7 Quick Takes about Waffles That Probably Weren't Worth the Effort, Channeling My Inner Miss Hannigan, and Rendering Toys Unusable as Quickly as Possible

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I hope everybody had a good time taking their kids trick-or-treating! Is it just me, or was there a distinct lack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups this year?

We ended up trick-or-treating with another family and it worked out great. Their older kids and our older kids took off together at their own pace, while the adults took the little kids door to door at a mind-numbingly slow one.

At one house they held out the bowl of candy out to my 1-year-old and like any good parent, I kept trying to encourage him to pick the full-size Almond Snickers in a semi-discrete manner: "Do you want this one? Does this one look good?"

But no, he ignored me and chose the bag of Halloween pretzels instead. Foiled again.

—2—

Since the success of my last video, I've been getting a lot of interesting offers via email. I was pretty excited when I got one encouraging me to apply to be on a reality show!

The producers were looking for large-ish traditional families where mom stays home with the kids, dad works, and there are at least 4 children at home... check, check, check. That's us, I'm listening. The premise of the show is that mom goes away for a week and dad takes over, and you get $20,000 to participate.

Um, I would do this FOR FREE. Sign. Me. Up.

Then I realized we'd never be picked because it would make the most boring show ever. Phillip is actually extremely competent at taking care of the house and kids when I'm gone, and actually he does it with a lot less drama, disaster, and whining than I do.

This is the only time I've been sad about that.

—3—

For a Saturday morning treat, I decided to make waffles for the kids for breakfast.

I was using a recipe from the Internet and doubling it, which was okay until I got to "1¾ cup of milk." For crying out loud, how is a person supposed to double 1¾ first thing in the morning?

In the end, I'm embarrassed to say it took two people and this paper to figure it out:

Apparently early morning is not the right time for this.

It wasn't until I grabbed a pen with my daughter looking up at me expectantly that I realized I have no idea how to multiply fractions anymore.

—4—

Pleased to announce that my baby goes into nursery this Sunday! For those of you who aren't Mormon, allow me to explain: after church there are 2 hours of Sunday School for kids and adults, but until they are 18 months old and start going to nursery during those hours, babies stay with their parents.

The last 4 months waiting for him to be old enough for nursery have been a nightmare. Literally two hours of counting down the seconds, every week. He is SO BORED. He rejects any snack or toy I offer. Sometimes I have to leave the building and walk around outside because he's generally going nuts. Phillip and I joke that he must not like organized religion.

Sometimes he likes to join Phillip at the piano in the children's room for singing time, but I have to take him back outside when he starts whacking the keys with too much gusto.

This past Sunday, however, he was actually very calm and sweet and I found myself thinking to myself how sad I was he wasn't going to be with me anymore!

How quickly we forget.

—5—

My daughter's school theater is doing Annie this year, so I watched the movie with the kids this week to refresh their memories.

A few days after that, our house had gotten super messy and I was doing a lot of yelling at everyone to clean up. One of my children subtly reminded me to talk nicer by chanting back to me in a sing-song voice, "We love you, Miss Hannigan!"

I admit I've always kind of empathized with Miss Hannigan when she sings "Little Girls," but I guess it wouldn't hurt to use a nicer tone of voice when enforcing clean-up time.

—6—

When I'm not freaking out about the messy house (see the take above,) I try to be tolerant and understanding of the mess. I try to remember that growing up is a very complex project, and we've got 6 of these very complex projects going on at the same time, so it's bound to get a little disorganized around here sometimes.

One thing I sometimes tell Phillip is, "It's not a museum, it's a laboratory."

"I don't know," he said, looking around doubtfully. "My lab at work looks a lot cleaner than this."

Of course, Phillip's labmates don't dump out all the contents of his desk and spread feces on the wall when he's in the other room for a few minutes, so I guess it's not a perfect comparison. But I still think it works.

—7—

Grandma sent some toys for the kids, including one of these cool coloring books for my 3-year-old. You paint the pages using a special pen filled with water, and the colors appear on the pages. When it dries out, the color disappears and you can use it again and again.

Of course, he didn't know what it was and ruined it immediately by coloring every page with an orange marker.

It's like he saw a no-mess toy and was like, "Lemme take care of that real quick."

This is why I do deep breathing exercises while repeating to myself, "It's not a museum, it's a laboratory. It's not a museum, It's a laboratory."

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