As I mentioned yesterday, Jobe had fallen ill on Christmas Day and so his parents had decided to spend the night. Nobody had gotten to sleep until after midnight and then, once calmed, Jobe had slept until 5:00 AM, when he woke up crying. Margie had gotten up then and had gone out to the living/front rooms where the family had camped out to see what she could do to help.
I tried to get a bit more sleep after that, but as has seemingly become the norm, I could not. My ability to sleep for more than a few, oft-interrupted, hours has been detroyed. So, after turning and tossing for about two hours, I got up and headed toward my office. As I passed from the hallway into the front/living room, what you see above is what I saw.
I continued on into the office to open up my computer so that I could see what was happening in various parts of the world and to begin to work on pictures.
Normally, I would have set the coffee pot to brewing and steel-cut oats to boiling, but when Jacob and Lavina are here, I look forward to what Jacob, our master chef, will concoct for breakfast, so I didn't.
A good four hours would pass before the others started to get up and move around and in all that time, I did not eat or drink anything. I just waited in anticipation for Jacob to start cooking.
Finally, somewhere around noon, Jacob announced that Kalib would be cooking breakfast for everyone on this, the morning of his third birthday.
Kalib? Not just helping out a bit but cooking breakfast? Instead of having our breakfast prepared by our master chef, it was going to be cooked by a three-year old?
Well, okay - after all, he does own his own spatula.
Kalib began by going to the fridge, where he pulled out some eggs.
;)
He broke an egg and put it in the mixing bowl. Then he broke another. It appeared that instead of putting it into the bowl, he was about to inadvertantly spread it across the counter. Jacob's hands shot in to give him a small assist and help him to hold the egg together until he could put it in the bowl.
It can be a frightening to watch Kalib break eggs. He, lifts them up, then thrusts them down hard and fast and it looks he is going splatter them all over the counter, but then suddenly, just before contact, he puts on the brakes and the eggs hit the counter with barely enough force to crack them - or maybe not even enough. Sometimes, he must strike two or even three times before he breaks the egg.
Kalib soon let it be known that he was going to break two eggs at a time.
He broke both the eggs, but just barely.
Into the mix goes an egg.
After Kalib breaks one egg, his dad holds it dripping above the bowl. Kalib reaches out to see what the draining white of the egg feels like. Kalib's mom had put a chef's hat upon his head. It didn't stay there long.
After all the eggs have been broken and dumped into the mixing bowl, Kailb breaks the yolks and mixes them up.
Then he adds some milk...
...followed by some pepper...
...then some chili powder...
...he just kept adding more and more items and spices...
...as he threw in gob upon gob of various herbs, I began to grow worried. I began to wonder if maybe I should have cooked my steel-cut oats after all. I did not know if I wanted to eat this concoction.
Now it is time to cook. His dad will man the flame, but Kalib sprays the pan with Pam. During my senior year in high school and my freshman in college, I fell in love with a red-headed girl named Pam. She lives in Hawaii now with children and grandchildren nearby. Her husband passed on, long ago.
Now, Kalib cooks with Pam.
Remember that spatula that Margie and I looked at when we did our Christmas shopping. We did, in fact, buy it for Kalib so that he would always have a spatula waiting for him at our house.
On his birthday, he put that spatula to use for the first time.
No one but Kalib is to use this spatula.
Understood?
;)
Finally, breakfast is cooked. Kalib doles it out in generous servings.
He takes a seat by his dad, who then feeds him what he has cooked. Look at that alligator! It looks hungry.
Kalib is not the kind to let a hungry alligator starve. He feeds eggs to it.
I overcame my fear and ate a generous serving myself.
You know what?
It was pretty good.
In the evening, there would be party for Kalib at his house.
Yes, we went.
That will be the subject of part 2.