Jeni’s Day of Sanctification

The years just roll by, and sometimes I think I say the same thing at the same time during each one.  Let’s see: it’s early December, the Cookie Exchange is tomorrow, and this post is about how much I hate  baking cookies with my children.

I know, I know.  I’m a bad mommy.  But it’s just not fun to keep four “helpers” occupied while I’m trying to make something in the kitchen.  When all the girls wanted to help today, I was outnumbered and couldn’t keep up helping the helpers.  So I got irritable.  And they left. And while I was cleaning up their mess in the kitchen and reworking what they had messed up, working hard to make cookies I don’t even want them eating in order to attend a Cookie Exchange that I don’t enjoy because I can’t eat 98% of the food, they dragged the Life game out and had pieces of it all over the living room.  Yeah.  I didn’t handle that well.

 

Above you will see the fruit of our labors.  On the left are the Coconut Chocolate Bites, on the right are the Oatmeal Cocoa No-Bake Cookies, and in the middle are the Peanut Butter Rice Krispy snowmen.    Anyway, those friendly snowmen were the beginning of my troubles today.  Why did I decide to show the kids after I made the first one?  Because I wanted my private space to be invaded by four little girls wanting to show off their fine motor skills by placing the eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons somewhere near where they were supposed to be.  And then they wanted to help with the making of the Cocoa Cookies, but they couldn’t mush them tight enough and crumbs were all over the kitchen, and Patie washed her hands between every cookie she tried to form and Sadie was banished because she licked her hands after the first one, and OH. MY.  I was done.

Until after dinner, when I quickly assembled the Coconut Bites with the help of Nate and Patie, Nate actually helping and therefore appreciated. 

Once you eliminate eggs, dairy, soy, and gluten from the ingredient list, your choices for cookies to make becomes small.  Last year we took 14 dozen cookies to the exchange (2 dozen for each child), and this year we are taking 4 dozen.  It’s plenty, especially since the cookies we exchange them for neither Bradford nor I will be able to eat.