I used to see the kitchen as a place to cook, a place to eat, and a place (occasionally) to clean. Somewhere to store all the hundreds of kitchen gadgets I have accumulated. A place to look for something tasty to snack on.
And then there were kids.
And somehow, in the past 5 years, my kitchen has become much less about cooking or food and infinitely more like a test of my speed, patience, endurance, and ingenuity.
Take breakfast time. I run in circles from one child to the next, as they all want something different to eat for breakfast. The baby has very limited patience for a lack of breakfast food on her tray, and she feels she must "share" her food with me before she can eat it. This entails me holding out my hand while she fills it up with her food, then saying "Thank you" and dumping it back on the tray after which she eats a few bites then wants to "share" again. The 5-year-old has preschool for which we must leave in less than 50 minutes, and she has yet to finish eating, dressing, and grooming. This means every few minutes I issue the standard reminder: "Eat your breakfast before it’s time to go." The 2-year-old inhales, rather than eats, and every time I think I’ve got a second to take a bite of my toast or a drink of my juice, he announces he is now ready for more oatmeal (going on three bowls a day as of late), or another orange, or more bananas, or yet another pancake or waffle. So meals are, to say the least, less than calming.
And then there is cooking. Which is, in my opinion, one of the best parts of kitchens. Or was, I guess I should say. Because now, cooking has become a test of how much I can do with one hand, or how fast I can throw things together while listening to choruses of "What’s for dinner?" "I’m so hungry!" and wailing from the baby.
My favorite kitchen "event" however, is by far and away cleaning up the mess. This, of course, includes washing the table, chairs, and counters, sweeping the floor, loading the dishwasher, and putting food in the fridge. Each of these comes with its own set of challenges, mostly due to the baby and her new-found ability to walk, enabling her to move around almost as quickly as me. When the meal is over and she looks up and says "ow" as cutely as she does, I know she’s done and is asking to get out. So I roll the highchair over to the sink and begin washing her. Except when she gets over by the sink she suddenly feels the urge to eat again and starts shoving everything in her mouth as fast as she can. Which is fine with me because it gives me a chance to get the dishes cleared from the table. Which I do as fast as I can, because the more I can finish while she’s eating, the better.
Once she decides that she really does want out, I wash her and put her down on the floor. Then the real fun begins. My efforts must be equally split between accomplishing the task at hand and defending my territory. Sweeping is a high priority, as she will eat anything she finds on the floor, including parts of dinner that have been partially chewed by one of the older children, pieces of paper from the 5-year-old’s latest craft project, small rocks brought in the house by the 2-year-old, or the magnets off the fridge. (Her latest trick is digging things out of the sliding door track and eating them. I found her with black fingers and small bits of who-knows-what in her mouth just a few days ago.) Next I put the food away in the fridge. (So that when an "emergency" happens and I leave the kitchen to become occupied in another room, the food won’t spoil. Because I will inevitably get caught up in another room picking up toys or playing with kids or getting them ready for bed – this is simply a fact of motherhood. No matter where you are, there is something to do. And I find that unless I completely finish a task, I will find so many other tasks on my way back to the first that I completely forget I was doing it in the first place.) The instant the fridge door is opened, over comes the baby and in go the little hands. She loves anything the shape of a bottle, because the top fits in her mouth. This includes the mustard bottle, salad dressing bottle, soy sauce, water bottles, or lemon juice. So I block from the door side where most of these belong, but she does occasionally get around me. Her next favorite thing to do in the fridge is to find the plastic cups of whatever the 2-year-old had for his drink most recently and try to grab it. She wants to be just like her older siblings, and the best way she can think of at the moment is to drink just like they do, out of their cups. So, as quickly as possible, I shove the food in the fridge, praying nothing without a lid falls over, and close the fridge door. Of course the next priority is dishes, including loading the dishwasher, as a kitchen is never clean until the dirty dishes are out of sight. I rinse the dishes and pile them on the counter until they are all as ready as can be to go in the dishwasher. This is because the instant I open the dishwasher, the baby comes running from wherever she was and uses the dishwasher as her jungle gym. If I turn my back for even a second, I find her inside the dishwasher. She finds every scrap of food and in her mouth it goes. Then she "loads" whatever she can find into the dishwasher for me – her magnets, socks, toys, or the dishes she gets from the drawers or cabinets (most frequently my lids, but occasionally other things such as my napkin rings or cake pans). Then she attempts to "unload" for me by removing any dishes she is strong enough to lift out of the dishwasher herself. So I load, as fast as I possibly can, doing my best not to break anything really important, and close the dishwasher, wiping the beads of perspiration from my brow as another meal has been (fairly successfully) completed.
Needless to say, the kitchen has become something of an adventure for me as the years have gone by. But I like to think I’m improving with each child. So bring it on. And when the guys in the Olympics organizing committee add Kitchen Tending as an event, sign me up. I’ll bring home the gold.
