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“No, this is okay,” Dahlia tells me.

Then she plops a largely overflowing tablespoon of cinnamon into the small mixing bowl, and leaves a dusty little trail of it on the counter. I guess if we’re going to ignore the rules here, this is the part where it does the least harm.

She goes in for the second spoonful, and it goes more or less the same. Except when it comes to putting it in the bowl, she flings it in.

“Lean back or you’re going to inhale–”

She starts coughing before I can warn her. That was a mom fail.

It’s even more of a fail when she coughs right into the bowl and more of it is blown into the air. I grab her under her arms and scoop her up and away from the cloud of it.

“I like sim.”

She starts coughing again, making her statement that much more hilarious.

“Cinnamon,” I correct.

“I can call it sim,” she insists.

I laugh at her matter-of-fact tone. Cinnamon is a hard word to nail down.

“Alright, close enough then. Do you still want to help?”

“Is it the cookie part yet?” she asks.

“So close, come here.”

I wave away what may be left of the cinnamon cloud, and put her back on her stool.

I measure out the sugar, and I don’t level that either. What’s the point in starting now?

Her eyes light up, and she claps excitedly when I grab the bowl of the dough we mixed no more than five minutes ago.

“Finally,” she whispers.

We spend the next chunk of the afternoon rolling our dough into little balls, or not-so-little. Her doing. We coat them in sugar, and lay them out on our pan. She’s not thrilled that they have to sit in the fridge for an hour, but I do my best convincing her that it’s worth it.

Thankfully it only takes a few minutes of impatient questioning before her attention moves to the dolls she left laying on the living room floor earlier. That’s the last of the help I receive from her.

Hours later, when I’m so sick of looking at cookies that I could collapse, Autumn walks through my front door.

“It smells so good in here!” she exclaims.

I point to the newest batch that’s sitting on a cooling rack.

“These ones are still warm.”

She doesn’t hesitate, picking one up and breaking it into two. Steam rises from the thick center, and suddenly I’m not sick of them anymore. My mouth is watering.

Dahlia comes up to hug her and swears she should have another one because she shouldn’t be the only one without a cookie at this moment. I give in, handing her one of the smaller ones. She notices and makes a little face, but mercifully says nothing.

“Usually I’m the late one. You were supposed to help us with these,” I chide.

She pouts.

“I know, I let Miles distract me for too long with some video game. Completely lost track of time, I’m sorry!” she says with her mouth full. A couple crumb fly out onto the ground, but I just smile to myself about it. We’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do anyway.

I step forward to hug her as soon as my daughter lets go.