Oct 20 - Good Company

  My nephew arrived at 7:30am roughly as scheduled.  He was more alert than usual and seemed to have a face full of optimism for the day ahead.  Well deserved as it turns out as we had quite a fun day together.  I quite like hanging out with my nephew.  I get to revel in his curiosity and spoil him rotten.  I wanted to make sure that I ate my proper breakfast so I settled him at the kitchen table with my biggest box of Lego and cooked breakfast.
   Breakfast was an egg and bacon sandwich.
It contained two slices of toasted Bürgen Wholemeal & Seeds Bread, one spread with chutney and topped with one slice of Bega Extra Light Tasty cheese, two rashers of short cut bacon and one fried egg.  I ate it at the table chatting away to my nephew, me good-naturedly interested, he happy to show me his creations at every step of the process.  He likes building cars, robots and birthday cakes especially.
  After I finished eating he decided he would like to have some dry Coco Pops on the couch and watch "the one that [Mr Smart] made me".  Mr Smart made him a DVD full of cartoons a while ago and it is still his favourite one at my house to this day.  I settled him on the couch, he wanted both fleecy blankets on and two pillows behind him, and then went to have my shower and get dressed.
  Now that we were both ready to face the day, I started to make a shopping list.  The plan was to make carrot cakes today and I needed a couple of ingredients.  Before we got too much further though, my nephew climbed up on my knee at the computer as he often does and pointed at the screen and asked "Can we talk to Grandad?".  Mum and Dad both use Skype to keep in touch with us all, far flung as we are, and my nephew has seen his grandparents in this manner a number of times.  So Skype we did.
  Each time we do a video chat he gets a little bit more excited about it.  I think it's because the penny drops more and more that this isn't just TV; that he can show them things and be shown things back.  He also likes seeing himself on camera in the mini-view.  Mum and Dad were off to the Barossa Valley today (so jealous) so they didn't chat long but I know they enjoyed seeing him too.
  With Mum and Dad gone, we readied ourselves for shopping and headed off to Brandon Park.  Mr Smart had alerted me that his Saganaki craving was still on high alert, the Haloumi of a couple of weeks ago having merely scraped the surface, so my nephew and I were on the hunt for a delicatessen stocking the required cheesey goodness.
  We parked on the top level of the car park which is opposite the local police and fire stations.  As we walked towards the centre I noticed that the trolley collector had paused his activities and was staring up into the sky.  I turned and was delighted to see a police helicopter just beginning take off!  I crouched down next to my nephew and we watched as it slowly rose into the sky and then shot off over our heads.  Not something you see every day, and quite exhilarating!
  My nephew carried a plastic bag full of plastic bags due for recycling.  We dropped those off first and then headed to our first destination, the lolly shop.  On our way a nice man was offering $1 off coupons for Baker's Delight so I let my nephew take one.  He said thank you and in fact his manners all day today were very good.  At the lolly shop he selected two chocolate cars, one in a red wrapper and one in a blue wrapper.  I gave him the money and he paid for them.  The lady behind the counter was lovely and put the two chocolates into a little bag for him.  He was happy to have his own shopping to carry.
  Next we went to the delicatessen and procured the required cheese for Saganaki making!  Only $5.40 for five pieces, a lot cheaper than in restaurants and as it turns out, it really isn't hard to do.  We also stopped at the bakery so that my nephew could spend his voucher.  He selected from the window, he put in his own order and handed over coupon and funds, gave me back the change and put the paper bag containing his hot dog bun in with his other shopping and we moved on to Coles for our last spot of grocery shopping before returning to the car.
  Once home I put on a DVD for him and heated up his hot dog bun in the microwave and loaded the dishwasher, but not long after he finished eating, he decided he'd rather hang out in the kitchen and help make the carrot cake.  His help at this point amounts to holding things, pouring the measured cups of ingredients into the bowl and feeding the carrot offcuts to the rabbit but he is nonetheless interested and keen so it was fun.  We turned the carrot cake mixture into twenty-four mini muffin sized cakes and six texas muffin sized cakes.  Cakes merrily baking away, we were free to browse the net a while.
  We spent sometime on youtube, searching for "robot cartoons".  His favourites for the day were Defective, Clocktower and the surprisingly heartbreaking, Smile.  I'm not sure why he liked Smile so much as it's one of those beautifully sad artistic shorts.  I'm choosing to believe that it shows he has a remarkable insight for one so young.  You can smirk all you want but you can't disprove me!  The most interesting thing about his interest in it was, that he absolutely understood the ending.  The source site for all three of his repeat requests was aniboom.com, a freelance animation marketplace as near as I can tell but they show featured projects for free.  Interesting site for repeat visits I think.
  We checked the cakes and removed them from the oven at this point.  For all his eating of the bits of carrot and carrot peel during the making of the cake, he was surprisingly reluctant to eat the finished product.  Unusual for him, he has an enormous sweet tooth.  Maybe it was the fact he'd only recently consumed both his chocolate cars, maybe it just looked very different to his mental image of what 'cake' is.  I ate about six or seven of the mini carrot cakes (one with cream cheese frosting).  Not an ideal lunch perhaps but I was running around with a toddler all day so I forgot to make my tuna sandwich.  I also forgot to take any pictures of the carrot cakes for the same reason and I've given all the rest away to Bertie so that I don't end up eating them.
  The highlight of our day came right at the end when we played his favourite 'game'.  My nephew has his own profile on my computer, it has limited access, the button to logon is a robot, the screen background is a robot and there is a copy of an interactive CD on the desktop which he calls 'the birdie robots'.  The CD in question is No! a children's album by one of my favourite bands, They Might Be Giants.  Each song has a video clip which you can click on to make things change.
  Anyway, the point is today I noticed he was still indiscriminately waving the mouse and clicking all three buttons but he seemed much more aware of the effect he was having on things.  So step one, I put a sticker on the appropriate mouse button for him and step two, I made him play the title track.  The title track 'game' is very simple.  Two wooden blocks drop down on screen that spell 'NO'.  If you click the stack of blocks once, a third block drops and it now says 'YES'.  If you click the stack again, it drops into a hole in the ground and a flower pops up.  All the flowers bloom at the end of the video emblazoned with the word 'NO'.

  Today, I am proud to say, after much practicing at my place, my nephew finally understood the mouse to cursor relationship!  It's not really that surprising as he has had experience at home using the more intuitive laptop track pads and Bertie's even more intuitive smartphone too.  But I was so proud of him!  He was proud of him too.  The first time he got it, he had about six flowers on screen.  The second time, he had about a dozen and announced "I win Auntie Jess".
  Bertie arrived not long after this proud moment so he got to play again to show her how clever he was.  She was similarly chuffed and proud of him, especially as she had no idea how much I'd been letting him go on the computer.  Ah well.. now you know Bertie.  I'm turning him into my very own little internet troll and there's nothing you can do about it!  Muahahahaaaaa....

  For the rest of the afternoon I did not a lot.  I changed the sheets, put on a load of washing, emptied the dishwasher and awaited the arrival of Mr Smart.  When he arrived, he arrived bearing gifts!  We tend to check with one another before leaving, if the other needs anything.  I had forgotten to get salad to go with our dinner and asked him to pick one up.  He did so but also brought a large box of his favourite green tea and four ice-cube trays with lids.  He uses these himself to freeze lemon juice ice cubes for going in said tea.  I had wanted some for a while but had never spotted them.  Quite apart from being brilliant for freezing lemon juice, they are also great for chopped herb cubes, fruit puree cubes etc. because the lid halts the sublimation process a bit.
  Mr Smart set himself up to do some more study while I busied myself with dinner preparations.  Making the Saganaki was very simple as I said earlier, but all the same I'm very glad I looked it up online before cooking it.  There are a few tricks to it.  You need to cut the cheese into the right thickness (though mine was bought that way) then you moisten the cheese with a little water and coat it in flour before shallow frying in olive oil (about a tablespoonful per piece).  It wasn't hard but I may need a few more practices to get it perfect but as always, Mr Smart is happy to be my guinea pig.
  After our entree I waited a little while then prepared our main, Spicy Drumsticks with a delicious Coles Moroccan style-salad, chosen and provided by the ever wonderful Mr Smart.  The harissa dressing was quite spicy (probably as hot as I can tolerate) and just right to compliment the chicken.  I also had a glass of Jacob's Creek Moscato.  A lovely meal, all home prepared!

  The evening has been a bit quiet since then, with my writing of a marathon blog and Mr Smart studying away and catching up on the day's soccer results, but it's a comfortable quiet.  We are now just a little time away from the Liverpool v. Reading kick off and if I make it through the whole match it'll be a 3am bedtime.  This seems doable but on the side of unlikely.  However it's been a very good day, in very good company and I hope you were all as fortunate.
  Jess