Mini-me nephew

When Josh's brother Dan was a toddler, he moonlighted as a food thief, wandering their Minnesota neighborhood, testing for open doors and raiding cabinets. My favorite family story is of little Danny being caught red-handed in a box of Pop Tarts. Having been raised in a trans-fat free household, I love that image because they would have been my contra-ban of choice as well.

Today, Jacob channeled Dan circa 1979-80 (Dan is 8 1/2 years younger than Josh). As Josh sat in the backyard grading, Jacob orbited him happily, coloring, checking out the garden hose, delivering our neighbor's rotting persimmons into our compost bin, shadowing Daddy like Dan once shadowed Josh.

Meanwhile, I was being a good little recessionista by trading foodstuffs with my neighbor: I shared tomato jam (with tomatoes from their garden) as well as spaghetti squash with roasted veggies & ricotta. In return, we received homemade spaghetti sauce, 2 cupcakes and two loaves of yummy banana-walnut cake. I left the loaves of banana-walnut cake on our butcher block to cool, well above little hands.

Or so I thought.

Later in the afternoon, it was quiet. Too quiet. I looked for Jacob and found him sitting on our snuggler, perched over a loaf of banana cake, digging a trench in the middle of the loaf, licking cake off his fingers and saying, "Ooooohh, nummy, nummy, nummy! Dee-li-cious!"

His "Unca Dan" would be so proud.