Cooking with your kids - plural

I have long been a fan of Rebecca at www.cookingwithmykid.com. I like the accessibility of her recipes, and the healthy choices she makes.

When it comes to cooking, we've been doing this awhile. I started cooking with with my daughter when she was about 18 months. I had another on the way and was looking for special ways to connect with my sweet girl. We cooked a lot at the beginning. I was also incredibly tired and resorted to letting her watch tv so that I could catch up on what seemed like an endless need for sleep. Giada, Barefoot Contessa, Chopped, these replaced Sesame Street and Yo Gabba Gabba for awhile. And as she got older instead of making pizza and pasta in her play kitchen my daughter made panzanella and balsamic reductions. She asked people who walked in our house if they wanted to try her french onion soup, or perhaps a blue cheese souffle.
Cut to 6 months later and I'm now cooking with a 2 year old and a newborn. Although it was slightly more awkward cooking in an ergo (it worked out much better when he was in the bouncy) we still got it done.
Now we are really zooming ahead to present day. I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old who both love to help in the kitchen. And while I want to say it is smooth sailing, it is not even a rocky ride. It is difficult to manage both of them when trying to cook in a way that the food will taste good. They each want a turn, and they want the same amount of turns. They want to do everything, even the "hard" things. My daughter wants to cut and doesn't understand why she can cut a cucumber with her little knife, but not a carrot or onion. And I want to just stop and say that I am doing it all myself (I have in fact done this, on more than one occasion). But we persevere. We keep trying new ways of working together as a family. We help each other, we take turns as  best we can and when one person gets to pour the sugar and the other is stuck with the flour, well, those are just the breaks.