Another weekend of working, so Henry and I decided to chill out at home while Matt took Thomas to hockey practice. (I hear it went well!)
Henry got bored of me sitting at the computer and decided to go read books in his finished Space Pod. I thought that he needed a little more comfort in his Space Pod and managed to squeeze one of the bean bags in there. He's wearing his shoes (huge no-no on the carpet) because he had a little bit of a freak out when Thomas and Dada left without him. He kept running over to me and crying "shoes!" with them in his hands. I figured it might appease him a little to be able to put them on - it did!
Thomas decided not to take a full nap after lunch, but did stay in bed for his "quiet" time. Once his songs were over though, he was ready to get up and do something! I thought it would be fun to make cookies together and had the brilliant idea to see how much he was capable of doing on his own. Usually I limit his helping and I thought it was possible I was underestimating his abilities. So I gathered up all the ingredients and put him to work. Once he started opening the butter and declared it was "sticky", I decided it might be good to find his apron Grannie made him last year!
I told him the first rule of apron wearing is that you can wipe your hand on your apron, but you have to make sure you are on your apron and not your shirt! He got the butter in the bowl just fine, then got to work measuring out the other ingredients.
Look at how carefully he is transporting that baking soda to the bowl. We still ended up making a mess, but not quite as much as usual...
Focusing hard on mixing the dry ingredients! I didn't get a photo, but he even managed to measure out the flour with the scoop and sweep method. Teaching him right!
He knew how to lift the bowl up without any instructions on my part. I should probably know they watch me like a hawk at all times, but it still impresses me when they pick things up. :)
And making sure he has the mixer on the right speed. We had a safety "stand down" before operating the mixer so he knew not to put his hands anywhere near the beaters. I think he was so focused on safety he asked me about 5 times what speed to use each time he turned it on.
This was the big moment - his first time to crack an egg. I showed him how to do it with the first egg and he watched closely. Then it was his turn to try! You can see he has his tongue out for full concentration!
So his cracking the egg open was a little like smashing it to smithereens, but he got the egg out of the shell! And we only had to fish out one shell fragment. I'm calling it a win!
Once he had all the wet ingredients creamed together, we moved on to slowly adding the dry ingredients. I think I made his job a little more difficult because I wanted to get a photo and wasn't holding the bowl at a very helpful angle.
Then I had him measure out the chocolate chips. He even stopped at the correct marking instead of dumping the whole bag in - such self control!
He couldn't decided on chocolate chips or M&Ms, so we decided to do both. Had to use up those Valentine's colors at some point. This is the only part he needed help on. Totally understandable, chocolate chip cookie dough is pretty hard to stir by hand!
I was debating whether or not he would be able to scoop out the cookie dough with the dishers and he did it like a total champ! His aim was a little off, but he would scoop up the dough and drop it on the cookie sheet all by himself. It's fair to say I was a little amazed at all of his culinary skills by this point!
He was more amazed by the mechanics of the cookie scoop. Not at all a surprise for my little engineer!
The only thing I didn't let him try was the oven part - I figured a mistake there would be a little more of a hard lesson than I planned for the day. But the two of them were certainly happy enough to be cookie tasters once the cookies had cooled down.
I am super excited how awesome he did with making the cookies. I am going to have a full scale helper in the kitchen soon. And my sons have no choice but to be bakers - my legacy must be passed on! :)