Tuesday night after the kids had gone to bed, I pulled out the Christmas cookies and poured a tall glass of cold milk. On Wednesday morning after the kids had gone to the babysitter, I poured a second hot cup of coffee — the perfect companion for another round with the cookies.
Each year for Christmas, my mother-in-law in Arizona ships significant amounts of cookies to her loved ones in various states — brothers, children, grandchildren and so on. I’m very happy to report that my wife gets along great with her mother because it means we’re on the receiving end of a variety of holiday cookies.
The ones with the little peanut butter cups in the middle are pretty good, so are the ones with Hersey’s Kisses. But I’m also just fine with your traditional chocolate chip and sugar cookies. A very sweet but desired cookie that I sampled this year featured an Oreo dipped and covered in frosting.
Obviously, the diet that I need to get back on is suspended during the holiday stretch. In past years, I’ve tried to stick to a diet when the cookies arrive, but it’s impossible to stay out of them. One year, we even asked her to not send so many. This year, I think we got extra because of the kids.
You try to be a responsible parent when it comes to the sweets. You limit the number of cookies that the little ones can have, plus you have to plan on the timing of offering this sweetness. We’ve had to hide the extensive cookie stash in the childproofed cupboards in the kitchen just so they’re not in constant sight on the counter. In fact, that’s probably a good move for me as well.
When you’re around a 3-year-old who has sampled the joys of eating cookies, you have to be careful about even mentioning the word. My father-in-law made this mistake a few nights ago. Sitting in the living room with Jude on his lap, he asked him something about cookies. That’s all it took — he immediately remembered that we have some in the house and demanded that one be given to him immediately. If the request is denied, he had a temper tantrum strategy to unleash on us.
Well, I guess I choose my battles. In this case, he ended up with a cookie on a plate at the table. But in reality, it was an opportunity for me to sneak a few for myself.
Merry Christmas everybody!
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News and spends what little free time he has with his wife and two young sons. Do you have a fun story to share about your kids or grandkids? Email it to me at news@philomathnews.com and it just might end up in a future post).