Mom Left Freshly Made Bagels for 5 Mins—What Happens Next Had Her ‘Crying’

A mom-of-two was left in tears after turning her back on a tray of freshly baked bagels, only to return five minutes later and realize that something was amiss.

Activities such as baking have been shown to have a positive impact on mental health. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who frequently undertook simple creative projects were more relaxed and happy in their day-to-day lives.

That didn’t quite end up being the case for Kathryn from Ohio, though. A busy mom of two gave birth to her second child a month ago and already has a 3-year-old son, Cedric, to contend with. Earlier this week, she set herself the task of baking a recipe from the book Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.

It proved anything but simple, though. Kathryn had originally planned on giving the bagels to her OB-GYN during her six-week checkup.

However, her young son had other ideas. “My toddler is my little sous chef and loves to help in the kitchen,” Kathryn told Newsweek. “After we pulled the bagels out of the oven, put them on a cooling rack and cleaned up the kitchen, I told him not to touch them and turned on a show for him to watch while I went to get my baby up from a nap.”

When Kathryn returned from the bedroom with the baby a couple of minutes later, Cedric was where she had left him, watching the television. However, when she went to take a look at the bagels, Kathryn quickly realized something egregious had happened.

“I walked in the kitchen and found a dining room chair pushed in front of the counter with the bagels and a bite taken out of each one,” Kathryn said.

There was no mistaking the culprit, either. “We have no pets, so I immediately knew who was to blame,” Kathryn said. “So I called my son in and asked if he took a bite out of the bagels, and he sheepishly replied, ‘Yes.'”

Kathryn was immediately overcome with emotion at seeing the hard work undone. “Honestly, I teared up and started crying,” she said. “I’m sure partially from hormones and sleep-deprivation, but also because homemade bagels are a labor of love, even when you’re not doing it with a newborn in the house.”

Worse still, she had no time to bake anything to replace them with. Kathryn said Cedric told her: “Mommy, I didn’t think you would know just one little bite!” She was unimpressed though, asking her young son to go to his room as she needed time to calm down and did not want to respond inappropriately.

When she eventually went to speak to Cedric, Kathryn was shocked to see him crying. More heartbreaking still, when she went to comfort him, Cedric told her: “I didn’t know mommies could cry. I wish I didn’t eat the bagels.”

Eventually, they talked things through, and she was able to make him see how it would feel if he had been working on something special and someone had come along and broken it. They hugged it out, and Kathryn set about salvaging the four bagels her son had not taken a bite out of, with the other four “contaminated” ones shared among the family.

Kathryn later posted a picture of the bagels to Reddit, with the upload earning over 45,000 upvotes. She said she hopes it serves as a reflection of how “parenting can be equal parts frustrating and hilarious”

“Baking with small children is definitely the best and the worst of times,” Kathryn said. “I hope people take away that they shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. What might seem like a massive irritation right now can usually turn into a funny story, given the right outlook and a little bit of time.”

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