teaparwees.

There is this aisle in every grocery store where you can find all kinds of sugars, flours, baking soda, chocolates, corn starch and these pastel-colored sugary decorations for cakes. Not long ago I referred to it as the mystery aisle. As in I don't bake, am seriously phobic I'll burn down my house, and therefore am just going to skip over this one and pretend I have no idea what's down there aisle. Brownie craving? No problem. I knew just where to find them: toward the front of the store in a fancy little display right next to the fresh-baked chocolate cookies and apple turnovers I never knew I definitely needed.

Then followed the I don't bake period. I had discovered a love for cooking, food, and how fun it was to experiment in the kitchen and come up with something for which people came away asking for a recipe. Cooking? Yes. Baking? [In a cheesy Italian accent] Faaget abaaut it. I wasn't dumb. I knew my limits. Well, mostly. There was that one time I tried deep frying rice noodles and caused a kitchen fire. But I digress. In the IDB period I had overcome my total denial of it's existance, yet continued to avoid it because when I peered in from the threshhold, pretending to be interested in the latest version of Cheerios that was on the end-cap, I could clearly see most women down there knew exactly what they were doing. You know the type. The super-mom with 6 kids in matching, hand-sewn outfits, all of whom manage to behave while grocery shopping? Yeah, that just wasn't going to happen.

My demise began when, not long after we moved to Portland, I began making treats for David's weekly staff meetings. [Sidenote: Not only is this an excellent way to make your husband's employees love him, but it also comes in handy when his boss has a mouth full of sweet teeth.] Lucky for me, we had a stash of flour, sugar, baking soda and salt at the house, in addition to a shelf full of stellar cookbooks. Alas...I eventually ran out of sugar. Drat.

I'm happy to say I have recovered from my baking-aisle phobia and can now enter without intimidation. And those scary ladies? They're actually quite helpful. Did you know it's called The Baking Aisle? Yep, there is an actual name for it. Who knew?

We grocery shop on Monday mornings after we hit the gym because of two reasons: (a) my husband hates grocery shopping, and (b) most people there are moms and retirees. My favorite grocery-shopping crowd. If Emily has a meltdown, it phases no one. They've either been there or are going through it. This morning we hit the baking aisle to pick up some dark chocolate chips for these evil loaded rice crispy treat thingys for David's staff meeting tomorrow. But we also needed marshmallows. Did you know these things come in chocolate, multi-colored, strawberry, plain, large, extra large and mini? That's quite an industry.

I slowed at the front of the aisle, where we usually breeze on by. I looked at Em's face and waited for her to realize where we were. She looks over at the mallows, back at me, back at the mallows, and screams, "TEAPARWEES!" Then, she immediately forces herself to calm down, puts her arm out, palm up, and says, "please Mommy, marmawows for teaparwees?" Of course as soon as I smiled back she let it out: the classic Emily giggle. The kind of giggle that comes with an all-over body wiggle and a smile that reaches to Texas.

What is a tea party without snacks? And lumps for the sugar bowl? She goes all out for teaparties. She invites us and a couple of her stuffed animals, and sits us down. She goes to her dress-up stuff and decorates Daddy with a tiara (which is almost always on backwards), choosing who is going to wear the floppy blue hat and who gets the Pollyanna-ish bonnet with the ribbon in the back [don't worry, honey, after much internal struggle I am choosing not to post the photo]. She pulls out her dishes: a tea pot, sugar bowl and spoon, creamer, napkins, plates, tea cups. She folds the napkins into triangles and hands them out. Then she serves everyone tea, asking them whether they'd like one lump or two of "sugar" (enter: mini mallows), doing likewise with the cream. It's absolutely one of her favorite things. Daddy's too, make no mistake.

So, in a sacrifical-lamb sort of way, I suppose it's good that I overcame my Baking Aisle issues. Because what is a tea party without the marshmallows?