The story of the microwave and bad afternoon naps

After re-telling this story to my sister the other night, I figured it was worth typing up because I found it so hilarious after-the-fact. One important fact to note: I am super-cranky when I first wake up from any sleep lasting longer than 40 minutes. I need 10 minutes to lay there and come to my senses before dealing with problems. Otherwise, you're getting the beastly side of me. Ben and the kids don't prefer this side.

We received a microwave for our wedding, a pretty nice one in fact. And while Ben thinks it takes up too much counter space, I guess I am a little attached to it and the fact that it still runs fine keeps me holding onto it. The only flaw it has is the broken LED screen which fried sometime during our first move, and has rarely worked since. Hence, you really have to pay attention to the buttons you're pushing.
Recently, Jilly has learned to make her favorite snack, chocolate chip peanut butter burritos. It's a flour tortilla, with peanut butter spread on one side and sprinkled with chocolate chips. Heat it in the microwave for 16 seconds, roll it up, and it's yummy, warm, gooey goodness.
A few days ago I was on the couch dozing just after lunch and the kids exclaim they're all hungry despite having just eaten. So Jilly offered to make herself and Gordon a burrito, which she did in fine fashion, no messes or mishaps. Evelyn wanted to get in on this (while I am mostly asleep), and then this conversation unfolds:
Mom!
Me, groggy: What?
My tortilla is stuck to the paper towel in the microwave! (Does anyone else keep a paper towel on their microwave plate?)
Me, trying to wake up to properly deal with this problem. Well, just peel it off.
No! Then the paper towel will stick to the tortilla and I'll eat it!
Me, thinking why in the world is it stuck, it never gets stuck. Maybe you didn't heat it enough, put it on for ten more seconds. 10 more seconds.
Mom, it's still stuck! Me, getting annoyed at this point. I go to the microwave and find burned, solid chocolate chips sitting atop bubbled, dried out peanut butter, atop a large tortilla-like cracker. 
Uh, how long did you cook this for?
Well, Jilly said sixty seconds so I pushed one, six, zero.
Um, Ev, it's sixteen seconds. Not sixty. You cooked yours for 2 minutes.
Oohh. Sheepish smile.
Make another one, and push one, six, and then 'start.' Okay? I go back to the couch to finish lazily dozing. Probably 5 minutes later: 
Mom, what do I push?
One, six, then start.
I'm scared to Mom!
What? Why?
Because if I push the start button, it says 'minute plus' and that means it will add minutes and I don't know how long to count!
Me, totally confused and grouchy: What in the world Evelyn? You've run the microwave before, what's the deal?
I don't trust the microwave! (She begins entering Evelyn panic mode) 
Okay, if you're worried about time being on the clock, just push clear a few times and it will reset everything.
I don't know what a few is!!
Beastly exhale from me: Push it two times! Then push one, six, and start!
But mom, I can't push start because it will add minutes!!
No it won't! Don't you trust that I know how to run the microwave?
Noo!!!
If you want your burrito, push the right buttons!!
I can't!!!!
Now really frustrated, I go back to the kitchen and try to help her gain trust in my microwave skills. 
Look, I promise, that if you push one, six, and then start, it will not add minutes. Okay?
But how do you know Mom?!!
Ugh. I push them for her. She watches her burrito spin. 
More panicking: Mom! No! No! No! The tortilla is blowing up! It's blowing up!!!
Evelyn! It's okay! It does that! The timer's almost done!
No!! The other one did that and then it turned all burned and hard and yucky!!!
Beeeeeep. Out comes warm, gooey goodness.
Oh. Sheepish smile. Thanks Mom.

Oh, the morals of this story. I pick "I should not nap in the afternoon."

The 200th post

 Is dedicated to Jillian and her love of taking pictures recently. I think she did okay for a camera whose LCD screen is mostly broken and un-viewable outdoors. 

Typical Jilly hairstyle: slicked smoothly down the front, hair in the face, and a headband. She has since had a haircut which looks quite nice when I blow-dry it (which is maybe once a week). 

 Part of my kitchen. 

 The light fixture that was hanging over the dining table. 

 Until a pipe upstairs started leaking and dripping down the afore-mentioned fixture, resulting in the loss of the light all together and a ceiling full of holes. It doesn't look too bad here, but this was only half-way through the "where's this leak coming from?" process. Think swiss cheese, and you get the idea. 

Evelyn probably didn't know she took this. Evelyn asked me to cut her hair that short. So much easier to fix in the mornings. 

 Now we head to the community garden for photos. This was early May. Those sunflowers are now gone and the tomato plants are triple the size seen here. Gordon is covering up his eyes cause he's a stinker. 

 A photo of the sun, because when you're five, you don't know you shouldn't look at the sun and Mom wasn't paying attention. 

 Said inattentive Mom. Sidenote: I love wearing floppy sun hats, but they definitely impede my peripheral vision, thus hampering part of my "mommy radar." Not sure what to do about it, but not too concerned either because my children are beyond the "may die or seriously injure themselves every five minutes" stage. 

 Calendulas in the garden. A much prettier relative to marigolds. 

 Exhibit I: Jilly's hand. 

 Exhibit J: Jilly's hand with dirt, because dirt makes everything more interesting. 

Exhibit K: Mom has five kids! Not really, I baby-sit the seated sassy little miss roughly 4 days a week now. It's actually not bad at all, mostly because I'm not sleep-deprived having to care for kids through the night. One of Evelyn's neighbor friends is pictured to the left.

Jilly is so ready for kindergarten, and to be in-the-know (as far as school goes) like her big sister and friends she plays with. Jilly really doesn't have friends that are her age, they're either a year younger or older than she is. Right now she's at a really logical, polite, and helpful stage. It's really nice considering Evelyn is in a mood-swing stage complete with attitude. I thought kids weren't teenagers until they turned 13. 

April Re-cap

April was a busy month for us: Evelyn's Spring Break, Ben starting the last quarter of the academic year, Easter, a birthday, and then all the regular stuff that goes on. 

 Ben took the kids to the mall for free scoop day at Ben and Jerry's. 

 Ben scopes out new parks and viewpoints on his bike rides, and this was a fantastic park we found for flying kites. The ocean breeze comes right over the top of this hill. 

 We also practiced softball skills with the kids.

 Playing after a softball game. 

 Ben's favorite dessert that we mostly gave away this time. 

 The kids were big on Playdough in April. Jillian especially can sit there and create for quite a while. Gordon likes to mash all the colors together, much to the girls' chagrin. 

 Evelyn loves making pictures for people, here's one for her cousin. 

Jillian likes being in control of the camera, and this was one of the few decent shots she took on her last "photo shoot." Lots of blurry pictures, one of Gordon's underwear-clad bottom, pictures of "The Cat in the Hat" show on PBS, etc. 

The first-graders were asked to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" for their last school assembly. Ev's in the back with her hand raised. There are nearly 100 first-graders. Crazy. She has really grown up a lot this year and learned quite a bit. I wish she'd slow down on the growing part though, she's already got the mood swings to match a teenager. Ugh. Only 7.5 more weeks of school, I can't wait! 

Easter did not produce many good pictures at all; Gordon was fighting off the chickenpox, and so we kept Easter small this year. We did the goodies on Saturday (all the other festivities were that day anyway), so on Sunday we could better focus on the Savior instead of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. I think it's a tradition we'll keep. 

My garden is a big source of satisfaction lately. I'm grateful to have somewhere to dig in the dirt. I got my garden all ready and planted for this spring/summer, and it's looking to be a much better growing year than last year. Most of the seeds have sprouted, and are continuing to grow instead of just staying tiny seedlings. I still had lots of trouble with my spinach (something ate the sprouts), and then a package of lettuce seed failed to sprout at all, leading me to think it was bad seed or something. My Calendulas and Bert's button flower mix are growing fantastically, as are the tomato plants, sunflowers, bunching onions, and radishes. We planted "Martian Sweet Corn," and Sugar Baby watermelons, which I will attempt to trellis due to a lack of space and mildew problems here. We'll see how the experiment goes!

Happy Birthday Gordon!

 This miniature Buzz Lightyear turned three early last month. He's most definitely no longer a toddler, he likes being rough and tough and can keep up with kids much older than he is. In the last month, he's been able to pretend play with Jilly and Ev in their make-believe games, which is a huge development beyond walking in and destroying whatever set they've built (still does this occasionally). He loves to play in the water, as evidenced by today's partial flood in the bathroom (two sink counter-top, one sink is really clogged, let that faucet run for a while, you can take it from there...). He really enjoys digging in my garden plot and making mud, and splashing in rain puddles to find the snails, slugs and worms that abound in our "May Gray" weather (personally loving it). He sang the beginning section from the "Imperial March" (Star Wars) for the 20 minute car ride home from a store yesterday. He loves Bob the Builder shows and Wonder Pets. 

He picked out Fruit Loops cereal for his birthday breakfast (sugar cereal is rare around here), and asked for maple syrup for lunch. Just syrup.....and then a little while later he added that he wanted "little squares cut up" with it. Jilly translated and said that meant waffles. So that's what we did. This boy LOVES brownies (takes after his mom he does) and so we did a big plate of brownie squares with scoops of vanilla ice cream on top, with an Oreo pushed into each ice cream scoop. The video below demonstrates my complicated technique. Uncle Dan has not missed a birthday yet I think, and he was with us for the afternoon. Gordon loves Uncle Dan. 

 Batman. (Sorry for fuzzy pictures).  

 He got a new baseball glove, and he's opening Great-Grandma Green's present here. 

 "Uuhhuh! More tissue paper?"

He was rewarded with a new pair of jeans. Gordon loves his jeans and when it hits 85 degrees later in the summer, I will have to say the winter fairy stole them until the weather cools off or something. Other random facts: He's been potty-trained for nearly a year now, he is no longer waking up before 6:30 am regularly, but still climbs into bed with me a few times a week. He's been the only kid I've been able to stand having in the same bed, he doesn't squirm around much. He drinks water like a fish, and goes to the bathroom just as much. When we're out in our garden or just playing around the landscaping in our apartment complex, I often find him relieving himself on a bush, wall or rock. Or the girls just yell loud enough for anyone nearby to hear, "MO-OM! Gordon's peeing on (whatever)." Today I wondered if some animalistic territory-marking gene has been activated.  I love my ticklish, squishy, rambunctious boy!