this past week, the kid has made heartening advances in the hand-eye coordination department. taking arky joe‘s lead, i handed her a blunt knife and half a banana at breakfast time, and by the third day, she was slicing perfectly uniform slices, and arranging them just so on her honey toast. but, oh, that glint in her eye when she took the knife from me that first morning!

so thursday morning, we delved into handling hot water. well, i poured it, and then she emptied the packet of jelly crystals, and stirred, and added cold water, and then filled a cluster of little gelato cups — without spilling a thing.

by the time we got back from library storytime, the jelly was ready! she poked her finger into it, and it sprang back, and her eyes were big at the magic! “but where is the other jelly?” she asked, bemused.

good children, today’s lesson in the state of matter: liquid, solid, gaseous and jelly!

me, i’ve been eating little food too (distinct, and very different from “a little food”). just look at these adorable ritter sport minis i got when i was last in singapore.

yes, i’m aware that was a good seven months ago, and i’d much rather think of this as “saving for a special occasion”, rather than “pathological hoarding”. and anyway, who says a special occasion can’t be, um, reading in bed?

i love ritter sport. it is so not sporty! pretty good chocolate with a huge variety of fillings like cornflakes or yoghurt or marzipan (or, yes, fruit and nut, if you’re that way inclined). the regular slabs are 16 squares; the minis, four, and you get an assortment in each pack.

of course, i liked the one with the whole sweet biscuit hidden within — just look at the cute wrapper, argh! — but even the old-skool hazelnut bar was very agreeable. here is the copy from the website, written with characteristically german precision and attention to detail:

…there are more nuts in ‘Ritter Sport Milk chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts’ than in other chocolates — and what is more, only the best hazelnuts will do: hand-picked and freshly roasted whole Turkish hazelnuts with precisely defined ideal dimensions — between 1.1 and 1.3 cm in diameter.