Principles of Engineering at Home

When people ask me what I do and I reply that I stay at home with the boys, the other question that will inevitably come up in some form is "What is your degree in?". Few people really know my answer because I actually taught before we had kids, but my degree is in chemical engineering.

Now there are many principles of engineering that I learned in school which I see in action on a daily basis. After all, much of engineering is being able to find a solution to a problem with the materials on hand - who else but moms have to rig up a broken toy/clothing/household item in a short amount of item (i.e. before child completely breaks down) with whatever is immediately on hand. Monday night however, I saw the perfect display of conservation of energy right in my own kitchen. (Conservation of energy being that when energy is lost, it has to go somewhere)

It was 4:30 pm and I was starting dinner. Brennan was sitting at the counter drawing, Nicholas and Philip were on stools next to me "cooking" with the tupperware, and Jonathan was sitting in the bouncy seat surveying the action. Thunderstorms immediately started up and then it happened - we lost all power. Lost our oven that was preheating, our stovetop that was browning pork chops, our microwave cooking frozen broccoli, and most importantly our light (boy was it dark outside too!). I stood frozen and said "well, there goes dinner!".

Did the boys notice? Care? Nope! Immediately my intuitive 5 year old runs for the emergency cabinet where we keep extra batteries, flashlights, and supplies. He excitedly hands out a flashlight to each of his brothers (minus the baby) and hands me the matches to "go light the candles in the family room". A quick look out the window at the rain water inching over the sidewalk and up the yard promptly brought requests for "my rain poncho" or "my umbrella". Never had I witnessed such a quick response to any situation. The boys were so wound up by all of this excitement and speculation of "when will the lights come back" and "how deep will the water get?" that even though we had power back at 6:48pm, we had trouble getting them settled for bed at 7:30pm.

Now if we could just harness that little boy energy and find some way to run the power with it...hmmm...