Mom for a Day

In keeping with the poetic blog theme and celebrating the recent vernal equinox, I would offer the following:

Roses are Red,

Violets are blue,

I'm glad I'm a man,

and so are you.

These words were verified through a recent trial with which the Lord has blessed us!  Although Bek is pregnant (an obvious blessing and gracious gift from God), The Lord has thought best to test our faith with another tooth problem.  On March 27, she began feeling some pain in one of her wisdom teeth which extended through this past week.  Consequently, she slept much less than normal last week.  After suffering through the weekend, she was able to see the dentist who helped with some medications, scheduling an extraction for yesterday, April 5.

Bekah was not overly excited at the prospect of having another tooth removed.  However, when weighing it against the option of extended tooth pain and many more sleepless nights, it seemed best.  Because she is pregnant, she is unable to inhale large doses of the famed "laughing gas" so prevalent in dental offices nationwide.  Instead, she received shots to numb the area.  It took one whole hour to get her numb.  Apparently they had to insert an IV-type tube into the area just to numb her!  The three minute extraction seems to have had some good results.

For example, I have been blessed with the opportunity to care for my entire family!  Hannah and Ben are old enough to be extremely helpful so I figured this was no problem.  It would be no problem, if I were Bekah.  But I am not.

She had wisely planned to have a rather simply dinner: potato soup.  Not only is it fairly healthy and simple to make, but I love it, providing more motivation as I tried to reconstruct this palatable masterpiece.  She graciously pulled up the recipe on her Ipod and off I went!  With a preparation time of 45 minutes, the meal would be ready around 5:30p, a great time for dinner!

I read through the instructions to get an overview.  The author must have made some major assumptions here.  Apparently, the time to find all the ingredients and measuring utensils is not included in the preparation time.  So, twenty five minutes later I had assembled all of the ingredients and was ready to measure, mix, and melt as necessary!

The actual cooking proceeded forward without too many problems.  Having been instructed by Bekah once before, I was somewhat familiar with the process.  However, I don't remember having to work over Phoebe.  Our youngest daughter has the sneakiness of Ben combined with the jabber-ability of Hannah.  Being focused on the instructions and ingredients, I would not notice her crawl into position between me and the oven.  The next thing I know, I am trying to reach over her to add or measure ingredients!  How was I supposed to care for Phoebe and cook at the same time?  I underestimated the sneakiness!

While this was going on, Hannah would come in with questions about reading.  She is doing a fabulous job with her reading so we want to encourage her.  However, it is tough to cook, not step on Phoebe, and read Hannah's books all at the same time!  How does Bekah do it?  On top of that, Ben would come into the kitchen from time to time reminding me that he is hungry.  The lesson:  not only is daddy a slow cooker, he cannot multitask to save his life!

After beginning dinner preparations at 4:30p, we finally settled down to eat around 6:10p!  What a night!  Praise God for Bekah, my wife!  Where would we be without our wives and mothers!  I am glad mommy can stay home and care for the kids.  I assume the kids are glad too!  We will see how Tuesday goes!