Cheap pasta, broken things, and where my kids get their stubbornness from (er, I mean their independent spirits)

Last night Dean was making himself some ramen noodles, and after putting the noodles on a plate, he slipped and bumped the glass bowl he’d cooked them in into a drinking glass, shattering the lip of the drinking glass. It wasn’t a large part of the glass that was broken, but the pieces were small and there were a lot of them, and, surveying the damage, I was pretty sure I could see a tiny piece of glass in Dean’s noodles.

Me: “Dean, please don’t eat that ramen. It’s just not worth it. I don’t want you to risk hurting yourself badly over thirty-three cents’ worth of ramen.”

Dean: “There’s just the one piece of glass in it.”

Me: “There could be more. There’s glass all over the counter.”

Dean: “I’ll throw away half of it.”

Me: “Dean, PLEASE don’t eat the ramen.”

Mabel: “Daddy, please don’t eat it! There could be more pieces of broken glass in it! It’s dangerous!”

Isaac: “Dad, it’s not worth it!”

Me: “Dean, even if you’re sure it’s safe, just please don’t eat it, if only for the sake of your pleading wife and children!”

Dean, reluctantly scraping it into the trash,: “Okay, I’ll throw it out.”

All the rest of us sigh in relief. A couple minutes later I’ve finished wiping bits of glass off the counter and sweeping the floor.

Me: “I hope I got all of that. I really tried, but there were a LOT of tiny pieces.”

Dean: “Just think, some of those could have been inside me now.”

Me: “I can’t believe we had to fight you so hard to get you not to eat that.”

Dean: “I was only going to eat half of it. I would have thrown away the other half.”

Me: “But you couldn’t know the glass only landed on half of it! That’s the whole point — the glass was everywhere.”

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Since Isaac is allergic to milk, we never got the habit of eating many of the easy kid foods a lot of parents rely on, such as yogurt, string cheese, or macaroni and cheese. Isaac has partly outgrown his allergy, but there are still some things that make his mouth itch. But, the other day at Costco when Mabel wanted me to buy a multi-pack of Kraft macaroni and cheese, I agreed, realizing that when I fed it to the kids, Isaac could just fend for himself and eat something else. (He’s very partial to ramen and corn dogs, and can “cook” them for himself.) So, mac and cheese is the new novelty food at our house, and Henry enjoyed his so much yesterday that when I said “Would you like more?” he said, very clearly, “Yes!” — which is the first time he’s said that word that clearly. So today when Rose and Henry asked for some more for lunch, I gave in — and regretted it. Lunch took over an hour. Usually we do sandwiches and finger foods, and although my kids dawdle a lot (because they know naps come after lunch,) I think we’re still usually done in half an hour or forty minutes. I’ve decided that having to boil the water and wait for the macaroni to cook and then letting it all cool down enough to be eaten is just too much fuss for lunch — we’re going back to finger foods, and we’ll save the mac ‘n’ cheese for kid dinners if Dean and I are going out on a date (etc.) Also, halfway through lunch there was a loud crash — and I was very grateful to discover that Rose had only knocked on the floor and broken an empty ceramic plate from breakfast — not her ceramic bowl full of mac ‘n’ cheese. Still, she got off her chair twice after I told her not to move until I’d swept up all the pieces. (She thought she’d be safest if she went and got her shoes, despite all my warnings to the contrary.) Oh and before any of this, Rose and Henry had managed to spill half the box of the uncooked macaroni on the floor, and I’d had to sweep that up. And then the novelty had worn off (or he was less hungry,) and Henry didn’t finish all his mac ‘n’ cheese this time. So, like I said, I’m swearing off the stuff, for at least a few days.

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When Dean went back for a follow-up visit with his podiatrist yesterday, we’d made an appointment for Isaac, too. It turns out Isaac has the same type of feet Dean does: “hypermobile,” meaning that the joints all bend too easily, which can lead to bone spurs or bunions or all kinds of fun things like that. The solution is that Isaac will wear orthotic insoles — basically for the rest of his life, I guess. Fortunately our insurance will pay for 4 sets a year for kids — he’ll need that many because kids wear them out quickly, and his feet will of course still be growing. I guess I need to get Mabel in to see the podiatrist, too, and find out whose feet she inherited.

Dean has permission now to occasionally remove his bandages and wash his feet with disinfectant soap, so he was doing that last night and I got to see the damages. His incision is about 5 or 6 inches long, running along the top of his foot (parallel to the first metatarsal) and his foot’s still quite swollen. I said, “I guess it wouldn’t be kind of me to call you ‘Frankenfoot’.” Dean took a couple of photos of it and said it reminded him of the photos of crime victims they show in “Prime Suspect” (which we’ve been watching while we’re stuck at home in the evenings.)

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So, those are some scintillating details from our scintillating lives. In other news, my two youngest kids are officially the worst-behaved children in Sacrament Meeting of all time — especially when I’m alone with them at church, as I was this past Sunday — for a second week in a row, after Dean came down with a sudden one-day stomach flu (or Independence Day Food Poisoning — although I ate all the same things he did and was fine.) Most people I talked to after Sacrament Meeting expressed sympathy, and one even said, “You’re in the right place!,” which I really was grateful to hear, since I’d been wishing I’d just stayed in bed that day, and had felt like crying by the time the meeting was over. It took me about an hour just to get my blood pressure back down to normal. In hindsight I wish I’d called someone beforehand to help with the kids — but then, I could hardly have imagined how bad it could really be. (I’d describe how bad it was in detail, but, along with the fact that it would probably be even less scintillating to read than the rest of this post, I’d really rather just block it all out.)

So, that’s all for now. But one last thought: life is good. Really. I love Dean, I love my adorable kids, I love that food is cheap and broken dishes can be swept up — and I even love Sacrament Meeting, most weeks.

Explore posts in the same categories: Health or lack thereof, Meanwhile in the real world, Parenting

Tags: broken glass, mommy blog, Parenting, ramen

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