For your consideration:

Item #1 At 9 months Butter discovered the jars of spices and was smitten.
Item #2 He requests several times a day to have someone hold him and open all the spices so he can sniff them.
Item #3 He did, anyway, until he could open jars himself.
Item #4 And work the stepstool.
Item #5 He regularly pads over to the far end of the kitchen, drags the stepstool over to the spice counter/drawer, and has at it.
Item #6 if not closely supervised he will pour them all over the floor.
Item #7 Lack of close supervision includes blinking during the close supervision of spice sniffing.
Item #8 He opens the jars, sniffs, then recaps nicely unless he smells weakness with the herbs d’provence. Then he speeds to the cinnamon.
Item #9 The cinnamon is the only rat bastard spice to have a flip top.
Item #10 Today I decided I can’t fight this anymore.

I grabbed the cinnamon and the small child. I asked him, “Cinnamon sprinkle, cinnamon shake, you like cinnamon?”

“YEAH” came the resounding answer.

“Let’s sprinkle the cinnamon outside, okay?”

“Tookatooka!” he agreed.

So we spend a half hour outside, him meandering through the backyard and announcing each tablespoon of cinnamon with a crashing wet cement on metal sound, the likes of which only small truck-lovers can make.

On paper I might appear to be an awesome mom. I let my kid shake $2.50 worth of cinnamon all over the patio and lawn. In reality I just take whatever drives me nuts and give it a positive outlet. Outside.

Always with the outside.

Coming soon to our backyard, a whining contest and an indirect-wood-carving-by-drawing-on-thin-paper extravaganza.