, Natalie enjoys peeling her quesadilla wedges apart. She always eats the cheese, and only sometimes eats the tortilla. Perhaps she's intent on living a low-carb lifestyle. That would explain why she licks the butter off her slices of bread, or tries to bite the bread in such a way that she maximizes butter and minimizes bread intake.
But back to the repetitive lunches. Do any of you seasoned lunch makers or lunch eaters have ideas for a toddler lunch food besides the magic quesadilla? We're trying to avoid giving her peanut butter until she's 2; otherwise PB&J would be my preference.

How will our garden grow?

We planted our garden last Friday! We've got grape tomatoes, various peppers, squash, zucchini, and cucumber. And we have some big tomatoes we still need to plant. Mysteriously, one of the cucumber plants has vanished. Only a string is left. It was pretty sickly just after we planted it, so I guess it's not a big loss. I'm hoping to replace it with an eggplant, but our local garden center is sold out. We also have dill, a few plants I'm growing from seeds, and strawberries a friend gave us. Here's photos of our little plants. Hopefully this post isn't too boring; I just think it's so fun to see these things growing! Last year we were amazed by how our tomatoes took off, so we expanded things this year, and I'm dreaming of the fresh veggies to come.... I added a photo of Natalie filching tulip bulbs. I thought only rabbits did that!

We have a winner!

We have some gold medals (a.k.a. foil-covered chocolate coins strung with ribbon) leftover from a church activity and Natalie has enjoyed playing with them. Since she hadn't figured out that they were edible, she didn't really need to be supervised with them, right? So she wore a necklace (I mean medal) to the grocery store tonight, and on the drive home Dave and I were chatting away, not even wondering why we weren't hearing anything from the backseat. Well, she figured out the secret of the gold medals. This is what we saw when we got home. Click on the photos to get the full effect.

Come again?

Natalie shows us what a big girl she is, feeding herself and sharing some of her favorite words.

Tuning Us out Already?

Just had to post this great photo of Natalie wearing some serious headphones. She's got her juice (or Doo, as she says), so she's happy.

More? You want Moooorrrrre?

Hooray for sign language! Natalie has mastered one sign--More! She uses it mostly to ask for food, but has been known to also request more books with it as well. In DiBella's the other day, she tried to convince me to give her more of a sub that was sitting on someone else's table! So for Natalie, the more sign basically means "I want that!"(Napoleon Dynamite, anyone?)

In the photo, Dave's holding a juice box and Natalie is repeatedly signing more. This was her first experience with a juice box and she was thrilled with it. Usually Natalie's juice is diluted with water, and I think she finds anything with a straw extra exciting.

Dave was giving her bites of his homemade egg mcmuffin the other morning and immediately after each bite she would start signing more. Natalie knows that sometimes we're slow to respond, or to see the silent signs, so she wasn't wasting any time. Anyone know the signs for chew and swallow?

I was hoping she'd start to do some other signs, and perhaps she will get into these eventually. She'll occasionally do all done. It's just not as high up on her toddler chain-of-command as the all-important MORE! This has been such a great breakthrough on both sides of the highchair tray--we know what she wants (or at least that she wants something) and she knows how to tell us.