Valuable Lesson

I decided TTT deserved a break from cereal or oatmeal for breakfast on the weekends, so I decided to cook eggs. When the baby saw me take eggs out of the fridge, she asked if she could help cook. Sure why not, it was a happy Saturday morning. The baby and were scrambling her egg when Rowan woke up and wandered into the kitchen.

“Mommy, can I help cook too?” she asked.

“You can cook your own egg as soon as your sister is finished,” I answered.

The baby finished and I put her in her high chair to enjoy her eggs. Rowan stepped into the chair her sister vacated and cracked her eggs and we cooked.

“Mommy, is it my turn to cook my eggs?” Jory wondered.

“In a minute.”

Jory got his plate out and a fork. He was ready to go.

Rowan was finished. I put her at the table, slid her hot eggs on her plate, and then got started with my big boy. We were happily cooking when I had to go into the other room. I turned the fire off and told Jory I would be right back. He got out of his chair and sat down.

I was talking to my mom when I heard….

“Mommy, it’s burning! The table is burning,” Rowan cried out.

I walked quickly into the kitchen to see what she was talking about. Yes, I walked instead of ran because this is the girl who cried wolf yelling. I arrived into the kitchen to find that Rowan was right. The table had been burnt.

In his bid to be a helpful, big boy, Jory decided he would take the pan off the stove and instead of hold it like I did while I put the eggs on the girls’ plates; he decided to put the pan on the vinyl poker table. The hot pan on the vinyl poker table. So I picked up the pan which had cool some that had black vinyl attached to it and a table with a circular patch of black vinyl missing from it. I cleaned the pan and then turned TTT.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Jory apologized/mumbled.

“It’s okay, but we’ve learned an important lesson. We do not move pots and pans off the stove unless Mommy is in the kitchen and tells you to. And we never, ever put a hot pan or pot on the table or the counter. Okay?”

“Okay,” TTT answered.

My mom walked into the kitchen. “Was something burning?”

“Yes and we just learned a valuable lesson about putting hot pans on tables,” I replied.

She looked at the table, rolled her eyes, but didn’t say a word, as I encouraged the kids to finish eating their breakfasts.

You just never know when a teachable moment will just pop up. And let’s praise God this happened on the poker table because if this had happened on her good table, she might have had a stroke.