Cookie Carving

Yesterday afternoon Koen asked (in the sweetest way) about when he would get to make cookies with me.  And that just really pulled at my heart strings that he misses getting the chance to bake on a whim since he's so busy with school.  So I said, "Sure!  Let's make some pumpkin cut-out cookies!"  And thus began our afternoon activity today.  Of course we hit a few glitches...  The first was that when I went online to grab my recipe (it's an Allrecipes.com favorite), the Allrecipes.com site would not load.  That has never happened to me before (and actually the link I put in this post works just fine now (of course)).  Anyways, I had to conjure up my own recipe for the dough with Tavin in the morning.  Tav was adorable about it.  He said, "I think you should just make up your own, Mommy, you can do it, I know you can."  Well, the little guy was right.  I did it off of the half of the recipe I remembered and then the half I conjured up after consulting a few cookbooks with somewhat similar recipes.  Anyways, we managed. =)  After Koen got home from school and we finished homework and some unwinding, we called Tav down from his rest time post-nap and got to rolling out, cutting out and baking up some Halloween treats.  Here's where we hit snag number 2.  Koen crumbled.  Often about halfway through the week he loses his ability to handle normal life here and there.  Some days he manages fine, others he's a wreck.  Today was one of those days.  It breaks my heart.  I wish I knew if something happened during his day that brought this on.  Or is it just exhaustion?  Oh, how I wish I knew.  Anyways, we plodded through our project.  Koen did really enjoy it, he just was tough to manage with Tav and quite irritable.  But I felt good that I made the time to do a desired creative project with him that he enjoyed.  Poor guy.  So much going on inside this 6 year old.

Thankfully his 3-year-old brother is a little easier to read.  Tav loved making moons out of his rolled out dough.

The finished product later on the cooling racks.

After dinner my little bakers enjoyed the proceeds of their efforts with a few of the thin, tasty (yes, my made-up recipe turned out well!) cookies.  Doug slipped Penn a crumbled cookie while I had my back turned.  

And yes, the third little Melder boy likes his momma's baking too.