christmas cookies!

In last year's Christmas package, my mom sent Christmas cookie cutters, red and green sprinkles, and the recipe for the cookies we made every Christmas while I was growing up (and sometimes Valentine's Day and Easter, too). Her hope was that Mabel and I could do the same. I was excited and loved the idea, but was too fresh out of the first trimester to commit. Next year, I thought.

This year, I didn't have pregnancy as an excuse, and while I thought of using the "I Have a Toddler and Baby and Am So Tired" excuse, I decided not to. Mabel will love it, I thought. She's always "baking" with her play dough. Mostly "happy birthdays" (cakes), but I figured cookies would be acceptable too.

So Friday night I took apple sauce out of the freezer to thaw (That's right, we had homemade apple sauce on hand; let me be smug for a second.) (Tony made it with Mabel months ago with the Instant Pot that I was so excited to get and it's the only time it's been used. Not so smug now, am I?) to serve as our egg substitute. (Mabel can eat baked goods with egg now, but I didn't want to risk her handling dough with raw egg. If she had a reaction, that would put a definite damper on the Christmas cheer.)

I have to be honest, I woke up Saturday morning feeling a bit of dread. I didn't want to bake cookies with my two-year-old. But I also did want to so as I nursed Clarke, I asked Tony if he could please check the apple sauce to see if it had thawed so we could make C-O-O-K-I-E-S. (We're at the stage of parenting where we need to spell things we don't want Mabel to know). Well... Mabel came running over with a big smile, "Mabel apple sauce make cookies!!!"

I looked at Tony, "You told her!" He swore he didn't. "You must have mentioned it!" He swore he didn't. "She didn't ask to eat the apple sauce and you told her she couldn't because we were going to make cookies with it?" He shook his head emphatically and swore he didn't. And that is how we found out that Mabel knows how to spell "cookies."

I put Clarke down for his nap, chose a Christmas playlist, and got out the butter and the sugar. After a brief argument with Tony about whether to double the recipe or not and if we really needed that much sugar and butter, and telling Mabel, It's butter, NOT cheese, and no you can't have a bite!, we got to work.

And...

It was fun!

I'm proud of myself for how much fun we had and that I didn't stress about the mess or about Mabel playing with the dough or dumping a bunch of sprinkles everywhere. She made her own cookies, sans cookie cutters, and I let her bake them and that is how we ended up with a burnt cookie that looked like a snail (I should have taken a picture) and a blob of brown dough (red and green sprinkles don't mix well).

Mabel was proud of herself too and we delivered cookies to her friend Lucia and Auntie Jo. She proudly carried a container of cookies to school on Monday to share with all her classmates. She insisted that I sit and eat a cookie with her after school, her friend Quinn happily ate one and stole another, and she's already asking to make cookies again.

I don't like sugar cookies very much, but I'm excited to make them now! Mom/Grandma, I think we're going to need some Easter cookie cutters.