Once upon a time, when my niece was little (about Iliya's age), I did a ton of cooking with her. She would come to our house, and we would hang out...we made cookies, brownies, even one time, we cooked meatloaf together. (the whole time we were cooking the meatloaf, she proclaimed that the meatloaf smelled "delightful and delicious!" -{yick}- only to take one bite of our cooked dinner and spit it right back out. oh well).

The point is that, in those days, I vowed to myself that when I had kids, cooking with them would be a regular thing. One of those bonding time sort of things. But you know, things are different when you have nieces and nephews. You cook with them, and they go home...they don't live with you, and you certainly don't have the every day stressors of having children. Once I had my own child, I found that sometimes, it's just easier to do things myself. I tried cooking with Iliya once, a while ago, and got so stressed out about it, that I decided I'd rather just cook, by myself, and make use of my time with him in less stressful situations.

I'm actually embarrassed to admit that. Because cooking is a most excellent activity for learning all kinds of things. And why not let him get some real life learning by helping me cook?

So, this Saturday, I decided that I was going to start afresh with my mindset, and that we were going to make muffins. From scratch. And if flour and sugar made its way all over our kitchen (and it did), then so be it.