I like to call that time of day in our house the unhappy hour.
It starts and ends at the same time, and there is usually some drinking and eating happening, but it's not very happy. At least not for me. There is just too much going on in the house and I can't seem to accomplish anything in one fell swoop. Interruptions to dinner-making abound, and my mind starts to unravel.
Perhaps I need to be pouring some cosmos into martini glasses during this time instead of milk into sippy cups.
Let's take tonight for example.
Unfortunately, my husband didn't make it home in time for unhappy hour tonight. Here's what he missed.
My son had not had his afternoon nap, so being the crankiest in the house, he was first in line at the food buffet. This entailed placing him in his high chair, or prison cell, depending on how you look at it, and putting anything and everything from the pantry onto his tray. Cheese puffs, goldfish, pretzels, you name it. Lots of good bar food.
After his third attempt at escape, I let him out of his chair. Of course he then proceeded to crawl up to me at every opportunity, no matter where I put him in the house, and attach himself to my leg, begging for mercy.
After a few rounds of leg attachments while I was dealing with raw chicken and an 8 inch kitchen knife, he moved on to play with my daughter's dirty shoes and socks lying on the floor.
What? Something wrong with that?
Then the dog barked for his dinner. Promptly after filling up his bowl with dog food, my son found his way to the dog bowls.
Remember that old puppy chow commercial where the puppies come racing around the kitchen corner for their food? It's like that, but my son is the puppy. And he comes a runnin' when he hears that food hit the bowl. He just can't stay away from that stuff. The good news is he doesn't eat it. Anymore.
After a few rounds of son vs. dog (the dog that is three times my son's size was gracious enough to back off every time the baby got close to the bowl - apparently he got the memo on the new sheriff in town), the dog finally finished his dinner. At least someone in the house was fed.
I then turned down the rice that was boiling over and continued cooking. At this point I decided to give my son some actual dinner. I put some more food on his tray and let him go at it. I was a little late in remembering that his hands were all over the dog food and water, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that dogs have less bacteria in their mouths than humans.
I'm also pretty sure that researcher never smelled my dog's breath.
And where were my daughter's, you ask? Parked in front of the tv, where any self-respecting child would be during this chaos. But they were in separate rooms, since I had upset my oldest earlier on and she went to sulk. She also refuses to watch her little sister's "baby" shows. After a brief pow-wow with her, I was back to making dinner.
There was a small talking-to with my younger daughter when it was time to turn off the tv and come to the table, but we made it through relatively unscathed.
Meanwhile my son was on his third solo attempt at the stairs. After a final rescue, he was back in the high chair.
And dinner was served.
Two surly girls, one over-active, dog-food-throwing boy, an ass-breath dog and a missing husband; putting the un back into unhappy hour.
Tomorrow we order in pizza. And beer.
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