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My cookie-hatred is an adulthood development. As a kid, I would beg and plead my mom to play bakery. And even though she, too, has the cookie hatred, she would oblige me once a week. On Fridays we'd fling flour around the kitchen. My grandfathers would call and I'd climb the footstool to reach the phone. "W______'s Bakery. Can I take your order?" I'd ask. They'd place their orders and would come visit later in the day.


Not the face of someone who would grow up to hate cookie-making as much as I do, is it?

I'm not exactly sure what made me think that making cookies with Clara Jane would be a good idea. I think I'm just desperate for anything that might combat 1)the borderline personality disorder she's developed, thanks to the molars she's cutting, and 2)being cooped up in the house because it's so damn cold outside. When we ventured out yesterday, I bought something that goes against every anti-processed-food tirade that's ever issued from my lips; I bought a giant tube of pre-made sugar cookie dough. Mainly because I'd rather feed my child yummy preservatives than take a chance with the raw eggs in homemade dough.

That was a good call, considering that the nanosecond I placed 1/4 of the dough-log before Clara "Lovin' in the Oven" Jane, she had her mouth wrapped around it, attempting to cram the entire thing down her gullet.

We won't be sharing the cookies made from that dough with anyone on our Christmas list. Well, except for people we don't like.

As we patted and cut the dough, flung green sanding sugar around the house, and took turns trying to swallow whole portions of tube-dough, I turned on "A Charlie Brown Christmas", just for a little atmosphere. I didn't expect Clara Jane to pay much attention to it, as she prefers creepy people in weird costumes to cartoons. So is it any wonder that, when the show opened with all the ice skating children and Clara Jane started waving and squealing, "Hello, Kids! Hello!", that I dropped my star cookie cutter and cried. My kid, with a high chair tray covered in raw cookie dough and green sprinkles, bursting with excitement at something that has been a part of my holidays since I was her age. I didn't know which way to go - to be the mom and relish seeing my daughter so excited and happy, or to be a little girl again, awash in my own cookie Charlie Brown memories.

I wound up making most of the cookies, of course, while Clara Jane ate dough and shook the bottles of sprinkles with wild abandon, shouting, "Sprinkles! Sprinkles!" At least I had the forethought to only open one of the bottles, which means only two rooms in my house are now green and sticky. But it was worth it. Even if the cookies were prepackaged, collided with each other as they baked, and were swimming in green sugar. And even if some of the dough was a little slobbery. It was all just fine, because we traded lines from "Jingle Bells" in our sugar-delirium. And that's what Christmas is all about, right?

(Photos of the decorating frenzy located on the Flickr bar to your right.)