Today, I'm welcoming Meghan from Phase Three of Life to guest post! There are few things that are awesome in this world. But, a mom who can wrestle an 11 month old with chronic, near crippling ear infections and a penchant for high speed chases down the freeway hallway, while maintaining a blog that extolls her outstanding sense of wit and charm is definitely one of those things. Also, I just learned that she makes a mean chocolate chip cookie bar.
Back in the days before I became a mom, I was a baker. I say “was” cuz once I had a kid, something had to give. Taking non-stop care of the kid is borderline required, and my boss had an expectation that I would keep coming into the office every single day, so my baking time took a major hit.
Recently, I realized I missed eating loads of cookies and cakes baking for family and friends. I set aside one precious hour to whip up some chocolate chip cookie bars. Once Mike and I had devoured a significant portion of them, it occurred to me: my kid has never sampled my baking.
Eleven full months of life on Earth and none of Mom’s baking? “Unacceptable,” I thought to myself.
So after Ryan ate an impressive amount of chicken and sweet potatoes for dinner the other night, I decided his good appetite and general happy demeanor should be rewarded with some dessert.
Kid gobbled it up. (Well, most of it: the chocolate chips are something of a choking hazard, and so I made the supreme sacrifice of ridding the world of them. The things we do for our kids!)
It was a positive experience all around: Ryan was happy to finally be allowed to eat something unhealthy, and I was satisfied with the confirmation – once and for all – that the kid is most definitely genetically related to me.
He happily splashed in the bathtub for a bit and then went down to sleep without so much as a whimper of complaint.
Mike and I enjoyed a relaxing meal, marveling at how easy the night was going (this is almost always our first mistake).
Then we heard a little cough over the monitor.
We paused our conversation for a moment.
He coughs a lot in his sleep, but this sounded different. Sort of... *cough*… muffled. Or... *cough*… thick?
Mike got to his room first and opened the door.
“Oh, god,” he said. “Oh, jeez. Oh, buddy.”
And there it was – chicken, sweet potatoes and chocolate chip cookie bar – all over his face, his hair, his neck, his hands, his sheet, his blanket. More food (did he really eat all of that??) than you’ve ever seen in your entire life.
We stood for a moment, just staring. It was quite a mess to behold, second only to one other incident that probably can never be topped (and I swear, we’re not trying to top it).
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Here's what he looks like when he's clean and smiling. Trust me, you don't want to see him the other way. |
Once the destruction was all cleaned up and Ryan was sufficiently tortured with a second bath and all the pieces of sweet potato had been plucked from behind the crib and the washer was happily humming, I asked the question that was haunting me:
"Do you think it was the chocolate chip cookie bar?"
"Nah, he probably just ate too much," Mike assured me. "Those cookie bars are delicious."
Please, go check out her blog, you won't regret it. Also, we should all pool together our resources and try to bribe a couple of those chocolate chip cookie bars off of her. Comments are off - go check her out!
