Ixnay on the Ookiescay

Regardless of your religious affiliation, there are bound to be cookies at some point in your year. Since we are Christians, we celebrate Christmas which I’m pretty sure is a Latin derivative of “cookie holiday.”
There are cookies in every direction, at every function. And usually you can find me sitting right next to them with my mouth full of sweet teeth and my hands full of hot coffee, because if anyone likes a good cookie, it’s me.

So you’d think that I’d spend this season hoovering around, inhaling every cookie in my path, but you’d be wrong. I learned through my parenting experience and wisdom that when it comes to cookies, you’ve got to be picky.

Because that’s exactly what they are, “picky;” those little chefs who help their mothers and grandmothers bake dozens of cookies. How cute they look in their minature aprons, how comical it is when they stir too quickly and fling flour across the kitchen and all over the chair that raises them up to counter level. How hysterical it is when you turn your back and Junior sticks his finger directly into his nose and picks out a big one, and then uses that same finger to make a cute little dent in the middle of the cookie that will hold a tiny spoonful of jam…and a booger.

Like it or not, kids pick their noses. They do it when we’re not looking and they do it when we are. It’s instinctive, really. Foreign object within reach, fingers properly proportioned. We are essentially sized to dig for our own gold.

The problem is that, as children, they don’t know how to correctly dispose of it, so most it ends up on their mother’s shirts or lies dormant under their fingernails until it gets a chance to jump off onto the first bit of dough within reach.

Don’t get me wrong – I bake with my kids and let them get their grubby little hands into as much dough as they want. The difference is this: I don’t pawn off booger cookies on my friends. I eat them myself or pack them in quaint little tins for their grandparents.

However, most mothers aren’t as considerate as I and put out trays that “the whole family made together!”
“How wonderful!” I respond. “Did Junior make the thumbprint cookies? They look so festive and adorable!”
And with her answer, I make a mental note and pass on the inside scoop to all I wish well this holiday season.

Ain’t no better present.