Crisscross steak

When I was pregnant with Biscuit, Jeff and I used to talk and wish about what we hoped Biscuit would get from each of us.

There were physical things -- like I wanted him to have my blue eyes and Jeff's height. And there were brain-related things -- I hope he's as smart as Jeff with my sense of making do with what you have. And there were emotional things -- I wished for Jeff's patience and my outgoing-ness.

He got my blue eyes, but he's still in the 5th percentile of height and weight for his age (that means 95% of kids his age are taller and weigh more than he does). He's definitely showing signs of intelligence. He's sorely lacking patience - although I think all 2-year-olds lack that. But he definitely got my outgoing-ness. He usually talks to anybody anywhere or should I say everybody everywhere.

There are still some things that are undecided. Lately, he's been holding his crayons in his left hand more than his right. I'm a lefty. As for Biscuit's size, Jeff said he didn't get tall until his junior year of high school, so there's plenty of time for growth spurts.

As we watch Biscuit grow and learn, we still play the "I hope he gets ..." game. Like tonight.

We stopped by the grocery store to get milk, bananas and a couple of other things. As we walked past the meat department, they had some N.Y. strip steaks on a really good sale.

I said, "Jeff, if you could have anything you wanted for dinner tonight, what would it be?" I knew the answer before I asked the question.

My non-excitable Jeff got this look on his face of a little kid who just got a new toy. "Steak and potatoes!" he said with a big smile. And I thought to myself, I want Biscuit to have that look on his face countless times in his life.

We got home and brought the groceries in, and I started cooking dinner. I eat my steaks medium-well, but Jeff ... he likes his steaks dang-near mooing when they hit the plate. So I looked up steaks in one of my go-to cookbooks to find out how to cook his just how he likes it. I'm used to grilling steaks, but tonight, I was using a grill pan on my stove. That pan has ridges just like the outside grill does.

Let me side step right here and say that I would much prefer to cook steaks on the gas grill outside (if for no other reason than the massive amount of smoke that was in my kitchen tonight), but our grill is broken. My parents are giving me money to buy one for my birthday, but that's not for another few weeks. So that's where my handy-dandy grill pan comes in.

So to get the full steakhouse feel, I rotated Jeff's steak a quarter turn halfway through cooking on each side so it had the nice crisscross marks on each side. When his was done (i.e. still bloody!), I called him into the kitchen and asked him to cut into it to make sure I cooked it correctly.

His eyes lit up when he saw it. "COOL! How'd you get the marks on it like that?" he asked.

"What?" I asked, not because I didn't hear his question, but because getting those marks is an easy thing that anybody could do.

But then I realized that it wasn't about the actual process of how I had done it. It was more about him being impressed that I went to the trouble to take a nice cut of steak and turn it into an impressive meal just because he asked for it.

I don't know a word that describes that, but whatever you call it, THAT is something I want Biscuit to have -- amazement and wonder with a little touch of innocence and awe, combined with the ability to make someone else feel really, really good.