Baking Memories

This weekend we went on a family trip to Cosco. Our usual strategy is to first stop off at the food court and get the boys a frozen yogurt to split. Happily occupied with their treat they will sit in the cart and we can quickly get our shopping done. This weekend, however, we got there pretty close to lunch time so we thought we would try to skip the yogurt. Big mistake. Neither of the boys would sit in the cart and Seth insisted on pushing the cart himself. Danno told him he needed to let him help or else we wouldn’t be able to go somewhere fun for lunch. Seth replied back, “Dad stop pushing the cart or we can’t go home and make cookies” I think he may have missed the point of how a threat is supposed to work.

My boys love to help me make cookies and usually I am happy to oblige. Every time I envision how fun it will be (my fantasy also includes a kitchen that magically cleans itself up as we go so you can see how realistically I see things). Immediately the fight starts as the boys drag chairs and benches over. They both have very clear ideas about whose chair and whose bench is whose. When they are finally all arranged I pull out the ingredients then the fights begin about who gets to dump what. I have to carefully protect my ingredients so Caleb doesn’t take it upon himself to dump some extra into the bowl and while I am busy doing that he empties my drawer of all the measuring cups and spoons. Then the screaming and pushing and pulling and tears begin. In order to buy myself some time I dump out a small mountain of chocolate chips for each boy. When the cookies are all mixed I move over and start putting them on the pan. The boys try to squirm their way in to help which of course puts them in a much better position to help themselves to the dough. Finally the cookies go in the oven and 10 minutes later the finished product comes out but the boys, full of chocolate chips and raw dough, have totally lost interest. I am then faced with a counter full of warm, delicious cookies that I really don’t need to eat but just can’t resist. Sigh.

Early morning smelling

I am not sure why but Caleb pretends to smell things by blowing air out of his nose. Every time he sees a flower or a picture of flowers he says, "flowers" and then snorts. It makes me laugh every time.

Caleb is a great sleeper. At bedtime we take him upstairs, tuck him in and say "good night, I love you." he responds with "bye mom, love you" then we usually don't hear from him until the next morning. Last week he woke up around four one monrning and boy was he mad. He was screaming and screaming while running and crawling all over the place. He wouldn't let me or Danno touch him so we ended up just standing by while he worked it out himself. At one point he went back into his room and screamed right by Seth's head which of course woke Seth up. He finally crawled into his bed so I tucked him in and his screams gradually settled down to some pathetic sniffiling. As he was finally settling down Seth says to me, "Why is Caleb smelling?"

Two more random Seth sayings

While watching me change Caleb's dirty diaper

Seth: Oh no Caleb, now you can't play video games (in the last stages of potty training Seth would lose video game privledge when he had an accident)
Mom: It's okay, if he poops in his diaper he is just a little boy and I don't think he is ready to potty train yet.
Seth (repeatedly the whole day): Caleb wants a potty train! (think chugga chugga choo choo)

After being bitten by Caleb

Seth: I am not for eating!

Opposites

The other day were eating one of Seth's favorite dishes: honey chicken. But the last time Kirstin went shopping for curry King Soopers was out of the brand we usually use. So now we are experimenting with a different brand that is apparently a little hotter than the house brand. We still don't have it exactly the same because Seth was complaining about how hot his mouth was.

"Just drink some water, it cools your mouth off" Kirstin said.

It must have clicked with Seth, because he followed up with "The honey chicken cools my mouth on."