By Staff
Michelle Blaylock, Mom's Corner
As I was cleaning house last week, it occurred to me the interesting things motherhood has taught me. I've learned a human being can survive on five hours of sleep and, if you're tired enough, you really can sleep sitting up. I've learned with a enough patience you can get a tangled comb out of a child's hair and to get gum out of hair you can use peanut butter, cooking oil, or mayonnaise.
I've also learned there are some things appliances just don't like. As I vacuumed this week, I began to think of all the stuff that my poor vacuum cleaners (notice the plural tense here) seriously did not like. They really hate mini-Legos, safety pins – especially open ones, small pencils, beads, popcorn kernels, and micro-machines. At least with these things, I usually know right away I just fed some thing to my vacuum cleaner I probably shouldn't have. However, there are other things I sometimes don't even know I've vacuumed up until the vacuum cleaner is clogged. Barbie clothes and craft foamies are particularly nasty.
In self-defense here, I didn't intend to vacuum these things up. Usually they were hidden at the edges of furniture or under a bed. Notice I said I didn't intend to vacuum up. My children have vacuumed up stuff either not knowing you shouldn't or trying to desperately clean up a mess before I found out. They discovered very quickly that you can't vacuum up cereal and milk (unless you're using a wet/dry vac). They also now know you can't vacuum up an entire container of beads with the intention of pouring them back into the container, because you don't just get the beads, not to mention it's extremely noisy. They've learned it's a bad idea to try to vacuum around long curtains without picking them up. They also now know when you smell burning rubber you should immediately turn off the vacuum.
However, vacuum cleaners do not have the monopoly on being fed inappropriate items. At the age of three, my oldest daughter decided to feed the VCR vegetable soup made from magnetic letters. John had the pleasure of taking the VCR apart because trapped inside happened to be a rented movie.
Hubby has also learned interesting things through parenthood. He learned when doing laundry you need to carefully go through the basket of clothes because you never know what one of your children has hidden in the basket. He learned a 10-pound weight in a washing machine is a bad idea. The end of a 10-pound weight has enough force to be propelled through the tub of a washing machine during the spin cycle. This is one of those interesting things that parenthood has taught us.
Many of our lessons have been taught out of good intentions. For example, one of my angels, in an attempt to be helpful, decided she could make toast on her own early one morning. Her idea was to surprise John and I with breakfast in bed. Unfortunately, she started to put the jelly on the bread before toasting it. Yep, you got. Not wanting to waste the bread, she tried to toast it with the jelly on it. Toasters do not like jelly. Actually, we've learned quite a few things don't go well with toasters. They dislike magnetic letters. You cannot dry a potholder in them. Yes, they will get hot enough to burn popcorn. You cannot not make a Poptart by taking two pieces of bread, putting jelly between them and toasting them.
Actually, kitchen appliances have taught us quite a bit. In addition to the toaster, microwaves and dishwashers have had a hand in our education. We know microwaves will not soften dried out Play-Doh. They will make sparks when you leave a spoon in your bowl. They can burn food if it's left in there for too long – way to long. My brother taught us this one.
In an attempt to make himself lunch, he accidentally put a hot dog in the microwave for 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds. Mom and Dad had to throw the microwave away! In case you're wondering, my brother was in high school at the time.
However, sometimes it all works out. Our babysitter in Kentucky discovered if you try to use hand dishwashing soap instead of automatic dishwashing soap, the soap will foam up beyond belief and flood the kitchen. It ended up being great because I ended up with an incredibly clean kitchen floor.
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