Take Home Chef

Past two nights the kids have been waking up at odd hours requesting California rolls and lemonade spritzers or so seems at 2 am and/or 3am, and/or again at 4am. I'm so delirious that being grumpy or impatient isn't even an option. The kids are met with warm arms, cuddly hugs, and soft hush now words. Abby's back is rubbed in circles until she feels like a warm loaf of buttermilk dough on my shoulder as I lay her sweet self back in the crib for (hopefully) the duration.

Grayson shadows me, no matter what time of night, back to the bedroom and asks for a "Mommy show."

"No Honey, it's time for bed."
"Can you find just one Mommy show to watch so I can listen and fall asleep?"

And I struggle for the fortitude to deny him that luxury. To teach him how to fall asleep on his own. To show him that you do not need the television on in order to go to sleep. Struggle the incessant struggle of easy over difficult. I do not win. Easy has another notch in her lipstick case. I reach for the remote instead and turn the blasted thing on.

"None of your singing and dancing shows on, Mom?" he asks as I flip from one paid program to the next like it's 8pm instead of time to milk the cows.
"Nope. Guess not, Babe." Nothing but Proactive and Andy Cohen in another blue shirt. Then I find an old and almost forgotten favorite: Take Home Chef. It has new graphics, men sous chefs (and not just hot single lady market go-ers since Take Home Chef got hitched), and of course the reason to tune in himself, Curtis Stone: a handsome Aussie who slices a tomato and makes the world over blush at the same time. He's that good.

We're set. Mommy show, here we go. I'm riveted. Grayson's psyched too. It's 4:23 am.

"Ooh good, Bananas Foster - I've always wanted to see how they make this."
"Me too," he whispers.

"That's a lot of sugar, Mommy." Grayson says through a tiny boy yawn and I agree.
"That IS a lot of sugar, holy cow is that a lot of sugar." I add to that tiny boy who had very much succumbed to the wee-early hours of his teething sister and who had miraculously already begun to snore.

Take Home Chef. I highly recommend it for those too-too early morning false starts for both comfort, peace, and more sugar than any lonely housewife can stand.