Who needs toys . . .

. . . when you have pots and pans? Margie Grace has become too smart for the child safety latches on the cabinet doors that house our pots and pans. Now one of her favorite things to do is pull all of the cookware out of the cabinet and spread the pieces around the kitchen floor (and also around the house! I recently found a lid I thought was lost forever in her bedroom!). She loves sorting small items and the pots and pans are perfect for doing that (notice her alphabet letters in the picture above). She also loves to "cook" and she has a blast with the pots and pans stirring and pretending she is making something delicious. Here is my little chef hard at work.

Cooking with Daddy

Margie Grace loves to cook! She can stay busy for a relatively long period of time with a bowl and spoon, mixing and "cooking" as she calls it. After she is done eating a meal, she likes to "cook" what food remains on her plate, meaning she likes to stir it together. (We typically try to remove her plate before this becomes a terrible mess!) And any time Neil and I are in the kitchen, she asks us if she can cook too: "Margie Grace cook!" she says. So lately we've been indulging this interest (under very strict supervision) and often pull a stool up to the counter and have her assist in small "cooking" tasks: helping to mix dry ingredients, adding cheese or nuts to a mixture or helping to put cookie dough on a pan for baking. Here are a few photos of Margie Grace helping her Daddy stir and "cook" some grits. She is a great help in the kitchen!