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A couple of weeks ago I emailed a pregnant friend who was approaching her due date; feeling certain she’d be part of the dreaded ‘overdue’ gang. Instead of peppering her with the much loathed question: have you had the baby yet, I shared with her the beginnings of my ‘top ten reasons why it’s good to still be pregnant‘ list.
I figured this time around I’d be prepared, nay proactive, and try to put a positive spin on my extended gestation period.
Ten (Best/Only/Fathomable) Reasons to be Pregnant for more than 40 weeks
- 1. More time to find a really good name for the baby. (Or, just a name.)
- 2. Ability to avoid, for a little while longer, having to feed someone every two hours, every day.
- 3. Slightly more, if incredibly uncomfortable, sleep
- 4. Extended wear of comfy maternity pants without being frowned at..
- 5. Ability to keep being lazy, because you’re too uncomfortable and tired to do anything; or, conversely
- 6. More time to ‘nest’ – get things organized at home
- 7. Getting to the point where you’d gladly go through labor – such is your desire to get the baby out
- 8. A chance to load up on beans, broccoli, tomatoes, garlic, chocolate and whatever else might make a nursing baby ‘gassy’. (This might be stretching the positivity a bit.)
- 9. More time to play the pregnancy card or draw upon people’s sympathies for women in their third trimester
- 10. Deferring the post-pregnancy look for just a little bit longer…
When I retrieved our oldest from his Sunday School class, he showed me a little tag he’d decorated. ‘Mom,’ he told me excitedly, ‘this says: I may be small but God loses us all.’ ‘Loses?’ I asked, perplexed, having momentarily forgotten that our boy wonder pronounces the ‘u’ sound with an ‘l’ in front. Thus ‘uses’ becomes ‘loses’.
After all, this is the kid who informed me on Easter, ‘Jesus died from a rose.’ A cause of death that isn’t mentioned in any Bible I’ve read. I assumed he’d heard ‘Jesus died’ and ‘he arose’ and had somehow joined the phrases. At least I hope that’s what happened. I didn’t really want to interrogate his teacher about theology.
As Mr. G gets older, it’s interesting to see which habits and quirks of his parents he ‘picks up’.
Watching him during the singing part of Vacation Bible School last week, there was just no denying the fact that he is our child. Blond hair and blue eyes notwithstanding.
There were about sixty kids gathered in the sanctuary singing heartily; performing various motions that reflected the words in the different songs. Well, I should say there were fifty-nine kids gathered in the sanctuary singing heartily, doing motions that reflected the songs’ lyrics.
One kid was sitting in the pew, while everyone around him was standing up, singing and dancing. The kid in the pew was neither singing nor making motions of any kind.
That was our kid.
Seeing as we, his parents, wouldn’t be caught dead doing any kind of motions, either, I really didn’t feel like I could reprimand him for sitting on his butt. I pointed out his non-participation to a fellow mom, explaining that he was rather like his parents. She started dancing beside me, as a joke. ‘Yeah, I’m a little embarassed just standing beside you,’ I told her.
I did broach the matter of the Gort’s not singing along with his friends. ‘How come you weren’t singing or doing any of the motions with the songs,’ I inquired as we drove home in our car-van. ‘Because I was thinking quietly about what time you were going to come and get me,’ he replied. (Huh? How does he always manage to come up with a reply that is completely unexpected?)
‘Well, now you know, so tomorrow you can stand up and sing, right?’ I suggested.
‘No, I’ll still be thinking about what time you’re coming to get me.’
He appears to be following in his father’s footsteps in private matters, as well. I was in the office checking email when I heard the toilet flush. After washing his hands, Mr. G emerged from the bathroom. When I saw our latest library acquisition still lying on the floor by the toilet, I had to laugh.
One man’s Glamsters is another man’s Vanity Fair.
It was a sleepless night, chez Johnson. Maybe it was the excitement over our anniversary, (kidding) or the boys’ inability to stay asleep, the pre-dinner hike we took along the Douglas Fir Trail, or the fact that my gut is being held hostage by a small hippopotamus. Either way, there was an hour or so between 12.30 and 2 that I slept and then I lay awake until 5.
I was in a fair amount of discomfort, which I concluded could only mean I was in labor and going to have still-unnamed-baby-boy-3 imminently.
Apparently I’ve forgotten what labor feels like, and that my children prefer to gestate for 42 weeks….not 36 and a bit.
So I lay in the dark mulling over all that had been left undone. Sure, I’d had a crazy bout of cleaning on Saturday, complete with actually organizing the nursery. But now it was Sunday (technically Monday) and the downstairs was completely trashed, for lack of a better word. No one had had the energy to do dishes after dinner. There was food still stuck on the dining table and papers and books and toys strewn across the floor.
How could I bring a child into such a disaster zone? I started wondering if I should get up and clean. No matter that it was 2.30am.
Instead I chose to fixate on another glaring issue. The camera battery was nearly dead. I’d spent a few minutes before turning in looking for the charger and hadn’t been able to find it.
How could I ever live with myself if I had to go to the hospital to have a kid and couldn’t even take a picture of the little man? The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced I needed to remedy the situation. Immediately.
Except I was tired. And had already looked in all the plausible spots. I needed an emissary.
Around 2.30, my emissary woke up. I waited until he’d gone to the bathroom and returned to the room. ‘Can you do me a favor,’ I asked. ‘Sure,’ he replied sleepily. ‘Can you see if you can find the battery charger for the camera?’
Silence.
‘You mean right now?’
‘Umh, yeah…..’
My emissary walked downstairs, flicking on the lights as he went, in search of the Olympus battery charger. After ten minutes I realized he’d never find it, and walked downstairs to aid in the search.
‘I can’t believe it’s 3.30am and we’re looking for a freaking battery charger,’ Jason muttered. Understandably disgruntled. Finally I found it – sandwiched between two file box lids. Of course?!
I took the battery out and stuck it in the charger. Pathetically relieved, given the late hour and the nature of our quest. ‘Can you charge the little camera too,’ I asked my perplexed spouse, who was desperate to get back to bed.
He did. And we went to bed. Around 5am, I fell asleep. With the hippo still firmly ensconced in my ribs.
Only 35 more days.
‘Happy anniversary’ Jason announced at 7.30 this morning; as we both struggled to wake up in order to retrieve an insistent Hen from his crib. ‘It’s not our anniversary,’ I told him, momentarily caught off guard by his attempt at early morning conversation. ‘It’s not?’ he asked, more confused than he should have been, since I’d just told him the day before ‘it’s two days until our anniversary.’
In the minutes that followed, he tried to mentally figure out what date it was, and why today wasn’t, in fact, July 27th when he so clearly thought it was. I’d moved on, literally and figuratively.
Fast forward to early afternoon when we were both checking our email. He made a joke about how all of his life’s difficulties had started after August 26, 1996. A statement I chose to ignore, knowing full well he’d meant to say July 27, 1996. This time he was a month off on our anniversary date. A fact that occurred to him as he sheepishly muttered…..’I don’t know where that came from.’
On the surface, Jason seems like fairly decent husband/human being material, if you like people who are attractive, witty, creative, intelligent, involved with their kids, that sort of thing. But when you stop to dig a little past the surface, you’ll find some glaring flaws.
There’s the social awkwardness and the way he conjures up supremely dumb arguments to get himself out of having to do work he doesn’t want to do.
At church this morning, the pastor was explaining the way communion would be served. On this particular Sunday, he suggested concluding the sacrament by hugging or shaking hands with the person beside you, to signify the peace that passes understanding. At least I think that’s what he said, I don’t really know, because Jason interrupted my valiant attempt at concentration.
In a bit of a panic, he turned to me and whispered: ‘I don’t want to pass the peace of understanding with Karen,’ a woman he’d just met, who was sitting beside him. Hugging virtual strangers is just not high on his list of favorite things.
We returned from church and, after lunch and naps, I decided to treat the boys to an ice cream cone. I’d bought cones and ice cream at the store a few days before. The only problem is, I’d noticed that, within the confines of our little freezer compartment, the ice cream doesn’t tend to stay – what some might call – frozen.
‘This ice cream isn’t frozen,’ I called to Jason, after I’d taken it out of the freezer the first time. ‘It’s all soft and mushy…do you think the freezer isn’t working?’ He stuck his head in the freezer and looked around. ‘Everything else seems frozen….maybe it’s a problem with the ice cream..maybe it just doesn’t freeze well.
He delivered this statement as if it was the most plausible thing man has uttered in recent history. That, in fact, there’s now a new kind of ice cream available on the market; a special kind that requires you to consume it immediately…because it just doesn’t stay frozen when placed in the freezer.
And the thing is, he was so insistent about it that I started to doubt my own common sense.
(Me, mulling the conversation over in my head) ‘Yes, maybe it is the ice cream. Everything else does seem to be frozen. Sure, when I bought it at the store, it was hard as a rock. And sure, the freezer doesn’t feel very cold when you put your hand in it, but maybe this weird, cheap Lucerne ice cream is just really bad at staying frozen.’
To prove his point, he took the ice cream downstairs to the basement fridge/freezer, which we’d never turned on, or used, since we don’t need two refrigerators. Sixteen hours later, I retrieved the containers, only to find the ice cream had leaked all over the empty compartment. And had morphed from a consistency of ‘glop’ to ‘mostly liquid’.
As I poured the dairy treat into the cones, Jason muttered: ‘fine, I’ll email her (our landlord).’
When our anniversary rolls around – tomorrow – it will mark thirteen years since we looked fancy standing in front of a bunch of people, timidly repeating the vows our extremely nervous pastor recited.
What a crazy adventure it has been, and, truly, I wouldn’t want to be married to anyone else, even if they would agree with me – the first time – that the freezer is broken.
Earlier in the summer, I failed to understand why all the moms I know in Calgary were talking about the myriad of summer activities their kids would enjoy. There were tennis lessons, golf lessons, and every kind of camp imaginable. Being a bit of a homebody, and leery of having hyper-scheduled kids, I didn’t sign my kid up for anything.
And I won’t make that mistake again next summer.
The funny thing is, during the ’school year’ G woke up every morning asking if ‘today was just a play day.’ One couldn’t help but conclude that the measly 6 hours of preschool he had to attend each week were just too much for him.
Hence my mistaken assumption that I had the ultimate summer kid; the kid who just wants to stay at home and do nothing. But, after three or four weeks of ‘nothing’, I’ve started scheduling things. Like enrolling him in vacation Bible school, and hounding people I know for play dates. But this morning, I was playdate-less, so I decided to sacrifice my own sense of ‘a good time’ and offer an outing to the park.
‘Should we go to a park this morning,’ I inquired brightly after breakfast. ‘No, I just want to stay home and play moonsand,’ my oldest replied. Fine. I guess.
Ten minutes later, having had a sudden change of heart, Mr. G announced: ‘yes, I want to go to the park!’ And he couldn’t find clothes and shoes fast enough. Within minutes we were out the door and onto the pavement, with the Hen in the stroller, heading in the direction of the park by our ‘old’ house. It’s funny how even the thought of such a short walk (five, maybe six minutes) with two kids can seem exhausting to someone who hates taking her kids to the park.
Maybe other moms like the park, but I don’t. Not really. If you go with another mom and her kids, it can be okay – assuming the kids don’t pummel each other with sticks or the tiny pieces of rubber lining the playground. Then, in between making sure no one falls off the colored metal structures and mediating arguments, you might get in a snippet of half-finished (adult) conversation.
But if you go by yourself, with just your kids, it’s a little more boring. You spend your time fielding requests for ‘underdogs’; trying to push one kid on the swing while making sure the other (smallest, usually) one doesn’t fall to the ground. And time suddenly passes in nanoseconds. What feels like twenty minutes, is only five. And you can’t very well arrive, set them loose and then announce: ‘five more minutes!’ That makes you a supremely un-fun mom.
Luckily today, after about ten minutes of fishing sand out of the Hen’s sandals, grabbing onto kids who’d gotten themselves in sticky climbing positions, and performing three ‘underdogs’, I convinced the boys to go for a walk down the hill(s). Knowing full well I’d have to carry the Hen back up. Both hills. But it was a price I was willing to pay – not to have to stand around on the playground covered in pea gravel.
As we walked back up hill number one, following a successful scouting mission for ‘lucky rocks’ we passed a troubadour. A gentleman lounging on a park bench, with a guitar sitting on his lap. We must have been quite a sight. The rather pregnant woman, carrying blond boy number two, who was wearing an orange shirt and blue shorts. While blond boy number one walked beside us, carrying his second lucky rock, also wearing an orange shirt and blue shorts. What can I say, sometimes we dress the boys in coordinating outfits.
Because what else is the point of having small children?
‘I bet the one on the inside is wearing orange and blue, too,’ our troubadour friend declared as we walked past his bench; making a pregnant belly motion with his right hand. (Lest I misunderstand what he meant by ‘inside’.) I had to laugh. Because less than ten minutes before his comment, I’d been imagining a similar day in early Fall; walking around with three boys clad in blue in orange.
‘I know, it’s kind of pathetic isn’t it,’ I replied. Even though, on this particular occasion the matchy-ness was actually Jason’s doing, and completely accidental.
And then I went home and had a Bejeweled Blitz relapse.
What can I say, it had been a rough day.
The condition of pregnancy invites input from strangers unlike most other physical conditions.
I was dropping off my oldest at a vacation Bible school last week, at a friend’s church, when a lovely Asian woman approached me. She asked me a question about the service times and I explained I didn’t actually attend the church. She started to walk past me but when she caught sight of my gut, she stopped in her tracks. ‘God bless you,’ she said and grabbed my hand. Seconds later she announced with tremendous self-assurance: ‘I think you are going to have a boy.’
I smiled and told her ‘yes, I am going to have a boy.’ Unsure if she’d understood me correctly, she clarified: ‘the doctor has told you this?’ And I assured her that it was, in fact, confirmed by those in the medical world that my next child would be a boy. She looked at the Hen and said: ‘your second boy?’
‘No, third boy,’ I informed her, ‘God bless me,’ I added, chuckling to show I was kidding (sort of). Because that’s just the witty kind of individual I am.
I’d had a similar run-in at Starbucks of all places around the 23rd week of pregnancy. I was paying for my Caramel Macchiato when the two women standing in line behind me engaged me in conversation. ‘Are you expecting,’ they asked politely, careful not to commit the worst faux pas of humankind: asking a non-pregnant woman if she’s pregnant. ‘Yes,’ I assured them. ‘We think you’re about 23 weeks along, are we right?’ At which point I was quite relieved, because if they’d guessed 30 weeks, I would have been crushed.
They weren’t done with their prognosticating, either. ‘We think you’re having a boy,’ they confided. As if they had some sort of insider information.
Since they were on such a psychic roll, I decided to press the issue. ‘The baby’s due in August,’ I shared, ‘any thoughts on when he might actually make an appearance?’ They thought for a second. ‘I’m kind of feeling the 14th,’ the one woman decided.
It was one of the better stranger-pregnancy conversations I’d had. Usually my pregnancy-related conversations go something like this: ‘due any day now, huh?’ or, my personal favorite, ‘when’s your due date again – end of July?’ ‘Um, no, I probably have about 4 weeks to go,’ I inevitably reply.
Knowing full well it will be closer to six.
I wasn’t even playing mindless games on Facebook; I was actually downloading pictures from the camera, when I heard my oldest walk in from the outside, asking his Daddy: ‘is my hair dirty?’
I thought it was slightly odd, out of the blue for mid-afternoon on a Sunday. But sometimes, in an effort to avoid a (future) hair washing, he’ll ask, passive-agressive-style, if his hair is NOT dirty. In an attempt to garner assurance from us that his hair will not be washed in the immediate future.
Several minutes later, Jason walked into the office. ‘Go outside,’ he said, ‘you’re going to need this,’ as he handed me the camera. A feeling of dread came over me…Jason never brings me the camera, much less while saying ‘you’re going to need it.’
It could not be good. ‘Did you see what I just posted on my blog,’ I asked, referring to the post about how I’m beyond outnumbered in my own home. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I was actually trying to do some work.’ Even better, both boys had been outside. Unsupervised.
I braced myself.
I am what optometrists might refer to as ’substantially myopic.’ I cannot see any amount of detail from far away without the assistance of my glasses. And yet, when I walked out onto the deck without my glasses, gazing in the direction where the boys were last seen ‘making coal’, I could tell they were black in places where they used to have white flesh.
‘We’re making chocolate rain,’ my oldest announced by way of explanation. Of course you are. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Tay Zonday had in mind when he wrote his song. I had a good chuckle, and took some pictures. And then it dawned on me that these chocolate rain boys were going to need to come into the house again at some point. ‘Maybe tonight’s a good night for you guys to sleep out in your tent,’ I suggested. A suggestion they weren’t particularly fond of.
The cleaning operation commenced. Step one involved putting them in the (empty) sandbox with the hose. Which didn’t really do much other than create supremely dirty water.
Next I removed their shirts…they were nice shirts, too. Shirts that won’t be handed down to brother number three.
I started a bath in the basement tub, thinking it was more conducive to cleansing dirty children. We each carried in a child, so as to avoid muddy footprints on the beige carpet. However, 30 seconds after depositing the boys in said tub, the water was black. I realized it was going to take multiple baths to remedy this situation.
I ran upstairs to start bath number two. We each carried a child to the next bathroom and put them in clean(er) water. And, since their hair was being washed anyway, I decided to give them haircuts, too.
So, in summary: four hours of work, three baths (if you count the post-haircut one), two clean outfits per child, and one trip to the convenience store for the promised post-haircut candy.
As my oldest concluded, ‘I don’t think we should make chocolate rain again.’
I was lamenting my status as the only female in a house full of men to my better half. Being a man, he wasn’t particularly sensitive to my plight. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘if you ever need an instant fart for any reason….you have a really good chance of being able to get one.’
Lucky, lucky me.
I’ve sort of learned by now that in motherhood, probably in all of life, it is never possible to be fully prepared for every possible situation that might arise. But apparently that doesn’t stop me from trying occasionally.
It has been a good 3 weeks since preschool ended and, with it, all of Mr. G’s social outlets. If you had asked me ‘is your child particularly social,’ I would have said ‘no’. And I would have been wrong, which is why I find it’s better not to try and pretend I really know my children. Apparently being at home with his nuclear family these past 21 days has been a fate worse than death.
So, this week I decided to be a bit more proactive and organized a couple of play dates.
I contacted a fellow preschool mom about getting our kids together. She proposed taking our five boys to a spray park. And, though I hate heat of any kind, and am 35 weeks pregnant, I agreed enthusiastically. Because I knew my boys would love nothing better than whiling away a couple of hours in a spray park.
The appointed day and hour arrived. I packed swim trunks and a towel for each child. I packed cups of water for each of us – even going so far as putting ice inside each cup. I must say I was feeling a bit like Martha Stewart as I placed a couple of lime wedges in my fake Nalgene bottle, and cut up pieces of cherry and canteloupe. And placed the morning’s leftover cookies in a little sandwich bag.
I grabbed an extra set of dry clothes for each boy, and a few more diapers for the Hen. I even refilled the wipes container, and remembered to put sunscreen on everyone before we left the house. Feeling like a grown up boy scout, I grabbed the directions I’d carefully written out, loaded the kids into the car and left the house in enough time to actually meet our friends in a semi-timely manner.
How is it that I have not received some sort of national or international award for mother of the year?
Maybe because the committee called my house and interviewed my children.
I was loading everything into the van, impatiently exhorting my 5 years and 4 month old son to hurry up and buckle himself. ‘Why are you being so crappy’, he asked. I honestly believe he meant to say ‘why are you being so crabby,’ since I use the word all the time, but I suppose either is correct when your mother is snapping at you over something inconsequential like buckling your seatbelt.
We arrived at the spray park and met up with our friends who were more timely than we, had already secured a spot in semi-shade, and brought two enormous bags of potato chips and white cheddar popcorn. Who can compete with that?
My oldest ran off with his friends, into the sprinkler fun. My youngest…refused. Bear in mind this is the same kid who now confidently walks into the kitchen, opens up one of the cabinets and retrieves all of his favorite plastic bowls and insists I put water in them.
So he can hang out on the deck and play with water.
But for some reason, today, maybe because it was a Friday, or 2 in the afternoon, or the 17th of July – whatever the reason, he decided he most certainly did not want to partake in any sprinkler fun. Which means he spent the first hour and a half of our time at the park alternately crying, climbing on and off me, and eating the lion’s share of our friends‘ snacks.
The four older boys would disappear for chunks of time, occasionally emerging for chips or popcorn or a drink. The Hen stayed glued to me, stuffing his little mouth full of salty snacks.
As prepared as we moms were, and I think having the wherewithal to reapply sunscreen to all of our limbs while at the park demonstrates just that, we apparently made a crucial omission in not bringing any TOYS to the park. Call me weird, but I thought the water was the toy; the source of fun. But apparently the must-have item of the spray park season is a cup or vessel of some sort. So one can stand in the sprinkler and fill up one’s cup; walk to the side and dump out the water. And repeat.
I’ll remember, next time.
So our four ‘deprived’ boys drained their respective drinks and used those cups as vessels. Problem solved.
Ninety minutes into our time there, having exhausted most of the popcorn and chips, the Hen suddenly ordered me to remove his shoes, and headed in the direction of the sprinklers. Where he cavorted, happy as a clam for the remainder of the time.
Two hours into our stay, Mr. G came running towards me. Crying. Bleeding from the mouth. I thought maybe he’d fallen; bitten his lip. But an interpretation of his sob-laden language, and a closer look at the diagonal wound on his lip revealed he’d had a collision with a girl’s watering can. Specifically, the tall-girl-in-the-purple-bathing-suit’s watering can. Her juvenile attempt at flirting had gone seriously awry. Judging from the way my oldest was threatening to send her to jail. (I never should have said that people who do bad things go to jail.) And vowing never to invite her to his house. (I didn’t point out that we don’t actually know her – at all.)
I had not contemplated the possibility of injury at the spray park, so I was unprepared. But my fellow, ultra-prepared mom had, and supplied us with kleenex and a band-aid. That it was a small, square band-aid that made my son look like he was sporting H-I-T-L-E-R’s mustache, was inconsequential.
At the two and a half hour mark, we mothers decided we’d been ‘fun’ enough and it was time to go home.
I looked down at the flip flops on my feet and noticed my feet looked rather ‘dark’. I’d put sunscreen everywhere BUT on my feet. And now I had two glowing thong marks on each appendage, and red streaks running from toes to ankles.
It was a banner day chez Johnson yesterday. I cleaned the house. It’s probably pretty pathetic or a true sign of serious laziness when one feels justified in making such an announcement. But it was a lot of work. I discovered it is indeed possible to have small children at home all day and a clean house. All you have to do….is stand up all day long and clean.
If you sweep your dining room and kitchen floors three times in the course of a day, they can stay clean. If you do 4 loads of laundry, the bulk of your laundry pile will disappear. If you walk up the stairs with a paper towel and spray bottle in hand, following the trail of 2 dirty-handed boys, whilst scrubbing the wall vigorously, you may be successful in removing all their handprints. If you vacuum and sweep every floor surface in the house, it will actually look clean. At least until the next person comes home and doesn’t take off their dirty shoes. Or until someone empties the contents of your purse on the floor.
In addition to cleaning, I also cooked dinner. It’s small wonder that we didn’t win the lottery yesterday. My discovery of the chicken satay burger recipe in the March 2009 issue of delicious coincided with the presence of ground chicken in my refrigerator, and fresh ginger and cilantro. The peanut sauce is most delicious and would fulfill all of your other peanut sauce needs. In other words, it would be worth making even without the chicken burgers. If you’re averse to chunks of things in your food, as I and my children are, put the onion and cilantro in a food processor so it’s extra fine.
For some added international flavor click on the link and listen to: ‘C’etait salement romantique.’ I don’t often listen to the radio when I’m in the car, much less pay attention to what is being played. But for some reason the radio was on yesterday, if at a noise level that only registers with dogs. The piano music grabbed my attention, as did the decidedly non-English lyrics, and I turned up the volume. And I used my high school french to decipher the artist’s name as it was being announced. And actually remembered it well enough to look it up on the internet last night.
No small feat(s) for moi, but I’m glad I did..and you might be too.
Chicken Satay Burgers (delicious, p. 106, March 2009)
270 ml can coconut milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 brown sugar
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbs sweet chilli sauce
1 tbs grated ginger
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs lime juice
400 g ground chicken
1 onion finely chopped
1/3 c breadcrumbs (preferably whole wheat)
1/4 c chopped cilantro
To make satay sauce, place coconut milk, peanut butter, sugar, garlic, sweet chilli, ginger and soy in a saucepan over low heat. Stir for one minute or until peanut butter melts. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring, until thickened. Add lime juice and set aside.
Place ground chicken, onion, crumbs, chopped cilantro and 1/2 cup of peanut sauce in a bowl and combine well. Form into 4 patties and chill for at least fifteen minutes.
Heat oil in a frypan over medium-low heat and cook patties for 3-4 minutes a side, or until cooked through. Serve with toasted buns with lettuce, tomato, onion, cilantro, chilli and remaining sauce.
