Dinner

So, dinner. Occurring regularly since the dawn of time, this most primeval activity happens without forethought or preparation when you are a child. At Mom’s and Dad’s house, the magic dinner fairies wave their wooden spoons and dinner appears, hot and fresh and ready to consume at a beautifully set table.

As a parent trying to replicate this glorious occurrence in your own home, you learn that the dinner fairies are dead, for they cannot survive outside of their natural environment of your parents’ house, and that when you tried to plead and wheedle to get them to come, you have only infuriated the Supreme Dinner Being who will now and forever muddle up your brain as you try to plan a menu. “Ground beef? What am I supposed to do with ground beef?! There’s not a recipe in the world that uses such a ridiculous ingredient!” But you do the best you can to feed your family and keep the illusion alive so that when they move out, your poor unsuspecting children will be greeted with the same dead fairy reality that you were.

In spite of this magical handicap, we were making dinner a few days ago for some friends who have just had a baby. As usually happens under these circumstances, the pressure is on to get the friends’ dinner done and so your own kids have to wait, hungry and pleading as you scream in a flour-coated, stress-filled voice, “No! You can’t eat anything! Darn it all! I’m trying to be nice to other people!” (At least, this ridiculous scenario happens too often in my house. Maybe, hopefully, not in yours.)

Anyway, we got the friends’ dinner done on time, it looked terrific, and the dessert had turned out divinely, so I was very proud of myself as we drove it over to them. Because they’re fairly good friends and we were not staying long, only dropping the food off, I permitted us all to go without shoes on, thinking, “It’s fine. This is just a fun, friendly, casual thing.” We take the food inside and as Josh is driving us home, I put my feet up for a moment to enjoy feeling good.  This forces my pants into view for apparently the first time in a decade, and I realize I have orange jello crusted down one entire leg of my capris and it has somehow dripped onto my skin without me realizing. Oh my. Ok. I probably shouldn’t have gone into their house like that.  As I continue my now-embarrassed search, I realize I have a giant black schmear across the other leg, from who-knows-what and having been there for heaven-knows-how-long.

At this point I’m replaying the conversation with our friends in my head. As I happily announce their delectable dinner and with it, implied confidence that it was prepared in a clean, healthy kitchen, I change their response from, “Wow. This looks delicious. That Sephonnie sure has it all together,” to “Aaahh!! Why aren’t you wearing shoes! And look at your legs! Put the food down and go take a shower, woman!”

We get home and trying to forget about this less-than-impressive debut, I busy myself finishing up our dinner. The kids have decided on spaghetti, so I put the noodles on to boil and tidy up the kitchen while we wait. The timer goes off and I secure the fancy drainer lid to the pot and pour out the cooking water. And then I go to take the lid off. In the mere 13 seconds the lid has been on the pot, it has apparently decided to weld itself to its partner and take up permanent residence there. The lid will not come off. I’m struggling and squeezing and turning and banging the pot against the sink. It will not come off. I run water over it. I get a giant butcher knife out and try to pry it off. It will not budge. At this point I am praying and near hysterical crying. It’s getting late, Josh is gone, and it appears there will be no dinner for anyone. Ever. The kids have caught on to my distress and are alternately weeping helplessly, “What about our dinner??” and rummaging through the drawers for every sharp kitchen object they can find – meat forks, steak knives, can openers – to assist me in this wretched noodle pot battle. In an effort to frighten the lid off, Felicity also gets out two pot lids and begins enthusiastically smashing them together, effectively making road kill out of my last remaining nerves and tolling the death knoll for all happiness everywhere. Just when I’m ready to throw the pot through the window and go get us all Happy Meals, something unhooks and the lid finally slides off. Exhausted, I dump their noodles and sauce in a bowl and settle on Reese’s Peanut Butter footballs for my own evening fare.

Going out to eat is not better for us. I’ve heard we’re not alone in this trial, and I’m not sure if the terrified looks we get from older folks and honeymooning couples as we sit in a nearby booth support or discourage this theory. I was at Denny’s with the three kids while we were out of town recently. While waiting for Judsen’s and Felicity’s food to arrive, I decided to give JJ her cereal. I got out the box, mixed some with her veggies, and began to feed her. Everything is going well until Judsen says, “Uh oh. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to.” I look over and he has knocked down the box of cereal, spilling its contents everywhere and turning our table surface into a vast desert of oatmeal dunes. I reply calmly that it’s okay, I know it was an accident, although I’m not sure if my calmness stems because I’ve done a good job of accepting the reality of dining out with children and I am handling the situation like a pro, or because my mind has finally snapped and I’m just seconds away from grabbing a handful of sugar packets myself and starting an all-out food fight.

Our server comes over to see how we are and Judsen, to his credit, is very sweet about apologizing for the mess. Server starts to assure us it’s fine, it happens all the time, and he’s not offended about cleaning it up, when he looks down to see what exactly has spilled. I see a look of horror in his eyes as he gasps, “What is that?!” Oh, just baby cereal. He seems to calm down at the easy explanation of the foreign substance and heads off to get a rag. As soon as he steps away, Felicity decides to add to the excitement and slosh her pink lemonade onto the table as well, creating a sloppy, gooey stew of oatmeal flakes and soft drink. Poor Server comes back to find an even larger disaster and then returns a third time with an enormous bucket-like saucer to slide the mess into. Poor thing. I should have also encouraged him to find a Haz-Mat suit. Needless to say, we left a very good tip when we were done.

Our younglings have also been known to choke mid-drink and spew milk all over the nearby walls, booths and people (aka The Splash Zone), leave a scrumptious potpourri of half-chewed chicken nuggets, fries, and napkins on the floor, and scribble all over pristine white walls with generously given crayons (ironically delivered to distract the children and keep them from getting into trouble J).

Yes, regardless of where we have it, dinner is an adventure. (We say “adventure” because Horror Story seems too Halloween-y and it’s not even October yet.) But we love our little gourmands and I guess we’ll just keep feeding them, in hopes that science soon figures out how to get those darn dinner fairies to adapt to other surroundings. Perhaps they could breed them with a hardier species, like some kind of dishes-cleaning robot. 

The Bear Necessities

Savoring the necessities of life is nothing new to me. As a busy high school student, I relished the times I could sleep all I wanted and just eat with abandon, instead of snatching a nap during a video clip in history class or cramming in a granola bar before softball practice. Since becoming a mother, this appreciation has been taken to Mt. Everest-esque heights; I have begun to cling to every memory of a bite or snooze taken in peace with the ferocity of a drowning sailor clinging to a piece of driftwood. Except if I really was a sailor clinging to a scrap of wood, I'd either be so excited for a moment alone that I'd fall into a delighted stupor right there and sink to the bottom of the ocean, thus eliminating my need for driftwood. Or, I'd start plucking fish out of the water and stuffing them into my sleeves to stave off the inevitable, "Oh, Mom. Glad you didn't drown ... So, what's for dinner?" that would ensue as soon as the rescue boat hauled me aboard.
Anyway, the necessities of life/luxuries of motherhood are a big deal.
Our morning schedule has recently changed; Judsen's school and JJ's teething have "encouraged" me to get up much earlier than I would like. But, I'm trying to have a good attitude about it, so I get out of bed and try to get things accomplished, even though I'm still tired. (Even if I stayed in bed, it would do no good, as Felicity has recently taken to ripping the covers off my body and hollering, "Mom! Get up! Get up! The sun come-d up! And I'm hungry!!"  And yes, I understand that the fine print in the motherhood contract reads, "By engaging in this profession, you will henceforth and forever feel like you've been run over by a truck.")
So, when my alarm went off the other morning, I had already been up for an hour and a half. The girls were somehow still magically asleep, so I jogged into the other room to turn off the raucous singing. And sitting there, blinking its innocent little doe-eyes at me was the "Snooze" button. Up to this point, I had been handling the morning well, feeling proud of myself for getting things accomplished and not even having a terrible attitude about it. But when that little electronic bully started taunting me with "Hey, Seph? Wanna little snooze?", my mind flashed white hot and I wanted to slap that smug red button off my iPhone's screen and scream back, "You think that's funny?? Of course I want to snooze! That's all I've ever wanted! Well, I'll show you snooze!!"
Thankfully at that moment, my too-long-ignored semi-reasonable alterego decided to speak up. "Sephonnie, calm down. It's just a phone, for goodness sake. Just words on a screen. It's not trying to make fun of you."
Reasonable and I had a little tug-of-war, but finally, with a dirty glance back at my cellular device, I let her win and went back into the kitchen.
It's not just moms that crave these necessities, I've found, though. Josh went to "put the kids to bed" the other night, which I was very grateful for. I walked into their room a few minutes later to enjoy the fruits of his labor and found an all-out circus. JJ is doing squats in her crib, giggling and cheering on her siblings as Judsen and Felicity sprint laps around the obstacle course they've built, consisting of their mattresses, some toys and books and the dozing form of their father, who is fast asleep on Felicity's bed. Sometimes you just have to laugh, shake your head, and back away quickly before they notice you and you also end up face-down, fallen in bedtime combat next to your comrade-in-arms.
Food is not really more successful than sleep in our house, I realized in wonder-awe-disgust the other night when I had been working like a crazy person way past dinnertime. After we put the kids in bed, I was cleaning up their leftovers. Overcome with hunger and an animal-like frenzy, I scarfed down the macaroni and cheese that sat congealed at the bottom of their bowls, not stopping until it was gone to look around and make sure no one was watching the death of my dignity.
The kids are good at making sure I feed them, though. We talk about food a lot. Judsen announces loudly, "I want a donut. Those are scrum-ectable!" While digging at the playground, Judsen decides he's digging for big diamond, but Felicity says excitedly, "I'm digging for a big peach!" JJ watches her siblings as they come marching into my bedroom in the morning with a roll of candy they proclaim that they would like for breakfast. JJ has already awoken, eaten her breakfast, and gone back to sleep, I thought. I take the candy from J&F and set it next to me in bed and all of a sudden, I feel Little Octopus wiggling around. I look over in surprise to find JJ not only awake, but grinning at me around the entire roll of candy she has stuffed into her cute little pie hole. Let us note here that she's only 8 months old; she shouldn't know that candy is something to be revered and then devoured quickly in case of competitors. Apparently my sweet tooth has been bred in to my offspring.
During lunch preparations, the kids holler requests at me and play while they wait. The other day they're playing super heroes and shouting out their super hero names. "I'm Captain America!" "I'm Iron Man!" "JJ is Firestar!" And then, "Mom, what is your super hero name?" Inspired by their game, I try to think of something catchy and fabulous based on what I'm really good at, what my mad skills are. The best I can come up with? "I am the Amazing ... Lunch Lady."
And I can never just put lunch down on the counter and walk away. My children insist on having it presented with an Iron Chef flourish. "No, Mom. We're the judges and you're Cat Cora. What is the secret ingredient?" "Um...lunch." "No, Mom. Tell us what you made." So we go through the list while they spout off their opinions on if I did a good job or not. Oy. By the time we're done with all this, the only thing I can think of to make for myself for lunch is pancakes, and those have recently been outlawed by Felicity. About a month ago, we drove past IHOP. Standing out on the corner, was a giant mascot-type pancake. Yes, a pancake. With huge eyes. Waving at the people driving by. The kids thought it was funny for a minute, but then at every corner they apparently had Vietnam flashbacks and started asking worriedly, "Where's the pancake with eyes? He's going to get us!" Now whenever we drive past an IHOP, I have to distract them and get them to look the other way, so we don't have a meltdown about where the scary phantom pancake with giant eyes is hiding.
And what do I get for all my trouble? What do I earn for keeping my little bear cubs supplied with life's necessities? I get early-morning presents from Judsen ("Here Mom! I have something for you!" - an old dish sponge), I get to listen to Felicity's ballads about her life: "I am a cow-boooooy. Cowboys have binoculars. And a belllllt. I am a cow-booooy." I get to feel JJ's tiny hands attempt to pinch my nose because she's already learned that I hate that and all the other kids and Daddy think it's funny to try. I get to watch them wrestle with each other and hear them ask questions like "Where are those humans going?" when they see other people at the park. I get to drag them through the grocery store as they drop to all fours, panting and slobbering and crawling like baby grizzlies. And seriously, even though life's necessities may be in short supply for me, if this sacrifice means I get to be Mama Bear to these little cubs, I'll take it. And just wait patiently for the winter I get to hibernate for four months straight.