A not-so Betty Crocker moment

Some days I secretly feel like trading in my daughter for a different model. Take today for example.  It was a dreary afternoon and the sky was pissing down rain.  The last thing I felt like doing was going outside.  But what to do with an energetic toddler?  Must think of a stimulating inside activity.  TV?  Kiku was done with TV after watching ten minutes of her favorite movie, Annie.  She’s not the kind of kid that can watch endless amounts of TV.  Sometimes I wish she were. 

I racked my brain while we played with blocks, then puzzles, until I decided that we were going to bake some chocolate chip cookies. 

Now, I have several mom friends who bake with their kids all the time.  They talk about how much their little ones love to help stir, add ingredients, and sometimes just watch out of curiosity.  What fun it is!  A few of them even purchased the pricey Learning Tower so their kid could have a better view.  Not my kid.

Our experience goes something like this.  Kiku adds a few ingredients to the mixing bowl and stirs gently.  Innocent enough.  Then she grabs some flour mixture and sprinkles it on the counter.  She looks for my reaction.  Then she starts eating flour, and swiftly moves on to the sugar.  She scoops batter onto the floor, and more is flung to the far reaches of the kitchen.  All the while, I’m running interference while actually trying to make some cookies.  It wasn’t fun.  For either of us.  It ended with an award-winning tantrum and some burnt cookies.

It's not like this was an unfamiliar experience, but it's been a while since we’ve done any baking and I thought it was time to give it another try.  I wish I could be the kind of person who didn’t care about big messes.  I wish I could just let go.  Flour in the hair, eggs on the walls, food fights, everybody having a dizzying good time.  No, that’s not me, at least not anymore.  I'm too tired.  I just want to bake cookies. 

I realized that I had some serious expectations.  In my mind, we were going to share a wonderful mother-daughter experience that I never got to have with my own mother.  I found myself wishing that just once, my daughter could be less intense and strong-willed.   But that’s not who she is.  We don’t get to pick our kids as much as they don’t get to pick their parents. 

Kiku is just not ready for baking right now, and maybe one day it will be a bonding experience for us.  For now, I need to reel in my expectations and appreciate her for who she is.