Tck Tck Tck

"Lily, what would you like for breakfast?"

"Pops!"

"We don't have any popsicles and we don't eat them for breakfast." I say.

"Choc-laht!" She yells.

"No, we can't eat chocolate for breakfast. How about cereal?"

"NOOOOO! No cer-rail! Want dot dogs!"

Note to self, never give an open ended question when freedom of choice doesn't actually exist...

Yesterday, like most days, had a moment or two of madness. The most obvious was when we decided to use our left over Easter Candy to make cookies. I looked up a somewhat healthy recipe for cookies online at my new favorite website, hillbillyhousewife.com (think Steal Magnolias mixed with June Cleaver on a budget....or better yet, June Cleaver married to Jed Clampett before striking oil...) and found a great Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe that i HIGHLY recommend (especially when you are adding a pound of M&Ms and a couple dozen smooshed Reeses Peanut Butter Cup Eggs). I actually had to adapt it since I didn't have the entire 2 1/4 cups of whole wheat flour so ours included about a cup of oat flour as well. They are fabulous but after turning around to find the kids quietly rummaging through the baskets of candy I had thought I put up out of reach (as if anything is really out of reach for my monkey child, Lily) I noticed Lily was trying to figure out how many jelly beans she could stuff up her nose while simultaneously choking on a chocolate egg and Aidan and Madeline were making snow angels, or something along those lines, in the remaining trash. Quickly recalling God's Grace and our goal to follow God's lead, I went with the humans-fall-considerably-short-approach, raised my voice to make it known how irritated I was and had them cleaning up the mess, at which point Madeline broke out in song, (Hard Knock Life from the musical Annie); she grabbed a few chairs and had Lily singing backup and actually it was pretty well choreographed for a 3 and 1 year old. For any of you who don't have kids, they call it the terrible twos and I would say it is followed by the theatrical threes...three year olds can make anything look like a five-star drama.

After regaining some calm, Aidan began vacuuming the rice noodles he had allowed the girls to pour out on top of the candy wrappers and crayons, while Lily went all stealth-like around the ground looking for anything edible (or at least anything small enough to stick up her nostrils where I am guessing we will later find the remains of any jelly beans she hasn't pulled out to snack on) and Madeline, happily hopped around, picking up art supplies as if this were the best day on earth. Finally, I did a little chicken call "Tck Tck Tck" since the cookies were ready and that's when Lily reappeared....

"Look!" Lily announced. "Chocolate!" She stood there proudly holding up Liam's now chocolate-covered pacifier. (At least, I think it was a pacifier...)

Oh yeah, I thought, Liam...

I was reminded of our sleeping baby and gave a little prayer of thanks that he had slept through the entire thing. Ahhhh, this is the life!