Baking Cookies and Getting Sick

Yesterday morning Hazel announced she wanted to bake cookies. I had been meaning to make something for Steven. His favorite candy is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and somewhere I saw an easy recipe to make something similar involving Reese's Peanut Butter Chips and Chocolate Chips. Well, I bought the supplies (Steve got into the peanut butter chips on me) and I couldn't find the recipe anywhere yesterday. So we made the recipe on the back of the peanut butter chip package with a few minor changes. We used one cup whole wheat flour and one cup all purpose flour and since Steve had eaten some of our chips we added some milk chocolate chips (enough to finish the 1 2/3 cups and then some more). The package recipe also was for dropped cookies. Drop by the rounded teaspoon full onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 8-9 minutes. The recipe calls to make 4 1/2 dozen, but I must have made them slightly big since we got just over 4 dozen.

Hazel beating the eggs (after I got the egg shells out)

Hazel did a lot of the mixing on this. I have to say I found it a bit frustrating because with Hazel mixing came the mess. We worked on holding the bowl with one hand after she put a good amount of the dry ingredients came out. You can see her practicing with the eggs. She also cracked one of the eggs herself. I had to get a few eggshells out, but she did well and is not as afraid of doing it. She also wanted to control the mixer, which was my biggest frustration of the day since she didn't listen to instructions on it.

After turning the mixer on high with the flour in it

The mess I got to clean up (besides the floor and the earlier one by hand)

I was afraid the cookies wouldn't come out well since she spilled so much of the dry ingredients out. The dough looked a bit sticky so I added a bit more all purpose flour. And the end result was they turned out great. We all loved them.

After cleaning up the kitchen and myself, we went downstairs to work on the craft room re-organization. Hazel painted while I worked. I decided to rearrange her areas. Now I have to find places for everything, but we decided to go buy more shelves for the organization which go on sale today. After painting we let her play with play dough and then draw. Steve sat with her while I kept working. Unfortunately she slowly got stuffed up and started sneezing and coughing. It was obvious that the scratchy throat she said she had wasn't made up. Well we went and ate lunch and took a nap--not as long as the day before but a two-hour one (Friday she took a 3 1/2 to 4 hour nap). Lesson learned when you 3-year-old who has basically given up naps takes a super long nap and another nap the next day, she is getting sick.

When she woke up from her nap she asked for something to eat and drink. I saw this as a good sign and of course got her something. Then I tried to finish something on the computer that I was working on while she napped and next thing I knew she was by her toys, coughing and vomiting. And this was the start of five longs hours of vomiting on and off. The first sign that she was about to be sick was no matter where I was she would find me and want to cuddle (even if Steven had been in the room with her). It is not fun to watch a small one have a stomach bug. Finally last night she stopped and fell asleep. She woke up during the night (I slept in her room for the first part of the night) and after a couple of hours of being awake and waking me up, she decided she wanted Daddy and they apparently slept pretty well after that. I slept fine in our bed after that. It was a long night. I'm not sure how my stomach is feeling yet, but am starting to feel hungry, so I'm guessing that is a good sign that I probably am not getting it. We are hoping both of us are healthy enough to visit Mimi and Pop this week since it is school vacation week so no school for Hazel and no tutoring for Mommy.

Hope all is well with you!!