Guess What? Chicken Butt!!

In today's post I have to tell a story of a conversation Nicole and I had the other day. I have a hard time getting Nicole's true emotion in writing, but I'll try. This one's just too funny not to share!

So last week I decided to make homemade chicken noodle soup. Nicole was at the kitchen table doing her school work and I was standing at the sink rinsing off a whole chicken, removing the giblets and all that fun stuff. Nicole looks up at me and asks, "Are you sticking your hand in a chicken's butt?"

Now this comment was not made by her to be funny, she was very serious. So I looked up at her and told her, "Yes, I have to take out the giblets and rinse the chicken off before I cook it. What's the big deal, its dead?” (This is me trying to be funny with her, but she was not amused).

Nicole looks at me dead serious and says, "That is disgusting! (With an emphasis on DIS) If you have to stick your hand up a chickens butt to cook, then when I get older my husband is doing all the cooking. I am NOT putting my hands inside a chicken." Now as she’s telling me all of this, her hand is on one hip and she’s staring at me with a look of revulsion.

So now I tell her, "They've all ready removed all the guts and the actual chicken's butt. It’s just the bones, meat and skin." She replies, "That's even more disgusting and I’m not eating the chicken soup anymore.”

At this point I'm completely amused by this conversation and her very serious face. It’s taking all I have not to bust up laughing because she is so appalled by this situation. So I respond, "What do you think hot dogs are made of?" I can’t contain myself anymore and burst out laughing.

While still giggling, I tell her hot dogs are made out of all the leftovers of different animals...the lips and assholes. Now she really freaks out and is not amused at all but outright disgusted. She then proceeds to tell me that she is “never eating another hot dog ever again, she's not eating the chicken soup and she can not believe how disgusting this all is”. (I'm really starting to think that she is soon going to be a vegetarian...)

Now this is the end of our conversation, but the story doesn't end here. For dinner that night it was either chicken soup or cook your own dinner. Nathan decides to have hot dogs and chips instead of soup. He heats up his hot dogs and sits down at the kitchen table. Nicole looks at him, dead serious and says, "If you knew what was in those, you wouldn't be eating them right now."

Now Nathan freaks out, not because of how hot dogs are made, but because he now thinks that Nicole has put something into his hot dogs. He comes running into the other room where I am, and he’s crying and telling me what Nicole said to him. I ask him if he knows what hot dogs are made with. He says yeah, the leftovers, and I tell him that's what Nicole was talking about. So now Nathan looks at me, completely irritated and says, "Great, now I threw my hot dogs away for nothing because I thought Nicole put something in them. Now I have to cook new ones."

I love these kids for making me laugh daily!!

I'm sure this story doesn't come out quite as good as it would have if I were able to tell you in person with facial expressions and all...actually when I told my mom the story, I was laughing so hard half way through it that I could barely finish. Nicole, true to her word, hasn't touched a hot dog since and she did not eat the chicken soup either...

The Silence is Deafening

Everyday I long for peace and quiet...with 5 very active children, my days are never dull. During the day I home school Nicole and have the 2 year old terror climbing the walls. After school there is choir practice, sports practices and games to attend, and a multitude of other extra curricular activities and appointments. With Tony on the road a lot, I don't get many chances to have a minute to myself. I mean this literally, as even with the bathroom door closed and locked there is someone crying, calling my name or talking to me through the door. By the time kids bedtimes roll around I'm so tired I go to bed right after they do. I do try and get up in the morning before I have to wake up the kids but most of the time the snooze button wins or one of them is all ready awake and waiting for breakfast.

This weekend was a little different. Brooke, Nicole and Nathan are all at their Dad's house for the weekend and won't be home until 6 tonight. Tyler spent the night with his Grandpa, so it was just little man and I for most of the day. Yesterday it rained, snowed and sleeted outside which doesn't help with my ambition to get things accomplished, especially on a weekend. So Brandon and I lounged around most of the day reading books, watching The Wiggles and other cartoons and had a Mommy/Brandon bonding day and went to bed pretty early. This morning I woke up to sunshine and a renewed energy. We started out the day with laundry and sweeping and all that fun stuff. Brandon is a big helper, or he tries to be anyway. He's very independent and wants to do everything by himself...too bad this stage doesn't last long. When they’re finally old enough to do their chores without help, no one wants to do them. But anyway, now he's napping and I'm cleaning away and the silence is deafening! Can it really be too quiet in your house? As much as I complain about the constant chaos and noise, times like this make me realize that I love it all! I feed off of their energy in order to keep mine going and all of this silence today, makes me want to wait until the little guy wakes up to finish cleaning.

But I'm also not crazy....I will not wake a sleeping toddler! Most of the time it takes most of my energy to get him calmed down enough to take a nap. But today he fell asleep all on his own. He must be wiped out from cleaning all day! So for now, I will crank up the radio and continue on my way and wait for all of the noise to once again surround me later this evening.

Someone should have warned me...

I finally have a few minutes to myself to write for a bit. The little man is down for a nap and Nicole has finished up with her school work for the day and is outside playing on the swing set. Ahhhhh, the sweet sound of silence! (For now) Now I probably should be cleaning, but cleaning has to do with what I'm writing about today, so at least I'm thinking about it.

Someone should have warned me...about how gross kids are. The scenario playing out in my house for the past 24 hours has to do with missing cleaning equipment. First and foremost is the fact that the plunger is missing. Now let me explain how I found this out. The toilet in the kid’s bathroom isn't the greatest and backs up occasionally, hence the need for a plunger. Late yesterday morning it had backed up again. Nicole came casually strolling into the basement where I was doing laundry and said “Mom, the toilet is going over.” That was it. She then walked back upstairs and into the living room to turn on the TV while I rushed frantically into the bathroom to check out how bad it was. I grabbed some towels and threw them onto the floor around the toilet and reached around the side to grab the plunger and only found air. Ummmm, ok. “Where’s the plunger?” I asked. Nicole says “I don’t know because I don’t use it.” I asked Brandon the same thing and got “Inanooooo” as he raises his hands up and shrugs his shoulders innocently. (Translated toddler talk is: I don’t know)

So now I'm left with a clogged toilet and can not find the plunger. I begin to search frantically through the house to figure out where exactly a plunger would go. It is now 24 hours later and I still have not found the plunger and am giving in to the fact that it somehow walked off the job and left the house. I also have not figured out why anyone felt the need to remove the plunger from its home in the bathroom. So off to the store I shall go to purchase a new one.

The children in my house must think that if the cleaning supplies are gone, they will not have to clean. In the last year I have had to purchase 3 new cleaning buckets (2 of which were in the last month). Along with the missing cleaning buckets, the window cleaner, mop, scrubby pads, air freshener, etc. all disappear randomly. Now these items did not disappear due to being empty, over used or broken. These items all went missing within a week or two of being purchased. The kids all have age appropriate chores and not a huge amount of chores either as I’m home all day to try and keep some sense of order in the house. They are supposed to keep their rooms and the playroom cleaned up and organized. The boys have outside chores ranging from snow shoveling, brush clean up, taking out the garbage, etc. The girls have to do dishes nightly. No, we're not lucky enough to own a dishwasher as I have precious little cupboard space. On Saturday's we do all the dusting, vacuuming, mopping, bathrooms, etc. And when I say we, I really mean me. Most of the time I send the kids outside and put them in charge of the little man so I can get down and get the house clean. When I'm finished I can actually sit in the cleanliness for a precious few moments before the kids come in and destroy it all over again.

Kids are gross and someone should have warned me. I'm almost positive that they would be perfectly happy living in filth as long as it didn't require them to lift a finger near a cleaning product. With that said, I'm off to the store to purchase a new plunger and restock the cleaning supplies, again. Then I'll be back home to use my brand new bucket and cleaning items, until the next time they all go on strike and disappear.