Why, oh why, do I torture myself like this?

Every once in awhile, I get this weird desire to be a "good" mom.  You know the type.  Her kids socks are organized alphabetically by color.  Schedules are color coded.  Exciting, stimulating activities are planned-exposure to so many diverse things!

Then there is me.  I buy socks in white, cream, and black.  There is no matching of socks to outfits.  Schedules are kept in my iPhone.  They are also forgotten in my iPhone.  I do, every once in awhile, plan exciting, stimulating activities.  They sounds fantastic in my head.  Doing them is another story.

Yesterday was a lovely, bright, sunny and warm day.  Perfect for playing in the water.  I could have pulled out the water table.  Or the sprinkler.  Or bought a little pool.  However...it was project time!  My chairs have needed to be scrubbed down for some time.  They have mold.  Gross, I know.  It's a combination of them being in an incredibly humid place and having small people that spill a lot of food.  And drinks.

So, what better way to have fun and play in the water, and generally go crazy than to have the kids help me scrub the chairs?!?  Really, what was I thinking?

I armed the big one with a soapy sponge and put him on hose duty.  Turn it on, then turn it off.  Only, half the time, he couldn't remember which way to turn it.  I guess I can forgive that-he is not yet 4.  However, he seemed to have a thing against getting the faucet soapy. 

The little one did not get a sponge.  He just toddled around, falling all over the place, getting in the mud and overall was underfoot.  He, of course, had a blast. 

In the end, my chairs ended up sufficiently cleaned and the boys had fun anyways.

Move on to today and my hairbrained ideas...today's idea was baking cookies with B.  My mother (known to B and K as Mama) sent a box with some great Mickey mouse stuff.  Unfortunately, it's not any thing that happens to be great all by itself...no, she sent, amongst other stuff, a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter and Mickey Mouse sprinkles.  Thanks Mama.  Just because I let my kids play with playdough...

So, against my better judgement, and frankly, because I was tired of hearing him ask, B and I made cookies today.

He actually did decently well.  While K napped, we mixed the dough.  I set up the mixer, measured out ingredients (B learned 2 new words-ingredients and recipe.  How is that for stimulating!?!?) and generally cursed the thought of making cookies.

B then came over and helped make a mess, um, I mean, make cookie dough.  He actually did pretty well.  He got to add in the sugar (we used Splenda actually-because, you know,  calories count when you're making cookies!), the eggs and the flour. 

After dinner, a walk, and putting K to bed, B and I finished up our cookies.  We pulled the dough out of the fridge, he helped me cut it out, and we baked and decorated our Mickeys.

That poor fellow on the bottom left-yeah, that's Mickey's little known second cousin once removed, Vinnie.  Poor Vinnie lost his ear at some point.  He doesn't like to talk about it.  Next to Cousin Vinnie-the naked Mickey-well, that's because Mom ran out of icing Mom didn't think that the baby needed all that extra sugar.

 

Apparently, they were good.  I must concur-after my 3rd cookies, I think they came out okay.