How to make an apple pie with your children:
1. Go to apple orchard on field trip with your child, his/her classmates, a manic teacher, a handful of grimly enthusiastic parents, and a pair of shoes with treads because it is inevitably slippery with all the mushy rotten apples stomped into the grass. Endure hayride and associated coccyx bruising. Bring home 2 bags of freshly picked apples that your 5 year old dropped at least 4 times.
2. Realize you now have 11 bruised apples in your house. Decide to make pie, and Wonderful Memory with Kids. Two birds, one stone, winning.
3. Head to grocery store. Stand in the refrigerator aisle staring at the pre-made pie crust. Attempt to talk yourself into making a pie crust because it isn’t that hard and you want your kids to remember you as a mother who made her own pie crust. Stand in refrigerator aisle for 5 long minutes, chewing thumbnail.
4. Buy pie crust.
5. Set up two apple-prep stations because god forbid your kids have to share anything ever at any time. Congratulate yourself for heading the bickering off at the pass. Feel smug.
6. Oversee round one of hand-washing, get everyone seated at their little spots, and continue feeling smug until your daughter grates off the tip of her pinky with her apple peeler.
7. Rinse blood off of apples, cutting board, daughter, apple peeler, self. Bind daughter’s finger.
8. After 10 minutes of sobbing, keening, and recriminations, get just a little bit tired of the dramatics. Stay calm because goddammit we are making memories. Grit teeth until jaw throbs.
9. Get all apples peeled through sheer force of will. Set kids up with the peeled apples and 2 [two] matching apple corers. Watch them happily crush the peeled apples with the corers. Allow self to feel creeping sense of smugness until son slips sideways off of his corer and bangs his funny bone on the edge of the kitchen table.
10. Hold squirming, screaming son while he writhes and inadvertently stomps on your bare foot.
11. Send children outside so you can finish slicing the apples for the pie filling. Daughter calls, “We’re going to make a bow and arrow, ok?” Feel so desperate for 5 minutes alone in a quiet kitchen that you hear yourself yell back, “Ok! Have fun!”
12. Finish slicing apples, put them in a bowl, put bottom pie crust into pie dish, and head outside to respond to son’s screams of pain.
13. Flush son’s eye out with water as he cries that a bit of tree bark was flicked into it. Look accusingly at daughter. Daughter will look back with saucer eyes of innocence and concern.
14. Bring everyone back in for another round of hand washing and to prep the filling. Helpfully point out to daughter that if she juices the fresh lemon she might get some of the acid in her wound from the apple peeler, in which case it will sting.
15. Time out while daughter throws self on sofa and wails about the unfairness of not getting to juice the lemon.
16. Allow daughter to juice the lemon and get the acid in her wound from the apple peeler.
17. Time out while daughter throws self on sofa and wails about pain of lemon juice in wound.
18. Add 2 [two] Tbsp of sugar, 2 [two] tsp of cinnamon, and 2 [two] pinches of nutmeg to filling. Stir. Send everyone back outside to play with the bow and arrow.
19. Wrestle pie into oven.
20. Spend the next 90 minutes fending off barbarians of all ages as the pie cooks and cools, emitting the most delicious smell known to family kind.
21. Slice generous portions of warm pie for everyone. Give self double portion, plus two times the homemade whipped cream, plus a large second [two] glass of white wine. You’ve made a memory, and you deserve your just desserts.
amomynity 
good one! hint: don’t peel apples next time.
But then how would we get the blood into the filling? Confused.
Step 22….watch with unmitigated hatred as people on TV and in the movies do this whole thing in a kitchen filled with golden light, surrounded by gentle piles of hand sifted flour, perfectly sliced apples (i.e. no blood or finger parts) and 2.3 perfectly quaffed, clean and happy children smiling in loving adoration at their saintly mother (and its ALWAYS a saintly Mother…never a saintly Father), deeply appreciative of not only the apple pie but the love that was baked into it.
Step 23. Refill wine glass.
Step 24. Eat cold pie for breakfast. It’s good for a hangover.
Awesome. I have these memories to look forward to. Thank you 🙂
Thanks for reading, sweetie pie! XOX
Priceless post. I made chocolate chip cookies with Dash one night after dinner this week. Washed hands. Cleared everything off the island (candle, orchid, knives) and sat him there with the big bowl between his legs. He whisked the dry stuff, got to hold the electric beater with me, and learned that those brown hard things were chocolate. After the cookies went in the oven – STAND BACK! – I dusted the sugar off every inch of his exposed skin while holding him over the sink. For all that work he got a quarter of a cookie and a story to tell his nanny, who loved the results. I’m sure I will regret this someday when he decides he can do this himself while I’m brushing my teeth and we end up with a 9-fingered boy. Your post makes me see the years ahead with an equal portion of dread and delight. Miix and bake.
I love your handle, first of all, and this story, secondly. Thanks so much for reading. Your boy is one lucky little cutie. XOX