on "helping"

Who are all these people who claim to be baking or cooking with their children? They typically gush about how their toddler, usually wearing a matching mini-apron, stands on a chair and helps mix dough while perhaps spilling an adorably small amount of flour on the floor--then help to clean up. The children help use cookie cutters to make impossibly perfect sugar cookies shaped like stars or hearts, which they then frost using a paintbrush. How wonderful! You know what happened today when MY children "helped" me bake gingerbread?

1.Mollie sat in a pile of cookie cutters and tried to pull the dog's tail, who in her desperate bid to escape shed all over the floor and necessitated a vacuum before even beginning;

2. Iggy dumped out the container of baking soda and preceded to eat it;

3. I allowed Iggy to help stir the dough and he managed to fling the entire dough lump onto the floor (good thing I just vacuumed!);

4. When "helping" cut out the cookies, Igs would press, smear, scrape, and then wad up the dough, resulting in giant lumpy cookies of indeterminate shape;

5. Tears, so many tears, caused by both kids fighting over plastic cookie cutters.

But you know what? The cookies were awesome. I didn't even attempt to frost them, screw it. That's enough for one day.

Last night, I framed and hung a picture of an elephant's butt.

 

It was an attempt to salvage some of the pictures from the Curious George book that Iggy had ripped every single page out of while throwing a tantrum a few weeks ago (all 300+ pages! It took dedication.) I tried to make lemonade and bought some cheapo dollar tree frames and did this:

 I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.