Don’t make pies with little girls and stay away from bats

When I went to make the pies for Thanksgiving, I had three little girls volunteer to help; ages 7, 5, and 4 (the 7yo is just starting to read and the other two don’t at all yet). Three pies to make. Perfect right?


I set the 7yo to peeling apples with an automatic apple peeler, the 5yo to melting butter in a pie dish, and pulled out the pre-made crust for the 4yo. I opened the cans of cherry pie filling for her to dump into the crust, whipped up some crumble topping, and showed her how to sprinkle it on, popped the whole thing in the oven. One down, two to go!


Oh, gee. (1yo) just figured out how to climb up a chair and onto the table. Great.


I told the 5yo to mix the crumb mix from the no-bake cheesecake box into the butter, then I evaluated the apple peeling. Hmmm, not quite enough apples to fill the pre-made shell, so we peel a few more and I cut them all up. At this point the 5yo brings me her well mixed crust. It looks weird, but I don’t take the time to figure out why. I just show her how to press the graham cracker crumbs into the side of the dish. Then I help the 7yo to mix up the seasonings for the apples and gently dump them into the bowl “…but hold the crust so it doesn’t fall into…” Too late.


Ok. Shift gears. Homemade crust for the apple. “Oh, (5yo), now put 2 cups of milk in the mixer bowl and add the filling package.” She gave me a totally blank look. I knew right then why the crust had looked funny. She had added both the crust mix AND the filling mix to the butter in the pie plate!

“OK, set that bowl aside. (Thank You Jesus! I have another mix in the cupboard!) Let’s start over.” I set her to melting butter again, and carefully make sure she adds the right package to it. From there her 9yo brother who can read quite well begins to help her so I turn my attention to the homemade curst for the apple pie.


(1yo) figures out how to climb onto the kitchen counter.


Woops! My pie plates are bigger than the pre-made-crust ones! One cheesecake mix won’t fill the plate and I don’t have any others in the cupboard. Oh I know! “(9yo), fix these two boxes of chocolate pudding and add them to the top.” 7yo and I peel and cut more apples, put them on the bottom so the seasonings will fall down to them as it cooks, add a crumble topping and exchange an apple pie for a cherry in the oven. Whew! Now to that cheesecake…


It’s done, but it looks funny. I taste a tiny bit of the pudding. VERY chocolate. “How many cups of milk did you add, (9yo)?”


“1”


Sigh. The recipe calls for three. And I don’t have any more pudding and scrapping all that off the top wouldn’t work anyway. It would just make a mess. Oh well.


As it all turns out, all three pies tasted just fine.


But I think next time I will assign an older, reading sibling to help each child, at different times, and I will just supervise. I don’t think my blood pressure could take doing this again.

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Wednesday, all the children were outside during our lunch break. I was quietly going through emails. Suddenly the two oldest run up the stairs caring the 1yo, who is screaming.

“She got hit with a bat!”


(??? We only have plastic bats don’t we? That wouldn’t cause that kind of screamin.)


“Where?”


They just turned her head. Already a purple bump the size of a baseball was forming on the side of her face, at about the temple area! Obviously we do have a real bat.


I look at her pupils. They are the same size. That, and the fact that she didn’t pass out and wasn’t vomiting, were very good signs. I made a couple frantic calls to daddy and grandma and head to the nearest urgent care with my 16yo sitting in the back keeping her awake.

Urgent care sent us right to the hospital, telling us to keep her awake the whole time.


Yeah, right. She is 1yo; it’s nap time; she is exhausted from all the screaming; and it’s a twenty minute drive to the hospital!


My 16yo did a fantastic job, though. She kept putting a cold rag on the baby’s neck to keep her awake (and screaming!)


ER took us right in. “She is probably ok, but let’s do a cat scan.” The doctor explained that at this age some doctors would just sedate her, but then we would have to stay there for several hours to make sure she woke up ok from that (sedation meds sometimes have side effects). So he just wanted to tie her down. She would scream, of course, but it would all be over in ten minutes. I hated the thought, but preferred it to the sedation.

When the tech came to get her, I just stood up to carry her out, expecting them to have me put her on the table and then they would tie her up. They assumed that because I didn’t just hand her over to them, I wanted to hold her during the test. I didn’t even know that was an option and wouldn’t have thought I could anyway.

I laid her on the table and the head tech told his assistant to just let her calm down a minute (after offering her a binky, stickers and a new stuffed animal, all of which she obviously thought were deadly poison.) I patted her on the chest and sang “Away in the Manger.”


After a minute she stuck her thumb in her mouth, stared into my eyes and was still. They draped a lead apron around me while I kept singing, and began the test. Every time that table moved, she thought the big machine around her head was going to eat her and she tried to get up. I gently pushed her back, like I do when changing a diaper, and told her “no, just a minute.” (Another advantage of teaching even very small children to obey) I smiled a lot to reassure her she wasn’t fixing to be eaten alive.


A few minutes later the tech came out and said he was going to call me the next time he had trouble sleeping, because I had calmed HIM down so much!


Turns out there was no bruising on the brain and she is absolutely fine.


Except for the horrid bump on the side of her head.


And sometimes she acts like she has a headache.


Go figure.





God is Good!