"Baby Cook!"

MJ is quite the little helper these days.  It's quite cute to see how eager he is to help with the laundry (clothes dub-dub as he calls it), vacuum, putting clothes in his drawers, and most of all...cooking.  "Baby cook" he exclaims!  Yes, we're still working on getting him to call himself MJ rather than baby.  :)

They way our kitchen and living room are arranged, he can always see when I'm cooking.  He used to like to pull a chair over the the counter and climb up to get a better view.  Now that's no longer good enough-he wants to actually be involved. Sometimes it's great!  Sometimes it seems to make my cooking time take twice as long.  Go figure!  Last weekend, I bought a cupcake mix and we made cupcakes together.  He thought it was quite a treat!

A few days later I was making some mostaccioli for dinner.  Mat wasn't home, so it was just MJ and I and he kept hollering "baby cook!"  It wasn't exactly a meal he could help with.  Boiling water plus toddler don't mix too well!  I tried giving him some wooden spoons and plastic bowls and measuring cups so that he could pretend.  I even tried to get him to pretend to cook on his own play kitchen.  Neither of those choices are good enough for MJ.  In his mind, it's gotta be the real deal.  He's beyond "pretending".  Ha!  Stubborn little guy! 

So, I improvised and gave him some extra noodles, four bowls of colored water, and let him "cook".  He loved it!  He used measuring cups to add water to each of the little bowls, then chose his colors and squeezed in the food coloring drops.  Then, he dropped in mostaccioli noodles and had to be patient for a few minutes (the hard part) while letting them "cook" aka dye colors.  Then, we dried them off and strung them on necklaces.  He proudly wore his necklaces for two full days. 

Loving this stage and my little helper, even when he's adamant that baby cook!