The other day I mistakenly told The Dormouse that if I could get The Caterpillar to take a nap, we could make some cookies together. It's always an iffy proposition to promise The Dormouse anything because a) we pretty much hate to make a promise that we don't keep, b) she never forgets anything that even remotely resembles a promise, c) we realize that in our house, events and circumstances change at a moment's notice so you may or may not be able to get to it later when you say you will, no matter how well-intended you are, and d) we are aware of the fact that if you tell The Dormouse anything, even if you're just speaking in the hypothetical, you will hear NOTHING ELSE OUT OF HER MOUTH until you provide whatever it is you said. It is for this reason that we:
  • didn't tell The Dormouse I was pregnant until a month or two before The Caterpillar was due and then only because I had to come up with an explanation for some stuff and "Mommy just ate a whole lot" was starting to become less and less believable
  • refuse to discuss travel plans such as purchasing airplane tickets until after she goes to bed
  • never under any circumstances mention it to her any time Uncle Matty says he's going to come over because Uncle Matty is perhaps flakier than a sixteen year old hyperactive girl from California and even if he says he's definitely coming, it's really just a big question mark and is generally thought of as just a starting point for negotiation
  • speak in code when were are discussing what we'd like to do today, such as "Would you like to go to the place created government funded public recreation today?" (the park) or "How about we consume mass quantities for our afternoon banquet at the place of the thin cut of yard bird?" (eat at Chick-fil-A) -- Aside: Oh how I long for the days when she could not spell. On the bright side, she'll probably have a twenty thousand word vocabulary by the time she's in second grade and by third grade we may have inadvertently taught her both Spanish and Arabic.
among other things. Basically, we don't tell her anything and surprise her with it all. Were it not so, we would be subjected to the following: "YAAAAAAAAY! Can we go? Can we go now? Can we? Can we? Huh? Can we? Can we? Huh? Huh? Can we? How about now? Now? I think it's time now. Now is the time. Let's go. I'm going to get my shoes on. Now. Now? NOOOOOW???????"

"No dear, we're not going to St. Louis until November and that's six months away."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaw, I want to go NOW." *walks away crying and/or moaning*

Then fifteen minutes later, we find her in her room packing her suitcase so she 'will be ready when we do go.' Repeat everyday for the next ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DAYS.

Don't even get me started on the time Grandma said to her out of the blue on the phone without checking with us first, "Would you like to come see me and go to Disneyland?"

So anyway, out of guilt for being a crappy mother that morning, I told her we could make some cookies together, but by the time I finally got The Caterpillar down, I really wasn't in the mood to completely dismantle the kitchen that I had only hours before gotten clean for the first time in weeks. So I decided to pull some pre-made cookie dough out of the freezer. Of course the only thing for her to do at this point was just to put them on the cookie sheet. Boooor-ing. Plus she'd already pulled every cookie cutter she could find out of the drawer. The cookie cutters didn't really work on the frozen dough and the directions said to bake them from frozen, so I cheaped out and told her she could arrange them on the cookie sheet in different shapes... see? Two cookies for ears one for a head and you've got Mickey Mouse. I know. So totally lame, right? I would never have fallen for that as a five year old.

But one of the best things about The Dormouse is she is such a champ at dealing with my lame parenting skills and only really wants to spend time with me. So she was a good sport about it all. And then, an amazing thing happened. We were playing with the cookie shapes and she decided to put a few of them together to make a caterpillar. So then I started helping her add cookies to her caterpillar and we started talking about how it was the Very Hungry Caterpillar. So I dismantled Sad Tiny-Headed Mickey Mouse and added the pieces to her caterpillar. Then I remembered some red and green decorators' sugar left over from Christmas in the cupboard. So the Very Hungry Caterpillar took on some color. He needed eyes, so we cut up some pieces of marshmallow for that with some mini chocolate chips for his pupils. Then The Dormouse pulled some lollipops out of the candy jar for antennae and announced he needed legs. I broke up some pieces of fettuccine for that and suddenly we had ourselves a cookie version of the Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcake Cake. Here he is before baking:


I was pretty sure that he would come out of the oven in a big, blobby, unrecognizable mess, but he actually baked up better than I expected. Here is the final product:


Not one trip to the grocery store. No flour and eggs on the kitchen floor. Not one dish dirtied (well, one pan). How awesome is this?

Now I'm intrigued by how many other things you could produce with frozen cookie dough. The solar system? A bunch of balloons? Pac Man game board?