At night, after we’ve managed to shut off the television, called a halt to the unending battle between the forces of older brother vs. younger brother, endured the dessert debate (Can we have a treat? Haven’t you already had a dessert? That was carrot cake, not dessert. It was cake. Dessert is supposed to be something like a piece of candy. You don’t get candy before bedtime. Ah, Mom, pleeeeeaaaaaase!), we have to send the children to the shower to perform those nightly rituals that seem to take up so much of our adult life.
I mean, seriously, when I am preparing myself for a day at work, it takes me a good 30 minutes to do all the things a dude must do in order to avoid being known as that smelly guy.
But kids? Heck, I’ve an eight-year-old who brushes his teeth in two seconds, washes his hands without running any water, and declares he had a bath by just glancing at the empty tub. For boys, it seems, hygiene is more matter perspective and expressed conviction rather than actual cleanliness.
There’s a part of me that suspects this problem may be the fault of their parents.
When we brought the first baby home from the hospital, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. At the hospital, the nurses kept our little poopmeister as clean as a whistle. They gave us lessons in bathing our infant that made the task look so easy and efficient that we knew it would be a snap. After watching those nurses, we knew we could keep our children spic-and-span. And didn’t the newest member of the Chef family look so happy and peaceful as the nurse expertly removed his diaper, bathed him, washed his hair, dried him with a luxurious blue towel and then put a fresh diaper in place.
When we came home from the hospital, I walked my wife, who carried our precious new son in her arms, to the door and up the stairs and got her comfortably in bed. After all, she was a new mother who had gone through a physically demanding ordeal and I was the loving doting husband who was there to make her feel all warm and fuzzy.
What happened next made that whole doting husband/father schtick last for only 20 minutes.
We both noticed that our little expression of worldly optimism was a little stinky, and being paranoid new parents, we knew diseases from the non-sterile world just had to be all over him. In order to show my sincere intention to share the burden of rearing our new child, I told Mrs. Chef to relax and that I would bathe the child.
It was quite the learning experience. First off, a baby will scream his head off if you run the water in the bathtub. The sound echoes loudly in the tiled room and will startle a child so badly that his cries would make you suspect we were torturing him at Guantanamo. Second, an eight-pound human being does not fit under the faucet in a standard kitchen sink. Trying to rinse the soap off of a child without getting suds into his eyes takes college-level calculus, a plumb bob, and the GPS off of an iPod. And finally, soap apparently transforms babies into wriggling fish.
After almost dropping my son four times in that first 20 minutes after he came home and actually dropping him at least once, I concluded that there must be some secret knowledge that women have that gives them an instinctive ability to wash newborns. So I called my wife to rescue me.
But I can now say that when it comes to bathing an infant, there is no gender gap, there is complete equality in the incompetence that parents have when it comes to keeping their child clean. To be fair, Mrs. Chef didn’t look nearly as panicked as I felt when the little sucker came slipping out her hands and into the baby tub like her forearms were a ride at a water park. We both eventually learned the fine art of keeping an infant somewhat clean.
But I have to tell you that there were times when I just wanted to take the kid outdoors, dangle him by his feet off the back porch, and spray him down with a water hose.
Mess O’ Turkey
WHAT YOU NEED
2 tablespoons of butter
2 stalks of celery; chopped
1 small onion; chopped
2 medium carrots; chopped
1 cup of turkey; cubed
1 1/2 cup of gravy
1/4 cup of milk
2 tablespoons of flour
1/4 cup water; cold
WHAT YOU DO
1. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add the celery, onion, carrots and cook the vegetables for 5 minutes.
2. Add the cooked turkey, gravy, and milk. Stir and bring the mixture to a boil.
3. Turn down the heat to low and simmer for five minutes. Stir flour and 1/4 cup of cold water together and add to mixture. Simmer until it thickens, about 5 minutes. Serve over rice.
