Fluffy affectionate filial kerfuffle
Another nothing thing.
Kids are there to make sure you don't take yourself too seriously. And to keep you honest. And to keep you awake, no matter how tired you are. And to keep your hair from staying straight and brown. (Or whatever your hair colour was before you had kids.)
My 5-year-old son is short and skinny. Granted, his dad's a short and skinny guy, and I'm a short and, well, a girl... but yeesh! This kid sucks in what little gut he has, and I swear you could see some spinal definition behind his navel!
This extreme skinninity seems to come from a confounding food pickiness. Carrots are good one day, but only if he's utterly famished (from having turned up his nose at lunch), and only if they're paired with something unspeakably vile (like, say, beef-with-broccoli and a side of plain, white rice). I can let him choose the main dish for dinner ("Can we have trees and that brown meat, Mom?" -- a.k.a. "beef with broccoli"), and he still won't eat it when it comes time to put his fork where his mouth is. But take him to DIM SUM, where you can get tripe served up in sesame oil and shrimp broth, and har gao (shrimp dumplings in translucent rice-flour casings that look like jellyfish), and soo mai (pork dumplings wrapped up in pig stomach lining), fried crab balls with a claw sticking out like a lollipop stick, egg custard tarts, sticky rice with vegetables mixed up in it, and you can't keep his plate full!
Unless, of course, it's the month he's decided he doesn't like dim sum.
Tonight, I made moo goo "turkey" pan (or moo goo gai pan, but with left over turkey instead of chicken) and the mein part of chow mein (those orange noodles). "Yuck! I hate that smell! That better not be supper! I want something 'licious!" he declared most emphatically as I cooked, offended that, even though he has magnanimously informed me that today is my day to choose what to eat for dinner, I did not appear to be stirring something he would care to eat.
Well, given that the light bulb in my sewing machine said "Pop!" earlier that day, and I still had a bunch of flannel nighties to hem (which cannot be done on the serger), given that even though I apparently only THOUGHT I had told my husband (who is the BEST!) and children that if they needed anything, they should ask Daddy for it, not Mommy, despite many repetitions delivering said marching orders, and requiring the affected personnel to repeat their orders back to me in acknowledgement... you get the idea. I was not in the mood for either a power struggle or a surrender.
"Nope, not done yet! But you have to wait another half an hour, because it's gonna take that much longer to make it 'licious, hon," I replied with that rictus most mothers acquire after a day of trying to make headway and settling for leeway.
I whipped up some baking powder biscuit batter, balled it up, rolled it into salad-plate-sized circles, and dropped that moo goo turkey pan into the middle. Made four of those MGTP patties. Popped them in the oven. Set the table. Put out the remaining MGTP on the table, the noodles, the drinks (Mommy had a Coke, not a beer, alas, as this was Daddy's weekly night out and she had to work hard to stay nice to the kids)... and a platter of MGTP patties. Didn't say anything about what was inside.
Wouldn't you know it.
They loved the patties. Ate them up, every last little bit of filling, with exclamations of "yum!" and "'licious!" And openly disaparged, held their upturned noses, P-U'ed the bowl of MGTP in front of them. The exact same thing that filled those biscuit shells...
THEY'RE PACKAGE IMPRESSIONABLE!
Forget parenting courses, prenatal preparation, Lamaze/Kegel/Dreykurs whatever. If you want to prepare for life as a parent, get a certificate in MARKETING. It's like getting a black belt in mental judo, and that's essential for successfully parenting picky eaters.
Now I must move all my halogen lamps to the sewing table, so I can make sure my hems are straight, until I can get that new light bulb. (Didn't I just get that bulb changed three weeks ago? !@$!@#$^^#$!#$!...)
Kids are there to make sure you don't take yourself too seriously. And to keep you honest. And to keep you awake, no matter how tired you are. And to keep your hair from staying straight and brown. (Or whatever your hair colour was before you had kids.)
My 5-year-old son is short and skinny. Granted, his dad's a short and skinny guy, and I'm a short and, well, a girl... but yeesh! This kid sucks in what little gut he has, and I swear you could see some spinal definition behind his navel!
This extreme skinninity seems to come from a confounding food pickiness. Carrots are good one day, but only if he's utterly famished (from having turned up his nose at lunch), and only if they're paired with something unspeakably vile (like, say, beef-with-broccoli and a side of plain, white rice). I can let him choose the main dish for dinner ("Can we have trees and that brown meat, Mom?" -- a.k.a. "beef with broccoli"), and he still won't eat it when it comes time to put his fork where his mouth is. But take him to DIM SUM, where you can get tripe served up in sesame oil and shrimp broth, and har gao (shrimp dumplings in translucent rice-flour casings that look like jellyfish), and soo mai (pork dumplings wrapped up in pig stomach lining), fried crab balls with a claw sticking out like a lollipop stick, egg custard tarts, sticky rice with vegetables mixed up in it, and you can't keep his plate full!
Unless, of course, it's the month he's decided he doesn't like dim sum.
Tonight, I made moo goo "turkey" pan (or moo goo gai pan, but with left over turkey instead of chicken) and the mein part of chow mein (those orange noodles). "Yuck! I hate that smell! That better not be supper! I want something 'licious!" he declared most emphatically as I cooked, offended that, even though he has magnanimously informed me that today is my day to choose what to eat for dinner, I did not appear to be stirring something he would care to eat.
Well, given that the light bulb in my sewing machine said "Pop!" earlier that day, and I still had a bunch of flannel nighties to hem (which cannot be done on the serger), given that even though I apparently only THOUGHT I had told my husband (who is the BEST!) and children that if they needed anything, they should ask Daddy for it, not Mommy, despite many repetitions delivering said marching orders, and requiring the affected personnel to repeat their orders back to me in acknowledgement... you get the idea. I was not in the mood for either a power struggle or a surrender.
"Nope, not done yet! But you have to wait another half an hour, because it's gonna take that much longer to make it 'licious, hon," I replied with that rictus most mothers acquire after a day of trying to make headway and settling for leeway.
I whipped up some baking powder biscuit batter, balled it up, rolled it into salad-plate-sized circles, and dropped that moo goo turkey pan into the middle. Made four of those MGTP patties. Popped them in the oven. Set the table. Put out the remaining MGTP on the table, the noodles, the drinks (Mommy had a Coke, not a beer, alas, as this was Daddy's weekly night out and she had to work hard to stay nice to the kids)... and a platter of MGTP patties. Didn't say anything about what was inside.
Wouldn't you know it.
They loved the patties. Ate them up, every last little bit of filling, with exclamations of "yum!" and "'licious!" And openly disaparged, held their upturned noses, P-U'ed the bowl of MGTP in front of them. The exact same thing that filled those biscuit shells...
THEY'RE PACKAGE IMPRESSIONABLE!
Forget parenting courses, prenatal preparation, Lamaze/Kegel/Dreykurs whatever. If you want to prepare for life as a parent, get a certificate in MARKETING. It's like getting a black belt in mental judo, and that's essential for successfully parenting picky eaters.
Now I must move all my halogen lamps to the sewing table, so I can make sure my hems are straight, until I can get that new light bulb. (Didn't I just get that bulb changed three weeks ago? !@$!@#$^^#$!#$!...)