On the menu for today: we're making cookies for Santa. And when I say "we," I don't mean "I'm making them while the kids watch Bubble Guppies and I yell from the kitchen 'COME HELP YOUR MOTHER'"; I really do mean that we're making them together.

Indy is really into cooking - he has announced that his plans for when he grows up are "to cook and to work at eBay" - which is ridiculously exciting for me. I remember a couple of years ago I posted a photo to Instagram of him standing next to the stove, helping me stir some pasta sauce, and got a bunch of blowback for it (THERE IS FIRE NEAR YOUR CHILD AND KNIVES ALSO, both of which were true). And while I do of course believe in making sure that children are safe when they're in or near a kitchen, my feeling has always been that the safest thing I can do for them is to let them participate in something that they're obviously going to be interested in, if only because it's so clearly a big part of their mother's life. To me, it's always seemed like telling them to stay out of the kitchen ("DON'T TOUCH THAT!") would be equivalent to transforming the room in our house where I spend the most time into an exciting mystery house of stuff they're not allowed to touch but desperately want to. It seems more reasonable to me to open the doors and not just "tell" them, but actually show them how a kitchen can be both safe and fun, so long as you're careful.

But the biggest reason why I encouraged my son to get into cooking from a (to some) bizarrely young age: it's our special time together, standing there side by side and talking about flavors and the difference between penne and rigatoni and what, exactly, happens when water comes to a boil. Indy knows how to measure, how to mix, how to put walnuts into a ziploc bag and whack them with a rolling pin to break them into smaller pieces. We taste sauces together and decide if they need more seasoning; he's responsible for doing virtually all of the pouring. I love that when he's older he'll have so many memories of sitting on the countertop in a warm kitchen, dipping measuring spoons into flour and breaking eggs while his mom chatters away about stuff he doesn't quite understand, but will one day.

It makes me something way beyond "happy."