Learning to Cook

Kaylin has been really interested in cooking lately. She wants to make meals and wants to do the work by herself as much as possible. Cool! A dream come true for me! I still do the "oven work" because she's so short it's hard for her to reach in and pull something out safely, but she does most of the prep work, menu planning, etc. She's been making some more "complicated" things like green bean casserole, but right now we're mostly working on easy stovetop things like pasta and eggs.

Last night we got home a little late. Gene was out with his friends and Logan had a lot of homework. Kaylin wanted to make dinner but I wanted her to do something easy. Score! We found a bag of frozen ravioli. Kaylin boiled the water and carefully added the ravioli. She likes to experiment so she added a few pieces of spaghetti and a few other noodles. I was busy with Logan so wasn't paying attention. The ravioli only needed to boil a few minutes. Kaylin drained it no problem and called Logan in for his partially cooked piece of spaghetti.

I made a comment like "Oh, you put some spaghetti in there?" Kaylin answered "Yeah, and I also put a few pennies in the pot." I freaked out. WHY would she put pennies in with our food??? GROSS! I told her I'd make myself a sandwich because I wasn't going to eat that! Kaylin was totally confused, but I was all "DUH! Pennies are filthy! And metal! I'm not eating something they've been cooked with!" Kaylin doubled over with laughter. "No Mom, not pennies, PENNES! You know, the pasta tubes?" Yeah. We laughed the rest of the night.

I'm trying my best to keep her interested in cooking. She really wants to experiment and change recipes and tweak them. She couldn't have a worse set of teachers! Gene is rigid in following instructions and more concerned with the mess than the product and I am clueless and uninterested. I have tried and tried over the years, but cooking just doesn't interest me. If Kaylin can be my personal chef the next few years that would be super. Kidding! Sort of...

Off topic, Logan's reading has progressed so far, so fast! The "click" I was waiting for in his brain finally happened. He reads out loud and only has trouble with big, strange words when he doesn't know the meaning. He's scoring much better on comprehension and he's even (gasp) reading for fun in bed at night! (I mean, it's only for a couple of minutes because he falls asleep so fast, but WoW!) The difference in his spelling is night and day. Practicing spelling used to be the most frustrating thing in the world because he would sound out the first letter, but nothing else. Every single word had to be memorized. It was terrible! Suddenly he gets it and can spell anything that is phonetically "normal." It's then easy to memorize a few weird words. He's also FINALLY able to read all of his homework instructions so can do most everything by himself.

And quickly, speaking of homework, I have complained endlessly about Logan's word searches. Kaylin brought home the ultimate last night. Sixty-three astronomy words. Seriously? This thing would have taken her HOURS to do on her own. Why? You better believe I helped her! She would have kept me up bawling about that thing until midnight. With both of us working together it still took nearly an hour. Gene even helped with the last several words when he got home. What a crazy waste of time!