If you Give a Mama an Ice Cream Maker

If you give a Mama an ice cream maker, she'll want to eat ice cream.

She'll decide to do a "fun activity" with her 4 boys and make ice cream in the fancy ice cream maker that has pedals to stir the barrel of cream.

She'll let her oldest child measure the ingredients and pour everything into this .... contraption.

The mama cleans up the spilled sugar and cream off the counter.

Then she'll need to make "crushed ice" in the blender because, naturally, this ice cream machine is too small to hold actual ice cubes.

The noise of ice in the blender causes multiple children to scream and cover their ears.

Once the ice is sufficiently 'crushed', she'll scrape the ice into the barrel, making sure to spill half of it on the floor.

The mama will mop up the water on the floor.

Once the hand held machine is ready to go, she'll announce that it's ready to spin.

When all 4 children start fighting over whose turn it is to go first, she'll separate the children and tell them to take turns.

She'll remind them to take turns.
She'll set a timer to help with the turn taking.
She'll yell at them to stop yelling at each other about whose turn it is.
No on takes turns.

While the big boys are fighting over whose turn it is, the toddler runs away with the ice cream barrel.

When the Mama brings back the barrel, she'll realize that the cream is leaking.

She'll get paper towels and clean up the sticky mess on the floor.

She realizes that this ice cream surely must be close to being finished so she opens the barrel and stares down at a pool of not-even-close-to-being-frozen cream. The instructions were not accurate in saying it would be ready in 20 minutes.

The mama, realizing it's creeping ever closer to bedtime, abandons the fancy ice cream maker and pours the cream into a plastic bag and places it inside another plastic bag with the ice.

No one fights over having to shake the ice cold bag.

Still clinging to her attempt to be the "fun mom" and not wanting to back out on the promise of ice cream to her children, the Mama herself shakes the bag of ice until the cream seems to be in a more solid state.

She opens the bag of ice and pulls out the cream, only to realize that only part of the cream is frozen.

5 more minutes of shaking.  The ice cream is done.

It is 8pm.  Bedtime.

Realizing she was too far deep into this project and she couldn't back out now, she served the ice cream to her 4 boys.

The ice cream was surprisingly good.

After eating the ice cream, she promptly announces that it's bedtime. All 4 boys are running around the living room, tearing apart the couch cushions, rolling on the floor, purposely running into each other and laughing.

The mama is always surprised at how quickly the sugar hits their blood stream.

She pushes back bedtime by 20 minutes so they can run off their energy.

20 minutes is not ample time for boys to "run off" their energy.

After the living room has been sufficiently destroyed, so gathers her last remaining energy (why didn't she get that sugar rush??) to wrestle the boys into pj's and have them brush their teeth.

Two minutes after putting the little boys to bed, a blood curdling scream comes from their room.  Boy #3 comes hobbling out, sobbing. He is injured. He injured himself going to bed.

The mama asks how he could have possibly hurt his foot while laying in his bed and Boy #3 says that he was climbing in his window, slipped, and cut his foot on the heating vent.

The wound is really quite small, but the boy wails as if his toes are being cut off one by one.

The mama, cleans up the blood, attempts to calm him down and puts him back in his bed, this time with specific instructions to NOT climb in his window.

The mama calls the two big boys to bed. Boy #2 is giggling uncontrollably. He trips going up the stairs and starts crying. 1 minute later he is bouncing and giggling again.

She prays and tucks them in.

More wailing emerges from the little boys room. Boy #3 says his owie has traveled up his foot and into his leg.  His entire leg huuuuuuuuurrrrrrrts and he cannot sleep.

The mama, less patiently, tells him his owie is very small and it will feel better in the morning.

After kissing him and Boy #4 goodnight, again, she heads downstairs.

Boy #2 comes out saying he is still too wound up and cannot go to sleep. The mama makes him do 25 jumping jacks in the living room and sends him back to bed with a new book to read.

The mama is tired. The mama is exhausted. The mama needs ice cream.

But she has learned never to make it again in that #$^$@ ice cream maker.