It’s mid March and the first crop of melons are already making their debut in the supermarkets.  This is also about the time I make my annual Public Service Announcement regarding a summertime favorite:  Watermelon. 

Melon is a favorite of my family and the kids would eat it morning, noon and night, 7 days a week if I would let them.  I will not, and here is why.

My neighbors all know how much my children enjoy melon and are always sending them over when they are in season.  A couple of summers ago I had just purchased a huge watermelon when my neighbor sent over an even larger melon.  My kids eyes were wide with anticipation.  I cut the two melons up and put them in my biggest  bowl, and told the kids to eat the melon up before it went bad.  Not a problem.  So they ate and ate.  It took them 2 days to put away about 15 pounds of watermelon.

It was the evening of the second day of the watermelon feast that my oldest boy called me over to the bathroom.  His naturally dark face was as white as a sheet.  ‘Someone is bleeding’ he whispered, pointing to the toilet.  Puzzled, I looked inside and was horrified by what I saw.  The toilet bowl was bright red with blood and ooze.  There was so much I almost passed out with fear.  I yelled for the other kids to come over, and demanded to know who had last used the bathroom, assuring them that nobody was in trouble.  One of my daughters stepped forward and apologized for not flushing the toilet. 

I was almost in tears as I checked her over, pressing on her tummy, checking her forehead for a fever, checking her eyes.  Did she hurt?  Was she dizzy?  Did she feel nauseous? 

“No, I just think I ate too much watermelon” she replied.  It took me a moment to comprehend and  then I began to laugh almost hysterically.  My kids looked at me like I was nuts, which I am, but at that moment I was only relieved.  I looked at my daughter and asked her to slow down and chew her watermelon the next time to help with the digestion process.

So, add watermelon to your list of foods that will pass through your system without digesting if not chewed thoroughly, along with peas, corn, nuts and greens. 

New parents usually waste spend their precious little free time during baby’s sleep time making plans for the future.  Planning is always the acceptable pro-active approach to child rearing although 9 times out of 10 the child is totally unaware of such plans, or has it’s own agenda and the plans are left by the way-side.  Just the same, parents plan for the day when baby will walk and talk, they plan for day care and pre-school, their first date, driving lessons, graduation and college.

One of the most obvious and yet often over looked mile stone in a child’s development is cooking.  When does one start teaching a child how to cook?

My mother always welcomed my siblings and I into her kitchen.  There were only happy memories in Mama’s kitchen.  I have been cooking since I can remember.  Perhaps I thought kids were born with the instinctive knowledge of how to cook just as they are born with the knowledge to suckle.  I vainly planned for everything in my childrens’ development except for when to teach them to cook.

I learned the error of my ways the day my 6 year old son tried to heat up a Big Mac for breakfast by lighting it’s styrofoam container on fire.

Styrofoam Big Mac containers melt and drip fire as they are raced through the hallway to be extinguished in the toilet.  Cheap rental house carpeting melts when burning Styrofoam Big Mac containers drip onto it.

But I would not get the hint until a few years and two daughters later when the same son decided to make breakfast while I slept in after working the graveyard shift.  Knowing that he was not allowed to use the stove unattended, he threw some eggs into the microwave to hard boil them.

Did you know that you can blow the door off of a microwave oven by heating 3 eggs (in the shell) on high for 3 minutes?  Did you know that the smell of burned and exploded hard boiled eggs lingers in the air for weeks?  Oddly enough most mothers entering my house in the following weeks could identify the putrid odor.

All 5 of my children are now accomplished cooks.  My egg-sploding son is constantly calling me for recipes to try on his Army buddies.  My youngest son has professional culinary arts aspirations.  My daughters feel compelled to out do their brothers at the stove.  I almost never have to hear ‘what’s to eat?’.  My kitchen is a perpetual mess but the house almost always smells delicious.

So when should a parent begin teaching a child to cook?  I learned from my sons that the best time is when they first start showing an interest, which is sometime around 4 and 6.  Start with the easy stuff, and be firm on the rules, especially concerning the stove, oven and knives.  A word of advice, include the cleaning up part and make it fun.  Other wise you may find yourself eating well, but stuck with a lot of dirty dishes.

Where is the Dirty Dish Fairy when I need her?

When my oldest was still a baby my husband and I began to plan for the inevitable ‘sex talk’.  It was a bit early, and Gabe couldn’t even speak let alone understand the technicalities of human conception but we were going to be prepared for when the time did present itself.  It was decided that my husband would deal with our sons and I would handle the girls.  It would be 8 years before we had to put our plan into action.  Gabe asked his dad what the difference between a boy deer and a girl deer was.  With 8 years to prepare Steve was ready.  “Well son, a boy deer has antlers and a girl deer doesn’t!”  It was then decided that I should be the one to handle any sex questions.

“Mommy, are you a virgin?”  my then 6 year old daughter asked a few years later.  Again, I had trained for years for this moment.

“Why, yes dear, I am!”

While my children no longer consult neither my husband or me for sex advice, they like to have their friends ask me the age old question:  Where do babies come from?

“Kissing!  Babies come from kissing!  One minute I’m kissing my husband and the next thing I know I’m having a baby!” 

My oldest son has actually tested and proven this theory twice, and if nothing else my other children pause and think on my words even for just a moment before planting a lip-lock on their current significant other.  And that is all a mother could ask for, that her children stop, if even just for a moment, and consider the consequences. 

Mission accomplished.

It’s 3:27 in the morning.  What am I doing still up?  I should have gone to bed hours ago. 

What, and waste this perfectly good peace and quiet?

Oh no, I’m staying up for as long as my eyelids can stand it.  It is silent between the walls of this big house except for the soothing drip of the aquarium pump and the distant snores of 5 children, one husband and one puppy.

I know I will regret this later on in the day, but for now I am just basking in the moment.  Bedtime is really the only time a mother can enjoy silence.  Silence during the waking hours is almost always a bad thing.  Much mischief occurs in silent periods during the waking hours.  Best take advantage of bedtime quiet when you can. 

Even if it means staying up past O’dark Hundred.

Today is my anniversary.  I’ve been married now for 25 years and have been a mother for 24 of those years.  So what have I got to show for all those years?

J     5 children

J     2 grandchildren

J     18,000+ diapers

J     7800+ rolls of toilet paper

J     1 cradle (hand made for the first born and passed on down)

J     1 crib (yes, they all used the same one)

J     5 strollers (they don’t make them like they used to)

J     7 car seats (two belong to the grand babies)

J     4 apartments

J     3 houses

J     10 cars

J     4 trucks

J     1 motorcycle

J     2 dirt bikes

J     1 atv

J     1 go cart

J     14 bicycles (10 are on the side of the house, only 5 work)

J     3 dogs (only one now)

J     3 cats (none now)

J     6 hamsters (5 died, 1 still missing… may be breeding with mice in garage)

J     1 hedgehog (RIP)

J     1 ferret (RIP)

J     7 dove (pretended they were good pets and gave them to friends)

J     4 hermit crabs (RIP)

J     4 crawdads (last remaining one spends days trying to catch our 6 inch goldfish)

J     1 goldfish (5 years old)

J     24 tropical fish (Henry the goldfish ate them all)

J     39 pet funerals

J     4 garter snakes (all MIA in the house)

J     8 tv sets

J     5 desktop computers

J     1 laptop

J     14 cell phones

J     30 parent-teacher conferences

J     100+ music recitals (band, orchestra and choir)

J     90 stuffed Easter bunnies

J     95 stuffed Christmas critters

J     95 birthday cakes (it would be 50 more but my husband and I don’t do cakes)

J     20 visits to the emergency room

On top of all this I figure that the tooth fairy still owes us  about $20 for all the quarters we had to sneak under pillows for her, which doesn’t even come close to the $ we’ve spent in the dentist’s office!

Looking at my family though I have to say it was worth it and yes, I’d do it all over again.  Except maybe for the parent teacher conferences and the trips to the emergency room.  I could have done without them!