Luke's Own Kitchen!!!

I have mentioned Luke's cooking fetish several times before. It really is his favorite hobby, and he has gotten pretty good at imitating things that we do and pretending to cook. Helping with the real thing would always be his definite first choice, of course.

This is Luke helping us make sugar cookies a few nights ago. I mixed the dough with the beater while Luke was eating his dinner. Jared had to wheel the high chair over by the counter. Luke would make the most excited faces every time I added more flour and turned the mixer back on. It's pretty much impossible to catch that face on camera, but it is my absolute favorite expression of Luke's. Luke stirred the dough while cookies were baking. I think he stood on this chair for over 30 minutes happily stirring away. It was the only good that came out of the experience because I tried a new recipe (instead of Mom's) that turned out to be a total flop.

The next day Luke wanted to use the mixer to "cook". He sat on the floor pretending to make cookies for quite a while.

Then he moved on to cupcakes

And finally he organized and made some soup.

Because Luke loves to cook so much, I was adamant that he needed a toy kitchen for Christmas. Jared was pretty apprehensive about it because he said they were too big and too expensive, but I found a great deal on a pretty small kitchen, and while Jared was in DC for an ADR competition, I bought it.

Last night (Christmas Eve night), the Sorrells came over to have aebleskievers with us, and after dinner Justin was so nice as to help Jared put the kitchen together. It was a beast of a project. Nancy helped too by hunting for pieces and getting each piece out of its packaging. With all of them working together, it still took almost 2 hours! I escaped the whole construction by cleaning the kitchen and making dessert.

We didn't get very many pictures today, but here are a few of Luke playing with his brand new kitchen. It was a big hit. He especially liked the play food. He would fill up a whole mixing bowl and then stir the food with a toy pot.

He also opened doors and put food in then took it out and moved it to a new location. That kept him occupied for a good amount of time.

But, you remember that whole post about retrospect and regretting teaching our kid(s) something? Well, I pretended to eat some food today, and made a big deal about it being yummy. After that, Luke started to gnaw the heck out of some of his food. He completely mangled one of his ice cream scoops. I'm telling you, he really clamped down. Jared and I kept saying, "No. No. Just pretend." But what do we know? We're just his parents. Apparently he'd rather develop TMJ than listen to us. Luckily most of the food is a lot tougher than the ice cream.

More pictures will follow soon.