How I Found Out My Four-Year-Old Son is Sexist

According to the all-knowing Internet, the average 4-year-old asks about 400 questions a day.

Looks like it's almost time for the big guns...

I’d say that’s a lowball number. Or my son is an over-achiever.

Matthew asks questions all the time, all day long. One minute he’s sitting quietly in his car seat in the back of the car, humming “Bad Moon Rising” and absentmindedly picking his nose, and the next moment he’s asking, “But, Mommy? How does the baby get IN the mommy’s tummy?”

One of the great things about being a stay-at-home mom is that I get to field about 350 of those 400 questions. Every. Day. And, obviously, my 4-year-old’s questions aren’t always easy. Recent topics include such doozies as God, death, where babies come from, and, of course, poop.

For example:

[On God]: “So God is, like, magic? And knows everything? Is God Santa Claus?”

Me: “errrrrr….”

[On the recent death of one of our cats]: “So, you and Daddy left Beau at the vet’s office after he died? Does that mean the vet’s office is Cat Heaven?”

Me: “uhhhhhh…”

[On how babies get OUT of their mommies]: “YOU SHOWED EVERYONE IN THE HOSPITAL YOUR VAGINA???? “

Me: [*cringe*]

[And, to his brother]: “Why are you such a poopy stinky butt?”

(Well, that one got less of an answer than a time-out, really.)

In general I try to answer my son’s questions as honestly and as factually as I can (except for the one about babies getting IN to their mommies’ tummies. I’m dodging that one for another few years).  Of course, I use language that’s accessible to a four-year-old, and sometimes I might not exactly know EVERYTHING about the subject in question, but I give it a go. So when I answered “How are tornadoes made?” with “Um, when warm air and cool air bump into each other and the warm air wants to go up and the cold air wants to go down so they end up swirling around each other and making a tornado,” I felt ok about it. He’s only four.

My answer? "Super duper hot!"

Of course, sometimes I don’t have enough information to satisfy my little professor. So I do what I always have done with my students: I admit I don’t know, and I point him toward other reliable sources of information. We have checked out library books on volcanoes (“But how hot is lava for REAL?”), looked up information on the solar system on the internet (“But what is the asteroid belt made OF?”), and read newspaper articles together (“But WHEN will the robot get to Mars? WHEN??”). And, very very very often, I refer him to his dad.

It turns out this may be a mistake.

Because, the other day at bedtime we had this conversation, which I thought was about evolution:

Matthew: “What kind of animal were mosquitoes before they were mosquitoes?”

Me: (having had enough questions and not enough caffeine) “I don’t know.”

Matthew: “I know who I’ll ask. I’ll ask Daddy or Uncle Johnnie or Papa or Grandpa. They’ll know.”

Me: (something is up here) “What about Grandma?”

Two-year-old brother (just happy to be involved): “Or Baba!!!”

Matthew: “Oh, they MIGHT know. But men are better at figuring things out than women.”

Me: (mouth literally agape) “What? Who told you that?”

Matthew (shrugging): “Me. I just thought it up myself.”

At this point I am starting to sweat. This is big stuff here, but it’s already bedtime and I’m on solo duty tonight. I’m also tired, and tired of questions.

Here’s what I WANT to say:

“Oh, Daddy and Uncle Johnnie, eh? The very two men who as we speak are at a Phish concert, probably swaying and playing slo-mo air guitar to some 15-minute-long, trippy version of “Hush Little Baby,” or some other such nonsense? Yes, I’m sure they’d give you a GENIUS answer to your question, darling.”

Here’s what I ACTUALLY say:

“What about Dr. Harvey? She’s a woman, and she knows a lot.”

Matthew’s response? “Yeah, but men doctors know more about people than women doctors.”

FOR THE LOVE OF GLORIA STEINEM, WHAT HAVE I DONE WRONG???

Now, I made a little jokey there about my husband but the truth is that other than his taste in music, he is an amazingly smart man. It’s part of what attracted me to him in the first place. This is a man who majored in math—MATH!—at an Ivy League college because, he says, “I knew it would be easy and I wouldn’t have to work too hard.” He reads pretty much everything he can get his hands on, and really does know a lot about a lot. Which is why he is my go-to back-up question answerer.

But when I refer my son to him when I don’t know something, am I sending the message that if a woman doesn’t know, the best course of action is to ask a man?? Good lord, I thought I was passing the buck but instead I’m taking down a generation’s work advancing women?? And how is it that my darling son has forgotten that I successfully (as far as he knows) answer over THREE HUNDRED of his crazy questions every day?? And I almost never say something like, “WHY is it so important to know why bumblebees don’t have stingers? WHY? LEAVE ME TO MY FACEBOOK AND WATCH YOUR YO GABBA GABBA QUIETLY!”

Ahem.

Anyway, this is fair warning to my mother-in-law, my stepmom, my sisters, my aunts, my grandma, and any other woman who has the bad luck of walking her dog past our house in the near future. I may be sending a small, underwear-clad boy your way—either via Skype or in person—with some random question about skunks or wind or gravity or who knows what else. Please, don’t let me—and all the women of the world—down. 

The Truth About Wine Labels

Tastes like GOOD wine

So today I was reading the label on my wine bottle, which is not something I usually do because, let’s be honest, I couldn’t tell the difference between “oaky” and “elmy” (is that a thing?). I am no wine connoisseur—I mostly choose my wines based on their price and label. Trader Joe’s is great for choosing wine. There are maybe 8,000 different kinds of wine for under $10. And truth be told, I generally stick to the under-$6 vinos anyway. Why spend a bunch of money when I wouldn’t even know the difference? The other great thing about the wines at Trader Joes is that lots of them come from snappy little up-start vineyards in California that try to lure you in with their clever names and labels. Why else would I try a wine called “Pancake White?” (my absolute favorite, so far.) And recently I bought a bottle of red wine called Cocobon because its name sounded like cocoa and its label said it had hints of chocolate. Mention chocolate and I’m pretty much in, every time.

Anyway. Today I happened to read the label on my current bottle of white (chosen because it features an old-timey-looking drawing of an elephant) and I read this: “lovely aroma of ripe tropical fruit, fresh lemon and green apple which marry beautifully with rich vanilla oak spice and melon flavors. Drink with grilled chicken with a pineapple mango salsa.”

Errr…come again?

So, I sniffed the wine, really trying hard to smell any kind of fruit. Green apple? Fresh lemon? No. What I smelled was…wine. You know how wine smells? That. That is what I smelled.

Hmmm. Maybe I’m getting a cold, I thought. Maybe my allergies are acting up.

WTF is "cherry coulis???"

I reread the label and decided to taste it. I like vanilla, though I’m not entirely sure if I like “vanilla oak spice.” But it sounds good. If I found a scented candle or a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in that flavor, I’d buy it. And I like melon well enough. So, I sipped the wine. And what I tasted? Was wine. White wine, definitely, not red. But just wine. And a disappointing lack of what I call vanilla, that’s for sure.

Well, I thought, maybe it’s because I’m drinking it standing over the kitchen sink with a low-cal ice cream sandwich in my other hand. Maybe if I were drinking it with “grilled chicken with a pineapple mango salsa,” maybe THEN I’d taste the vanilla oak stuff. Maybe I should make some grilled chicken with a pineapple mango salsa for dinner tomorrow.

Then I laughed so hard at my little jokey that my husband asked if maybe I shouldn’t lay off the wine a little.

Pineapple mango salsa??? If I want a good pineapple mango salsa, I’ll go where god or nature intended me to go—a RESTAURANT. 

So then I got to thinking about what wine labels should really say. What many of us are ACTUALLY eating and thinking and doing when we drink wine. Here’s what I came up with:

“Pairs beautifully with guilty-pleasure reality tv and a king-size bag of M&Ms.”

“A delightful complement to chicken nuggets with a ketchup/mayonnaise dipping sauce.”

“Enjoy while gorging on an embarrassing number of Girl Scout Cookies while wallowing in your latest round of parental guilt.”

“A fine accompaniment to eating your weight in ice cream and crying over your recently deceased cat.”

“Drink with Triscuits and Facebook.”

Of course, I’m just spitballing here, it’s not like I’ve done any of these things…really, I swear.

So, what’s your favorite wine?

There's nothing like a little validation to make a blogger feel all warm and fuzzy inside--this post was syndicated on BlogHer!

Dead Womb Walking?

So lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my uterus.

For most of my life I have taken my uterus for granted and haven’t thought about it much at all. During my two pregnancies I thought about it A LOT, of course, but once my babies joined us on this side of my cervix, I kind of forgot about it again. But now I feel bad, like I haven’t appreciated it enough. It grew two healthy babies and helped usher them into this world just as it should. (And one of those babies was 9 pounds, 10 ounces and almost two weeks late—that’s above and beyond the call of duty, uterus-wise.) If uterus-having were an Olympic sport, I’d at least qualify for the finals, I think. (No medal, though—those would go to the Super Uteruses, like the ones in surrogate mothers and Michelle Duggar.)

So why am I now suddenly all, “How great is my uterus?”

See, I had a birthday recently. The First Annual Celebration of My 39^th Birthday, to be precise.  And as the big 4-0 looms ever larger, I can’t help but wonder if my uterus’s time is up.

If it’s not just a dead womb walking.

I have always said that I want to be done having kids by age 40. I’m not sure why I drew the line at 40—I guess it was all the talk about how your fertility decreases around then, at the same time that your chances of having problems with your pregnancy increase. For whatever reason, for me and many of my friends who put off having kids until our 30s, 40 is the big cutoff date. Last call at the fertility saloon, if you will.

Well, 40 is just one year away. And if you do the math, given a nine-month pregnancy (HA!), that means we have just 3 more months to decide if I’m retiring the old uterus or calling it back into baby-making action one last time.

And I just don’t know.

There are some days when I KNOW, unequivocally, that my two darling boys are enough for me. It’s not just the days when they fight like rabid badgers, though that certainly helps. But it’s also the days when they are just wonderful; when we are lying in a heap on the couch reading a book together, or sitting on the floor at the airport eating a McDonald’s picnic and watching planes take off as we wait out a 2-hour delay. And I think, “How can I ask for more than this? Why rock this happy little boat?”

But, then… Then I remember being pregnant. Feeling those first kicks and hiccups and even the right hooks to the bladder. Somehow the balloon ankles, sciatica, and crippling nighttime carpal tunnel pain are forgotten. Instead I think about that delicious anticipation that comes before you meet your newest little one, the nine months of wondering what he or she will be like, and then the slow process of getting to know the precious little human you helped create.

(If a mom with a new baby happens to walk by as I’m having all these thoughts, there’s a good chance my ovaries will just explode.)

Ovaries exploding in 3, 2, 1...

It doesn’t help that every time I turn around or log onto facebook someone in my real or online life is announcing their third pregnancy. I can’t even read my favorite celebrity gossip magazine without hearing about Jennifer Garner’s new (third) baby or Tori Spelling getting pregnant just one month after her second baby with her current husband was born. (By the way, that’s a whole ‘nother blog post, am I right? ONE MONTH? We all know what that means, and that is completely cray cray. Good lord, give your poor lady parts a break, Tori!)

Of course, everyone assumes that if we tried for a third, I’d want a girl. And sure, there are times when I think, “Wow, everyone in this family farts a whole lot,” and then I think it might be nice to have a daughter to hide in the corner with, fanning ourselves and spraying Febreze at anyone who gets close. And, I have to admit I kind of want to see what would happen if my husband ever had to deal with little-girl hair. THAT would make for some entertaining facebook photos, I’m sure.

But truthfully, when I think about having another child, I don’t secretly wish for a certain gender. I just think about holding a squishy little newborn and smelling his or her wonderful little head. (What is it about newborns’ heads that make them smell so good?) I think about another round of first smiles, first steps, first words. I think about the amazing, addictive, indescribable feeling of love I have for my sons.

But still, I just don’t know.

I wish that the decision to have a third child were as cut-and-dried as the decision to have a first or second. With our first baby, the question my husband and I had was relatively easy to answer: Did we want kids or not? The answer was yes, the timing was right, so we moved on to the fun part. Sure we were a little scared and not entirely sure what to expect from parenthood, but we forged ahead anyway. The decision to have a second child was also easy. We asked ourselves,  “Do we want our child to have a sibling?” The answer again was yes, and though it was a little more difficult to find time for the fun part with a toddler in the house, we managed to make it happen.

It's Ryan Gosling holding a baby. *Drool*

But, a third? Not so easy. Right now, we are so lucky. My two boys are healthy. They are active, happy, little beasts who, sure, tend to break things and whine a lot and refuse to eat most vegetables, but who also, for the most part, get along with others and follow most social norms (you know, just not the ones involving nudity). They are by no means perfect, but they are perfect for US. How do I know if we are meant to have another?

So. My husband and I have some thinking to do in the next month or so. There’s a lot to consider—even more than what I’ve laid out here. My uterus is looking for answers, and I can’t keep her waiting much longer. (Uteruses are female, right? It would be weird otherwise, I think.)

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you—how did you know when you were done having children? And how did you know how many you wanted to have?

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

You like me, you really like me!

Sally Field may have said it best when she accepted her Oscar for her role in “Places in the Heart” in 1984.** And now, it’s my turn.

Because someone out there likes me!

In fact, TWO people out there like me!

Yes, it’s true. In the past week I’ve been tagged by two different bloggers for two different blogging awards. First of all, dancing dynamo mom Keesha over at Mom’s New Stage awarded me the Liebster Blog Award, an award given to upcoming bloggers who have 200 followers or less. According to her blog, the word “liebster” is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. Now, I have on occasion been told I am cute (you know, the three times a year that I blow dry my hair and wear makeup at the same time), I can sometimes be pleasant (a full night’s sleep helps), and if at 8 pm you are holding a glass of chardonnay for me I will definitely be the kindest person you know. So, totally fitting, right?

 

Well, as if that excitement wasn’t enough, then I got this news: Dawn, the amazing baker from DJ’s Sugar Shack, has awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award! Hot damn, I am on a ROLL! (Or maybe I should say I am on a DONUT—check out this recipe from Dawn’s blog--*drool*.)

Now here’s the thing. Each of these awards comes with rules. You have to post facts about yourself, answer questions, tag other bloggers who you find deserving of these awards, and ask them new questions. Yikes. Between the two awards I would have to post 18 random facts about myself and tag 26 different blogs! You do NOT want to know 18 random facts about me, I promise. That would get us all into mundane details like “I have a cat with Irritable Bowel Syndrome” and “Mushy bananas make me gag” and no one needs to know about that stuff. So with many thanks AND apologies to the lovely ladies who nominated me, I am going to split the difference and combine my responses to these two awesome awards.

So, drumroll please, here are 9 random facts about me:

1.     When I was 8 I got to play Bozo’s Buckets on the Bozo Show (a tv show on WGN—anyone? Anyone?) and I totally bombed. I had to throw a ping pong ball into buckets that were in a line in front of me, and I missed the first one. The one that was practically touching my TOES. No one misses that bucket. No one.

2.     My first celebrity crush—at age 10 or so—was Alan Alda. I watched old M*A*S*H episodes with my parents…what can I say? I like funny guys, lucky for my husband.

3.     I would pay good money (and have!) for a nice, long, scalp massage. Heaven…

 

4.     I always claim that chocolate is my favorite food, but every time I eat bacon I think, “Hmmmm...maybe I was wrong.”

5.     I once spent two weeks traveling in France by myself and though I loved the experience, I hated traveling alone. I’m too shy for it and I don’t really want to do it again.

6.     Fingernails on a chalkboard don’t really bother me, but you know that noise that a pencil makes when its eraser is almost gone and you try to erase something anyway? That sound of metal scratching on paper? I’m getting nauseous just writing about it.

7.     I can’t not watch “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” I know they’re crap TV, but I’m hooked. I’m already worried about how I will see the finale when I’m on vacation.

8.     As a kid, I read the “Little House on the Prairie” series 7 or 8 times. I loved it and wanted to be Laura Ingalls, even for one day. But I never, ever, ever watched the TV show. I knew it couldn’t be as good as the books, and to this day I don’t know if it was.

9.     When I was single, I used to watch “Bridget Jones’s Diary” like once a week. It made me laugh and gave me hope. Also, Colin Firth.

Now, to introduce you to some of my favorite blogs! Please go check them out when you get a chance—there is a lot of creativity, humor, and inspiration in this list!

Bella Noise

Foodler—Feeding the FoodieToddler

Laura Loves Fitness

January Lace

Five Little Chefs

Honest Toddler

Young Adultish

Gina Valley—The Glamorous Lifeof a Modern Day Soccer Mom

Bubblegum on My Shoe

Hands Free Mama

Starring Scarlett

Thoughts from Paris

I know I missed some. My brain is like Swiss Cheese since I had kids. So if you’re a blogger, or you know one you love, feel free to leave a link in the comments so others can check it out!

**Oh yeah. Wikipedia informed me here that that’s not exactly what Ms. Fields said, but the sentiment is still the same.

Why Wine and Group Exercise Classes Don't Mix

So last night I was thinking about how much I love my kids. This is something I often do when it’s 10:00 pm and they’ve both been asleep for 3 hours and I’m lying on the couch watching Glee or The Bachelorette (I’m not proud) and drinking a big ole mug of herbal tea. I love them ALL THE TIME, but it’s just soooo easy to bask in the truly awesome glory of my love for them when they are both sound asleep and not fighting over stupid stuff (“Mommy! William has my cup! That cup has my germs on it! I want my germs baaaaaaack!”).

Now I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re probably thinking, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, that was a big ole mug of chardonnay you were drinking, not herbal tea.” And normally, you’d be right. But I’ve largely given up alcohol lately. Not for any dire reason like alcoholism, but because I absolutely, positively MUST MUST MUST kick my own ass into losing some weight. And since fitting back into my whole entire wardrobe doesn’t seem to be motivation enough, I’ve decided to use alcohol as my incentive. For now, I’m giving it up. If—no, WHEN—I lose 5 pounds, I’ll have a nice glass or two of something to celebrate, then start the process over again.

 

Well, talk about motivation! The Bachelorette is just NOT the same without a teeny little wine buzz (OK, truth: The Bachelorette is just not that good without a teeny little wine buzz). So to speed the process up, I’ve also tried to give up my favorite crappy snacks and I’ve started (*gasp!*) exercising more.

Exercising more has not been as easy as I hoped it would be. It turns out I wasn’t burning many calories ambling along on a treadmill at the Y watching The View with no sound, so I turned to group exercise classes to get my butt moving a bit faster. I started by trying Zumba, but found that I looked like a chicken on ecstasy. Then I tried a Boot Camp class. That was much better. I mean, I still flop around a lot and I still find it’s better for my ego if I don’t look in the mirror much while I’m doing it, but at least I can do most of the moves without falling down. And, I sweat A LOT during Boot Camp class. I don’t mean that oh-is-it-hot-in-here? kind of sweating. I mean an embarrassing, you-can-see-the-outline-of-my-sports-bra-because-its-the-only-part-of-my-shirt-that’s-not-soaked-through-with-sweat kind of sweating. I figure that kind of sweating must equal about 9237598547 calories burned. Hooray!

As an added bonus, I’ve learned a few things since I started my Boot Camp class:

 

The first thing I’ve learned is who/what LMFAO and “I’m Sexy and I Know It” is. I had never heard that song until I heard it in class, and now I know for sure that it is both the absolutely dumbest AND catchiest song I’ve ever heard (sing it with me, “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, yeah!”). I hate myself just a little for loving that song.

The second thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is that there’s this Rihanna song about how “We found love in a hopeless place. We found love in a hoooooopeleessss plaaaaaaaaace” that will play on an endless loop in my head from the second I hear it at class on Tuesday morning until at least lunchtime on Friday. Just that one little part. Over and over and over and over again. I hate myself just a little for hating Rihanna because of it, but I do.

The third thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is what “Mountain Climbers” are. Mountain Climbers are what the Devil down in Hell does when he feels like he needs to lose a few pounds. You put your hands on the floor, stick your butt in the air, and alternate bringing your feet up to your hands over and over and over again. (Not coincidentally, we mostly do this to that damn Rihanna song.) I suppose this is something like climbing an actual mountain, but you can bet your sweet ass I’ve never done that. Anyway, they’re unflattering, hard to do, and I don’t much like doing them.

The fourth thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is that I do, indeed, have triceps, even though I can’t see them. I know they are there because every Wednesday morning I feel them burning when I do strenuous activities like lifting a coffee cup or brushing my teeth. Same with my quads. Can’t quite see them under their comfy padding, but every Wednesday I find myself wincing as I gingerly lower myself into a chair in the Y’s lobby to watch my son’s swimming lesson. People probably think I have hemorrhoids or some other horrible personal problem, but, no, it’s just Rihanna and her dastardly Mountain Climbers From Hell.

The final thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is that if I ever had to go to any sort of ACTUAL boot camp, like for the armed forces, I would probably not survive one day. I’m glad there are young, tough, and strong men and women who are willing and able to that and more so I can have the freedom to lie on the couch watching bad tv and eating M&Ms. Er, I mean, rice cakes. And kale chips. NOT ice cream or handfuls of Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits. Really. I swear.

Now will someone explain to me why I’m not losing any weight?

My Son Called Me A Whore

Yes.

It’s true.

A few months ago, my then-3 ½-year-old son called me a whore.

Well, sort of.

No, we weren’t on some godawful tabloid-y talk show like Maury or some equally horrible reality show like “Toddlers and Tiaras.” (“Toddlers and Tantrums” is more like it. Now THAT they could film at my house for sure.) And this wasn’t even an insult hurled mid-meltdown or hissed through gritted teeth during a timeout.

In fact, it probably wasn’t even intentional.

Probably.

Here’s what happened:

Matthew had become occasionally interested in drawing things other than scribbles. He moved into straight lines and circles, then decided he wanted to try writing letters. My husband and I were a bit wary of this. Matthew is, yes, of course, a genius and FAR advanced for his age in all areas—much like your kid, I’m sure. (*ahem*) But he also has a very low tolerance for frustration, and writing letters seemed like an activity RICH with potential frustrations. So we started slow. We taught him ‘O,’ which he pretty much already knew, then ‘M,’ because it’s the first letter of his name. Over a few days we taught him just a few more letters, mostly ones with straight lines.

One day, he came to me with a piece of paper and an insanely proud grin. “Mommy! I wrote something for you!” he exclaimed, as he handed me his masterpiece. Here’s what he gave me:

I oohed and aahed and tried to hide the fact that I was crying just a little bit. My son wrote a word! And not only that, he wrote “MOM!” Together we found some tape and hung the paper up on the kitchen wall where everyone could see it. I went back to trolling facebook, er, researching recipes online, and he went back to the playroom for more writing.

A few minutes later he returned. Same triumphant grin, another piece of paper. “Mommy!” he shouted. “I wrote you another word!” I looked down eagerly. What lovely sentimental message would my son bestow upon me this time? Here it is:

After my initial moment of shock, I oohed and aahed (though without the tears), then I tentatively asked, “Um, Matthew? What made you decide to write this word?”

“Mommy,” he said, “It says ‘ho.’” (That’s what his voice said. His face added, “DUH.”)

“I see that,” I said. “Why ‘ho?’”

“Mommy!’ (another “DUH” look) “That’s what Santa says!”

[Did I mention this happened around Christmas? Kind of a key detail in retrospect, I suppose.]

Before I could respond, he handed me the tape. “Hang it up! Hang it up!” he begged. How could I say no? So, Matthew’s second official written word joined his first in the place of honor on our kitchen wall, where everyone could see it.

. . .

And now, to apologize for using the word “whore” in this post’s title, I give you Matthew’s latest masterpiece.

Hubby and I secretly call it "Mutant Bird" because of the googly eyes.

What’s the latest cute thing your child genius has said to you?

How to Make "The World's Easiest Banana Bread"--the Hard Way

Recently I learned how to make the “World’s Easiest Banana Bread.” Then I learned how to make it the hard way:

Let your four-year-old help you.

 (Photo: Steve Hopson, www.stevehopson.com)

We had three bananas getting brown on the counter, which is a rarity around here. We are serious about our bananas, and they never last long. If my husband or I are at a grocery store—even if the only things on the list are tampons and light bulbs—we will always buy bananas because, well, we always need them or are about to need them.

So. Somehow, these three bananas had been allowed to exist long enough to get a little brown. And the only thing I hate more than mushy bananas is throwing out food, so I decided we would make banana bread. According to the clock we had just under 2 hours until we had to leave for Matthew’s T-ball “practice” (have you ever seen 3- and 4-year-olds play T-ball? If so, you get the need for quotes just there). I figured we had lots of time. No problem, right?

Right.

I Googled “banana bread recipe” and got about 1,000 recipes for banana bread that all included goofy ingredients like buttermilk or rum that would require a trip to the store. Taking two kids to the grocery store was NOT what I had in mind when I imagined making banana bread. (Taking two kids to the grocery store is pretty much NEVER what I have in mind. Ever.) So I refined my search to “EASY banana bread recipe,” and I hit the jackpot. The very first hit, from simplyrecipes.com, required only ingredients I already had! I hit “print” and headed for the kitchen.

I gathered my ingredients and my 4-year-old and soon realized how this was going to go. Matthew was interested ONLY in cracking the eggs. As I squinted at the recipe, he badgered me, “NOW do I crack the eggs? NOW? When, Mommy? Mommy, when? Mommy, WHEN DO I GET TO CRACK THE EGGS??”

I thought that smushing up bananas would be a good distraction, so I pulled a dining room chair up to the counter for him to stand on and told him to go for it. This was a special privilege because standing on chairs is usually not allowed. This is a tough rule for Matthew to follow. Pretty much every time I do something like, I don’t know, clean the cat box or go to the bathroom alone, I emerge to find him standing on a dining room chair. Not doing anything, usually, except gleefully breaking the we-do-not-stand-on-chairs rule. But today? Today he was being a stickler for the rules. And he refused to stand on that chair.

So, as Matthew attempted to mush bananas that he could not see because he was kneeling instead of standing on the chair, I got out some yogurt to substitute for the butter in the recipe. Why? I don’t know exactly. Yogurt is not in the original recipe, but someone in the comments had said that if you replace the butter with yogurt, the bread would be “healthier.” And since I had a feeling that I was going to be eating a LOT of this banana bread, I decided to blindly follow that advice. Now, measuring yogurt shouldn’t be hard. But measuring yogurt with a 4-year-old’s help is very hard. First the yogurt has to be spooned from its container into a measuring cup, then dumped from the measuring cup into a bowl. The result? Some yogurt in the bowl and lots of yogurt everywhere else.

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_bread/

A quick check of the clock told me this was taking a bit longer than planned, what with pleading with my kid to break rules and cleaning yogurt off of my shoes, but we should still have plenty of time to finish up and get it baked before T-ball. I mean, how long could making banana bread take?

Next was sugar.  Once again, I deviated from the original recipe, cutting the sugar down to ¾ cup and using brown sugar instead of white sugar. I couldn’t begin to tell you the difference between brown and white sugar (other than the obvious), but, again, someone in the recipe’s comments said it was a good idea, and who am I to argue with the internet? Though we still hadn’t cracked any eggs, the sight of sugar caught Matthew’s attention. He finally stood up on the chair and offered to help measure and pour, which went about as well as the yogurt. I turned away to grab a sponge to wipe up, and when I turned back I found Matthew, literally up to his elbows in brown sugar, licking his arm, hand, and fingers like a starving wild animal.

I put a stop to the sugar feast, handed him a wooden spoon, and told him to stir. Matthew went for it with gusto, though his speed at mixing far exceeded his effectiveness. “Look at me! I’m an agitator in a washing machine!” he yelled. Before I could ask him where exactly he learned that, he went on, “I’m a tornado! A mixing tornado!” He paused long enough to grab the second spoon that I was holding, stuck it in the sugary, yogurt-y banana goo and yelled, “DOUBLE AGITATOR!”

Apparently, all that sugar was kicking in.

Finally, FINALLY, it was time to crack the egg. Just one, it turns out, which was lucky because that’s all we had. I gave it to Matthew and stood back. Matthew has a strange method of cracking eggs that absolutely demolishes the egg, but somehow lands very little shell in the bowl. There’s also a whole stab-the-yolk-until-it-“pops” thing that can be kind of disturbing if you think about it too much. Once all that was done, it was back to the agitator-tornado for more stirring, and we moved on through the recipe.

When it was time for the flour, I knew I had to proceed with caution. Flour is a pain in the butt to clean up, and we didn’t have a lot of extra time. But of course it went everywhere, leading Matthew to tell me triumphantly, “Mommy! I have flour on my nipples!” (Yes, he was wearing nothing but underpants, his favorite outfit.) The situation didn’t improve as he began his crazy stirring again, which somehow didn’t incorporate the flour into the batter at all but did manage to incorporate it into his hair.

I looked at the clock with dread. At this point, we would be late to T-ball if the bread took a full hour to cook, so I did some damage control. I gave Matthew a spoon to lick while I quickly mixed in the flour, poured the batter into the pan, and put it into the oven. The kitchen was a mess, and I knew that I should enlist Matthew’s help in cleaning it up—you know, teach him that cleaning up is part of the process of baking and all that—but I still had to get us both dressed and sunscreened and get a snack together. So I did what any parent would do (right? RIGHT?). I turned on “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

And then, as I tried to clean brown sugar and flour out of the fruit bowl, the dish drainer, the silverware drawer (???), I heard a question that I would hear at least 40 more times in the next 50 minutes: “Is the banana bread done yet?”

We were NOT going to make it to T-ball on time.