Tonight, Charlie took William and Carolyn (along with his Den of Cub Scouters) to see a basketball game at a local high school, while I remained home with a recovering Elizabeth and Henry.
The game was scheduled to begin at 5:45, but Charlie was due to arrive at the school at 5:30 for early seating and so the kids could meet all the players. The school is approximately 15 minutes from our house. He stuck a pizza in the oven for the kids at 4:45. When I came home (from a doctor's appointment) at 5:05, the timer for the pizza had just gone off. I opened the oven door and noticed that the pizza needed five more minutes. So I reset the timer ... but Charlie decided that he'd speed up the process and just turn the heat to broil.
A split second later, we heard crying from the hallway. We dash out to see William laying on the floor with blood on his chin. He had been attempting to "ice skate" on our hardwood floors in his socks. His attempt was unsuccessful. I scoop him up and he has a 1/4-inch gaping wound. The kind of wound that might require a trip to the ER to have 2-3 stitches, if it wasn't Friday night and he didn't have somewhere to be in 23 minutes.
Also ... I have medical adhesive and butterfly bandages ... and since my mother is a nurse, my father and two sisters are pharmacists ... my great-grandfather was a Harvard-educated doctor there is enough medical-know-how in my genetic makeup that surely I can mend my son's chin.
This is probably exactly what they'd do at the hospital after we waited for four hours, anyway.
So as I'm retrieving the First Aid supplies while Charlie is consoling our eldest son, Carolyn mentions that she smells something burning. It seems four minutes on broil were approximately three and a half minutes too long and smoke BILLOWED out of the oven when Charlie opened the door. Our kitchen smoke detector went off, followed by our dining room, living room and hallway.
Charlie is running through the house, pulling smoke detectors off the ceiling and flinging open all the windows. As he hastily moves from one room to the next, he steps on the puppy, who someone had let out of his kennel. The puppy runs in to the kitchen and pees on the floor as Henry starts screaming that water is coming OUT of the toilet. As in, overflowing the rim. All because our children are capable of producing such mass that that they clog the toilet.
Frequently.
From William's injury to the scorched pizza to the puppy incident to the toilet overflowing, less than three minutes had lapsed. And the only reason I'm jotting this story down, is to memorialize the crazy that often reigns in our house.
Charlie and the kids gobble down burnt pizza and fresh fruit before shoving off to the basketball game, while Elizabeth, Henry and I stayed in our warm house and crafted gingerbread men.
The children made these last year and they were so adorable, I wanted to try and re-create them. If we make this an annual tradition, we'll soon have enough to make a gingerbread man garland that we can string across doorways.
To make them, just take brown butcher paper and trace the image of a gingerbread man. Cut out the image and using it as a template, cut out the second gingerbread man. Use markers, paint, glue, glitter and pom-poms to decorate.
Staple the two images together, while adding crumpled tissue paper (last year we used crushed paper towels) between the two pieces in order to give the gingerbread man a more "full" look.
I love (love! love! love! love!) children's art.
