Gabe Decorates Brownies and Works on His Lying Skills

Sunday, Libby bought a brownie mix and decided that it would be a good idea for Gabe to decorate it.

Now, on the surface, I'm very supportive of Gabe being involved in the kitchen. I like the idea of him learning to enjoy cooking. It's a very useful skill to have, and I look forward to the day when I don't have to cook every meal. But I do generally have one small problem with it--the clean up. Even though it is invariably Libby's idea to get the boy involved in the cooking process, it is never she nor Gabe who has to deal with the aftermath. It is me. And, as I learned Sunday, frosting is an oil-based food, which means it's not all that easy to clean off the floor and other pieces of furniture.

Anyway, I cooked the brownies because I didn't really see any point in having to clean up TWO messes--the one left by mixing the brownies and the one left by decorating them. When I was done, he was set loose with a spray can of frosting (an invention I had not seen up to that point) and a jar of sprinkles. The sprinkle container was one of those ones with four different kinds of "holiday" sprinkles in four separate compartments. Normally, such a container might decorate ten or a dozen cakes. This container decorated one. This was a seriously decorated platter of brownies.

After Libby put on the first squirt of frosting to show Gabe how to work it, she handed the can over and he immediately stuck it in his mouth to suck out the remainder of the frosting.

Oh, yeah, Norah got in on the fun, too. Shortly after this, she wandered off to leave little orange handprints all over much of the dining room.

Instead of using a spatula to spread the frosting around, Gabe preferred to use his hand. He still didn't end up actually spreading it all that much. Pretty much there was a pile of frosting in one corner, and much of it ended up being scooped into his mouth.

The sprinkles. The first piece of this brownie that we ate was like putting an open-faced peanut butter sandwich that had fallen, face down, into a kitty litter box into our mouths. Eventually, the sprinkles soaked up some of the oil from the frosting and became edible. Also, when Gabe wasn't looking, I dumped all the loose sprinkles into the trash can. Still, after it was all said and done, the layer of frosting and sprinkles nearly doubled the thickness of the brownie.

There was supposed to be a video with this, too, but Blogger is still being a useless piece of garbage. Seriously, if they don't get their problems worked out soon, I'm going to look elsewhere, and they will just have to do without the traffic the literally fives of people who visit this blog produce for them. That will really hit them where it hurts.

And I have a brief update on Gabe's developing lying skills. Today, he took his first steps in covering up the evidence.

For about two weeks now, I've been taking Norah upstairs and the three of us have been "playing" up there. I use the quotes because all I'm doing during this time is cleaning up the epic messes that Gabe keeps creating up there.

Today, I was in his room sorting through cars, trains, legos, and other assorted toys and the two of them were playing in the landing. "Cars" was playing in the DVD player, but the TV wasn't turned up very loud, so I couldn't hear anything. In addition to this, Norah is presently obsessed with the functioning of doors. She loves closing them, and had closed the door to Gabe's room a few minutes earlier. For awhile, I opened the doors back up, but I've since given up on it as she will just close it again in less than a minute.

After just a few minutes of them being sequestered in the landing by themselves, Gabe started to whine. "McQueen isn't on anymore! Norah turned it off!"

"Hold on a minute, hon. Let me finish putting away your blocks." So I did. A few minutes later I went back out to the landing to find the TV turned off the "video" mode so the DVD player would show. Easy enough to fix. I pushed the button but nothing happened. I looked down and noticed that the DVD player was off. I also noticed, with a bit of a sinking feeling in my stomach, that the front cover of the DVD bay was missing (the little cover that opens and closes as the DVD tray pops out--a wholly cosmetic piece of the player, but a piece of the player nonetheless). I pushed the eject button, the tray came out, and the DVD was gone, too.

"What happened to the DVD player?" I asked. Gabe was sitting up on the back of the couch.

"Norah did it," he "explained."

"Norah did what?"

"She was pushing buttons." This I didn't doubt for a moment. She's at that age and we really can't watch any TV upstairs while she's up there because she won't leave the TV or DVD player alone and we have no way of covering them up so she can't get to them.

"But how did the DVD player get broken?" I asked.

"Huh?" he said. This is his go-to answer for just about everything he knows the answer to but the sharing of which would get him into trouble. It's his stall tactic while he formulates his story.

I didn't feel like playing the "Huh" game, though, so I just asked him pointblank, "Where's your 'Cars' DVD?"

He pointed in between the couch and the cedar chest behind it. He'd slid the DVD between the thin crack.

I rubbed my face slowly, as I often do when faced with these kinds of issues. I opened and closed my eyes slowly in disappointment at him. "And where's the cover to the DVD player that was broken?" I pointed to the empty hole where, ten minutes earlier, a strip of silver plastic had been.

"It's in my pumpkin," he said, so I told him to get it. He'd hidden it somewhere in Norah's room and came out a minute later.

"Look! It's a hat!" he said, holding the trick-or-treat pumpkin on his head, using a clear distraction ploy. But I wasn't falling for it. I asked for the piece of plastic and he handed it to me. It was well and truly broken, and I have no idea how he managed to break it without breaking the DVD tray at the same time. When the tray is closed, the piece of plastic covering it is all but impossible to open. He would have had to open the tray, grab the plastic bit, and hold it open while he pushed the tray back in. Then, I guess, he must have just pulled on it until it snapped. It's not the kind of thing that could accidentally get snagged and broken. There had to be intent.

But he wouldn't fess up to any of it. And he really needs to work on hiding his evidence, too. I can understand hiding the piece of plastic, but I'm not sure why he dropped the DVD behind the couch. Hopefully, as he gets older, the reasons behind the things he does will become more logical and well-thought-out. Or at least maybe he'll start hiding things in places that don't require me to move a 200 lb cedar chest.