boy's baking with mummy

A couple of Saturday's ago, T wanted to bake cookies with me. Right away. I had been preparing to make some bread but I stopped and asked T what kind of cookie he wanted to make. "Gingerbread". Ok - mid-summer, hot and sunny and he wants to make gingerbread. I got out the big bag of cookie cutters for him to choose his shapes with and I dug out my America's Test Kitchen Cookbook and turned to gingerbread.

T got kitted out in his cooking gear and put all his cooking tools out (mixing bowl, measuring cups and spoons and his piggy whisk).

T added all the ingredients to the mixer bowl and I monitored his finger placement everytime I turned the mixer on - quite nerve racking for me as he is fascinated by the turning blade but he loves putting on the cover and pouring shield so that works for me.

The dough was very soft in the heat and I misread the recipe - placing the dough in the fridge after it had been rolled out and cut into shapes instead of after rolling but before cutting. Nevermind. We mixed the dough, cut it in half and rolled out the dough. We cut out a moose, gingerbread boy, a whale, a sheep, a penquin, a plane, a car, a train, a bear, a cow, a duck, a lion, a rabbit, etc. I put the dough in the fridge and then we baked them up. T was so excited to try them that he touched a pan coming out of the oven and burnt his finger. So I soaked his finger in cold water until the heat was gone from his finger and by then the cookies were cool enough to eat. T started with the moose and kept on going. If I hadn't put some of the cookies away, they all would have been eating by tea time.

 We still have half of the dough in the freezer, to be made into cookies some other time.

visit with Santa

Today was the big day - T's visit with Santa. I was a bit worried about the weather as throughout the night the wind was howling, sending various items skidding around the backyard. And it was cold enough to snow, if there had been any precipitation. But it didn't. Snow that is. It was a lovely, clear, sunny day once we woke up. "Mummy, it's morning. We have to get up and go visit Santa", was how it was worded today.

It was a smaller party this year, less children as there are fewer employees this year. T had a wonderful time decorating and then eating two gingerbread cookies. He's an equal opportunity boy - he ate one gingerbread boy and then one gingerbread girl.

And in between he had a Christmas truck painted on his face (with sparkles). He played in the wind tunnel and had a few bounces in the bouncy pirate ship but he was waiting for the main event. He sang with the other children to welcome Santa. And when it was his turn to go up and see Santa he rushed up on the stage and then got a bit shy. He sat down on Santa's knee and when Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas he was silent. I whispered "a bulldozer" - T repeated "a bulldozer" in a whisper, I whispered " a track backhoe", he repeated in a slightly louder whisper " track backhoe" and then he almost yelled " a rogater"..."please". He jumped off Santa's knee when the elf came to lead him away and gave Santa and the elf a high five and a wave. He then trotted off and collected his present. The paper and the box were ripped open to reveal a lego car racing kit.

A few minutes later, he came to me all upset (I was on elf photo taking duty). I asked him why he was upset and he said "why didn't Santa get me the construction toys I asked for?" Oh dear. So I told him that Santa was going to go back to his workshop as soon as he had visited with all the children at the party and he was going to tell the elves what all the children wanted for Christmas and they were going to start work on making the toys right away so that Santa could deliver the big toys on Christmas Eve. The lego racer was a special early present from Santa to say thanks for coming to see me today. Fortunately that seemed to mollify T and he mulled it over all the way home. Once the racer was put together

and raced a few times, T was ready to tell everyone that Santa had given him a racer as an early present. Phew!