Banana Bread

I wrote this a couple of months after the Knight was born:

The Art of Making Banana Bread With A 3 ½ Year Old, A 1 ½ Year Old, And A 2 Month Old After 3 Hours Of Sleep

Feed your 2 month old prior to beginning this endeavor.
Buy some additional time, by burping him and changing his diaper as well.
After you coax out a nice big, juicy burp from your baby, change his outfit and wipe his face.
Change your own shirt after your 3 ½ year old points out that you too are covered in spit-up.
Place your 2 month old in a portable bassinet near the kitchen, give him his binky, and attempt to win his support in the banana bread making process.
Bravely turn off the television before Dora the Explorer starts. This ensures your kids’ full attention.
Brace yourself for cries of angst following Dora’s expulsion from the living room.
Reaffirm to your children that baking banana bread is a much more productive way to spend their morning than watching television.
Turn on stereo to drown out any cries to the contrary.
Choose inspirational, upbeat CDs to motivate yourself and remind yourself of the studies proving that too much television is bad for your kids.
Pick up your 2 month old and dance with him while your 3 ½ year old and 1 ½ year old overcome their Dora withdrawal.
After giving your 3 ½ year old and 1 ½ year old a whirl around the living room following their cries of “Me next!” announce in your best “overly excited pre-schooler voice” that it is now time to start making the banana bread!!!
Instruct your older children to sit in their chairs at the table to await further instruction.
Quiet the shrill demands of your 3 ½ year old with the promise that yes she can indeed be the one to “squash up” the bananas.
Reassure your 1 ½ year old that he will get a job just as fun later in the banana bread making process.
Retrieve 4 overly ripe bananas from the kitchen counter.
Attempt to explain to your 1 ½ year old that, no, the bananas are not for him to eat but rather they are an ingredient to the banana bread.
Calm the angry cries of your 1 ½ year old with a sippie cup of milk.
Go to your 2 month old and calm him down as well since the protests from your 1 ½ year old have awoken him.
Repeat steps 2-4.
Peel a banana and place it in, for obvious reasons, a non-breakable bowl.
Hand your 3 ½ year old a fork and the bowl and ask her to start squashing the bananas.
Shake your head and bite your tongue when she yells at you for getting a fork out of the drawer for her because “I can do it myself!!!!!”
Put previously retrieved fork back in drawer and allow 3 ½ year old to “re-get” the fork all by herself
Demonstrate banana squashing technique and ask your 3 ½ year old to replicate.
Remind your 3 ½ year old to keep the bowl away from the edge of the table.
Say a quick prayer of thanks when the bowl, while dancing very close to the edge of the table, does not fly off of it and hit the floor.
One by one, peel and place the remaining 3 bananas in the bowl, allowing your 3 ½ year old to squash all bananas in turn.
Ask your 1 ½ year old to choose a mixing bowl from the Tupperware drawer in your kitchen.
When your 3 ½ year old announces that she can do that, explain to her that she got to squash the bananas so now it is her brother’s turn for a job.
Tell your 3 ½ year old that you will stop making banana bread that instant if she keeps yelling like that!
Repeat steps 2-4.
Pick up the excess bowls that your 1 ½ year old has thrown out of the Tupperware drawer, keeping one appropriately sized banana bread making bowl.
Place in this bowl one stick of butter that has been sitting patiently on your counter for 3 days waiting for you to make banana bread.
Deny your daughter’s request to mix the butter, explaining that more ingredients are needed before that can happen.
Add 1 ¼ cups sugar.
Explain the difference between stirring and pounding.
Wipe up spilled sugar from the table and add ¼ cup additional sugar to replace what has been expelled.
Ask 3 ½ year old for the coveted spoon.
Smile when she gives it to you without hesitation, and mix the butter and the sugar yourself.
Open the refrigerator door to retrieve 2 eggs.
Chase down 1 ½ year old and rescue ketchup, mustard, and barbeque sauce bottles that your 1 ½ year old has swiped while the refrigerator door was open.
Put away the ketchup, mustard, and barbeque sauce bottles, cutting 1 ½ year old off at the pass as he attempts to grab a gallon of milk.
Scratch your head and wonder what were you going to the refrigerator for again?
Feel slightly inadequate as your 3 ½ year old yells “Where are the eggs, Mommy?”
Place 1 ½ year old at his place at the table, run to the refrigerator, and retrieve the eggs before he can let himself down again.
Smile as your 1 ½ year old laughs at your new “game”.
Add 2 eggs to the butter and sugar already in your bowl.
Be thankful that banana bread cannot be over mixed, as your 3 ½ year old has been mixing the entire time you were getting the eggs.
Lecture your kids on the dangers of raw eggs as you wash your egg-y hands.
Mix the eggs yourself after realizing that they were your last 2 eggs and you don’t want anything to happen to them.
Add eggs to your shopping list that you keep on the refrigerator.
Consult your recipe and laugh to yourself as you read ½ cup of buttermilk thanking your lucky stars that the whole milk you have for your 1 ½ year old is still good.
Wonder what the difference is between whole milk and buttermilk anyway.
Shake your head and measure out ½ cup of whole milk.
Mix this yourself as well since the batter is getting pretty sloppy at this point.
Take vanilla out of the pantry and measure out 1 teaspoon of vanilla.
Add this to your recipe and allow your 3 ½ year old to mix the batter after receiving a promise from her to mix very slowly.
Smile proudly as your 3 ½ year old mixes the batter without spilling any.
Realize that you have not heard from your 2 month old in a while, go to his bassinet and place your hand on his chest to make sure he is OK.
Repeat steps 2-4.
Consult your recipe and add 2 ¼ cups of flour, using the opportunity to introduce fractions to your 3 ½ year old.
Check off “math lesson” for the day on your master list.
Add the last 2 ingredients of 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon salt.
Take turns mixing the batter with your 3 ½ year old.
Let your kids take a bite of the batter after their begging increases in volume telling yourself that you are protecting the sanctity of your 2 month old’s nap.
Scratch your head after your 3 ½ year old asks if the eggs in the batter have been cooked now and if they are OK to eat?
Answer “yes” and move on.
Curse yourself for forgetting to pre-heat the oven.
See that it is time for Dora the Explorer to start again since that show is on 100 times each day.
Turn Dora on. What do those studies know anyway?
Sigh when the buzzer on the oven goes off signaling that the bread can go safely into the oven.
Bake bread for 75 minutes during which time your husband comes home from work for lunch and asks why the only thing you got done that morning was to make some banana bread.
Shake your head and roll your eyes at your husband.
Check “make banana bread with kids’ help” off of your master list.