The Rainy Day

Like many families with young chi’drens, the Sweet Family Sassyfats is constantly on the go. Even when our schedule is clear, we’ll load El and Em into the car and find somewhere to go, just for the sake of keeping busy. Which is why we were recently stymied by a very rainy Saturday. The rain fell steadily throughout the day, and not one of us could think of an adventure that would be worth dodging raindrops to get to the car. For the first time in a long time, we just stayed home – all day long.

The morning went smoothly enough. El and Em were content to do stuff like play computer games, watch TV, read books, and interact with each other without calling each other “stupid” or inflicting physical pain on each other. (Sisterly love. What can I say.) But sometime after lunch, I started to hear the age-old sing-song complaint, “Mo-om! I’m bo-ored!” I knew it was only a matter of time before “I’m bored” turned into a screaming, snarling sisterly death match irritable, argumentative chi'drens. That's never a good thing when you're stuck in the house.

Taking a page out of my own Dear Mama’s playbook, I enthusiastically offered them the opportunity to clean their room or identify clothes and toys to give away. They responded as positively as I always did: eye roll, sigh, and the revelation that my suggestions would not alleviate their boredom. After the second or third time we repeated this little dance, they realized that complaining about boredom to me would only lead to housework. So they took it upon themselves to actually look at the various and sundry items of plastic, fluff, and glitter on their overstuffed toy shelves. It had been awhile since they’d played with anything that wasn’t Barbie or American Girl related, so after a minute or two they were acting like they were in a toy store. “Look at this!! I forgot about this!! Let’s play with this!!” It was nice to see them rediscovering some of their forgotten toys whilst playing nicely with one another.

After some time happy play time, El approached me with an unopened science kit and asked me if we could do some experiments. In the interest of pretending to be a good mother spending quality time with my chi’drens, creating memories, and fostering educational interests, I broke the seal on the box and emptied its contents.

Let the science begin!

I carefully skimmed the instruction booklet for experiments that didn’t require any additional materials. Food coloring and flour may be standard kitchen items in some households, but not ours. (Don’t judge me - I ain't no Martha Stewart.) Ultimately, the girls decided they wanted to grow some jiggly crystals. (Please don't ever take that sentence out of context.) They excitedly used their new sciency equipment (Pipette? Check! Test tubes? Check! Starter crystals? Aww, yeah! Check!) to add water to the salt-like crystals. It was exciting - they were really doing actual science.

It was then that I realized I had neglected to check how long each experiment would take. We'd all had expectations of an instant result. Kinda like *POOF* You are now the proud owner of a tube full of fantabulous crystal-looking thingies. But as it turns out, chemical reactions take time. You add a little water to the tube and wait 15 minutes. Then you add a little more water to the tube and wait 15 minutes again. Repeat as needed until you're satisfied that your jiggly crystal thingies are big enough. (Please don't ever take that sentence out of context either.) 

I don’t want to say that El and Em's enthusiasm waned; they were very interested to see what would happen to the stuff in the test tubes. But it didn’t take long to go from this:

"We're growin' crystals!"

to this:

"When are they gonna be done??"

and this:

"Take my picture too, Mom. I can look bored."

Ultimately, El and Em decided that I could babysit the growing crystals while they went off and did something else. Turns out the “something else” was to get into my makeup bag and play "Makover Ladies." Technically I was supposed to roar, “What did you do? Stay out of my things! You have enough of your own things to play with!” and then hulk smash the little boogers firmly chastize El and Em for using my things without permission.

But instead we had a photo shoot. After all, if we managed to end a cabin-fever-addled rainy Saturday on a good note, it was totally worth documenting.  

My Glamour Girls