The thing about Pinterest

This morning on my run, I decided that when I got home I was going to bake Halloween cupcakes with the boys. I took mental inventory of the ingredients we had in the cupboards– a Betty Crocker cake mix, a handful of chocolate chips, food colouring and sprinkles and enough icing sugar to make a simple frosting. 

The endorphin high around the seventh kilometer had me envisioning a Pinterest worthy scene, where the boys were licking batter off mixers while I pulled light fluffy golden cupcakes out of the oven to cool. I imagined us sitting at the table, happily decorating each cupcake with colourful frosting, a little dab on Naveen’s nose, while I snapped adorable pictures to post here.

I hate when the kids deliberately ruin my good parenting moments. I mean don’t they understand I’m trying to make memories here?

If I wasn’t begging Deaglan to stop eating the cake mix to which I hadn’t even added the wet ingredients, well then I was chasing Naveen around the house to retrieve my measuring cups and spatula. And after I fished 48 pieces of eggshell out of the bowl because Deaglan was being such a great helper, I practically had to put him in a headlock to find out where the vanilla extract was. He’d shoved it into one of his rocket ships so that I had to use the skinniest tongs we own and with the precision of a surgeon liberate the small container from within the bowels of the toy.

Finally when I’d set the sprinkles and icing on the table, told the boys they each had a decorating station of their own there was a five minute stretch of arguing about who had more sprinkles. Pinching and shoving ensued so that wearily I had to threaten time outs and promises that no one would be eating any bloody cupcakes if this continued.

It made me think of something my brother Craig’s wife posted yesterday -  one of those signs you see everywhere on facebook these days. It said:

Someday we’ll find out that Pinterest is a conspiracy created by a group of men who are tricking women everywhere into cooking, cleaning and working out.