Don't eat the noses off the snowmen!

Yesterday was my day to do Christmas baking. I enjoy baking, but usually by the time I make 3 or 4 different types of cookies, I'm pretty much done. It was late in the evening, and I was working on making snowman cookies. Very labor intensive, as the dough had to be made, then tinted different colors, rolled into balls and flattened, and then shaped into various scarves, hats, pompoms for the hats, noses, etc. Into the midst of this process comes Savannah. She of course was too short to see what I was doing but she wanted to be involved, and so I had a sudden epiphany. What could be better than baking Christmas cookies with my daughter? What memories we could make together! Apparently I forgot that she is not yet two and is not overly prone to following instruction. So I brought a chair over to the counter and hoisted her up. She went wild when she saw the snowmen taking shape.

"Snow! Snow!" she said as she fingered several of the cookies.

"Yes! It's so cool! Now, don't touch," I instructed. "Just look at the pretty snowmen but don't touch!"

I turned my back to begin forming more miniature snowmen hats. I heard her say, "Wow, mmmmm", and turned back in time to see that a snowman nose and some buttons had disappeared. Did I mention that I was already running low on the red-tinted dough that I was using to make the noses, among other snowmen parts? So, to keep her from eating any more noses, I positioned the pan away from her and instead gave her a few mini M&M's to eat. She gobbled these up in no time and demanded more. When I felt she had more than her fill, I told her no more. Here's where my vision of a Christmas-cookie-baking-with-my-daughter experience turned and headed south. She proceeded to have a complete meltdown, complete with racking sobs, cries of "No!" and "More", and just pretty much an inconsolable tantrum. Ricardo's solution was to put her in her crib for about 5 minutes, which actually worked well.....she calmed herself down and then called out for him. When he went to get her, she wasn't crying anymore, but had those little baby "shaky sobs" that they get when they cry so hard. So sweet. I put my cookies in the oven and held her for awhile, and then when the timer rang for my cookies, I passed her to Ricardo. She promptly fell asleep, so I know that she was exhausted, which probably added to the reasons for her tantrum. Ah well. We'll try again next year.