The Amazing and Unsuccessful Sugar Cookies Odyssey

Day 1 of the Sugar Cookies.  The kids are having a super-grumpy day, so I think we can cheer up the mood a bit by making sugar cookies before lunch.  I make the dough ready, and by the time it cools in the fridge and is ready to be rolled, Aaron is begging me to put him to bed, and Peter is crying uncontrollably.  Neither of them have a bite for lunch, and they both go down for a nap.  Peter ends up developing a high fever -103.5F- and is feeling absolutely miserable.  After a visit to the walk-in clinic and being Tylenol'd up, he finally gets some sleep after he falls asleep with Daddy in his bed around midnight.
Day 2.  Peter seems to be feeling better, although he is still pretty tired.  Aaron is a little testy and also a little tired, but he never ends up with the short-lived fever that Peter had the day before.  Time to pull out the dough and give it another try.  I try to roll it out, and it's so hard that the tablecloth is slipping all over the place.  By the time I get it to the point that I think it might be flat enough, the boys are busy smushing the cookie cutters into the dough and are having fun making mangled shapes.  I start directing their cookie-cutting efforts, and we end up cutting out about 20 cookies.  Hmmm, I think.  The recipe said it made 40 cookies.  Either my cookies are not flat enough, or my cookie cutters are really big.  I decide my cookie cutters must be really big, because I'm not re-rolling all that dough.  Besides, Aaron probably has snuck 2 or 3 cookies' worth of dough into his mouth while I'm not looking.  Time to throw them in the oven.  I throw them in the oven, set the timer for 12 mintues, and go off to check the Internet for decorating ideas.  After 6 minutes, I discover that you should decorate them before putting them in the oven.  Obviously I have not made these cookies before.  I run to the oven, remove the cookies, and let them cool while preparing some egg yolk paint for the boys to decorate with.  Painting the cookies is a job better suited for Peter than Aaron, although they both have fun for a while.

 

Aaron mangles some cookies, as his "painting" technique involves 

shoving the brush into the cookies over and over again.  

When I try to show him how to paint, he has a breakdown.  

A soother seems to temporarily remedy the problem.  

Aaron happily continues to paint mangle cookies    

 

 Peter takes his job very seriously. 

Now that they have been decorated, I put them in the oven again.  The boys watch the progress carefully.  As they have already been half-baked, I'm not sure how long they should re-bake.  I take them out after another 10 minutes.  5 minutes later I decide they are not yet done.  I put them back in the oven for another 7 minutes.  I take them out again.  They still do not look entirely right.  I decide that they must just need to be cooled all the way down before they look like they should.  Not like I know what they should really look like, as I haven't made them before. 

 The final product.  Can't say I'm too thrilled about their appearance, taste, 

or texture.  I guess I'll have to give this another shot someday!