"Your cooking in the kitchen?! AGAIN?"

A large majority of the shenanigans of my life involve my husband (if not caused by said party).  This time is no exception.  He came home, I quickly learned, kind of grumpy.  I was in the kitchen, cooking spaghetti & meatballs and had gotten to the point of boiling the water for the angel hair pasta (that I was quite excited about indulging in - in spite of the promise to myself I would discontinue eating like a 13 year old boy after my birthday) Charlie was contently running around in his walker, chasing the dog and singing his favorite "Bah, Bah, BAH!" song.  My husband looked around and said "Your cooking...?  Again?  I thought we talked about this...?"  Yes, America.  My husband freaks out when I'm cooking.  Not because I don't cook (in fact, I love to cook.. and can be quite good at it actually) but, since having a baby he doesn't like me cooking in the kitchen, with the tot running around in his walker.  This seems like a pretty reasonable request when my husband *caught* me frying bacon one day, "Something could happen and knock over the skillet and hurt him!" he said.  "Ok.." I thought, "...Highly unlikely the skillet is going to jump off of the stove.. but, ok."

As our child grew older, I realized that Charlie was big on personality and really liked being in the kitchen, bathroom, shower, bedroom, where ever with me.  So, my choices for consuming/cooking food were limited to when he was sleeping (which, turns out he's a light sleeper) or.. when my darling husband came home (which could be as late as 9 p.m.)... Being that I never had the will power to be anorexic in high school, starving was not an option, and since I was still cursing my baby weight I refused to eat 'fast' food (i.e. microwavable foods) - oh, no.. I had to cook something.. and it seems as though I was going to have to *gasp!* cook, while my son was in the kitchen with me!!  Quick!  Call Child Services!  I'm a starving mother who is cooking in the kitchen with an (almost) toddler!  Take me away!!  Back to the story..  So my darling husband "catches" me cooking again.. in the kitchen.. and gets all huffy and we actually yell at one another mostly me telling him what an idiot he is and how women for thousands of years have been cooking - some with open flames - with their children present.  He yelling back how a friend who was in his 'grade' in school had burns from when he was a tot.  Then my husband grabbed our accordion style wooden baby gate, rolled little Charlie out of the kitchen and propped it against the wall blocking our sweet little boys entry into the kitchen while yelling his argument to me (impressive feat since I had no idea he knew how to multi-task).  So I gesture to the gate saying "...And this is better?!" as if on cue, my son grabbed the gate with his little chubby fingers and lifted it over his head.  Thankfully, we've had the gate for awhile, so it didn't fold up and pinch him.  My husband quickly ran over to Charlie, as I'm basking in the glow of (once again) being right; grabs the gate from Charlie and while untangling his little fingers from the gate, ignoring his glare of 'how dare you take my new toy' my husband says "C'mon Charlie!  Your making daddy look bad!"


That phrase made the 3 arguments we had over this stupid issue totally worth it.