" I mating tsata cupcates!"

Yesterday afternoon, Ollie and I were reading his special story that made him when we threw away his binkies. In that story, there is a picture of him trying to eat a cupcake with his binky. As soon as we came to that picture, Ollie said, "let's make cupcates!" Since we were just hanging around, I decided to just go for it. We went into the kitchen, I pulled a chair over to the counter, and I actually let my not quite 2 1/2 year old help me make chocolate cupcakes. It was messy. It was kind of a crazy idea. And I'm sure that those cupcakes were highly contaminated with Ollie germs, but he was so excited every time I let him help me hold the beaters, dump in some sugar, or crack an egg (yes, he even cracked an egg - half of it onto the counter, but didn't get any shells in the batter which was quite impressive)! He had a great time and I actually had a great time, too. We ended up with sugar all over the floor, egg dripping off the counter, and batter basically everywhere, but I really did enjoy it. For some reason, I was able to just let the mess go and realize that we were doing many good things that didn't include keeping things clean. When we finished the batter, I let Ollie lick the beaters (a favorite of mine when I helped as a child and still to this day, in fact) while I filled the pans.
When my mom walked in (we were going to girl's night - dinner at Olive Garden and saw Crazy For You at Tuachan), Oliver joyously exclaimed, "I mating tsata cupcates!" Grammy whipped up the cream cheese frosting that I had softening and we gave them a try before we went out. We even made delicious chocolate cupcakes while we made memories!