Busy day... and bonus time!

Today we had a district day to have training in the morning and time to work on grade cards in the afternoon.  BUT, lucky me, since I have a new(ish) kiddo on my caseload with high needs, I got to attend a full day of CPI training.  I DID have the training in ND, but here teachers has to be re-certified every year.  Yippee...  It wasn't the worse use of my time, it's just that I happen to have 14 other kiddos that I have to prepare grades/progress reports/print graphs from AimsWeb and easycbm.  [Hey!  You spedies -- have you seen easycbm?  I love it!].

Ok, so anyways, because it was training, we did get out a little early and it felt like a heavenly gift to be able to pick M up almost an hour early.  She was so surprised.  She pointed to me and yelled, "MOM!" to her teacher.  It was so cute!  We went for a nice walk, played with M's "new" kitchen (our neighbor girl decided she was too old for her kitchen set - that even makes boiling and frying noises!), and had a great snack all before we would normally have been home.  Gift.  Total gift.

In the meantime, I decided to launch into a new recipe.  Ugh.  I feel like such a failure in the kitchen.  First of all the recipe (Baked Potato Soup) called for... you guessed it... baked potatoes.  JJ has taught me several times how to bake a potato but I've never had to do it on my own.  I'm not too proud to admit I had to do a quick google search for step-by-step directions.  Did you know they take like OVER an hour to cook?  Ridiculous.  Completely ridiculous.  Anyways, I got them going some time into our *bonus* time so that my soup could be ready by around 5:30.

SO, while the dumb potatoes cooked, M helped me vacuum and sweep.  Then I thought she could help me measure the spices to go into the soup so we could have them ready when... you know... the dumb potatoes would be ready.  I kept telling M that the oven was hot.  HOT.  Don't touch.  Careful.  Hot.  She knows hot - when we say food is hot she blows air and waves her hands.  Then I had the brilliant idea to get the base going so I could just add the hot potatoes to it.  I got the burner going with a big pot on top and added the three cans of soup, milk and spices.  The [insert expletive here] potatoes still weren't done and now the soup was bubbling.  I kept turning the burner down, down, down, until I turned it completely off and removed the pot from the burner, leaving the burner exposed.  I told M again (who was now happily going through the measuring cups and spoons in the "baking" drawer) that everything on the stove was HOT.  The potatoes came out and I began trying to cut them when I glanced over to see her hand hovering over the coils.  I most likely yelled, "NO!" and startled her, but in any case, she made contact and started screaming. 

Ugh.  Not only can I not cook but I also don't know how to cook while also caring for my child.  : (  Really sad day.  I abandoned my soup to care for my baby, who, thank goodness, loves ice cubes.  The rest of the evening she was grumpy and sad.  Even during her bath, which is never hot, she gingerly held her hand above the water saying, "hot".  : (  Poor honey.  We ended up just having baked potatoes and pears for supper.  I did not even want to look at the stupid soup.  : )