Baking cookies on a Lazy Sunday

It was another lazy Sunday morning. Kyle and I were laying around in our room while the kids played in the living room. I was smiling to myself that Cate is so incredibly patient and motherly to Max when it's just the two of them.

Fast forward to lunch. I decided it would be good that I recognize Cate and her fabulous big sister behavior in playing so nicely with Max. There is nothing more she wants to be when she grows up than to be a teacher and a mom. So, I opened with: "Cate, I am so proud of how you play so nicely with Max in the morning. You are going to be such a wonderful mother. How did you learn to be so good?" Her reply: "No one taught me. I learned how to do it by myself."

Guh.

She also told me, "Besides, you're too mean."

Double guh.

Needless to say, that hit me. I almost teared up right there.

How do I redeem myself?

We had to stop at the store to get a few groceries, so we added eggs and flour into the kids' "Shopper in Training" carts and made our way home. Cate wanted so badly to go on pbskids.org, ("Mom, you never let me go on pbskids anymore!"), so I let her play to her hearts' content. Then I even let her print off some of the pictures she made online.

As the afternoon wore on and I felt Cate had finally had her sufficient fill of playing on the computer, I asked her if she wanted to bake some cookies. She jumped at the opportunity. Thank goodness!

We didn't have a full package of any one kind of chips, so we made four-chip cookies. Fortunately, Kyle's mom bakes a lot and just dumps in whatever she has on hand. Cate bakes quite a bit with Grandma Katie, so she didn't panic when I told her that was what we had to work with. She wasn't too sure about the butterscotch chips, but I explained that they were kind of a cross between caramel and peanut butter. She could handle that.

So she did the measuring, mixing, egg-cracking (no shell!) and dumping into the bowl. I did the final scrape down and scooping onto the pans. Max was the batter taster.

They turned out pretty darn good.

As far as my mothering skills and Cate's opinion of it goes...well, I'll deal with it. I'm hoping this is somewhat typical for a mother / oldest daughter relationship. Right?

Right?!