May 15, 2015

I have to admit that I have lost the Mother of the Year award

many

many

many

many times over.

It is so far out of reach that I have to remove it from my psyche.

You know how all those super-mom’s do cute things for their children like….

bake cookies in their initials

do crafts on rainy afternoons

create scavenger hunts

cut their food in cutsie shapes.

I didn’t do any of those.

Seriously, my children were deprived of any cutsieness what-so-ever.

They were made to eat asparagus when they were two.

They watched a lot of TV (and I am an educator, so I should know better!).

The only scavenger hunt I ever did was to yell at my kids to pick up every thing that was theirs or I was throwing it away!

I know….now I am a horrible mother instead of just in second place for the Great Mother award.

But today….

I actually did something cool with them!

Remembering something I saw once AND knowing that I was too tired after a long day at work to make dinner….

we had Noodle Dogs!

Like a miracle, we had skinless chicken hot dogs in the fridge from a campfire we never had and uncooked spaghetti (and frozen vegetables so at least they would have a somewhat balanced meal).

Simple concept: Stick the noodles through the hot dog and boil.

First we had fun naming this project:

DNA Dogs

Einstein Dogs (for the one my daughter put noodles in all facing the same direction…..like in the picture)

Ben Franklin dogs (after it was cooked)

The best was when my hilarious daughter said,

“It looks like a porcupine and a hot dog got together and had a baby!”

I posted the before and after pictures.

The kids had SO much fun with this simple ‘I don’t want to make dinner’ project!

It is embarassing how much genius can come out of sheer laziness.

The other thing that struck me as I watched these two children gigging and eating in harmony when they normally were thinking of scratching each other’s eyeballs out, is how their creations emulated their personalities.

The Einstein/Franklin girl is serious, scientific, cautious, thoughtful, and likes things in order.

The porcupine/ hot dog mating creation was done by my carefree, creative, spunky, loud, mischevious messy child who has given me every gray hair and every laugh line I posess.

What an enjoyable evening,

the kids didn’t fight,

I didn’t have to make dinner,

with my feet up I sipped on a glass of wine and smiled.

 

“May the dragon of life only roast your hot-dogs and never burn your buns!” ~Anonymous.