Ivan's Kitchen

"Watch you put that there," Ivan said as he entered the house.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It's a kitchen, for me," he said, approaching to check it out.

Yesterday, while Ivan was spending the night at my parents', I bought him a play kitchen from Ikea. Surprisingly enough, it was easy to put together, for an Ikea product, that is.



He's spent the last few months constantly playing kitchen that finally I broke down and decided it was worth spending a hundred bucks for him to have a kitchen.

Initially, Andy wanted to buy him a kitchen this past Christmas, but I balked at the price and didn't think he would enjoy it much. I didn't think he really cared to play kitchen, until this past spring, when he basically wouldn't leave daycare, but cooked, served me food and washed dishes for about 45 minutes.




Ivan timidly, but with a smile, approached the kitchen. He turned on the stove. The stove is an electric glass stove top--which actually looks just like our actual stove top--with two button that he can push to turn on a burner.

He opened the cabinets. He looked at his utensils. "Oh, a little one," he said looking at a pair of thongs.

"What am I going to cook," he asked.

I offered a suggestion, which he dismissed.

"How about Didi's meat?" I tried again.

"No, that's too hard," he said.

"I'm going to make cream cheese hummus," he decided.

While I went upstairs to get dressed for work, he took hummus out of the fridge, scooped it into a pot, and was stirring it on the stove.

"Aah, how about you make playdoh hummus," I offered, taking everything to wash out.

"You can't make playdoh hummus," he answered, frowning. "What am I going to cook?"

We settled on pasta. I gave him some noodles to put in his pot. Then he wanted to take some more himself.

When I returned from work, he quickly went to open the fridge and show me pasta he cooked.



He "cooked" his pasta, sprinkled some grated cheese on it, wrapped it in saran wrap, and stored it in the fridge. Just like I would've done.

"Try it, mama," he said. "Crunchy pasta," he said smiling.

He brought out his pot of pasta for "you, dadda and me, that's for us," to eat.

And we had to help ourselves to some. Then he put it back in the fridge.

"That's for later."

Kitchen at the end of the day.