Booger Soup: A Recipe by Doctor Dorothy and her Mother

Saute 2 chopped onions and 5 chopped garlic cloves in oil. Add and saute 3 chopped ribs of celery and 4 sliced carrots.  Sprinkle with 3 TBS paprika and 1/2 tsp dried marjoram.  Add 16 oz. green beans, 1 chopped zucchini, 2 chopped green bell peppers, 8 oz. sliced mushrooms, 1 large can diced tomatoes, 2 cups vegetable juice, 2 TBS soy sauce, 1 TBS dried dill, water to desired consistency.  Simmer until veggies are tender.

     Two days ago Dorothy marched up to me and asked me to make her vegetable soup to get her boogers away.  We whipped up the above together.  When she sat down and took her first bite she exhaled, "This is just what I needed to make me feel better".  Please note that I have never made vegetable soup for her before and have no clue where she came up with this idea.

     Today, with two days to sit, the soup is really quite tasty but has a rather gross title.  Dorothy remembered why she requested the soup be made and must have condensed the information in her mind because she requested Booger Soup for her lunch.

     When I'm finished here I'm calling  Progresso and Campbell's and offering Booger Soup to the highest bidder for mass production.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

     Dorothy has just announced that when SHE grows up she wants to be a lady bug.  After some consideration she added, "Or Snow White".

     I'm not sure how much we should set aside for college...or are these trade school kind of things?

Puke Problems

     Our Israel Quinn is sixteen months old and slept through the entire night for the first time last night.  We snuggled in my soft and cozy bed at 7:30 last night.  We read about Pete the Cat's school shoes and his four groovy buttons a couple of million times.  Izzy hit the dairy bar for a bit and then it was off to dream land.  It was FIVE in the MORNING before he wanted to nurse again, which he did.  Then he rolled over onto his back and threw up, soaking his hair, shirt, and bed.  He instantly climbed on me for a snuggle and fell asleep on top of me before I had a chance to address any of the mess.

     There I was, flat on my back, staring at my ceiling, with my soggy puke baby between me and my blankets.  I thought love was going to be different than this.

     Twelve hours after we hopped into bed Israel is on his third costume change.  I need to get the laundry going and my rug looks clean but I'm already dreaming about shampooing it once I can set this little fella down again.

     Here on my love seat, where I'm sure I'll be all day long, I have to wonder who is running things around here?  I'd like to file a complaint.  I'd like to drop an index card in the planetary suggestion box.  Let's reschedule puking season to summer.  How much easier would this be in a lawn chair?  How simple would this be if I.Q. was naked?  He could empty his stomach on the grass and I could hose us off if any got on us.  Instead I'll be washing his clothes and blankets for the next EVER, and renting that clunky Rug Doctor to clean up after this bug.

   Lame.  Lame.  Lame.  It is time for a CHANGE (and not just his clothes)!

Homemade Play Dough

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/4 cup salt

1 1/2 TBS cream of tartar 

(I didn't have enough so I put in an unknown amount and it seemed to work.  Other than drive up the cost of homemade play dough, I don't really know what cream of tartar does)

5 TBS vegetable oil

(I had a thought while doing this...would it be nice to add some essential oils and make scented play dough, or am I making this more ridiculous than it needs to be?)

food color

Put all of the above in a pot and cook it on low heat.  I stirred it like a mad woman because I was afraid I would burn it.  It started out like a Cream Of soup.  Then lumps began to form.  Then so many lumps formed that before I knew it there was a ball of dough in my sauce pan.   Next you take the ball and divide it into however many lumps as colors you want.  I didn't wait for the dough to cool.  I am an idiot.  I kneaded the food color into the hot dough balls and PRESTO!  

Play dough!

     

     Making play dough is the kind of stuff I obsessed over when I had just Enzo and Clara.  I believed that making the play dough from scratch was going to accelerate my children's intellectual, emotional, social, tactile, and quite possibly, spiritual development.  If someone perfects time travel someday the first thing I'm doing is going back in time and punching myself in the face.  Then I'll pour my past self a Big Slam of Riesling and say Woman, it's PLAY DOUGH.  Get a f#@%ing grip. 

     So why am I making play dough at this point in my life when I know there is a three pack waiting for me at the Dollar Tree?  The answer is simple.  Today it seemed like the easiest way out.  It is one degree outside and all of the kids are home today.  Dorothy asked if she could use her little rolling pins and my cookie cutters with the play dough Santa brought her.  Well, THAT play dough has long since been mashed into the rug, dried, chiseled out with a butter knife, and vacuumed up.  So I returned to my old homesteading self, but not to prove anything, or improve anything.  Simply because I had s#!t to do and if Dorothy would play with play dough and get out of my way then we needed some dough!!!

     What is that saying about the best plans of mice and men?  Well, yeah...that.  While I whipped up play dough so that I could get some chores done Dorothy and Israel scattered dried beans and STAPLES all over the kitchen floor.  They took out my pots and pans a spatulas.  They jabbed me with picture books and asked for my help with their Magic Bean Soup every few seconds.  Then when the play dough was done they were SO happy they wanted to share their joy with me.  We rolled at patted.  We squished and cut.  We had a great time.  The dough came out better than any I had made in my prime neurotic years but  I didn't get a single thing done!

     Or did I? 

I Spy

    At 4:30 in the afternoon Miss Dorothy skipped into the dining room in her grey firetruck footie "pajams" and her peach Easter bonnet.  "Let's play I Spy", she cheerfully suggests.

     "Ok".


     "Me first", she grins.  "I spy something starving".

     I got the picture.  We'll have dinner a little early tonight.

Games

Jumping on the Bed

Family

Animal Family

Sonic the Hedgehog

Cops and Robbers

Ninjas

Dress up

Race

Freeze Tag

Blanket Fort

Barbies

School

Dance Party

Baseball

These are the games my children like to play with their cousins (and oddly aged uncles).  Over a decade of entertainment.  But all of these games are L-A-M-E compared to the latest game Clara, Savanna, and Phoenix invented.  It's called:

Clean the Girls' Room

Talk about a winner!  THIS should be America's favorite pass time.  Best Game EVER.

Translation

     It is two in the afternoon and Dorothy says, "I'm cold".

     What this really means is: I woke up at midnight for the day and it is finally catching up with me.  I'm going to snuggle up under my Hello Kitty blanket and fall asleep until about...bed time.  I'm going to ruin your night.

Aston Says...

I hear a lot of complaints whined at the top of little lungs in my house.  In fact, I don't usually pay attention to much of the whining.  My systems would overload if I did.  Sometimes one of the kids will out do themselves and come up with a complaint that breaks through my Mom Hearing (aka ignoring) and demands to be heard.  Today Aston got me with...

Maaah  aaaam, I'm naaaaaked.

I'm not sure exactly what I was supposed to do with that.  What kind of helpless creatures am I raising over here?  Have I coddled them too much or not held their hands long enough?  Mom, I'm naked.  Honestly.

Ready

MOM: Dorothy, what do you want to wear to JUMP today?

DOROTHY:  A clean diaper.....Oh, and my purple coat.

Flexible

ASTON:  I'd like to check out that space Veggie Tales.

DOROTHY:  I want to watch pirates next.  Cucumbers with mustaches are soooooo funny.

ASTON:  How 'bout after the space one.

DOROTHY: No. No. No.  Pirates first THEN space.

MOM:  Dorothy, you'll get to watch both.  Why don't you let Aston have a turn picking since you picked the last one?

Dorothy begins throwing a fit.

MOM: Shhhh Shhhh Shhh.  O.K.. Aston, what about you?  Would you be my flexible child and watch pirates first and then space?

ASTON:  Sure Mom, 'cause I can do an entire cart wheel.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water

So, Dorothy is making very, very slow progress toward potty training.  While she prefers to wear
diapers on her bottom she has not given up on wearing undies.  Dorothy finds that they make
lovely hats.

Keeping The Stay at Home in Stay at Home Mom

While I did my grocery shopping this week Israel insisted on breastfeeding and napping.  Dorothy hollered that she needed to pee on the potty and managed to lose my car keys.  Enzo and Aston wrestled a little. Clara worked on her book report.  I wore pajamas.  It was awesome!

My new best friend the Shop Rite grocery delivery van as it pulls away from my house.  I love ordering my food online...

...and Shop Rite loves me.  Look at the lovely flowers they gave me!

Oops. I Guess I Turned On The Wrong Burner...

There goes my favorite pot holder.  My water will never boil this way.

The Me I'll Never Be

    This morning Ariel said to me, "I just want you to know that if we didn't have kids we'd be on a cruise ship right now".

     I'm freezing right now so at first, that sounded nice.  Then I felt bad that I've burdened Ariel with five children and robbed him of his care free cruising self.  I had to wonder, other than a week long cruise, what would we do if we didn't have children?  It was six in the morning, so the first thing that popped in my head was go back to bed.  O.K.  but then what?

     I can't know for sure but if Ariel had told me that he didn't want to have children....wait, let me rephrase that because he DID tell me he didn't want to have children.  If I had believed Ariel when he told me he didn't want to have children instead of thinking Yeah right.  EVERYONE wants to have children,  I would have...done exactly what I did.  I would have given birth to any baby that parked it's adorable little self in my uterus.  I had already decided that I would adopt or foster if I didn't conceive kids the old fashioned way by the time I was eighteen years old.

     There is no if I didn't have kids for me.  Besides, Ariel and I are both terrified of open water.  Really, I don't know what he was thinking.

     Maybe we could do a Disney cruise.  Then we could all drown to death under the warm Caribbean sun as a family.

Transcript from a Two Hour School Delay (Brief Excerpt)

DOROTHY: Mommy? Is Clara going to school soon?  She is being a meanie.

CLARA: No I'm not!

DOROTHY:  She hit me in the head and stepped on my foot.

CLARA:  It was an ACCIDENT.

MOM:  Clara is just a little out of control this morning.

CLARA:  No I'm not!

MOM:  Seriously?  You were moving around the house like a f#@%ing octopus.

ASTON:  Mom... don't say octopus.

Speech Therapy

     Israel walks about making noise, lots and lots of noise.  Sometimes the noise is relevant to what is going on around him most of the time it is not.  I was sweeping the floor after lunch (a job that I could probably justify bringing our back hoe in the house for) when Enzo whined, "Maaahhh aaahhhm, Israel thinks I'm his faaah ther".  I huffed that that was ridiculous as I moved a chair away from the table.  Enzo and I have been in business together long enough that he knew I was mostly ignoring him and that he wasn't going to get anywhere with me so he went back in the living room.

     I moved on from sweeping to laundry and as I did I heard "Eh nn zoh", "Ahhh sssss ton" coming from the living room over and over again.  Eventually I heard triumphant, "MOM!  Israel said our names PERFECTLY"'s.

      When Enzo was little and receiving speech therapy through our county's Early Intervention program I sat with Enzo and Miss Kristin every time they met.  Miss Kristin was an educated professional speech pathologist.   In retrospect I realize I should have sat in on my sons' impromptu say my name session.  I left a one year old in the hands of a twelve year old and seven year old.  I'm pretty sure their methods were not tested, tried, or true.  Whatever they did, Israel has been punching me in the face while clearly enunciating, "Aston", ever since.

Daily Frozen Viewing

     Disney's Frozen has not gotten stale in this house despite the daily viewing.  Anything my children add their personal flair to entertains me.  Yesterday Dorothy was singing Do You Want To Build A Snowman and said, "Hang in there, Jones" when Anna says, "Hang in there, Joan" and today Aston, sweet, oblivious, Aston asked us which Sven we were talking about, the human one or the reindeer one.  My mother in law once remarked that she wondered what it must be like to go through life being Aston.  Seriously!  It must be something.