Pizza!

Toby is big into "helping" these days. He wants to "help" with anything and everything. He'll clean up his toys at the end of the night, put his dishes in the sink after meals and, lately, he has definitely wanted to help cook.

Remember about a year ago (OMG, A YEAR?!) I said I started dragging his highchair into the kitchen while Aaron and I prepared food? Well, we really devoted ourselves to doing this in hopes that Toby would have an appreciation for food, how it's prepared, and enjoy it. We make a BIG deal out of dinner time with much pomp and circumstance. We even have theme nights: "Finger Food Fridays" and then a themed meal one day per week. For example, on "Italian Night" we might make spaghetti and meatballs and pull up some Italian music on Pandora. If we are truly ambitious, we will even pull print out a few facts on Italy (or the theme location) and read them to Toby... or have him color a map of the country.

Is he retaining any of this? Probably not. BUT, what we are doing is making routine and traditions. I know people with children around my son's age think their child is too young for things like this (hence, insinuating that my son is too young also) but, I never allow myself to think that he won't get anything out of these types of activities. Perhaps, yes, when I ask him to help me make pizza, he's just throwing around dough and cheese, but we're spending time together and I'm letting him be curious and explore food.

Over Christmas we went to the farm and my mom gave us her recipe to make pizza from scratch. So we did it for the first time in Maine over Christmas (she even made us ALL matching aprons.)

Now, every Wednesday, Toby and I make pizza. He gets so excited when I pull his apron down from the hook. He'll run to the kitchen to grab his ladder. He knows. That much he has retained. And, when the pizza is done, I will compliment him on what a good job he did making pizza. You know what? He will even eat an entire slice.

I'm not going to lie, it would be "so much easier" for me to just make the pizza on my own; not worry about putting things in little dishes so he can spread the toppings more easily- (thus doing way more dishes than actually required to make pizza.) Further, it would be much less labor intensive to not have to clean cheese, sauce, and toppings from the floor and rug. But then I would miss moments like this: