I wish I could say that I was coated head to toe in a superfine aerosol of cocoa, dried milk and sugar because of an afternoon spent indulging in some esoteric sexytime enterprise. The fact of the matter is that today was the day we endeavored to assemble our homemade offerings just in time to be handed out on the last day of school before the holidays.
The project ended the way it began: in extreme annoyance. I’d left the house with the recipe forgotten on the counter and only the foggiest notion of what ratios needed to be maintained between the main ingredients and an even less tenuous grasp on how many times it would have to be multiplied in order to gift everyone on our list. Imagine me in the grocery store surrounded by the elbows and ill-tempers of my fellow shoppers attempting to work out an equation with no knowledge of the variables. Suffice it to say that my final stoichiometry was very bad.1
At home things were no better. Asking my little elves to pick up their rooms prior to the festivities served as utterly no motivation for speed; because of this we began the project far later than I intended and during an hour which otherwise would have found them screaming out their late-afternoon frustrations while I tried to get dinner on the table.
It all ended in tears; mine as a particularly ill-timed cupful of sugar collided with a scoop of cocoa sending up into my face a great gout of powdery annoyance, and theirs as I ordered them out of the kitchen for licking2 the resultant spray from the counters.
As I stand in the shower tonight with sticky sugarwater pooling around my feet and the twitch in my eye finally3 easing I’ll wonder what my children will remember from today. No doubt it will be the grouchiness of the mother, which makes me wonder two things: If I cannot accomplish this kind of task with joy instead of crabbiness, why not give a gift that requires no more preschooler participation than a single scrawled signature?
And am I the only mother so unnatural that a single afternoon of crafting with her offspring drives her to extreme stabbiness?
- Does anyone need eight cups of unsweetened cocoa powder? [↩]
- Licking!!! [↩]
- I hope [↩]
You most certainly are not the only Mom! :) Heck, I thought I was the only one! LOL
It’s consistent with Momish behavior, but being a Mom is pretty cool.
I suppose this is the wrong time to give you the advice I always give my wife…Start a little earlier next time…DON’T HIT ME!
I think anyone who can get through an afternoon of crafting with their children without gettting stabby is not normal.
They’ll remember a day of making holiday gifts with their mother. They’ll remember it was a good day.
cooking with preschoolers?
No, I’d say that’d drive any but the most saintly batty.
No you are not the only one! Happens to me too!
You are most definitely not alone.. and I don’t even bother trying. It’s too much stress!!
I agree with Megan (above).