egg | All that makes you…

Some mothers don’t have to do a daily morning safety check throughout their home. Some moms have daughters or kids that look like Harry Potter and sit and read books all day. I have three boys that I will have to eventually write a book about or someone will write a book about me once one of their experiments goes awry and I am blown to bits. My mornings consists of mad chaos while I cook and pack lunches and play drill sergeant.

While wrangling three boys our patient dog stares me down to say, “Feed me!” and “Let me out!” and my husband yells, “Abbie, did you pack me a lunch?” and “Stop yelling yelling at the kids so much!” and “Boys, stop beating each other with pool noodles at the kitchen table!”

You would think that after dropping them off at school I would sit in silence and drink my coffee.

Not in our house. I have to be sure that our house will still be standing when Jim comes home from work and I am still alive when everyone starts screaming, “When is dinner!” Mother’s of all boys also know boys are born with two stomachs to accommodate the Hobbits meal plan.

I walk through our home and look for signs of mayhem or hopefully pre-mayhem to nip in the bud. The house was looking pretty good other than the odd light that they left on. Toilets were flushed. Faucets were all the way off.

I was walking past our first grader Peter’s bedroom when I saw this…

Why would his nightstand drawer be glowing?

Here is where I do that walk that all mothers of little boys do. I walked with eyes squinted, holding my breath and thinking about the exit strategy to get whatever it is quickly out of the house and thinking about how many more days until the garbage man comes.

I open the drawer and find a Robin’s egg wrapped in a towel and with a reading lamp on and inside as well.

Oh, my sweet little Peter.

I had found the egg while out gardening. It was completely intact and I called him over to show him. I explained that it had been out of the nest long enough that it would no longer hatch and that if it gets broken chances are it will be rotten and stink.

“But isn’t it beautiful!” I said.

When he asked if the mothers was sad I told him I was sure she had already laid another egg and these things happen when eggs are up in trees.

I kept on gardening.

A little while later he came outside and asked how long you would have to sit on the egg to make it hatch.

I patiently told him that if he sat on the egg it would break because he is not a bird and reminded him that it was old and would never hatch.

Then he came out and asked how warm it would have to be to hatch.

I told him, “So help me Peter if you put that egg in my microwave!!!!”

He snickered, “I am sure. Like I would do that. That would cook it.”

I thought that was the end of it.

Until I found the night stand incubator.

When he came home from school I told him I found his little experiment and while it was very smart and sweet I told him he is lucky he didn’t burn the house down.

His reply (said with a minor head shake and slow blink that all little boys do to their mothers), “That is why I used an LED cool lamp. I am sure, like I would use a regular bulb. That would catch on fire.”

I know far too much about rotten eggs. Read my post, “Exploding eggs and nakedness” and follow for more stories.

Please do not try to incubate an egg this way. That would be dangerous. 😉

Thanks for letting me share and I hope you are “following” our stories,

-Abbie, All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing. allthatmakesyou.com

the baby robin eggs ~ daily photography of the hatching process (foundobjectbeachart.wordpress.com)
Drill Sergeant: No Need to Yell (drudge.com)
Take time to pause and enjoy nature! Robin eggs and hatching chicks. (playdreamfun.wordpress.com)
In rare event, hummingbird lays egg at Franklin Park Zoo (boston.com)

There is a reason I have a sense of humor about my life with our three boys. If I survived the ridiculous childhood I had, they will be fine. I am going to share with you one of my own childhood stories. Sit down and I will try and paint a mental image and while you laugh at my misery, please remember that nothing is funny until the smell of rotten eggs is gone.

Our family usually hung out at “The Farm” all day on Sundays. We lingered in my grandmother‘s massive kitchen cooking dinner from all that came from the garden and the barn. My Mamaw made a cake from scratch and without a recipe. They had three daughters and the daughters had six granddaughters and eventually, much later, a grandson. Picture my childhood being like an episode of “Designing Women“.

When I was about eight my grandmother told us girls to go get some fresh eggs for a cake. I now know, since their wisdom is immediately bestowed upon we women the moment we become mothers, that they were just getting rid of us.

My grandparents always had a couple hundred chickens, among other animals. I sincerely thought I was Laura Ingalls. I had long brown hair and I loved a dress, (still do) but I fancied myself a tomboy. My cousin, who is about the same age, and I headed off towards the chicken and cow barn.

Since we were sent on a “busy” mission and the eggs had already been gotten for the day the chicken’s nesting boxes were empty. We kept looking and finally found a nest that was full. I held up the hem of my flowered sundress and my cousin loaded up all of the eggs and then I held them close.

I walked across the cow pasture, climbed a fence (as the gate was to heavy to open) walked across the yard (so as to shake them up really good). When I walked in the kitchen, proud of the major score of eggs we found, NOT in the chickens boxes on the wall but in the corner in a nest on the ground my grandmother gasped, “My Lord child! You didn’t get those eggs from that old nest by the cows your Papaw was supposed to get rid of, did you?!!!”

And then the eggs began EXPLODING! Exploding in my sundress and the stench of rotten eggs was less offensive than the dead baby chickens that were all over me when I let go of the hem of my sundress which was less offensive than being stripped naked in front of my entire family and hosed off in the front yard.

It took twenty-five years before I would eat an egg. Go ahead and laugh, I am.