The Goddess Rambles

I made my favorite breakfast casserole, yesterday. One of The Girls, Mrs. K, introduced me to it. It’s delicious and yummy and all sorts of good. Basically, you mix 6 beaten eggs, a cup of milk, a cup of biscuit mix, a pint of cottage cheese, a full pound of shredded cheddar and some salt in a bowl, then you dump it in a baking dish and bake it at 350 for 40 minutes. Best damn thing y’ever had.  And great for mass, week-long family breakfasts that you can just nuke and not have to actually make while you stumble around in your PJ’s at 6:30 in the morning and fumble with the coffeemaker which resolutely refuses to allow you to set its timer so you don’t have to fumble with it. (Whew.)

So, yeah. Breakfast casserole. I made it yesterday. But I didn’t have any shredded cheddar. What I DID have was a hugenormous (think wholesale club-sized) bag of American “cheese” slices. I say “cheese” and not cheese because cheese is.. well, cheese. “Cheese” is Processed Cheese Food. It’s what cheese eats. Anyway, so I chopped up a bunch of slices of cheese food and threw them in the mix. Turned out pretty tasty, all things considered.

Now, I have an almost-two-year-old named Anna (“Nanners” to us). Child loves her some eggs. Which is fantastic, considering she won’t eat meat (except “tacos”, which is any sort of ground meat, and bacon. At least there’s that). So, for lunch, I decided to give her some of my yummy casserole. I warmed it up just a little in the ol’ microwave (because, really, who wants cold eggs) and set it before her. She immediately tucked in. I put some “t’toons” on the tube and turned my back for a few minutes to Internet (it’s a verb, now).

A few minutes later, I turned around, due to some indescribably happy noises coming from the high chair. What I found… well.. was this:

And this:

And this:

My child had been attacked by cheese food. And it had done terrible, horrible, awful things to her. Held hostage by cheese food, she had obviously developed a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, because she appeared to be loving every gooey, sticky, cement-like minute of it.

I just turned back around and continued looking at LOLCats. I needed a minute.

After my minute, I walked into the bathroom and drew a bath (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase. So elegant and.. uppity.) I went back over to the high chair where the poor child was squealing with Stockholmy delight as she RUBBED THE STUFF IN HER HAIR. And I mean, she was goin’ at that hair like a Jersey boy with a bottle of Dep and a date.

I removed her clothing (which was tricky) and her diaper (which, THANK YOU JESUS, was clean), and I carried her (gingerly) into the bathroom and plunked her in the tub.

It took me, I crap you not, a half an hour to get all the cheese food off the child. The hair was the worst. It was DISGUSTING. It had cemented and was orange and sticking up all over like Perez Hilton in a tub of Velveeta. The process was as follows:

Scrub with baby shampoo. Brush out. Curse under breath. Scrub more. Try the nylon scrubby thingy. Brush. Curse more loudly. Scrub more. Try not to cry. Curse (silently) the baby for laughing hysterically at hostage negotiation efforts. Scrub more.

Finally, I think I got it all out. Except for one rogue piece in her left nostril that I thought was a booger.

I dried her off and put her on diaper and clothes (ones which were not covered in goo) and told her it was “night night”. Now, mind you, up until this very moment, she’d been the happiest critter on God’s green earth. And she’s usually really good about taking naps. Child loves to sleep. In fact, if I wait too long, she’ll ask to go “night night”.

Not today, Dear Reader. Not today.

Everything was peachy until we got upstairs and into her room. It was fine throughout picking out a toy to sleep with and finding our pacifier (which is normally somewhere in the dusty regions behind the crib). It was fine throughout kisses and hugs and “night night, Nanners!”. Then I put her in the crib.

Oh, the humanity.

Granted, she’s been throwing tantrums for a while, now. Or so I thought. But I realized, at that moment, that I’d never actually seen a real tantrum.

This was Britney-worthy, folks. This was why terms like “having a cow” and “flying off the handle” were invented. This was an all-out, balls to the wall, choke-a-biznitch TANTRUM. She was throwing herself against the bars of her crib, down onto the mattress, buying her head in the sheets and PUNCHING THE AIR.

I laughed.

Heartily.

Finally, I picked her up and stuck her face up to mine. I think I startled her into shutting up. I said, “Anna. You are going to lie down. You are going to take your paci. You are going to get under your blanket. YOU ARE GOING to be quiet. And you are GOING night night.”

I set her back down. Now, this is a 22 month old, Dear Reader. Not even 2, yet. She laid down, took her paci in her mouth, pulled her blanket over her and closed her eyes.

WIN!

I win.

She is now reposing as peacefully as a princess. And I am now sitting down for a frakking break.

Moral of the story: Be very, very wary of cheese food. It’s apparently evil in more ways than one. When in a heated state, it will take your toddlers hostage and turn them into raging fiends. BUY CHEDDAR.