How to bake a cake with The Bubbly One:
Step 1: Bubbly enters kitchen, grabs cake mix box and demands cake.
Step 2: Explain patiently to Bubbly that we need to cook the cake and it takes a little while (insert approximate Bubbly time e.g. One Sesame Street, 15 songs on YouTube, whatever).
Step 3: Open box. Console Bubbly because the contents do not look like the picture on the box (visual fail, thanks White Wings)
Step 4: Use the pictures on the box to gather and add ingredients. Tell yourself it's a sensory activity as he sifts cake mix from bowl all over bench. Protect remaining eggs from destruction.
Step 5: Pre-warn Bubbly that the beaters will make a loud noise.
Step 6: Warn him again as you put beaters together. All good, he's already hiding.
Step 7: Ease cake into oven without third degree burns as Bubbly tries to get his hands in that battery goodness.
Step 8: Grudgingly let him lick the bowl (if letting him have the bowl isn't true love I don't know what is!)
Step 9: Try to distract him from cake that takes an eternity to cook.
Steps 10-553: Show Bubbly the timer counting down a few dozen times and try to distract with something more appealing than cake. Look longingly at wine bottle as you put the eggs away.
Step 554: Remove cake from oven without burning yourself or Bubbly, or dropping the cake. Degree of difficulty added if Little One decides to join the fun.
Steps 555-632: Repeatedly talk about being safe and not touching the hot cake. Administer first aid when he sticks a finger into piping hot cake.
Step 633: Try to ignore meltdown for withholding cake that looks perfectly ready to him.
Step 634: Finally give cake that's cool enough not to burn his fingers or oesophagus
Step 635: Hide cake before he eats the whole thing, or possibly sigh and put cake away when he doesn't like it. Same cake, different day, so who knows if he'll eat it!
