Yesterday I’m making dinner and my 4-year-old Emma is doing her usual thing – dragging her step stool around, trying to reach everything. “Mommy, can I crack the eggs? Can I stir the soup?”
I give her the usual safe stuff, you know? Wash cherry tomatoes, tear lettuce. But I can see it in her face – she knows it’s not real helping. She wants to do what I’m doing, standing at the counter like a big kid.
Then she was trying SO hard to reach the cutting board, stretching on her tippy-toes, and she just… couldn’t. She looked at me with these big watery eyes and said, “Mommy, I’m too little for everything.”
And then she sat down right there on the kitchen floor and started crying. Not tantrum crying – heartbroken crying. “I can’t help you for real. I’m just a baby.”
Lord, that broke me. My husband walked in right then, took one look at us both sitting on the floor, and said, “What if we fixed this problem together?”
Three days later, he calls us into the kitchen. And there it is. A whole custom island, just Emma’s size. Her own workspace with shelves for her dishes, hooks for her utensils, even little containers for her “ingredients” (currently goldfish crackers and cheerios, because priorities).
Emma walked around it like she was in a museum. “Is this… is this really mine?”
And my husband, this man who works 10-hour days, he’s beaming like he just won the lottery. “Now you can cook right next to Mommy, chef Emma.”
The whole setup is so thoughtful. He even ordered these adorable mini cooking tools from some crafter on the Tedooo app and painted everything in her favorite turquoise. I didn’t even know he knew that was her favorite color.
Now every morning she “helps” me make breakfast, and every evening she’s my sous chef. Real helping. Standing at her own workspace, measuring, mixing, being part of it all.
But honestly? This isn’t just about the kitchen island. This is about a dad who heard his little girl say she felt too small for the world, and instead of just telling her she’d grow up someday, he changed the world to fit her.
This is why I married this man. Because when the people he loves are hurting, he doesn’t just offer comfort – he builds solutions. With his own two hands, after working all day, because that’s what love looks like in our house.
Credit to the rightful owner~
