rainy day project (that failed)

After running Gran's errands with her this morning, Dennis and I returned home so that he could nap. He told me again and again in Wal-Mart "I ready to go to bed" and "want nap", and that's exactly what he got to do when we got home. Just after I put him down, I opened the front door to feed the cat and I heard the ice cream truck on our street. I didn't know it came here. I went to his room to grab him and intended to RUN to the end of our long driveway and let him experience one of those really fun things I remember from childhood. But when I opened his door, he was sleeping so hard that I didn't wake him. I wrote on our dry erase calendar what time it came by so that maybe I'll remember to listen for it again.

It was raining hard when he got up and I tried to think of something fun and different for us to do. We decided to bake cookies. He was very excited about the concept and stood on a chair while I consulted the chocolate sugar cookie recipe from the Southern Living magazine we just got. I put the sugar and butter in the mixer and started it and he seemed very interested in how the mixer worked. The mixer is an ancient Sunbeam Mixmaster, the very one that I watched my own mommy mixing cookie ingredients in during my childhood. When it started to not work as well a couple of months back, I had hopes of having a reason to finally own a Kitchen Aid stand mixer (a red one! or a white one! or a blue one! or ANY of them!). I don't use a mixer much but think those Kitchen Aids are SO cool. David fixed the Sunbeam, though, and it works good as new, darn it. I suppose it's still a cool mixer, though, because the new Sunbeam Mixmasters are retro in design (and look very much like mine). After we mixed the butter and sugar and I had him help stir the cocoa into the flour, he completely lost interest. He didn't want to help roll out the dough or cut the shapes, though he did tell me what shapes to cut. Mostly he cried during all of this because he wanted me to do something else and he did NOT want to stand on that chair and help. He wanted to eat the cookies and didn't know why in the world it was taking so long. He stole a cookie from the cooling rack and when I ran after him I discovered all the drawers he'd emptied in the den while I was baking. My countertop is full of drying glazed dark chocolate sugar cookies in various shapes, and I had to clean up one of the worst kitchen messes in a long time, and he totally hated the whole event. I think I learned something here. I hope David feels like eating cookies when he gets home.