Christmas Cookie Making

Today we again made Christmas cookies. We had shared and eaten through the batch we made a week and a half ago, so I figured it would make another fun activity time with the boys (primarily Koen). We ended up saving the task for after naptime due to time constraints and behavioral issues this morning before church (ugh, 4 year olds and their sidekicks!!). Thankfully after church and after naptime Koen was much more the 4 year old I enjoy spending time with and working with so the cookie-making project was going to be a perfect activity. Unfortunately, Tavin woke up super early from his nap coughing and it was apparent quite early on into our project that he was very cranky. Here he is before the meltdown pretending with his own mixing bowl and spoon.Koen has become quite the helper in the kitchen. Last year I would've had to watch his every move with the bowl, but this year he actually gets things mixed together quite well and I just have to do some good strokes to finish it off.Koen loves cutting out the shapes. He has learned that the rolling out the dough part is for Mommy to do which is a relief because that task is not easy to share with a 4 year old. Tavin wanted to do some cut-outs too. I wish I could've gotten a picture, but it's tough to hold a child, guide the cut-out shape and hold a camera, so you will just have to imagine it. Right after that though he got bored with the cookie-making and totally lost it. He cried on and off between trying to play until dinner was ready (amazingly I multi-tasked the cookie-making overseeing and making dinner for the boys and myself...it's a good thing Koen is getting so good with baking!). I eventually had to just put Tavin in his highchair and he drank milk and sucked his thumb. He was so tired he was stumbling and bumbling around Koen and I. I felt terrible for him because I knew our project was over his head, but I also knew that his crankiness was totally due to lack of sleep and normally he would play well while we did something like this. Poor guy. After we got the cookies in the oven we sat down to dinner and I think Tavin getting some food in his system helped. Koen and I took a break from our project until after we laid Tavin down as we knew he wouldn't enjoy the slow decorating process.

Koen, on the other hand, is quite the decorator this year! I'm so impressed with his attention to detail, his use of symmetry and his good judgement on not overdoing the decor. This time we used melted milk chocolate out of nozzled plastic bottles to decorate our cookie cut-outs. Koen loved this activity! He even said he liked it better than icing cookies.My bottle of chocolate took quite awhile to warm up and melt, so Koen got a head start on the cookies and he did an amazing job. He probably did 2/3 of the cookies himself. In these pictures you can probably see which you think are mine and which are his, but I was so impressed with his designs and careful use of the chocolate.We enjoyed our handiwork before heading up to bed. Yum. Delicious! Oh yes, I meant to mention that this recipe is a whole wheat cut-out cookie from allrecipes.com. This is the 2nd or 3rd year I've used it and we love it. Very simple recipe and is very easy to roll out. My only FYI is to watch out as you add the water as you probably don't need as much as it calls for. Here's a link to the recipe.http://allrecipes.com/recipe/whole-wheat-cut-out-cookies/detail.aspx