Wordless Wedne- ...Wait.

It was a rough night. Getting the kids through their end of the day routine was just dragging on, and on, and on. I tried to stop at one point, and remind myself that "this is what its all about", and in that moment I did get a chance to enjoy it.

A naked boy Charlie climbing into my lap (just after kicking his baby sister in the face). Evelyn screaming her flushed face off (having been just kicked in the face by her big brother). And Eleanore, splashing in the tub, flooding the floors that were previously soaked due to a kicking war that caused water droplets to fly through the air and land on my head, and spill red hair color down from my tangled pig tails onto my favorite green striped tank top.

I must have shouted "stop splashing!" ten times or more, but when the kids are in the bath, I somehow lose all authority over them. I guess they see the tub wall as being powerful? And in a way, they're right. The last thing that I want to be doing, is reaching in and grabbing slippery wet kids and pulling them out of the water, who would then be freezing cold and pissed off, and dragging them by their ears (which I don't actually do, but maybe should start), while I slosh along, soaking everything in my path, just to get them to time out for 2 or 4 minutes. Its just not anything that sounds like fun to me. On top of already not-fun that giving 3 kids baths at the end of the day already is.

They ended up not having story time. I hate that. I always feel guilty. And to try to offset the guilt, I follow up my "you will not be having story time tonight" with a "let this be a lesson to you"!

So take note, children: If I tell you to go pick up the play room while I'm giving Evelyn June a bath, you had better do it, rather than building duplo block towers and playing hide and go seek in the basket of stuffed animals.

After upset toddlers were in bed, and the baby was layed down after a go at some warm milk, I picked up the clutter around house, set up the french press for tomorrow morning, and sat down to answer emails and do a wordless Wednesday type post (thank goodness, because I'm really not in any kind of mood for creativity or mother/child romance), but-

Oh right. Its Thursday, isn't it?
...crap.

So all of that being unnecessarily said, here are the photos that I was going to use for my wordless Wednesday post, which probably wouldn't have actually been wordless, and could double as a flashback (which I'm going to start posting on Fridays, rather than Thursday nights), because Eleanore's hair has clearly been hacked off since these were taken...

Blueberry Syrup

When I was growing up, my parents went through a phase where we'd eat pancakes constantly. Because of that, I hated pancakes for years. I couldn't stand the smell of them, and I would have rather starved than eat one.

Maybe they didn't serve them with the right kind of syrup? Maybe they bought the cheap mix? Well the whole reason that we ate them, was because we couldn't afford to eat anything else, so I'm sure it was the cheap mix.

The very best pancake that I ever ate in my life, was in Medford Oregon, at my Mom's best friends house. She had made pancakes during one of our visits, and even the scent of them cooking- was just so different from all of the other pancakes that I had ever had in my life. And when I bit into them, it was like being reborn.

Reborn into the amazing world of pancakes.

But of course from then on, I expected all pancakes to taste as good as Suzette's did (I can't believe I just typed her name, this means I'm getting closer to writing about how much I miss her- but not today). So when they didn't, I went back to hating the dry boring pancakes that landed on my plate, and vowed to never eat another one again.

Until a few years ago, when I learned how to make my own.



Now we have pancakes once a week. Sometimes twice. And its usually for dinner, rather than breakfast. I make homemade blueberry syrup every time. Dump a bag of frozen blueberries into a sauce pan with a splash of water, spin them around in the vita mix after they've bubbled for awhile, add a splash of lemon and a sprinkle of stevia, and then pour it over our fluffy piles.

This is what we're having for dinner tonight, by the way. From-scratch gluten free pancakes, smothered in mock butter and berries.

It'll turn our mouths purple, and leave the kitchen smelling like a Saturday morning cafe.

And of course, I'll think of Suzette, and the pancakes that she made for me, that gave me hope in a world where there otherwise was none.