The Cutouts

Many, many, many years ago when I was a young thing in my 20's I would occasionally babysit my sister's kids. It was one of the many privileges of being an Auntie. I could go over to their houses, play with them, hold them, hug them and then leave and get a good night's rest. Depending on the time of the year, we would do all sorts of seasonally appropriate activities. One year, when my niece and nephew were about 3 and 2 years old I came over to play while my sister and brother-in-law went Christmas shopping. Before they left, my sister showed me where their jammies were, what was for dinner, how to operate the remote and oh! Some cookie dough for Christmas cutouts--won't that be a fun thing to do together with two very small toddlers? In my naive and childless world I thought "Oh yes! That DOES sound like fun! We will bake the cookies and decorate them while they are gone! How fun! How festive!"

What I failed to realize, and only realized years later when I had small children of my own, is that baking and decorating cut out cookies with small children is something that sounds great in theory...but fails miserably in execution. Either one of three things happens: 1) Someone ends up dumping an entire bottle of sprinkles into a bowl of icing and/or floor, 2) A fight breaks out over the bottle of sprinkles and THEN ends up being dumped into a bowl of icing and/or floor or 3) Someone ends up dumping an entire bottle of sprinkles onto one cookie and/or bowl of icing and/or floor and then EATING said sprinkled cookie and then proceeds to be seemingly jet propelled across the entire house for the better part of an hour.

Actually make that three hours. My boys are still amped up beyond belief. Actually as I type this, Liam is laying in his bed laughing maniacally over a JibJab video he watched an hour ago. Oy. Methinks Christmas Eve is going to be a loooooooooong day...