Sugar

"I'm going to regret this."

The words ran through my mind as I took the pen and scribed my name on the sign-up sheet.

It had been a normal day for our family. As I was picking up the little man from preschool that evening the teacher had just finished taping the treat sign-up sheet for the school Halloween party to the door of his classroom.

We were the first ones to sign up, so the choice was ours.

"Look buddy, what do you want to bring to your party?" I asked the little man.

I began to go down the list one at a time out loud.

"Apples?"

"No," little man quickly interjected.

"Cheese?"

"Nooooo."

"Crackers?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Sugar cookies?"

As I read the words aloud, I tried to stop myself, but it was too late.

"YEAH!" Little man exclaimed. "I wanna bring swugar coooookies!"

It was too late. I tried to talk him into something easier, but his mind was already made up.

"Are you sure you don't want to bring juice boxes?" I asked, trying in vain to make juice boxes sound exciting.

But the little man was on to me. And he was sure of his decision.

"Noooo mommmmmaaaa," he said. "I wanna bring swugar coooookies!"

His blue eyes looked up at me, pleading.

I sighed as I took the pen and put my name next to the sugar cookies category.

My history of making cut-out sugar cookies is not a good one and I was fearful of what I had just gotten myself in to.

But the smile that beamed across the little man's face as I signed us up for cookies gave my some courage to attempt a feat that I had only tried a few times before.

{With disastrous results.}

When I got home that night, I informed the husband of what I had just done. In a flash of instant relief I told him that I could just buy the take-apart sugar cookies at the store and bake them. I remembered I had just seen fun ones the weekend before that had cute ghost images in them.

"That's lame," he said, as my bubble of relief quickly burst. "We need to make cut-out cookies, that's way more fun."

I was stuck.

As the week drug on, the little man asked each day if it was time to make sugar cookies. Even while laying on the couch, fever raging and fighting the flu, he asked me nearly every day if today was sugar cookie day.

A few days before the party little man's fever finally broke and he was on the mend (although mommy was still fighting a particularly nasty bought of bronchitis). I took sugar cookie dough from the refrigerator, got out the menagerie of cookie cutters, icing and decorative tips and took a deep, deep breath.

After a few tries and a bought of high frustration, I quickly learned that there was definitely someone looking over me as I lifted my first successful ghost cut-out and placed it on the cookie sheet.

Now, only 39 more to go.

One by one the little man and I rolled out the dough and made an assortment of bats, ghosts and pumpkins. While some definitely came out better than others, I had at least enough recognizable cookies for the little man's Halloween party.

With my kitchen covered in cookie dough, frosting and sprinkles, I looked over my successful mound of cut-out cookies.

Victory was mine.

And as we walked into the preschool the next morning carrying our cookies, the little man proudly exclaimed to everyone that we had brought cookies for the party.

And that he had made them.

As I walked out the door I smiled to myself, thinking of how proud the little man was of his cookies.

And I reminded myself that next year, we are so signing up for apples.