Birthday Cake

Noah is very into birthdays ever since we celebrated his in July. His favorite story at the moment is Curious George and the Birthday Surprise, which we read many times a day - Noah has many parts memorized and likes to repeat "George couldn't resist..." Anyway, today was my birthday and the most important ingredient as far as Noah was concerned was the cake (in George's story, there is a part where George uses a blender and frosting splatters all over). I decided to have some fun and let Noah help me make my birthday cake. Even though he wanted another "strawberries and candles" cake, I convinced him that mamma wanted chocolate and raspberries. Noah helped me get out all the ingredients, then he ran down into the basement and brought up some equipment from his little play kitchen. He pulled himself up on a chair and we got down to business. I measured out ingredients for Noah to pour then he used his little miniature utensils to stir. When I got out the electric beaters, Noah said "beaters like George" and immediately wanted to take command of them. He was somewhat upset that we had to do this part together, but splattering the entire kitchen with cake batter was not a part of the story that I wanted to recreate. I was wondering how long it would take for Noah to figure out that eating cake batter might taste good - not long; before I knew it, he was sticking fingers, whisks and spoons in and licking. At some point when I turned my back for a second a nectarine ended up bobbing around in the batter which then got licked too. Although the kitchen was quite a bit messier thanks to my sous-chef, it was well worth the fun that Noah clearly had!