Bam!

Alex has the video Elmo Cooking. Despite my sometime desire that this be about shrill Elmo in an oven (ha ha), it is instead about Elmo learning to cook from various kitchen notables. One of them is Emeril, who cooks pizza with Elmo. “BAM!” Emeril says as he slaps on olives. “BAM!” echoes Elmo, adding peppers.

So it isn’t surprising that Alex likes to help with our homemade pizza. We made about a dozen of them for guests one Christmas, and Alex never left the kitchen, bamming pepperoni, peppers, mushrooms. A good shot, too.

Pizza

Last night he wanted to help with all steps, perhaps because he’d just come off ripping an “Erase the R Word” button off the bag I take to work, shoved a stack of newspapers off the dining room table, and in general misbehaved like what I termed “some alien life form” (I snuck out of work to see Star Trek yesterday afternoon…) Alex likes to help after being naughty. Much as I like to think it’s his way of apologizing, I think he hopes we’ll be so pleased we’ll just forget his bad behavior of a few moments before. Same thing, really.

Last night, he wanted to handle the dough. I should’ve let him, except I was in a hurry to get the pizza into the oven so Jill could get out the door to a meeting. “Not tonight, Alex. Sorry.”

“Dough! Dough!”

I got the stuff pressed down and he handed me the sauce jar. I spread it out, letting him handle the fork a little (only rookies use a spoon…). Then came his favorite part: cheese. I let him bam a little; he tends to drop it in one big mound in the center of the pie, so we worked on sprinkling.

“Alex, clear! I’m opening the oven!”

“Pepperoni?” he asked.

Someday I’ll report that he actually ate a slice of homemade pizza. (He used to eat the cheese off slices in pizzerias, leaving me to finish what amounted to a warm ketchup sandwich.) He did stick his finger on a drop of sauce on the counter and place his fingertip in his mouth. “Alex – sauce!”

A new food? A new era?? His lips twisted into a sour rectangle, and he ran back to the living room. Later he had his hot dogs. We must bam more.

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The Autism Treatment Acceleration Act has hit the House and Senate.