Pigs Fly

Never thought I'd see this scene in my kitchen...

Yes, that would be my two youngest children happily hand washing the dishes...TOGETHER.  This bizarre occurrence all happened because of homemade playdough.

Yes, Playdough.

Apparently it can be homemade.  Who knew?  Actually Aunt Wendy knew and she brazenly showed Chloe just how this can be done while Chloe was hanging out with her cousins the other day.  Then Chloe came home and told Connor all about it and the two decided they wanted to make some here at home.

I confess that I'm not a big fan of kids cooking in the kitchen.  It only leads to mayhem, messes, and oft times the need to seek medical attention.  (Just ask Cheyenne who once had to have her finger stitched back up--or was it Mitchell?)

And although the fact that my dishwasher quit may not sound like a fortunate event,  I saw the sink quite literally half-full--of dirty dishes and decided to use this predicament to my advantage...or so I thought.   Knowing this would throw a hurdle in their cooking plans    I simply gave their epicurious endeavers an evasive green light with ONE BIG IF.

That is...IF they washed all the dishes BY HAND, dried them, AND put them all away.

(Evil grin) that would stop them!

...turns out it didn't.  They headed for the kitchen and got to work scrubbing everything in sight!

They did a pretty darn good job surprisingly enough.  Or should I say Chloe did a pretty darn good job?  Since Connor's notoriously short attention span for anything domestic quickly and predictably faded.  His job was to hand dry everything Chloe washed.  But he soon turned some chopsticks he was supposed to be drying off and putting away, into drumsticks, and began distracting himself by rocking out with my pots and pans and leaving the real dish drying for Chloe to do once she finished washing. 

Chloe didn't seem to mind.  She was so focused on a future of homemade playdough.  Purple playdough at that.

...And, speaking of the mayhem and messes of which I'm not so fond of, it is helpful to note for future reference that this sort of cooked up concoction will stick really badly to the bottom of your pans should your children forget to rinse and soak 'em after they're done with their cooking extravaganza.

And while happy kids washing dishes might be a miracle around here, it wasn't an everlasting one.  I still had a defunct dishwasher and playdough stuck to the bottom of my pan...and that's where I could use a real miracle!