Final Yolk Tally

Mmmm.... I just finished the most yummy crustless quiche.  This quiche was thanks to my friend Ashley, who readily supplied me with the recipe when I put out the call for recipes that call for 5 potentially double-yolked eggs.

This afternoon the kids helped me whip up this quiche, and I have to say... we were pretty excited to crack open the 5 remaining eggs in my magical carton.  So, we grabbed our remaining eggs and recorded the whole thing for posterity.  Well, who am I kidding - I was recording it for 2 reasons:

1. To prove I wasn't making it up.
2. To provide the footage to the press and to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum in Niagara Falls and to the Guinness World Book of Records.

:-)

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here is our mini documentary entitled, "The Final Yolk Tally":

I think that more than half the carton is pretty darn cool.  I don't think I'll be going on an autograph signing tour any time soon, but at least my kids think this was one of the coolest things that's happened to them all winter!

Now go enjoy the Oscars!

My Saturday Night Egg-stravaganza!

We found out Knolan has pneumonia a couple of days ago, so my Saturday evening plans shifted from fun night out at Ken's cousin Bethany's house with his relatives to me staying home with Knolan so that Ken and Kaycie could go visit.  I love seeing Ken spend time with his cousins, so I was happy to volunteer to stay home so that we wouldn't have to cancel on Bethany and her husband entirely.

While I was spending my Saturday afternoon and evening at home with the little guy, my mind kept drifting back to eggs.

Why?  Well, you may recall my recent diversity exercise that resulted in double yolked egg confusion last weekend where I cracked 2 eggs in a row that had 2 yolks in them.  Since then, I've used 2 more of the eggs from that carton, and to my surprise, they too had double yolks!  Both of them!

That's 4 out of 5 eggs from this carton that have had double yolks!

So, I have been DYING to crack open all the eggs in the carton all day. 

Finally, after I put Knolan to bed, I decided I could at least make a pile of muffins and use 2 more of the eggs to see if I could continue my double yolked egg-stravaganza.  Here is the video I made of me cracking my eggs into my muffin mix:

My stove top needs to be cleaned AND I sound

like a lonely nerd in this video.

2 MORE DOUBLE YOLKERS!  6 eggs from this carton have been double yolked!  This is crazy.  Either that or they are completely un-rare and all of my friends who grew up on a farm are secretly snickering at me oohing and ahhing over my carton of eggs. I swear that the carton says that they are just normal, run of the mill eggs.  My sister-in-law, Kerry, may be right... I might have to stop buying lottery tickets because all of my luck is just pouring into this one weird carton of eggs.  :-)

You might have heard me declare at the end of the video that I was putting all of my big plans for the night (laundry and SNL) on hold to bust open the remaining 5 eggs.  Once I shut off the camera, though, I thought better of it and decided that I couldn't just waste the eggs, and I couldn't think of anything I was willing to make that required 5 eggs and would keep overnight.

So... you will just have to wait for the update on tomorrow's episode of.... "All my Eggs".  And trust me... I am using all of those eggs tomorrow!  Know any great egg recipes? 

Kaycie Sez... (Knolan Sez is not far behind!)

I am excited because Knolan is starting to talk.  A lot.  His favourite greeting is, "Hey baby!" and he loves to say, "Bye bye... ab dood day!"  (Translation: Bye, bye... have a good day!).  And of course, since he is closing in on the terrible 2's, he is all about "NO!"  Fun times.  :-)

As for Kaycie, she is, of course, still spouting out lots of interesting stuff.  I have been collecting these ones for a while and finally managed to put them all in one spot:

While playing floor hockey with her cousins and Ken:  "No, Daddy, I'M the goldie."

After she had wandered into our bedroom late one night and announced that there was something weird going on with her foot, we took a look at it and reassured her that it was just a wee bit of dry skin on her toe and there was no need to be worried.  She seemed ok with that and went back to bed.  About 20 minutes later we heard her little angelic voice call out from her room:  "Don't worry Mommy and Daddy.  I chewed it off!"

When I was buckling her into the van and didn't realize I was leaning on her leg:  "Ow Mom!  You're crankling my bones!"

While reaching in to ever so gently lift her out of her booster seat after she'd fallen asleep in the car, she shouted out in her sleep:  "No YOU'RE the evil one!"

While brushing her hair (a little too roughly apparently!):  "MOM!!!  You're hurting AND devastating me!"

And there is a recent development.  She has been working on this roster of jokes that make ZERO sense and revolve around the word "reflection".  Why?  Your guess is as good as mine!  Here's a sampling (all of which result in hysterical laughter from the joke-teller):

"Why did the T.V. poo a lot?  Because of the cowboy's reflection! "

"Why does the princess curtsy a lot?  Because she always kisses and has a reflection!"

And the one that perplexes me the most... she makes a flatulence sound with her mouth and then says, "That's not a toot... that's my reflection!"   (If she is anything like I was when I was a kid, she just likes the way the word 'reflection' sounds and is looking for any and every opportunity to say it out loud.)

I should add one thing.  I am always a little worried that people reading this blog think I am mocking my child.  I'm not.  I honestly get so much joy out of the strange things that she says because it reminds me of how innocent and literal and funny and creative kids can be and I get so sad when I forget the things Kaycie says that make me happy and make me laugh from my toes up.  I think I kind of wish I could go back to being 4 years old some days and experience life the way Kaycie does.  Can you imagine life without all the filters of work and household responsibilities?  I can't believe I wanted to grow up so fast, and now I am silently begging the universe to let my kids stay little forever.

Diversity Now! (...or maybe now?)

I am always looking for visual ways to help my kids learn about the world around them. Any time I've had a tough time explaining something to Kaycie, I try to find a way to show her with toys or pictures to make it a bit easier to process.  And after a teachable moment successfully comes together, I feel so, so happy that I've been able to pull together a great moment in parenting in that big sea of uncertainty on which I continue to bob along in my little lifeboat (hoping desperately that a compass or map might float up alongside the boat!).

I  recently stumbled across an article (and judging by the comments section, it was a tad controversial on a small scale) indicating that various studies have shown that because we are living in a society where many children get "shushed" for pointing out someone who looks different and where children are told that everyone is equal, but are not told much more, that we are not doing our children any favours.  That by putting our children in diverse environments and assuming that this will - by osmosis - teach them that diversity is natural and good is faulty reasoning. 

This got me thinking, because in the past few months Kaycie has talked to me often about kids at school, the people she likes, the regular day to day disagreements that her friends get into, the things she hears.  It is all very interesting - in fact, hearing her ramblings about her school day is often my favourite part of the day.  I have heard her ponder aloud sometimes about the colour of her friends' skin - nothing really inappropriate.  I have talked to her about how how the colour of someone's skin does not make them any different from anyone else and that when she makes friends with people that it should be about whether she likes them, and not about how they look - whether that is how they dress, the colour of their skin, the length of their hair, or whatever.

The article made me think that maybe I could start looking for opportunities to talk more openly with our kids about diversity and different cultures.  I thought I would start small and start visual by using an exercise referenced in the article.  The article suggested that you show your child a brown egg and a white egg and talk about how the colour of their shells are different, but that when you crack open the eggs, they are identical on the inside.  Then you can have a discussion about how people are the same on the inside, but are all different on the outside.

Well... if you have been reading this blog long enough, you will already be assuming that this exercise didn't go exactly as planned.

While I was making breakfast this morning, I showed Kaycie a brown egg and a white egg.  She was very interested to see that they were the same shape and texture but different in colour.

She eagerly watched as I cracked open the white-shelled egg to see what was inside.  She has seen me crack open a zillion eggs, but I loved that she was just as excited about this zillionth-and-one egg.  We cracked it open and looked to see what was inside:

Ta da!  I asked Kaycie what she thought we would see when we opened the brown-shelled egg.  She declared quickly that we would see the same thing.  I readily agreed with her, and we had a nice little chat about how she might look different than one of her friends, but that they were just the same on the inside and that on top of both of them having muscles and bones and what have you, that they both also probably loved their parents and liked to play outside.  So, we decided it was time to crack open the brown-shelled egg to take a look.  As I brandished my egg cracking skills and poured the egg into our dish, I said, "See?  They are just the s..." 

I stopped dead in my tracks, and then I couldn't help but laugh at what I saw:

A double yolk?!  I have never, ever, EVER cracked open a double yolk in my life.  It just figures that this would be my lucky day.  LOL

As we looked at my little visual exercise together, Kaycie looked at me with a bit of a bewildered face.  Oh yes... we were learning.  I had better think fast on this one!  I said, "Well aren't we lucky!!!  Those eggs were SUPPOSED to look the same on the inside, but eggs are a funny thing and very, very, very rarely an egg has TWO yolks inside!  It hardly ever, ever, ever happens... can you believe that this happened to us when we were trying to see that people are the same on the inside?  I can't believe it, can you Kaycie?"  She was grinning from ear to ear and agreed that she couldn't believe our luck either.

So, I suggested that we crack open another brown egg and that she would then see what I was trying to show her... that we are all identical inside.  So, we excitedly cracked open another brown egg.  It was then that Kenny came running in from the other room to find out why I was bellowing, "Oh for the love of Pete!"  As Ken, Kaycie and I all peered into the griddle (we had run out of microwave poaching spots), this is what we saw:

I couldn't believe my eyes.  Kaycie and Kenny of course thought this was hilarious, but I was reeling trying to figure out how to rescue my precious teachable moment!  And in case you think I am making this up, here is my side-by-side comparison:

Slowly I cracked a third brown egg - subtly checking the carton to see if it was labelled "FRAGILE: extremely rare double-yolked eggs" - and held my breath as we all looked to see what came tumbling out of the shell.

A single yolk!  And I proudly showed off my single yolk egg, holding Kaycie's angelic little face in my hands and saying, "See?!?  We really ARE all the same inside!"

It was then that I realized that I actually had a way BETTER lesson sitting right in front of me.  Our bizarre egg cracking expo allowed Kaycie and I to sit down and talk about how all eggs might be different colours, but inside they all have yolks and egg white - sometimes there might be a different number of yolks, but that's just like people.  People are all basically the same inside - we all have a heart, a brain, blood, etc, but our insides can be slightly different because we all have different personalities too.  Some of us like to ride bikes, and some of us like to play guitar, and some of us like to colour, and so on.

Luckily Kaycie did not wonder aloud if Knolan might have 2 brains or anything like that.  But she did say, "Yeah!  Like the way I like princesses and Knolan likes to break things with his hockey stick!  Right, Mom?!"

All I could say was, "Right, Cutie."