Lucy & Cherry Pie Prep

I skipped Thursday and was going to do two posts yesterday to make up for it, but I didn't get there. I'll do it quickly today by adding another moment from yesterday.

I bought cherries to make pie. They'd sat in my fridge for almost a week so I finally decided to make it. I made the crust while Patrick and Lucy were napping. I started the cherry pitting process when Lucy woke up.

Lucy wants to help all the time. Unfortunately, a 2 year old's help isn't always help and makes the process longer and often a lot messier. Nevertheless, Patrick was napping and Andrew was playing video games so I figured to let her try. I was just starting anyway, so I gave her the task of pulling off every stem. She did a great job with that! Andrew popped into the kitchen, climbed up on the chair next to Lucy, and started helping pull a few times off, too.

I started cutting around the pit on every cherry while she did that. After Lucy finished, I was going to help her twist the cherry halves apart and immediately separate them into different bowls: pit and no pit. However, this was too many steps to follow at once because the halves kept going in the wrong bowls. I modified her directions and told her to just twist the cherries apart and put them in one bowl together. She stood next to me on the chair going "twist... twist... twist..." for each cherry. She dropped them into the bowl. She did a great job again! Before she finished, my mom had shown up to drop off the vanilla I'd requested since I was out from the crepes earlier in the week and cupcakes the week before. My mom helped clean her off as I started pulling the pits out of the cherries. She was a mess, but not as big of a mess as I had expected. We did have to change and spray her shirt, but she was a great helper since I forced myself be patient enough to let her.

I can't guarantee I will always be that patient with her, especially since she tries to touch everything even while saying "no touch" to repeat my directions most of the time (with egg and raw meat I get especially anxious; her fingers always go into her mouth or hair so quickly!), but it was fun this time around.