Every Saturday morning, my husband and seven-year-old make pancakes. It's their ritual. 
At seven, our son can measure the pancake mix, drag a chair to the sink, pour in the water, and mix up the batter. Then he waits impatiently for Daddy to come along and cook the pancakes on the griddle.
He can't wait until he's old enough to flip the pancakes all by himself, but he's still too short to reach the ones at the back.
However, he still manages to give all the pancakes a personal touch--he adds colored sprinkles to the batter. (I think this is the reason that no one else in the house partakes in the Saturday Pancake Tradition.)
Once the pancakes are cooked, my boy and his dad head to the dining room. He usually wants someone to cut his pancakes for him, because he's a little slow and clumsy with the knife. But he's got to learn sometime, so lately, he's been on his own.
Last weekend, as he sawed away at his breakfast, he called out, "I have the cutting knife!"
"The cutting knife?" I asked. "Isn't every knife a cutting knife?"
"No, Mom," he told me. "In pancakes, you have a cutting knife and a butter knife. That's the rules."
This from a kid who doesn't know what to do when a restaurant gives him a salad fork and a dinner fork.
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