Guest Post from Erika: The Motherhood Olympics

This post is dedicated to all the single mamas out there -- I don't know how you do it. I'm only a single mama a few nights a week, and most of those nights I feel like I am competing in the Motherhood Olympics just feeding my children and getting them to sleep.

My friend Tina, who is not a single mama, but is FULL of extremely useful information and advice, always leaves a tip for me on her voicemail messages and I do the same for her. It can be a tip about anything that makes life easier or more enjoyable. My favorite tip was in response to a frustrated rant about some child behavior issue that I had left on *her* voicemail (with accompanying tip, of course). She advised me: when it has been One of Those Days and you are at the end of your rope and you still have to make dinner, just call it a day, make yourself a cocktail, and make breakfast for dinner. Easy, and everybody is happy. l should listen to Tina more often.

In the spirit of good advice, here is my tip for anybody that cooks: READ the WHOLE recipe before you start to make it, or even think about making it. It seems obvious, but I still get myself into a pickle on a regular basis because I ignore this particularly practical piece of advice. This evening was Less Than Pleasant in part due to the fact that I neglected to thoroughly read the darn recipe.

Any of my friends, acquaintances, and yes, even my hairdresser, who put dinner on the table have heard about how my slow cooker has changed my life. It is the only reason my family gets a hot, nutritious meal at least two nights a week. (Thanks, parents, for my new LARGE slow cooker -- life is even easier now.) I recently acquired a new slow cooker cookbook, "Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever" by Diane Phillips, that has put an astounding number of delicious meals on our table. However, the emphasis in this particular cookbook is definitely more on "delicious" than "quick to prepare", which I have been slow to figure out. The Italian Wedding Soup with handmade meatballs should have been a big clue, but...

I found a recipe for Old-Fashioned Beef Brisket with Root Vegetables, which screamed Comfort Food -- the perfect thing for the rainy/sleety weather we have finally been getting. I put it on the calendar for Monday night, also known as Slow Cooker Night in our household. But this morning (Monday) things did not go as planned. It was raining. Peter had a fever, so he was not going to pre-school. And I had my first Back to Work meeting scheduled for 10:30am, the time I normally put the food in the slow cooker so that it is ready to be eaten at 6:30pm. Did I mention it was raining?

Wonder Sitter Ariana arrived at 8:15am, right on schedule, to watch Karolina, who was still asleep. I stuck her with Peter instead and exercised my option to take a shower. At 9:00am I called my dear mother-in-law, Jana, who is visiting from Prague, and begged her to come over and watch Peter while I was at the meeting and while Ariana was taking care of Karolina. She quickly agreed (yay!). For the first event in the Motherhood Olympics, I picked Jana up, brought her back to our house, nursed the baby, and sped off to my meeting, with time to spare for a much-needed latte. Score!!! Figured I would put the food in the slow cooker when I got home.

Home by 12:00, fed Karolina, and then tried to feed my beloved son, who was feeling spunky for a kid with a fever. He picked up his bowl of soup, dumped it on the floor, and said "I want a sandwich!" By the time I got him to clean up the mess, finished my lunch, read him some books, and got him up to his room to try and get him to take a nap, it was close to 2:00pm. The slow cooker! I finally got around to reading the recipe thoroughly. Chop four kinds of vegetables, put in the slow cooker, rub the meat with spice mixture, toss that in and cook on low for ten hours. TEN HOURS!?!?! That meant we would be eating around...oh my, way, WAY too late. So much for Slow Cooker Monday. Thank goodness there was leftover soup.

Fast forward through the rest of the afternoon, which mostly involved Peter not napping, Karolina napping when we needed to go to the doctor, and a frenetic trip with both kids to the doctor, who determined that Peter has "a virus" (How many times have you heard THAT one, parents?) but at least it's not strep, which is making the rounds at pre-school. Peter made up for the Soup Incident by taking the initiative to wash all of the dinner dishes while I was in the other room, nursing Karolina. He did this by taking each dish, one at at time, to the bathroom sink (he can't reach the kitchen sink without a chair), rinsing it, and bringing it back to the kitchen to put it in the dishwasher. Darling child! Didn't even break one.

As we got closer to bed time, the fever kicked into high gear, just when Karolina decided that it was Play Time. This was the most challenging Olympic event -- I spent a good part of two hours rushing from our room (trying to get Karolina to go to sleep or at least stop crying) to Peter's room (in response to the most pitiful whimpering of "I'm cold! I'm too hot! I'm thirsty! Mama, come here!") and back. It was heart-breaking. As soon as Peter would start to drift off, Karolina would cry and I would race back to her room to rock her and sing her more lullabies. Then Peter would call out in that weak little voice and I would put Karolina down, imploring her to sleep so that I could tend to her brother.

During those precious few moments when both children were quiet, I would sneak downstairs and chop vegetables for tomorrow night's slow cooker meal. For, as I was nursing Karolina, I did the math again. In order to get dinner on the table by 6:30pm on TUESDAY, I would have to turn the crock pot on at 8:30am. In the morning. With all of the vegetables chopped and ready to go. Oh, did I mention that we are going BACK to the doctor's office tomorrow morning, for Karolina's two-month check-up? sigh. Realizing that there was No Way At All I was going to get anything done before 8:30am tomorrow morning after being up all night with a feverish child and a newborn, I decided to chop the vegetables tonight.

It went something like this: Scrape three parsnips, start chopping one, and run upstairs to rock Karolina, then soothe Peter, then sanitize hands and put Karolina's pacifier back in her mouth two or three or twenty times. Sneak downstairs...wash hands, chop another parsnip, rush back upstairs to pick Karolina up and sing her a lullaby. Sit with Peter, get him to drink water, sneak downstairs to wash hands again and finish the parsnips. It was worse when I got to the onions because then I had to wash my hands BEFORE I re-inserted Karolina's pacifier and checked on Peter.

Poor little guy, I asked him so many times today to cover his cough that he was actually doing it in his sleep. I love watching him sleep, but I hate watching him suffer. I think about all the mothers who have sat at their child's bedside, helplessly keeping watch as the poor little things burn with fever. Even now I hear him coughing. It's going to be a long night. At least it's not strep, which the whole family would no doubt get. And at least I'll have a delicious, nutritious and warming dinner on the table at 6:30 tomorrow night with very little time or effort during the pre-dinner witching hour. Let the games begin!