The Miracle Hour…aka: Dinner Time!
I’ve decided to dub the 6ish to 7ish hour as “The Miracle Hour”.
It was an absolute, pure miracle tonight that 1. we even made it into the kitchen to 2. put together a delicious and nutritious (rhyme!), amazing meal that we 3. thoroughly enjoyed…TOGETHER at.the.diningroomtable.
Anyone else hear what I’m sayin’, smell what I’m cookin’? Yes?
I can hear some wonderful Baptist out there saying, “AMEN!”.
My friends that have at least one child are the ones shaking their heads and empathizing with me. For you, my precious single friends, you with your happy hours and cocktails in peace and (boring!) quiet, keep reading. Life doesn’t get any better than when you throw an energized (and where does he get all this energy anyway?!), on the verge of crazed, toddler into your dinner mix.
I’ll set the scene for you visual learners: I was trying a new recipe I’d found in Real Simple (snipped from January 2012‘s copy no less)…Shrimp Lo Mein. It looked and sounded delish. I went to the store Sunday afternoon and grabbed most of the ingredients and then ran by Publix on my lunch break today to snag the 1.5 lbs of beautiful shrimp.
Normal routine after work: pick up the kid (it’s a term of endearment), get home, check the mail, play with the kid and dog and then go inside. First mistake. The kid loooovvvvesss to be outside. Loves it like I love shrimp. So when I picked him up, offered to let him keep the glorious stick he’d found, the drama took over. {pep talk: we can do this!}. We made it inside and proceeded to both feed the kid and start our delicious dinner. In the midst of peeling RAW shrimp, the kid decides to have a meltdown…I laugh at him. He thinks I’m funny! So the crazy-eyed laughter takes over both of us…but hey, the shrimp is getting peeled and he’s still in his highchair laughing at me. Daddy calls…speaker phone is another miracle. He’s half way home (I praise you, Jesus)…that means I have about 5-10 minutes of my (loony-toon) son to entertain while I continue to try to put together this meal before it all burns to a brownish black crisp! Still peeling (it was 1.5 lbs!), the kid loses it all over again. Wash hands, get kid out…he discovers the mac n cheese he’d thrown on the floor and decides he wants to spear it with the blunt fork he’s got a death-grip on. Great. Keep cooking. He yells at me. I have no idea what he’s saying, so I say in return, “Really? Where’s Daddy? Is he at the door?” He starts walking to the back door (my kid is a genius but that’s a different post for a later date). Daddy IS home! Another praise. Dinner is ready (how did I manage to do this?!). Plate the food, bowl-up the salad and sit down as fast as you can!! Go! GO! GOOO!!!
Sigh. Breathe. First bite. Ahhhhhh.
