7 Quick Takes about Not Knowing What Is Going On as Usual, Hand Soap that Must Be Special, and Speculation About How Many Reese's My Daughter Can Eat

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

—1—

Usually my dreams have zero relationship to my actual life, such as when I'm fighting ghosts in an abandoned museum with some guy I haven't spoken to since college.

(Before you ask, yes, that is a real example.)

But this week I woke up from a dream that overlapped with life enough that I was actually confused about whether it had really happened.

I was taking my kids on The Funnest Outing Ever (bear with me, that's not the super-realistic part.) While we were waiting in line for something I asked each one in turn, "Did you get ice cream? What about you, did you get ice cream?"

All the kids said yes except for the last one, who answered "No, but it's okay, I had some at Arby's."

"When did you go to Arby's?" I asked, starting to get embarrassed because she was young enough that I should know her whereabouts most of the time.

"With the Tibbs'," she answered.

"Who are the Tibbs'?!?" I yelled, just before realizing that the child in question wasn't mine and in fact, I had no idea who she was.

The fact that even in my dreams I don't know what's going on speaks volumes for my parenting.

—2—

I thought the directions on the back of this soap were a little funny.

"Use to wash hands as you would any hand soap?" Isn't that cheating? Like using a word to define itself?

Also, is there a reason I'd think this product would be used differently than any other soap? Since it goes out of its way to clarify that this is just ordinary soap with nothing special about it so just move along thankyouverymuch, I feel like I'm missing something here.

I never thought I'd be confused by directions for hand soap, but here we are.

—3—

My kids are always trolling for pets, since I categorically refuse to bring one more (non-human) thing into this house whose poop I have to clean up. 

Their latest pet substitute is Tenty, a caterpillar my 6-year-old found outside. The weird name is because he's a tent caterpillar.

Tenty pictured at top left trying desperately to escape from his Sterilite prison.

The kids made him a nice habitat and Googled what tent caterpillars eat and everything. It took two full days of Tenty's life for him to figure out how to climb out, which is basically the caterpillar equivalent of digging the tunnel for 19 years in Shawshank Redemption.

—4—

I'm really loving working with the toddlers in nursery at church on Sundays. My last calling involved a lot of activity planning for the adults which is pretty much the worst-suited thing for my personality that I can imagine. 

Not that it wasn't good for me in a lot of ways, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like this breath of fresh air. Playing with and teaching toddlers for two hours is my happy place.

We've got some voracious readers in nursery so I've gotten pretty familiar with the picture books, and I have to laugh every time someone requests this one:

On every page you spin the wheel in the middle to see which animal noise you're going to make, and on the very last page — I'm not sure if this is because the writer couldn't think of any more animal noises or because he knew that by the last page parents would be over it and dying to just get the kids in bed already — the last square says "Be quiet like a fish!"

—5—

I thought about finding a babysitter for my 2- and 4-year-olds during my daughter's allergist appointment this week. It was after all a food challenge, which meant a whole morning of sitting in the office trying bites of peanut butter and waiting to see if she developed hives.

But since my strategy to life lately has been "Put off making decisions until it's too late and doing nothing has become your decision," I didn't find a babysitter and they came with us.

Needless to say they were pretty bored. By the end of the 3-hour appointment, they were trying to launch themselves off the exam table and were literally dismantling the room (or at least the furniture inside it.)

Removing the rubber stoppers on the exam room stools because what fun is a toy that still has all its parts?

Taking a mayhem break under the exam table with snacks.

—6—

However, I was too excited to even care about how loudly they were shrieking as they played with the swivel stool: my 6-year-old has outgrown her peanut allergy!

She tolerated ¼ tsp and  ½ tsp and finally 2 Tbsp of peanut butter, at which point they cleared her of her allergy and declared her Not Allergic Anymore.

It's weird. We've been cautious about it for practically her whole existence, and now...?

Sure, she could tolerate two tablespoons, but what if she had more? I kept asking the allergist if we still needed to worry, if there was any possibility of a reaction sometime in the future."What if she goes crazy on Halloween and eats, I don't know, a whole bunch of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?" I asked.

The allergist reassured me a future reaction to any amount of peanut butter was extremely unlikely, and "besides, two tablespoons is an entire adult serving and I don't think she could eat much more than that."

Good to know I guess, but obviously she does not know my children because they absolutely could and would.

—7—

I must be getting old because I feel like this just happened a couple of weeks ago, but it's that time of year again for the semi-annual broadcast from my church called general conference. (Or 'General Conference' if you're Mormon, because I noticed we're kind of a capitalization-happy people.)

Many of my readers know and love our conference snacks tradition, where the kids put pictures of church leaders on different snack foods and get to eat that one when that person speaks. But even more than the snacks I'm looking forward to the peace and recalibration that always comes at conference time, without fail.

Whether you're Mormon or not, I'd love for you to tune in for some or all of it this weekend using any of the bajillion methods listed here. Maybe I'm biased, but I really do believe that God often speaks through the prophet and apostles who lead the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And if you're curious about general conference or why Mormons have a prophet or what that even means, this short article is a good place to start.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

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