Irrational Kitchen Mania

Cole loved playing kitchen.  He still enjoys it but he was obsessed with toy kitchens when he was younger. Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to buy gifts involving some great wooden food toys with Velcro that were "cuttable" etc.  You name it.  Pizza, cupcakes, bread, kabob kit, magnetic ice cream etc.  Cole would occasionally mess up the kitchen with these things but overall it was okay.


Then at our old daycare providers garage sale I helped her with, she was selling this kitchenette so I picked it up!  It was fantastic.  We were relieved to get all of that stuff out of our kitchen cabinet and
away from the broken pots and pans (broken by Cole).  So over 100 individual pieces of kitchen stuff now had their own place.  It was wondrous and magical and all of that.  Until Kai got old enough to get into it.

Enter the kitchenette nightmare.  These aren't pepperoni pieces, cookies, and market goods to Kai, these are a recipe for disaster soup.  He was NOT happy unless everything had its own place not touching the kitchenette.  We lived in a perpetual state of over 100 pieces being scattered all over the living room and of course the rogue pieces that found their way elsewhere.  1/4 of a wooden green pepper behind the curtain two rooms away?  Of course!

His feelings about it were so strong that I really couldn't clean it up.  This last weekend I tried doing it while he was in his high chair eating a snack.  I was half way done when his snack was over and he bee-lined it directly for the kitchenette and proceeded to trash and toss every single piece away from the kitchenette as fast as possible.  In 30 seconds he dismantled every single pepperoni piece from every single pizza slice and every pizza slice apart from each other along with everything else I had just spent the last 15 minutes on.  I patiently tried one more time and he would grab for things as soon as he saw me putting them down.  I imagine his baby brain screaming "ZOMG NOES!!!!"

After a giant "GAAAAH!" on my part I yelled at T "That's it!  Get me like 10 baggies!"  He quickly delivered a garbage bag and it all went in.  I then calmly explained to Cole that until Kai gets older, we're going to store all the kitchen stuff away in his closet.  Cole of course, having moved on to swords and pirates took it with a shrug and an "okay".

Out of pity for Kai I did leave him 3 clangy pans to tide him over.  Of course, they didn't belong IN the kitchenette.  They immediately made their way into the green bucket.  Which for him was surprisingly organized.

As if to get the last word, he knocked the bucket over.  Then all was right with the world again.