Lemons

For the last three days, Jacob has been begging me to make lemonade. I offered to pour him a glass of any one of the different types of juice living in our fridge. I offered to buy him lemonade. No. He wanted to MAKE it. By squeezing lemons.

So I added lemons to my grocery list.

At the store, Jacob made a bee-line for the produce aisle. He carefully selected 5 lemons. He placed four of them in the cart but refused to part with the fifth. "No mommy, I want to CARRY it!" he said as he craddled in his hands as if it were a precious treasure.

For the next three aisles, he tossed the lemon, dropped it, kicked it, rolled it, squished it between his hands, and rubbed it all over his cheeks multiple times. Poor lemon. Remind me to NEVER buy that kid a hamster.

The lemon went "climbing"

It participated in an art project

Then it went to "jail."

Then it went to visit its "friends"

At the check out counter, I placed the lemons on the moving counter thing. One, two, three, four lemons. Where did the fifth lemon go? I scoured the cart. I scoured Jacob's hands. Jacob must have left it somewhere- maybe he set it down and forgot about it during his "I want yogurt. I want some RIGHT NOW" meltdown. OR maybe that poor lemon had finally made its escape.

Oh well, I could make lemonade with four lemons.

We paid for our goods, drove home, and put away the groceries. I set the four lemons on the table with a juicer.  Ryan, sensing that I was about to do something that requires concentration, decided to fuss in his carseat. I reached down to pick him up and discovered......

.......the runaway lemon.

At the end of the year, I'm going to have to write Safeway a huge check to compensate them for Ryan's shoplifting habit.

The second I sat down to get started on the lemonade, Ryan started shrieking for food. Jacob saw me preparing a bottle and approached me, scoldingly, "Mommy! What are you doing? You're not making my lemonade!"

"I have to feed Ryan first."

"NOOOOO!" he whined. "I want lemonade."

"Ryan is hungry and he needs to eat first."

"But I can't wait!"

So we compromised:

Notice how thrilled Jacob is to be feeding his brother?

While Jacob was "volunteering" by feeding Ryan, I got to work on the lemonade. I cut the lemons in half and started juicing them.

Ryan was soon done with his bottle. I set him in his Bumbo on the table so he could watch. Jacob thought juicing the lemons looked like fun and begged to help. I gave him a lemon half and showed him how to twist the lemon on the juicer.

He twisted it once, decided it wasn't that cool afterall, and  proceeded to lick every inch of that lemon half from rind to middle. He pulled the seeds out with his teeth and spat them all over our work area. Then he squeezed the lemon between his two hands, dripping juice all over the table. That kid, he's SUCH a big help.

I finished juicing the rest of the lemons and whipped up a batch of lemonade using the recipe that Mommy On The Floor posted. It's amazing, by the way!

Jacob took one sip and declared that it was WONDERFUL! Then told me he didn't want anymore. When pressed further, he said "I don't like lemonade....I just wanted to have some lemons."

*SLAP!*......That was the sound of my hand hitting my forehead.

Shaking my head in frustration, I reached over the table to get Ryan out of his Bumbo. My middle section landed in a puddle of cold, sticky, rogue lemon juice. At least, lemon juice is a nice change from spit-up.