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Wii-lational problems

As I mentioned last week, a Wii came to live at our house this Christmas. And, it is pretty much the most fun thing ever, despite the fact that my 5-year-old can kick my butt in bowling (because I have run-ruled him at baseball twice. So THERE!)

But. When it comes to my three-year-old, my little Sophie, we are having some Wii-lational difficulties. Sophie isn’t quite at the stage where she can play the games, but she is at the stage where she loves watching them. And by “loves”, I mean she is utterly obsessed. Yesterday she spent a good part of the day trying to convince me to play, since her brother had gone back to school and wasn’t there to entertain her with Mario Kart, or her favorite, Super Mario Bros. She throws huge, heartbroken crying fits when we turn it off, or if we tell her it’s not time to play.

Instead of playing with all of her fabulous toys on her fabulous new shelf, she goes over to said shelf and stares longingly at the top level where we keep the Wii stuff, out of her reach.

It’s very fun to listen to her cute commentary on all the games (“Nice spare, mama!” on bowling, or more often, “Whoops. Try again!” and “Be careful Joshua!” on MarioKart), but I can’t sit around playing Wii all day, as much as I’d like to, and she shouldn’t be staring at Wii all day instead of playing.

The last couple of days my little stubborn miss has let me know just how displeased she is with the decreasing volume of Wii-watching in her life. So, the battle is on! And it’s much less fun than a Wii tennis match!

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If, When

Growing up I always wanted a big family. First I would say, “I want five or six kids.” I remember once when Bobby and I were talking about it early in our marriage and he said he thought two was a good number and I was horrified. Then I had one, and even though he was a pretty easy baby, I thought, ok, “I’d like three.”

Then I had a second, and she was, um, let’s say, difficult. Because I was violently ill for about the first 15 weeks of my pregnancy with her, I was already feeling before she was even born, that there was no way I could possibly go through that again. Still, when I was on the operating table after Sophie was born, when my doctor asked me if I wanted her to tie my tubes, I said no. Because I was 29, and I just wasn’t ready to say that my childbearing years were over.

And then in the ensuing weeks, the transition from being a mother of one to being a mother of two pretty much solidified it for me. I was done. Even though, after I decided that, I would get sad thinking of that bunch of kids I wanted to have that I was not going to have.

But now, over three years later, I wonder. I’m 32, if we’re gonna do this, we should do this. But can we? Do we want to? I’ve already told my mom to put away her hopes and the high chair she keeps in her dining room.

I’m doing so well on my depression/anxiety meds, do I want to mess with that? I really don’t.

But sometimes, looking at our two amazing kids, Bobby and I look at each other, and say, “Wow we make amazing kids. Maybe we need another one.”

And seeing baby Marler be born…it made me sad that I’ll never have that again.

All our baby stuff has long since been given away. We would really have to start over. And we don’t know if we want to or not.

So how did you know when you were done?

(P.S. Mom, please do not get excited.)

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I am officially an idiot.

I seriously should not be allowed to operate a stove. Or a microwave. And especially not a crock pot.

It’s the new year you know, so I have been trying to get better about cooking dinner, bringing my lunch to work (although I started the new year off right by going to BW3 today), saving money, all that. So last night I did a google search to see what I could throw into the crock pot this morning, using ingredients I had on hand.

Eventually, I came across this, a recipe for slow cooker spaghetti chicken. The reviews were pretty good, and one of the only negative ones said it was “great for teenagers but not empty nesters who want something better.” I figured it would be perfect for us, since my pallet reflects the sophistication of a 15-year-old.

Let me show you the recipe so you can identify all the things I did wrong.

Slow Cooker Spaghetti Chicken (from allrecipes.com)
Ingredients
* 1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti, cooked and drained
* 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
* 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
* 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
* 8 ounces processed cheese food
* 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – boiled and cut into bite-size pieces
Directions
1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add spaghetti and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and set aside.
2. Put chicken soup, mushroom soup, tomatoes with green chile peppers and cheese in slow cooker over medium heat. Stir together and cook until cheese has melted.
3. Stir cooked chicken and spaghetti into cheese mixture and heat through. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for about 40 minutes.

After looking at this again, it’s worse than I thought. See those directions up there? I basically skipped 1-3. Oops. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Before omitting all of the steps required to make the dish, I also screwed with the ingredients. The recipe says “1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti, cooked and drained.” Boiling the noodles seemed like an awfully lot of trouble to go through, so I did a little google search and found something that said it was ok to put uncooked pasta into a crock pot. Score! So, instead of using “1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti, cooked and drained,” I used 1 (13.25 ounce) package (whole wheat) spaghetti, uncooked and therefore undrained. I didn’t have “8 ounces processed cheese food” but I did have 4 slices of American cheese. Hey, the less processed cheese food the better, right? And finally, the “4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – boiled and cut into bite-size pieces.” Yeah. Boiling noodles was too much trouble, I certainly wasn’t about to boil the chicken. Cooking food is what the crock pot is for! So instead, I used 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, straight from the freezer and frozen solid.

So back to the directions. Let me refresh your memory.
1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add spaghetti and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and set aside.
2. Put chicken soup, mushroom soup, tomatoes with green chile peppers and cheese in slow cooker over medium heat. Stir together and cook until cheese has melted.
3. Stir cooked chicken and spaghetti into cheese mixture and heat through. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for about 40 minutes.

Yeah. I did none of those things. I broke my dry, uncooked and undrained spaghetti noodles in half and threw them in the pot. I then threw in the frozen chicken breasts and added the can of diced tomatoes. I shook the various congealed soups out of their can and right into the pot, and covered the creation with some Kraft singles. Then I put the lid on, set it too cook on low for six hours (what?? that’s only 5 hours and 20 minutes more than the recipe said!) and waltzed out the door to work feeling pretty domestic.

You’ll never believe this, but it didn’t work.

When I got home, this is what I found.
crock pot mess 1

Doesn’t that look good??

It was awful. The chicken-soup-cheese part didn’t look so bad, but the noodles were a disaster. They were hard and stuck together and completely charred. Here’s a closer look.
crock pot mess 2

Needless to say, we didn’t eat it for dinner. Instead, I went to Subway and let the sandwich artists create our meal. I should really leave these things to the professionals.

Cooking FAIL.

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