Sunday, August 5, 2012

Mommy's Sous Chef

(I'll admit it, I totally learned what a sous chef is from the movie Ratatouille)

If we haven't made it clear already, Elliot is kinda...a Momma's Boy.  And by "kinda" we mean, "a lot, a LOT."

And that's no crime--after incredibly independent Kendra, it's kinda nice to have a little person around here who literally can't get enough of me (though I have to keep myself from bursting into tears when I think about how his world is about to get totally rocked with the addition of a new baby).  But it does mean that it's often very difficult for me to prepare dinner (when I decide to cook at all...) what with Elliot clinging to my legs and begging for my attention.

I can put him in his highchair and give him a toy and/or a snack to keep him occupied, but then he's less patient to stay in it when it's actually dinner time, so I only do that if I'm putting things together in the morning.

If I'm trying to appease him while also actually putting the evening meal together in the evening, I do this:






I just pull up a chair and let him stand on it right next to me.  Mini rice cakes and Beanie Baby reindeer are not in any of my recipes, so he's still just playing and snacking, but he's doing it on my level and that's much better, apparently.

The only glitch so far is if I need to use a knife, because he likes to grab at what I'm doing and yeah, baby fingers and CutCo are not a combination I want to contemplate, ever.  So I just have to plan ahead and do all my knifing before I bring him up, which is pretty easy to manage.


We're really just getting a head start on the time I start having the kids help with meals whether they want to or not, but it adds a whole lot of cute to my dinner-preparation experience.  :)

1 comment:

Jenny said...

He's such a cute little helper. My kids also liked to watch me cook- and I hesitate to admit that I did chop Andrew's finger with a knife once when cutting carrots. Pain to my mother's heart- it was even more traumatic for me than it was for him! It didn't leave a scar even, despite the fact I was sure he was going to need surgery to fix it.