Let's Pretend... chef at work

Sydney spent a large majority of the day with a spoon or spatula in his hand and an assortment of sauce pans, lids and frying pans within reach. He was BUSY BUSY BUSY pretending to cook food and would often stop stirring his pretend dish so that he could feed me a taste of it.

The hilarious part was that sometimes, he would stop to blow on it before serving it into my mouth.

Eventually, I got out his toy salt and pepper shakers. I showed him that we sometimes use just a little bit of salt and Mommy likes A LOT of pepper. He must have taken note because the S&P were his favorite additions to his pretend kitchen.

Sydney was "cooking" when Mike came home from work. I explained that we had done A LOT of cooking and taste-testing in Sydney's pretend kitchen. Mike thought we've got our hands full... Sydney LOVES to help in the kitchen. Also, I think he has been inspired by watching the Food Network with Mike. (Surprisingly, Sydney will willingly sit through almost an entire episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats, too - as long as we fast forward through the commercials!)

When I was making dinner tonight, I brought a kitchen chair in for Sydney to stand on. I showed him how to bend asparagus to make it snap at the good breaking point. I showed him that you snap it and keep the flowered end. I was pretty impressed when he stole a piece off of the counter and snapped it into two pieces - just like mommy did. We also measured water into a liquid measuring cup and I showed him which tickmark we were shooting for. He helped measure out some rice granules, too. (We were having FUN!)

After dinner, Sydney dug out our lemonade pitcher from a kitchen cabinet and insisted that he pour pretend liquid into his pans before seasoning and stirring. We asked him what he was pouring into his saucepan. Mike and I were pretty impressed that he knew to tip it over to pour (although, he does watch me pour milk onto his Cinnamon Life cereal some mornings). Mike laughed because he would shake the container to get the pretend liquid out. (Sydney was watching me shake the container of BBQ sauce the other day because it was almost empty; I think he is a little sponge and takes everything in!) I told Mike that he sees me get his cereal ready. At that same moment, Sydney was signing the word MILK with his hand.... YEP, he thought the pretend liquid was MILK.

This kid makes me LAUGH! He's SO STINKING CUTE!!!!