{We're Thankful for Cookies}

This weekend we got together with a neighbor for the "Great Cookie Bake-a-Thon!".   There's a bunch of different ways you can tackle baking with toddlers- they key is making sure that everyone has a task, even if that task is simply holding onto a whisk.  

LuCk & Co. had a fun time in the kitchen.  Lucas honed his butter mashing skills. Abby, our guest, whisked a mean egg. Chuck just hung around the kitchen taking in the sites, and all three of them enjoyed some sampling along the way.  We measured ingredients out, counted how many eggs we cracked, and stared into the oven watching cookie magic happen! 

Baking with toddlers can be fun! Here's a few tricks of the trade to make this a little bit more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Recipe for Success

Choose a recipe that leaves a little wiggle room.  We made chocolate chip cookies.  At the end of the day, its hard to go wrong with sugar, eggs, flour, and chocolate.  There's a LOT of room for error, or as I like to call it, "experimentation."

Prep

Have everything you need in arms reach.  When I watch cooking shows, I am always in awe at the level of preparation that goes into getting everything set up.  I try to emulate this when kids aren't around.  It's an absolute MUST when the kids are in the kitchen.

Get Everyone Ready

Once their hands are washed, most recipes can be divided into "wet" and "dry" ingredients.  If you have multiple bakers in the kitchen, you can assign some one to be "in charge" of each of these things.  Lucas went to town creaming the sugar and butter!  He is a mashing machine!  

Don't Forget the Fun 

Have some containers filled with ingredients for the kids to to play with. There's a lot of waiting in baking; having bowls filled with a little bit of flour to play with while you are waiting for a batch of cookies to come out of the oven, reduces the risk of real ingredients getting sampled.  

The cookies are baked and all packaged up to bring to the Senior Center on Wednesday! They may not win any competition, but I sure hope the folks we deliver them to can taste all the love that went into these (and don't notice that a few chocolate chips may or may not be missing) 

I wouldn't be telling the whole story without the disclaimer that this will be messy and the end result will vary.  There may even be some crying involved.  Chuck reminded me that baking is a very sensory rich environment: there's a lot of clanking and whirling and buzzing. Baking with a group is chaotic; and although a full-blown toddler sensory overload meltdown was not in this recipe, I'm pretty sure that's what happened. 

Sometimes I need an activity like this to remind me that even though I had visions of mommy/daughter bake-a-thons this winter, I may need to re-envision my vision.  Chuck is super sensitive to sounds right now (hey, she's 23 months old, what do you expect?), so the noise of the mixer really bothered her.  She's also been super clingy lately, and its really hard to measure out flour while balancing a toddler on your hip. Even though I wanted her to get her hands in on the action, Chuck was perfectly content watching from the sidelines (or in my arms) and chewing on a whisk.  I need to remind myself that "that's OK".  And it is.  There will be more chances to bake cookies in this girl's future.     

{Surviving Thanksgiving Part III: Teaching Toddlers To Be Thankful}

With a little over a week until Thanksgiving, we have been thinking a lot this month about all the things we have to be thankful for. I've spent a lot of time focusing on what to cook, and how to keep my kid at the Thanksgiving table for 30 minutes.  The reason I put this much planning and thought into these things is so when next Thursday arrives, we can spend time actually giving Thanks.

Lucas and Chuck give us so many things to be thankful for, observing them experience new things, listening to them giggle, and watching them share secrets with each other.

It got me thinking, "how can I get my kid to be thankful? Is that even possible?"

I don't think there's a single person in the world who sets off on the adventure of parenthood with the goal of raising a self-centered child.  Twenty-two months into it, I have to honestly admit, I can see how some kids become self-centered.  I'll give you the play-by-play: the first months of my daughter's life, I gave her what ever she asked for.  My main goal was to decrease the amount of crying that came out of her.  If buying her a golden pony encrusted with diamonds would have made that happen, I would have done it.  About a year ago I had "a moment". Chuck was doing something wrong at the dinner table, I looked at her firmly and said "no".  I didn't raise my voice.  I didn't look upset, but she knew that I wasn't pleased at that moment. The above photo is the result of this interaction.  I snapped it right before things took a turn for the worse. Her little lip came out, her eyes welled with tears, and I felt horrible.  What ever it was that she did that was so wrong (I honestly can't  even remember it at this moment) was it so bad to make my baby girl turn into a melty mess?   It was this moment I realized that I was no longer just some lady taking care of a baby; I was a parent.  I was overwhelmed with guilt: did I over react?  I'm not a giant believer in tough love.  At that precise moment, all my heart wanted to do was scoop my daughter up in my arms, tell her I was sorry, and explain that everything would be OK.  I realized though, that I couldn't do this.  I had to stand my ground.  I had to let her cry.  It was the longest 30 seconds of my life.


I am a complete word dork. I am especially fascinated by words that are both nouns and verbs. The moment that I realized I was a parent, was made infinitely more sublime by realizing I was, myself, both a noun and a verb.

Parent (n): One who begets, gives birth to, or nurtures and raises a child; a father or mother.
Parent (v) bring up.

So, how do you (the parent) teach your child to be thankful? How do bring up your kid to be thankful?  This is still a work in progress in my household, and probably will be for the next several decades; however, this is the plan I am going to try.  It follows the age old philosophy of "Monkey See.  Monkey Do."

Model Being Thankful (Monkey See)
Chuck's first words were rather normal, "mama," "dada," and "baba". It was her next words that made me proud: "day dew."  That's Chuck for "thank you".  She still says it; sometimes at inappropriate times that it makes it almost comical.  I choose to believe that she picked this up from all the times I would say "thank you" when someone did something for me (picked up a toy, brought dinner to the table).  It makes me realize that if you want your child to be thankful, you have to model this behavior yourself.   I hope her little "day dew" blossoms into a thousand heartfelt thanks within her lifetime. I hope she one day realizes exactly what she is saying and why she is saying it.  Right now, however, we have to start some where.

Do Thankful Things (Monkey Do)
Next week Lucas and Chuck are going to get together with some friends and deliver cookies to our local senior center.  Is this going to save the world? No, but hopefully we'll bring a little joy to people who may not be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, or maybe to someone who's just having a blah kinda day.  Will Lucas and Chuck know why their moms lugged them to the senior center?  Probably not, but if I waited until Chuck understood things, well, then I'd be one bored mama.  What I really hope is that this is something that becomes a LuCk tradition, and in 10 years Lucas and Chuck will say, "hey, Mom, you know how you've lugged us to the senior center for the last 10 years?  Well, I've been thinking about it, and why can't we go to the senior center every Thursday?" 'Cause, hopefully this will bring a smile to everyone's face.*

I'd love to take credit for all these ideas, but being a mother in the 21st Century, I Googled "how to teach my kid to be thankful".
Here's the most helpful resources I found:
Teaching Children to be Grateful 
5 Ways to Raise a Grateful Child 
How to Raise Grateful Kids




*also, because I couldn't leave you with a pic of my miserable daughter, without a few smiles to balance it out. 

{Project: Seeds!}

When I was a little girl, I would wander away from my mother at the market.  She never had to work that hard to find me; she knew exactly where I would be.  There was an aisle at the market that had large barrels filled with dried goods: rice, beans, and grains.  I was always elbows deep in the rice barrell.  I loved everything about the way it felt; it was smooth and cooling.  I dreamed of filling a pool with rice and going for a swim . . . . . Many (many) years later, I am happy to say that I frequently dream of floating through a sea of rice.  The seed was planted in the aisle of that Market, and it stuck!

With the weather turning a cooler, we've been hunkering down a little bit more.  Fall is that in-between season when you pack up the water toys, but it's not quite time to bring out the snow gear.  This year, as I was packing up the kiddie pool, I got this gut feeling that Chuck was not quite ready to say goodbye to her beloved summer water playthings, and that got my mind working overtime.  Basically, it ended up with this phone call:
Husband: What are you doing tonight?
Wife: I'm going to the gym and to the hardware store.
Husband: What do you need at the hardware store?
Wife: Birdseed.
Husband: We have birdseed leftover from last winter.
Wife: I need more.
Husband: How much more.
Wife: About a kiddie pool's worth

To answer your question, "yes, my husband thought I was insane." I've seen seeing a bunch of sensory tubs on Pinterest and floating around the blogosphere, so I was feeling a little inspired.  Karen and I thought long and hard over what to fill the pool with.  At first we thought of feed corn, but after many many phone calls, we couldn't seem to locate a small enough batch.  I reminisced about swimming through rice, but it was just too wasteful. Then Karen mentioned bird seed, and it just clicked!

So, we did what any normal moms would do, we spent our Friday night at the gym and the hardware store feeling our way through the aisle of birdseed.  In case you're wondering, it takes about 40 pounds of birdseed to fill your average 12 gallon swimming pool.

Sunday morning, the sun was shining, the leaves were blowing, the air was crisp, and Chuck and I anxiously waited for Lucas and our buddies to arrive.  We dragged all 40lbs of seed down to the back yard, pulled the string on the bag, and dumped it right into the small blue pool.  Karen & I had made all kinds of educational guesses as to what would happen next.  They ranged from "this will last 10 minutes", to "they are going to have SO MUCH FUN".  We were slightly skeptical of where this playdate would land on the "fun-o-meter"

I am pleased to announce that all four kids dove right in!  The filled up buckets over and over and over again.  Drove trucks through the seeds.  Explored the seeds with their hands.  We had kids from eighteen months to over three years old happily occupied with a pool full of birdseed for a good 45 minutes. That is about an eternity in mom-years.  They were so occupied that the three of us moms looked at each other and wondered "why didn't we arrange for some sort of adult playdate?"   Or, at the very least "why didn't I make a pot of coffee for my adult guests"

I can sit here and list the five million reasons why filling a pool with birdseed is great for the kids (it helps with their cognitive development, social skills, physical skills, communication skills,  …. I really could keep going), but sometimes its fun to sit back, and watch your kid actively learn and experience something new!  Chuck was truly in her element! She loves filling containers, so this activity was perfect.  Lucas loves digging with his trucks, and the seeds provided a happy alternate to the dirt and sand that he is familiar with. 

Karen & I did make our best educated guess on what to fill the pool with.  Here's a helpful check list you may want to take to the hardware store with you when the mood hits! Have fun and happy exploring! 

• What does the material feel like?
• What does the material smell like?
• What does the material look like?
• What does the material sound like?
• Would you mind if your kid ate it?
• Does your kid have any tactile preferences? (For example: Chuck HATES sticky things, so filling the pool with whipped cream may have to wait a while)

 
And, don't worry . . . we are working on about a thousand ways to re-use 40lbs of birdseed!

{We've sure been enjoying us some October!}