Oh, What a Beautiful Morning, Oh What a Beautiful Day!

It's been a good day, I'm happy to say, even in spite of the gray skies. T and I have had a quiet morning. We had scrambled eggs for breakfast; we watched Sesame Street (as much as I get tired of Elmo, I love that tricycle song!); I worked on my cross-stitch project while he was engrossed with Cookie and Elmo; he "helped" (mostly watched) as I mixed up the cutout cookie dough, and then helped me pound it flat with a rolling pin before chilling (this was by far his favorite part). We traced his hands a couple of times to make turkeys, which I finished off with legs and comb and beak and he mostly scribbled on. We made one for each set of grandparents. It was grand. And he may be learning his colors; he guessed red and yellow correctly. We had lunch, rolled out the cookie dough, and then cut out and baked cookies. Since he mostly wanted to eat the dough, and I'm hugely paranoid about him getting sick from raw eggs, he didn't get to help too much with that, unfortunately. But we did talk about leaves and pumpkins and sunflowers and turkeys, some of the many cutters we used. We read some stories, and then I cleaned up the kitchen.

Here's the only let-down of the morning: my first disappointment from the King Arthur Flour books. To be fair, it is my fault. I read through the recipe notes (for King Arthur's Special Roll-Out Sugar Cookies) and the ingredients, then scanned through the recipe before beginning. But somehow I failed to absorb that the recipe, if rolled thinly, would produce crisp cookies, and if slightly thicker, crunchy cookies. Now, here's the problem: I'm not a huge fan of crunchy cookies, and crispy cookies might as well be dog biscuits, as far as I'm concerned. Well, as I'm not very consistent in my rolling thickness, I ended up with a mixture of crispy and crunchy. Sigh. However, all is not lost. I think that I'll be mixing up a batch of buttercream frosting this afternoon. I have rarely met a non-burnt crunchy sugar cookie that could not be much improved and softened with the addition of icing. And, really, I'd eat anything with icing on it.

Goal for the afternoon: library and bubbles, and then delicious roast chicken with potatoes, biscuits, and green beans for dinner. We may skip the park, as it's chilly and gray, but we'll see what Dad wants to do about that.