Inheriting a love of food

Something about having a baby has turned me into a kitchen maniac. It started when Alicia got pregnant 3 years ago and we moved in together. She was holed up in the upstairs rooms of our shared house and so I opted to cook all the food. Since then my obsession has evolved into pretty much cooking 99% percent of our meals and trying new recipes all the time and just getting really damn excited about food.
Those who knew me as an early bachelor know that this wasn't always the case. When I first lived on my own - in Hungary and then later in Sandy Hill - I had exactly 2 recipes under my belt. The first was spaghetti and the second was pizza. Both contained absurd amounts of onions and chili and not much else, aside from tomatoes. I ate out constantly but also relied on more creative roommates to provide meals.
I bring this up because I think that there are two factors driving me to want to be in the kitchen all day (this is not a joke, I can putter around the 10X10 room literally ALL day): (1) this impetus for being the 'provider' that I think infects many 2nd parents and (2) wanting to learn and explore and create. I've started trying to involve Hadley in some kitchen stuff but it's not easy at this age. She helps me make muffins by throwing the batter everywhere and she helps me take the seeds out of squash.
My mom - and dad, too - were all about the kitchen. I grew up surrounded by all sorts of interesting food and a love of cooking and baking. My mom tried to get me helping out in the kitchen as often as possible and I remember those days fondly. But what happened when I turned 18 and moved out? I guess I was lazy. Will the same thing happen to Hadley?

Over this past weekend we baked 2 loaves of bread and made chili, beet salad, coconut pumpkin curry, garden salad and mushroom soup. Not to mention 5 pots of coffee and endless cups of tea.

Dina Tune and more

The Little Boss is really coming into her own.
I won't deny that in my life I have been known as someone who manipulates the stereo, no matter the social circumstance. Is this an inherited trait? Hadley now rules the music of the house, in a micro-managing kind of way.

At first she would insist on the artist we listen to: Raffi ("Waffi", French Lady "Fench", African CD, Scary Robot Children, etc. So unlike the old days - by which I mean a few months ago - we can't just say, "hey Hadley, here's a Sharon Lois and Bram album: enjoy". Instead she gets to pick.
Then she started to narrow down the album. In the case of Raffi, she was really focussed on the first album, which she identified by the song near the end about working on the railroad all the livelong day. She called this one "Dina Tune" because at point Raffi cries "Dina!" and Hadley used to love that. The French Lady CDs were divided by colour of the CD itself: yellow, green and red.

But nowadays she decides on individual songs and makes us switch CDs back and forth. So She'll want the "SleepyTime" French song about animals sleeping in the jungle, then she'll want Down by the Bay by Raffi, next she'll want Elmo's Song on the Sesame Street CD, etc. And she gets really irate if we take too long or try and placate her with only one album at a time. This is unacceptable in her eyes. Of course, in today's futureland of musicmaking I could probably just burn all her favourite songs onto one CD and be done with it.

Hadley also associates different songs with different dances, so she'll opt for a 'jumping' song or 'sleepy' song, depending on her mood and dancing spirit.