Hadley Adventures: The Condescending Banana Bread

It's no secret that I'm a little bit on the verge of dying of cabin fever. This has been the longest winter on record. Between having a new baby and keeping him in, then having said baby get ill and extending his "keeping in" through Easter, there are days that feel awfully...stinky.

Anyhow, because of this I've gotten desperate for entertainment and have begun doing little projects around the house. Cleaning out closets, reorganizing my kitchen, and baking. Banana bread was on the docket for this week.

Yesterday the sun was shining and I told the kids that if they could stop acting like crazy people for the last 30 minutes of J-Baby's nap that I'd walk down the street to the park with them when he woke up.

Joel gets this big grin on his face and says to me, "So, if we stop being FREAKS you'll take us to the park?" He said it all cheerfully, like he could totally stop being a FrEaK if that's what it took. Ha ha.

A bit later we headed off on what felt like a grand adventure. When we got to the park the kids requested that rather than staying on the playground we walk around the circumference of the park and see what we could find. Sounded good to me. We spent about an hour walking, very slowly, around the park, gathering twigs, pointing out trash heaps and ongoing storm damage, waving at Uncle Ben's house and stabbing Mom in the back of the legs repeatedly with gathered branches. Good times, good times.

At one point Cadie Lu says something along the lines of "This is the BEST! Can we just stay here all afternoon? We're getting good exercise and fresh air." I was prematurely pleased with my efforts in spending some quality time with my kids!

I replied that we could stay until Jasec needed to eat again.

That time, of course, came much sooner than our outdoor starved children were okay with. I ended up walking home with a crying baby, an "exhausted" 3 year old, a pouty 6 year-old, and an 8 year-old that had no idea what was going on and nearly ran into two trees. Honestly.

So we get home and Cadie Lu immediately starts in on how the entire park experience was the biggest waste of time ever. They didn't even get to play on the playground, instead they were practically shackled to the stroller like mules with asthma and made to walk around the park looking at stupid sticks. (Uh... pretty sure she had an immediate brain dump when we walked in the door, because she wasn't singing that tune at the park.)

I recognized a bad case of No Food Bad Mood setting in, so I instructed the kidlets to help themselves to a snack while I fed baby downstairs. They chose fresh baked banana bread, because who wouldn't?

A few minutes into the banana bread snack time I hear Ms. Els saying the following to Cadie Lu: "Now, Cadie, you aren't old enough to be trusted to use a knife to slice the bread. And you don't know how to spread butter. You need to just sit down and I'll take care of it for you so you don't hurt yourself."

Me: Ms. Els, you're being a bit condescending toward your sister.
Els: What's condescending?
Me: It's when you treat someone like you're older and smarter than they are. Like you know more than they do.
Els: Uh...I AM all those things.

Oh, sorry, my bad. Carry on Your Highness.

When I was done feeding the baby and went upstairs to the kitchen, which the children had immediately vacated upon being feed and restored to happiness, I was frozen in place by shock. There were banana bread crumbs everywhere. I mean like they had stood on top of the counter and crumbled the bread into pieces while dancing a jig, spreading joy in all directions with nary a crumb actually entering their bellies.

Ms. Els made the mistake of coming back to the kitchen at that moment.

Me: Mean words regarding the mess
Ms. Els: Well, I TRIED to clean it up.

Oh, yes, again, my bad. I see that there is a butt print sized space on one of the bar stools that is free of banana bread crumbs. Thanks for keeping the part under your kiester nice and clean.

So I grumbled and swept and promised myself to leave my kids at the DI and pick up a new set next time I'm out.

When I was done cleaning I decided that perhaps I, too, could use a snack. And despite my anger, banana bread sounded good. So I went to the pantry and retrieved the loaf, at which point I discovered something very strange. The bread had no top. There was just a bottom half of a loaf and chunked out pieces where the top had been.

It would appear that I was right, they just flung banana bread all over that kitchen like monkeys fling poo.