Pancakes

Due to our kitchen being what it is (an outdated, completely impractical nightmare), we have not made pancakes in a very long time. Turns out that Riley has not outgrown them. It was Casey's idea to make pancakes for dinner tonight. Riley is at an age where he is starting to take an interest in cooking, so I thought he might like to help make the pancakes. We pulled out the step stool and he stood on it while he helped me crack the eggs (a slightly frightening experience, but only one tiny piece of shell made it into the bowl, so I consider that a victory), add the milk, butter and pancake mix, and then use the electric mixer to combine it all. I think his favorite thing was poking his fingers into the eggs, but a close second was using the electric mixer all by himself. (I will note here that Riley clearly takes after his father when cooking -- it's not cooking unless a big mess is made. Also, if anything gets on your hands, it's clearly the best idea to wipe it off on your clothes. But I digress. I should also add here that Casey has taken over much of the kitchen clean-up and nearly all of the laundry since I got pregnant, so I really can't complain about the mess-making at this point.) I figured he would have had enough of the cooking experience by this point, so I started pouring some batter into the pan. Next thing I knew, he was hauling the step stool over to the oven. Hmmm, does this spell disaster to anyone else? Hoping to avoid a catastrophe, I pulled out another pan, gave Riley a spatula and an already-made pancake and told him to flip his own pancake. This seemed to satisfy him for awhile... until (a) he got hungry and (b) the dogs started to hover. After all the pancakes were made, we sat down to dinner where Riley ate four adult-sized pancakes (mind you, Casey only had four also, and I had three, so this should tell you something about the portion size). And then he talked about how Mommy and Riley are good cooks (probably the only time I will ever hear those words spoken about my cooking!!!). Clever kid. I imagine more pancakes and cooking are in our near future.