Making Mondays

Lola has been loving to help me "make" stuff in the kitchen lately, so I thought I'd be planful about the two of us doing at least one cooking or baking project together each Monday. Because then we can use alliteration. And call it Making Mondays.

(Side note: Mondays are really no good for this other than for the alliteration part. My house is clean-ish on Mondays. Later in the week would be more ideal and help me be cool(er) with the mess.)

However.

This week, we kicked off Making Mondays with strawberry cucumber lemonade popsicles. Not too complex, plus it was a bazillion degrees out on Monday. So, during her nap, I prepped our ingredients: strawberries that we had picked a few weeks ago that were in the freezer, cucumbers, and lemonade. I've found that prepping everything ahead is key because once we start, Lola just wants to keep adding and doing "MORE!" She has no patience for me peeling cucumbers or trying to open a new jug of lemonade.

When she woke up, I laid out a dishtowel on the floor and put her equipment on it (a plastic immersion blender cup, a spoon, and her first ingredient). Our kitchen is way too small for a learning tower or whatever they call those things. I think she'd love one. But working on the floor works better in our house. And it cracks me up watching her get comfortable to do her work.

She started by happily transporting the cucumbers into the cup with the spoon.

Then did the same with the strawberries, which she proved to enjoy just as much and take just as seriously as the cucumbers. Me? I tried to not care about the juicy strawberries falling onto my mostly white dishtowel during transportation. These making adventures are a real test in patience and letting go for me. But I'm trying my best, and I didn't say anything about the spillage. Because after all, this kid is 2. And her little hand helping hold the strawberries onto the spoon was too freaking cute.

She poured (rather, quickly dumped) the lemonade in, gave everything a good old stir, and then wanted to pour the whole mixture back into the glass measuring cup that had made its way to her work space.

But that wasn't how I was going to do it!

Without thinking, without restraint, I said "Oh, we're done with this part. Now Mommy has to blend it up."

Ha. Right. Lola wasn't done.

I let her pour this whole concoction back and forth between the two vessels for a while, and eventually couldn't take it anymore.

So, I confiscated our popsicle mixture.

I averted crisis and allowed Making Monday to continue by quickly giving her some water, extra cucumber, and chopped scallions to play around with. And Lola created her own making project. And I happily finished the freezing portion of our project.

Thanks to Zoku, we were eating our pops within 5 minutes.

I'm loving that Lola seemingly loves something that I love, and I'm excited to try to foster it. While getting lots of practice in relinquishing control. :)

Good luck, Sarah.