It Nearly Happened To Me

Panic Attack Magazine has a section called, "It Happened to Me!" where parents can write in about how their bad or lax parenting led to a near disaster, or more often, how something that would never in a million years occur to you as dangerous, is actually a crisis waiting to happen. Well, I think this weekend I may have come up will a potential submission.

Today was my (8th) annual cookie baking extravaganza, and in years past I have spent the days and weeks and months leading up to this day diligently planning. There are excel spreadsheets to be made with egg, butter, flour tallies, dough to be pre-made and frozen, recipes to be tested, cookies to be pre-made, icing recipes to be pondered over, and so on. This year, I don't know, I am either getting lazy, or mildly over committed. Or maybe I need to be committed? Instead of doing a lot of ingredient planning, I just went to costco and got 4 pounds of butter, 18 eggs, 7 pounds of sugar and a 20 pound bag of flour. Then I went to king soopers and bought 10 heath bars. Then I went back to king soopers and got 2 pounds of brown sugar. When I was at Target I got 2 pounds of chocolate. Then I went back to King Soopers and got 18 more eggs. And so on.

I did test one recipe last week and it was so delicious that I ate almost all of the cookies and then decided that since I am not going to the gym I should definitely not make those again. Or maybe I should since I still have another 5 heath bars and a pound of chocolate left over. (Those are the two main ingredients.) Short story long, all the pre-making of cookies, pre-making of dough, cleaning the kitchen, planning of the hor-dourves and drinks, and everything else, took place between the hours of 9am (when Jack and I got up for the third and final time of the morning) and 1pm when my cookie baking partners in crime arrived instead of over the last few weeks.

Where is the bad parenting? I am just about to get to that. While I was trying to clean the kitchen, Jack got everything out of the bench and put half of it in the oven warming drawer. And then he took half the stuff out of the lazy susan and scattered it all over the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around my legs and wouldn't let go. At this point, when I am cooking, I usually put him in the sling.

From Jack's birthday

But I was so tired...

So I got all the ingredients out, and all the measuring utensils out, and I put the bumbo on the counter (mine is old enough that it can without the warning not to place it on the counter) and I crammed Jack into the bumbo, and I gave him a measuring cup for each hand, and I started mixing sugar cookies. Jack was happy, and not trying to escape, cookie dough was being mixed and I was not getting a pain in my shoulder from the sling. All was right with the world. Until. Until I realized I didn't have the vanilla. So should I take Jack out of the bumbo, set him on the floor, take two steps back, get the vanilla, pick Jack up, put him back in the bumbo, or somewhere actually safe, and then finish the dough? Yes. Yes, I should, but I didn't. I just made eye contact with Jack, slowly took one step back, then another, opened the cabinet door, grabbed the vanilla, never taking my eyes off of Jack, took two steps forward and was back in place, right in front of my precious baby. I have made this sugar cookie recipe every year for 8 years. I can do it with my eyes closed. I can do it while staring at my happy baby who is not in anyway attempting to injure himself by falling off the counter.

And then it happened. Well, then it almost happened. It almost happened to me. While still making eye contact with my happy, smiling, safe baby, I started to pour a teaspoon of vanilla into the measuring spoon. Vanilla? Nope, not vanilla. I had grabbed the apple cider vinegar. Thank the Lord for the heightened senses that mothers experience when they put their babies in harms way for the sake of getting some cookie dough made. Because I caught a whiff of that vinegar and managed to stop myself before I poured it into the dough. Crisis averted people! But tragedy almost happened to me!!!

So I took Jack out of the bumbo, put him on my hip, walked two steps to the cabinet, took out the vanilla (exact same size bottle) and walked two steps back to the counter and put Jack back into the bumbo and then continued my cookie dough recipe.

What do you think? Is this a good scary nightmare story, from which Panic Attack Magazine readers can learn a valuable lesson? Never, never store the apple cider vinegar right next to the vanilla. It almost ruined a batch of sugar cookies.

P.S. I have lots of cute pictures from today, but I don't know where the card reader is. Soon. I promise.