Preparing for Parenthood: Cooking Dinner

Welcome to our second installment of Preparing for Parenthood. Today we will cover preparing dinner for your family when you are a parent. Remember, this is not a tutorial claiming how to be a good parent. It's simply an exercise to prepare you for life on the other side. Once you've completed this exercise you'll be ready to cook dinner with a kid at home. You may need to practice a few times before you get the hang of it. What are you kidding? Eat in peace while you've still got the chance!

There are two variations of this exercise. If you're preparing to be the parent of a baby you'll need a bag of flour and an orange. If you're preparing to parent a toddler you'll need to assemble a string of tin cans tied to a roomba vacuum set to warp speed, or you could just borrow someone's actual kid. Mine is available, let's set up some sort of sign up sheet. No matter which version you're trying, you'll need to start at approximately 4:30pm.

For the baby version: place the bag of flour awkwardly on your hip. You'll need to place the orange precariously atop the flour and secure it loosely with one piece of floss. This will replicate your baby's floppy head and limp neck. If at any point during the dinner preparation your orange falls off, you'll have to start over. It's okay! This is only practice. Prepare dinner as usual. Do not drop the flour, do not let the orange fall off, do not allow the flour to get wet or remotely close to anything hot, and do not put the flour down. Do everything one handed.

For the toddler version: Start out with the toddler on your hip. You can't cook in this messy kitchen! Begin to sweep but abandon that when the baby won't let go of the broom. Begin measuring your ingredients with the measuring cup as far away from you as possible, so they don't fall prey to baby swipes. This works best if you have your hip and butt jutted way out into the middle of the kitchen. Once baby figures out he can't reach anything with you in this position he'll want to get down. He'll squirm and lunge stoveward just as your water begins to boil. Catch him before he lands in the boiling water and place him on the ground. He'll say "wun!" and run. This is where you'll turn on the roomba if you're using it.

As long as the kid is happy and not bleeding, you can ignore him for a few minutes while you chop vegetables. Do this quickly, as you don't know how much time you have. Allow the child to pull the pots and pans out of the cabinets, throw magnets on the floor and dance around the kitchen. Catch him just as he pours the dog's water all over the flour. Tell the dog to clean the floor as you pull the kid's hands out of his mouth to clean them. Your kitchen will look like this:

See the video from my last post if you're curious what this dance looks like

Once you've cleaned up the kid and the floor, you'll realize the beans are burning. Go to check on them and give them a little stir. While you're here, check the chicken and re-set the timer. During that time, the kid will have wandered away. You have to find him. He's pulled every toy he owns out of the cabinet in the living room and he's yelling "bump! bump!" as he jumps on the couch. Tell him no, and put him on the floor. This will start a meltdown of epic proportions.  He'll feel so betrayed and devastated that the only thing he can do is put his head under the couch cushion and weep dramatically. 

The oven timer will go off, so you'll need to take your quinoa out of the oven. (Yes, you'll cook quinoa when you're a parent.) Abandon the crying baby and the messy living room and go get the quinoa. You've scorched the beans so you'll have to determine if they can be salvaged. The quinoa is ready, the beans are burnt, the chicken is raw in the middle, and the peas haven't been opened yet. It's time to triage: ignore the first two and deal with the second two.  Oh, but wait! What about the baby? He's stopped crying and is quiet. Yay! He's feeling better. But where is he? Do a visual sweep of the room. You found him. He was squatting beside the unswept lunch remnants, licking the dog door, with a bottle of paprika in his hand.  At that point you'll also notice that the dog has taken a box of tampons outside and scattered them in the yard. Indifferent, you'll leave those there for now. 

Scoop up the kid against his will. Hold him while he fights to get down as you answer the phone. It's your partner. "I have to work the day after Thanksgiving" he/she says. That seems like a long time from now. You accidentally talk loud because you can't hear over the baby's protests to get down. "BUT WHAT ABOUT TONIGHT? ARE YOU COMING HOME TONIGHT?!" you ask, exasperated. He/she confirms that he is, indeed, leaving in a few minutes. Whew! 

Alas, you've still got cooking to complete. You decide you'll turn on Sesame Street to entertain the boy, but you can't find the right remote that gets you to Netflix. Search for it to no avail while the kid pulls more stuff onto the floor. He'll have to watch real tv. You find the regular remote but the only thing on PBS is the show about real animals that he's really too young for. Maybe it'll last for a few minutes, but if you leave him in the living room he's bound to jump on the couch again. Hold him on your hip as you angle the tv toward the kitchen. Drag the high chair into viewing distance and plop him in. 

At this moment you become the parent you always said you'd never be. Toss a toy onto the high chair tray, scoop some burnt green beans beside the toy, and walk back into the kitchen to finish dinner. It is 6:00. 

Moments later your partner walks in. He/she surveys the huge mess of toys all over the living room, then the pots and pans in the kitchen floor. That will be met by dog water on the floor, and the aroma of quinoa, chicken, and burnt beans. The microwave timer will be sounding as music plays from PBS. The child, ever an angel, will smile broadly at him/her and reach out for a hug. 

Your sweet little family will sit down to a dinner of tough chicken, burnt beans, bland quinoa, and cold black eyed peas. The baby will throw much of his on the floor, where the dog patiently awaits. Your partner will turn to you with lies in his eyes but kindness in his heart and tell you that dinner is delicious. Then he/she will stoop down to give you a kiss, but you'll respond with "I almost forgot! I've got to get the tampons out of the back yard before it rains!"