Tuesday, March 30, 2010

And he cooks too...

A month or so ago, my husband and I preemptively spent part of our tax refund on a new fridge. (yes, our tax withholdings are horrendously out of whack if a brand new fridge claims only part of our tax refund).
 
So far, I love the thing. Love love love it. There wasn’t much wrong with the old one, except for a crotchety disposition when it came to the “auto” defrost, and a general lack of size. And storage space. It did look nice enough and was only about ten years old, with fairly good energy usage. So it took me a really long time (and a sizeable hunk of new-found money) to really commit myself to buying a new one. Don’t laugh too hard at that. Yes, I’d been drooling over larger models for a couple of years, but I’m an obsessive window-shopper.
 
The difference between the old fridge and the new one is about the size of a person. We now have six cubic feet more storage space. For comparison sake, I’d estimate that I’m about five cubic feet (probably less—my ankles aren’t that fat when I’m not pregnant). So you could stuff me and a kid and all of our groceries in the thing. And the energy usage? Almost identical to the smaller model (I mentioned obsessive, yes? I still had the yellow “Energy Guide” tag from the old fridge tucked away in the filing cabinet).
 
This fridge is so big that last night it had two gallons of milk, one of orange juice, one of apple juice, a 6-qt crockpot full of chili fixings (for tonight’s dinner), sodas, leftovers, our massive array of sauces (incuding like 6 kinds of mustard. We’re weird), big containers full of strawberries, grapes, leftover fruit salad, etc. And there was room left. Seriously. I’m not sure the crockpot even fit on a shelf in the old fridge.
 
The downside to all this stainless-steel wonderfulness? Access to the ice cream. The model we bought is a French-door one (which works great in the corner up against the wall that used to impede the old fridge door). And it has a bottom freezer. Which my 3-year old can open all by himself.
 
We have caught Trystan snacking on ice cream bars and popsicles all by himself more than once now. He’s sneaky about it too—just helps himself, throws away his wrapper. One day my husband caught him not just with unauthorized ice cream, but eating it at the computer desk (I think the computer was already terrorized by the little people and their penchant for button pushing…and we just added sugary stickiness to the risks).
 
And the frozen waffles. Oh the waffles. I think I should be less worried about him eating waffles than ice cream, except that he knows how to cook them. In the toaster. He has to take the toaster out of a cabinet and plug it in. And he can totally do that. Last time I heard him banging appliances around in the cupboard, he had the toaster out and was also checking out the metal grids for the waffle iron.
 
The biggest dilemma now?  Whether to punish him for messing with kitchen appliances, or promote him to sous chef.
 
 
 

2 comments:

Bethany said...

Sounds like you've got a mini-genius on your hand. You know, you should have expected this, everyone on both sides of your family is really bright. Non-mother talking here, but I'd be more concerned about the diet issues than him burning down the house. Yes, he's sneaky, especially for a kid only a few years old, but you can control where the toaster is located. Maybe you could use it as an opportunity to talk nutrition with him?

BriteLady said...

There are an extremely limited number of doors in the house that he can't open, and all of them involve the type of handle that one specific baby-proofing lock fits on. None are in the kitchen (no cabinet knobs). And he knows how to pull up a chair, step stool, climb, and/or stack things to reach higher surfaces. So, short of sticking the toaster in the trunk of my car, I can't actually put it somewhere that Trystan can't reach.

And he's totally an engineer. Between my family and his engineer of a daddy, we were doomed from the start :) His sister is equally as bright, but she demands an audience for most things, so she doesn't get sneaky like her brother. He's independent and crafty.

I fear the teenage years.

And its a darned good thing (for him) that he's cute :)