Day-Hay loves to bake. I do not. Someday, Day-Hay�s baking will be a real benefit. Actually, we�re getting close. I do less and less when she is baking but I�m still not doing little enough to really enjoy the situation. I won�t until Day-Hay bakes and I need do nothing. As it is now, I�m doing more baking than I care for.

But Day-Hay is such an enthusiastic baker and she does learn from her mistakes. She now knows to check and double-check whether she needs a teaspoon or a tablespoon of salt. She�s learned to crack her eggs over a separate bowl so that a mistake with a shell doesn�t destroy the whole project. She remembers to turn the oven from preheat to bake. Baking is just full of discoveries.

One of the problems with the baking, however, is the eating. I find it hard to be good when there are fresh baked goods around so often. Earlier this week, she baked for her class and Saturday night she baked for the other teachers at the Sunday School. Finding an appreciative crowd to eat her baked goods helps some but broken cookies whisper that they have no calories and someone has to eat them. Mr. Philately has too much self-control and Kat is rarely home these days because she�s working on stage crew. That leaves me and Day-Hay. What�s a Mom to do?

The more serious problem, however, is that Day-Hay equates the amount of enthusiasm for her baking projects with the amount of my interest in her and my approval of her. But my impatience with baking really is no reflection on her. I have more interest in baking than I would otherwise because she is the one doing it but I don�t find baking relaxing and I can�t relax when I�m baking. I get too frustrated by it. I�m not a good enough baker to know, beyond the basics, which mistakes are not very serious and which will ruin the product. I therefore can�t just flow with it unless I can learn not to care about the results. I suppose I could try but baking is one of the places that I tend to be results oriented.

Perhaps Day-Hay needs a different mother. I�d trade her for my craftsy niece because her mother, Maxiegirl, likes to bake---except that Sister likes to bake too.

Well, if parenting is an obstacle course designed to teach us about ourselves and to improve us, then mother-daughter baking is that rope in the gym that I could never quite climb. Come to think of it, there�s not much difference between rope burns and oven burns. I get burned both ways.

|