Chubby Fingers

I am daily amazed at the new things these chubby fingers learn to do. On Tuesday Colin helped me make tamales. I mean, actually helped make them. He always wants to sit on a barstool and watch what I'm doing and this afternoon was no different. I plopped him up there and went back to work on dinner, but he insisted on having his own corn husk. "Okay," I thought, "you can have a little piece of one." Then he pointed to the masa and said, "some a that," so I gave him a bit. And then he really shocked me.

He said, "mash, mash" as he smoothed it out, then said, "some meat," took a bit and put it in the middle of the tamale, said "I fold it," folded the thing in half and said "put on pan" as he held it out to me to stack with the rest I had made.

I was absolutely floored! Just by observing me, without any prompting he had completed all the necessary steps to make a tamale! Um, wow!

Needless to say, my little sous chef was hired and got to help for as long as he wanted! I couldn't have been more proud and saved and showed off two of the little tamales to his daddy and our friends when they arrived!

Today, he stunned me again when he brought me this little goose he had been playing with. He had found a tiny piece of paper and had figured out how to make it say in the goose's mouth! He always pretends he is feeding all his animals, but I thought this was so creative!
Here it is with a duck, "swimming" on the water!
Such a clever little man!