A Factor of Two

I am adjusting to a new granny nanny schedule. My son-in-law’s teaching schedule has changed. No more preschool run on my nanny days for five-year-old Adella. I now have have both Adella and Marshall all morning long. It’s not that I haven’t nannied the two little cherubs together for hours before; I have watched them both since birth. But I have not watched them together since Marshall, now two-and-a-half, has become an entity to be reckoned with. He no longer naps. He adamantly says “no.” He now is a maelstrom. 

And now Adella wants to make cookies today. Two days ago, she asked me. She remembers the days we used to bake cookies while Marshall napped. I made my excuses. I was hesitant to undertake such adventure with Marshall added into the equation--making cookies means managing two helpers, not one. But I love to bake. Adella loves to bake. Maybe Marshall will learn to love to bake. And I do want both of them to have memories of baking with Granma. So I wonder if today is the day.

Our morning has begun calmly. Marshall sits snugly in my lap as we eat oatmeal together. Adella, wanting to practice her newly acquired pouring skills, successfully pours just enough milk from the nearly empty milk jug into our bowl without spilling a drop and then settles into eating her yogurt. Breakfast is usually scattershot. All three of us sitting quietly, pleasantly eating breakfast together. Surely this is a sign to proceed.

So we do. After breakfast, I go to the kitchen counter. I begin assembling the ingredients, the measuring cups and spoons. Marshall sensing some action, immediately pushes the red stool next to me. Adella follows, and soon they are jockeying for position on the stool as they spoon sugar into two different cups.

“Marshall’s not giving me any room on the stool,” Adella complains.

“Go get the other stool,” I say. “It’s in the mudroom.” 

I am unruffled. This is precisely why I have two stools. And two of many other things in my house. Such as the two vintage Littlest Pet Shop carrying cases, which once belonged to her mother and uncle, currently sitting on my hearth beneath a menagerie of pets.

I pour the cup of granulated sugar measured by Adella into my mixing bowl. I add a little more sugar to Marshall’s cup to make it a level cup and add it to the bowl too.

As I try to help Adella measure the brown sugar, Marshall begins carefully removing the granulated sugar from the mixing bowl, spoonful by spoonful, back to his measuring cup. For her part, Adella is more interested in picking out the lumps and sucking on them than pressing the moist brown sugar into her cup. 

“Look, Marshall. This tastes good,” she says. 

He looks. I no longer have a problem with the granulated sugar gradually diminishing from my mixing bowl. Instead brown sugar is now sprinkled all over the counter, the stools, and the floor. 

No matter, I think. I quickly remeasure the granulated sugar, add the cup of brown sugar, push the mixing bowl beyond the children’s reach, and add two sticks of shortening. Yes, shortening, not butter, all thanks to Mrs. Green’s recipe from my seventh grade home economics class in the early ‘70s. It is true that despite its claims on the label the shortening has traces of that dietary evil trans fat. But these cookies taste so good, I rationalize, and even Cookie Monster now knows cookies are a “sometime food.” So, I start the mixer a’creamin’ and reach into the fridge for the eggs.

“Eggs,” Marshall says excitedly when he sees the carton. 

Marshall manages to grab an egg before I can stop him. I manage to turn off the mixer before he smashes the egg into the mixture. He grabs for another. I stop him with one hand, put three more eggs aside for Adella far from Marshall’s reach with my other hand, return the eggs to the fridge, and then begin fishing out all the eggshells, which I throw into the sink. 

Marshall stares at the viscous, gooey egg white dripping from his hand and then looks at me. I dodge his hand before he can wipe his on me and grab him.

“Adella, switch places with Marshall,” I say. 

She scoots over, more than happy to move to the prime real estate. She sets about cracking the remaining three eggs, which I have to move yet again out of Marshall’s reach. I set Marshall down in front of the sink and turn on the faucet so he can wash his hands. He is delighted. He loves water play. He presses the switch, changing the water stream to a spray. 

“Uh-oh,” Adella says. 

I look. Her fourth egg has missed the bowl entirely. It is gradually spreading across the counter, melting some of the scattered brown sugar in its path. I throw her a paper towel and turn my back for just a second to grab another egg from the fridge. 

“Granma,” Adella yells, “it’s a river.”

And indeed it is. Marshall has pulled down the faucet head and stretched its hose over to the countertop. It is not a river, but a flood, dotted with floating bogs of brown sugar, flowing quickly over the edge of the counter as a waterfall, cascading down the cupboards to the floor. 

“No, Marshall, no,” I say, grabbing the faucet from him. I turn the water off.

I run to get several towels. By the time I return, Marshall has somehow managed to turn the faucet back on. Not sure how. His arms are not that long. (Perhaps Adella wanted to continue the fun?) Regardless, what was once a river on my kitchen counter is now a lake on my kitchen floor. A great lake.

I wade through the lake, lift both children over it, move the stools, and wipe up the floor. It’s a three-towel lake. I strip Marshall to his diaper and then I very quickly finish mixing the dough, throwing in the vanilla, the dry ingredients, and two packages of chocolate chips, one semisweet, the other bittersweet. Finally I move the bowl and the cookie sheet over to the kitchen island. 

Soon the stools are also pushed up next to me and four little hands and two little spoons are competing with me for cookie dough. I drop neat little mounds onto the cookie sheet. Adella heartily samples the dough, sans chips, she has neatly captured onto her spoon. Marshall, his hands thankfully very clean, reaches in and carefully cherry-picks out piece after piece of chocolate. Me? Well, I do sneak a large bittersweet dark chocolate chip here and there, all the while hoping that after forty-five years of sampling cookie dough, today, of all days, will not be the day we are felled by salmonella. (Note to self: reduce granny nanny guilt by buying pasteurized eggs before baking with the grandkids again.)  

By the time the first batch of cookies is out of the oven, Adella and Marshall, their sweet tooths sated, have scampered into my bedroom. I tidy a few things, knowing full well that every moment I tidy in the kitchen is counterbalanced by a moment of chaos in my bedroom. So after the second batch is in the oven, I check on the children. Amidst several pairs of shoes scattered around the room, I find Adella prancing around in my heels. Marshall performs a sort of veil dance, a twirling whirlwind, dancing in circles as he throws Swiffer sweeping cloths in the air with each turn. 

“Oh, my,” I say.

“I am wearing Granma’s shoes,” Adella sings. “I love to wear Granma’s shoes.”

I grab the Swiffer box from Marshall, gather the cloths from around the room and stuff them back into the box and begin collecting the shoes. 

Then the timer dings.

I scoot my cherubs from my room, shut the door behind me, and rush to the oven.

I remove the cookie tray from the oven and begin transferring the warm cookies to the wire cooling rack on the counter. Soon Marshall is next to me, matching me cookie for cookie. Each time I lift a warm cookie from the cookie sheet, he picks one of the cooled cookies from the first batch and places it on the cookie sheet. By the time the cooling rack is full of warm cookies, my cookie sheet tray is full of cooled cookies. 

“Wanna cookie?” I ask, baiting him so I can switch the cookies. Marshall begins eating the warm cookie I offer him, and I surreptitiously slide the cooled cookies back to the counter and begin scooping more dough. 

“Schlurp, schlurp,” Marshall slurps--his equivalent of a three-star Michelin rating. 

I look at Marshall. I am surprised. In a matter of seconds, he has managed to smear his face and chest with the warm, melted chocolate. He looks like a Navy SEAL wearing camouflage. 

“You, my dear, need a bath,” I say.

“I’ll give him a bath,” Adella immediately volunteers, exuding the confidence of a five-year-old, first-born child.

“No! no! no!” I say. “You can’t give him a bath alone. You need an adult to supervise.”

My hands are dirty, and I am still scooping out the third batch. I hear little feet scurrying up the stairs and know I should follow, but I am so close to finishing. Then there is silence, and finally the sound of running water in the bathtub upstairs. I shove the cookie sheet in the oven and rush upstairs. 

When I get to the bathroom, Marshall is stripped of his diaper, sitting in the tub, surrounded by a flotilla of grounded toy boats. He splashes in the water rushing in and out of the tub, for Adella has not yet learned how to close the bathtub drain stopper in Granma’s tub. I sit down next to the tub, adjust the water so that it is at least warm, close the stopper, and watch Marshall, who is soon joined by Adella, enjoy his bath.

I also enjoy their bath. It is a welcome respite. Adella and Marshall are contained. They are entertained, playing with the bath toys their mother once enjoyed. They are happy. I am happy. I settle in. I am thinking, this bath can go on indefinitely.

And then the timer dings. 

“Curses,” I think. “Why did I put that batch in?” 

And then I quickly begin calculating probabilities. How likely is a fire from burned cookies? How likely is Marshall to slip and drown in the bath? How likely is Adella to save Marshall should he fall? Do I doom my grandchildren to death by fire and smoke inhalation or death by drowning? In the end, I conclude the chances are miniscule and that I am a hypocrite.  I make a mad dash downstairs, pull the cookies out, turn the oven off, and run back upstairs before my grandchildren are even aware I have left the bathroom, knowing full well that I would eviscerate any other adult who left a child alone in the bath for even an instant.

But all is well. And just as I am beginning to recover my mental equilibrium, the regatta has finished, and the children are dried and dressed and running back downstairs. I do not even stop to tidy the room before following them. I simply grab the wet towels and follow them downstairs.

By the time I am downstairs, Marshall is on the stool at the kitchen counter. His clean shirt smeared in chocolate. I wonder if I can get the chocolate out of white stripes of this brand new shirt without his mother noticing. I remove his shirt. 

I look at the clock. It is 10:30. I know their father will pick up Adella and Marshall  in the next hour. I have survived four hours. For four hours I have kept my grandchildren happy without the help of a single electronic device. No cell phone, no tablet, no computer.  No T.V., no DVD, no DVR, not even PBS. Granted, I have exposed them to trans fats, salmonella, drowning and smoke inhalation. But they are happy. Their young, impressionable minds are free. And, despite the hazards in my home, they are alive. Time to throw in the towel.

“Let’s watch Netflix,” I declare.

Knowing she who controls the remote controls the viewing content, Adella quickly and adeptly finds Barbie Life in the Dream House before Marshall can demand Toy Story Toons. I put another clean shirt on Marshall, who is a bit too mesmerized by the screen. Then I  relax into a chair. I look down. I notice a cookie, with just one small bite taken from it, under the edge of the coffee table. Then I notice another similarly sampled cookie under a family room chair a few feet away, a third under the kitchen table a few more feet further, and a fourth under the kitchen island. I do not know when Marshall snuck these cookies, why he has taken just one bite out of each, nor why he has created this peculiar trail of abandoned cookies. (Note to self: find Hansel and Gretel to read to Marshall.) 

“Hmm,”  I say. 

I stare at the trail and try to imagine the thought process of this rogue two-and-a-half-year-old.

And then, as I consider Marshall and Adella and our frenetic morning together, the half-empty bowl of unbaked cookie dough, the clothes and towels to be laundered, and the mess in my kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, I come to a very important realization. There is a reason my second child Nathan went off to college without the ability to cook. I chalk it up to the factor of two. Two children, that is. For when two children, one of whom is just two, are factored into the cooking equation in my kitchen, the probability of chaos increases exponentially.