Little Man Makes Toast

I'm torn. Today something crazy and awesome and terrifying happened. I took The Princess upstairs to change her after a particularly epic pooptastrophe that left me needing to not only wash her, change her clothes, and change my clothes, but also wanting to replace the carpets and repaint the walls (since I'm pretty sure our paint was now peeling from the stink). Don't worry, this is not the crazy/awesome/terrifying thing that happened, just background info. So, I'm upstairs, busy. After a while it occurs to me that all is very quiet downstairs where I left Little Man. So I call down to him to see if he's ok.

"Yes Mommy, I'm fine. I'm just making an Eggo."

Ok, no biggie, he's just making an Eggo. Wait. What??? He's COOKING? By himself???? Ok, what do I do? I am slightly disgustingly preoccupied up here with what I'm doing. Can he DO that? Breath. Ok, we're breathing. Despite my natural motherly instincts to run down there and cook the Eggo for him, cut it into teeny tiny, non-chokeable pieces and spoon feed it to him just to be sure, I need to step back and let him have his independence. Am I right?

So I finish up what I'm doing and wait impatiently on the stairs, where he can't see me, straining my ears to hear and interpret every noise he makes. And you know what? He did awesome! He pulled a chair to the fridge, got an Eggo out of the freezer, pulled his chair to the counter, put the Eggo in the toaster. He moved his chair once more to retrieve a spoon (pat myself on the back for teaching him to spread peanut butter with the back of a spoon instead of a knife) and the peanut butter and then went back to the toaster, where he carefully retrieved his Eggo, spread his peanut butter, got down a plate and carried it all to the kitchen table to eat.

I'm torn because on the one hand, I couldn't be prouder of my little guy for being so clever and independent. On the other hand I'm terrified he may burn the house down while I'm in shower one day. (What's missing from this story is the information that last week after putting The Princess down for her nap I came downstairs to find him attempting to microwave a bag of popcorn by himself- also with much success, though he was stumped into waiting for my help by the plastic packaging on it). I always let him help with things like cooking, but if I didn't show him how to do it maybe he wouldn't try and be safer. Or maybe he still would try and he's safer if he's been shown how to do it properly? I just don't know!! In my perfect world they'd just manufacture giant kid sized hamster balls that magically kept them from ever being hurt, sad or scared, and I'd be a much more relaxed Mommy! Teaching them, guiding them, helping them, and then eventually letting them go and watching them do it alone... Man parenting is HARD sometimes! In the end, I think I have to give this one a big "Way to go Little Man!"