The oven is off and the great chocolate chip cookie bake off is over!
Last night I got a call from one of my good friends in the ward. He had a work thing this afternoon and needed a babysitter for his kids, a boy (5) and a daughter (3).
"Why not?" said I. "Bring 'em on over, the more the merrier!" Of course that meant that from 8 to 1 I had Squizzle, Peff, Reaggers, Bub, Motor, and my buddy's two. If nothing else it'd supply me with some stories.
Seven dwarfs(do NOT call me Snow White), all under the age of five. And hey, since it's Wednesday,it's baking day.
Who wants cookies?
First, let me explain the logistics of this little disaster in waiting. Have you ever tried to wash seven kids hands and then monitor them to make sure that fingers do not go into noses, mouths, ears or elsewhere? It took ten minutes just to get that done. I quickly came to the conclusion that it was best to do this in shifts, so I sent Pef, Motor, and Bub to watch cartoons while the baby sat in his high chair and the other kids helped measure, mix and roll. Then when it was time for the next batch, we switched.
I think I kind of hurt Motor's feelings a bit. He is used to getting to do a lot more than today, and he told me he was feeling left out. I felt bad and promised him that next time there would not be such a crowd.
I kept a piece of paper and pen handy, because I knew I was going to get some gems and I was not disappointed. Here are some of the better ones:
Reaggers: "Bub is eating the butter!"
(He really was. He had unwrapped a stick and bit the end of the cube off. Probably at least a tablespoon's worth.)
Neighbor Boy: "Fluffy flour equals fluffy cookies!"
(And that, my fellow chefs, is why we sift the flour. Bet you didn't know that. I didn't.)
Neighbor Boy quote #2: You can't eat that dough, there's raw eggs in it!
(At this point I'm really glad I made everyone wash their hands. What do five year olds know about food safety? I guess a lot. Where do kids this age learn this stuff?)
And last but not least (In fact, my favorite line of the day)
Peff: "Don't call people names, you Nerd!"
How am I supposed to respond to that?
Then, when I was cleaning up the dishes, Peff and the neighbor girl were jumping off of the love seat (how many times do I have to say "stop that"?) and Peff head-bonked the poor girl. She got a little bit of a nose bleed, so I brought her into the kitchen, cleaned her up and asked what would make her feel better.
"Drink" she said.
That's easy. "Milk or water?" I ask.
"Milk"
"OK. Let me pour you some." I opened the fridge and she saw a bottle of root beer on the shelf next to the milk.
"No! Root beer! Root beer! Root beer! Root beer better!" she shouts.
It was like someone shouted "Free Clearasil!" at a Poindexter convention. All of them, and I mean all of them, were instantly in the kitchen begging for root beer.
And that's how an entire 2 liter of root beer found itself emptied into the gullets of seven dwarfs. It was worth it.
I'm so glad I get tomorrow off. Enjoy the recipe, I'll post pics if I can find the cable that connects my camera to my laptop.
Ah, I see rootbeer medicine works as well as muffin medicine does at our house. It's odd because the way our child says medicine and muffin makes them sound nearly identical. We went to a lot of work to differentiate them and talk about how one you eat and one you shouldn't eat (he's 2 we're not getting into nuances here, we just don't want anyone eating a tub of tylenol). And then he bonked himself and in a fit of desperation we asked if he wanted muffin medicine to make his head feel better. Nice work parents.
ReplyDeleteP.S. It only took 10 minutes to wash 7 pairs of five year old hands? That is impressive.
This post, and all others that involve messy children, demands pictures. You don't need to be in them, nobody cares what you look like FD.
ReplyDelete