Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Breakfast isn't breakfast (and practicing isn't practicing)...

This morning while I was in the shower there was a big fight over the brownies leftover from yesterday, apparently. I know because multiple children came in to ask about them while I was in the shower (and I could hear the distant sounds of screaming between visits from my children). There was other evidence, which I'd find later.

I had the girls make brownies yesterday to take to our friends' house because (a) we had a brownie mix in our pantry and we're trying to empty our pantry and (b) I'm diabetic right now and brownies aren't something I would sit around wanting because chocolate isn't remotely tempting for me. Following with our Independence Day theme, they did everything from start to finish, including putting the pan in the oven and pulling it out again. It was awesome!

Anyway, we had some leftover, which they wanted to take home to consume later. Benjamin thought they'd make a good breakfast this morning but the girls insisted that brownies didn't qualify as a "decent" breakfast (which is one of their "chores") so they put them out of his reach and they all sat down for a "decent" breakfast together.

When I got out of the shower the piano was turned on, so I praised Rachel for jumping in and getting her practicing done like I'd asked her to.

"Oh, I haven't practiced yet. I started but I was too hungry so I decided to have breakfast first."

"Well, why don't you go ahead and practice now that you've had breakfast?" I suggested.

"Actually, I'm still a little hungry," she said. "I think I'll have a yogurt, too."

"Uh, no," I snorted. "That was the very reason we made up the decent breakfast rule in the first place, remember? You are supposed to sit down and eat enough breakfast to keep yourself satisfied for a few hours. None of this first and second and third breakfasts with a bowl of cereal here and a piece of toast there and a yogurt half an hour later. It dirties too many dishes and makes breakfast last all morning and you use it as an excuse to get out of doing things that I ask you to do. So. No."

Had she not literally just called her brother on the carpet over the whole "decent breakfast" thing I might not have been so hard-nosed but, uh...she literally just called her brother on the carpet over having a decent breakfast, so...come on.

She harrumphed at me but sat down at the piano and began practicing. I pulled up a chapter from Andrew's dissertation and began combing through it—my desk is right beside the piano, but apparently I was more absorbed in editing than I thought. Soon I was distracted by Zoë who asked for some water—with ice (she always wants ice)—so I went to the kitchen and gasped.

There were blackish-brownish specks all over the floor.

"What happened in here?!" I asked, somewhat in agony (because it's always something).

"Oh, we dropped the plate of brownies," Rachel said, joining me in the kitchen. "We picked them up [and ate most of them as part of our decent breakfast] but we didn't sweep. I'll do that right now."

"Thanks," I said. And then I realized that I could still hear Rachel practicing the piano...but she wasn't at the piano. She was standing in the kitchen with me. "Hey, wait a minute!" I said. "I thought you were practicing! What..."

"Oh, I was practicing," she said. "I just recorded myself..."

She had been listening to a recording of herself practicing one of her songs, not playing it five times in a row like she's supposed to (though she swears up and down that she had been "playing along with it" the whole time).

"You sneaky kid!" I chided, with a laugh. "Get back to work!"

She finished her practice session up just fine, but I'm going to have to be a little more diligent about making sure the kids are actually practicing (and not listening to themselves practice from once upon a time a few days ago when they decided to record themselves). It's one of the downsides of having an electronic piano, I suppose.

A while later when I opened the fridge to pull out some leftovers for lunch I found more of those brownish-blackish specks littering the shelves of the fridge. This time I identified them as brownie crumbs much quicker. Turns out Rachel had put the plate of brownies on top of the fridge to keep Benjamin from getting into them and when they'd then opened the fridge to get out the milk they upset the plate of brownies.

Good thing they were only on a paper plate!

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