I think you're an autumn
Last week I broke down and bought one of those lunchable snack packs. Yes, I know that they are the worst possible things that you can feed a child. Artery clogging disgusting little packets of certain death, but they were on sale, and I had a coupon, so I tossed them in my cart figuring my finicky kids would probably never touch them, and I’d be the one risking my coronary health as I succumbed to late night munchies.
I woke up the next morning to find Millie sitting at the kitchen table, and the open lunchable packets thrown across the floor. She was assembling the little cubes of ham and cheese-like product into neat little sandwiches, marching them in a line across the table and into her mouth.
Oh, and this was the day after we watched Babe: Pig in the City. I might have been a bit icked by this if the ham in lunchables was in any way a by-product of a pig. I’m not sure what animal those meat cubes come from, but I’m pretty sure it’s not one you’d see on an actual farm.
Unless that farm is in hell.
“Mom,” she said, holding up a miniature cracker. “These are the best things ever!”
Thinking this may be a way to break the pancakes-waffles-PB&J-chicken nugget stalemate lunchtime has become, I bought ingredients to make my own, healthier lunchables. Real cheese. Whole wheat crackers. Low fat, low salt bologna. I used cookie cutters to cut the cheese and bologna into little shapes, and it went over spectacularly, with both kids making (and eating!) different sandwich combos.
The bologna, in particular was a big it. Soon, Millie started asking for the whole slice. Then Quin, the consummate chicken nugget man, asked for “bwoney.”
Yesterday, when I was sitting at the kitchen table, writing my Christmas cards, both kids went into the fridge for more bologna and, this time, slices of cheese to go with it. Happy they were getting their own snack, and not bugging me, I let them do it, and continued peeling labels and stamps.
It wasn’t until I went to plug in the Christmas tree that I realized my mistake. It’s a universal fact that kids won’t eat bologna rind. I sure didn’t. I remember tossing it to my dog, Sandy, who would catch it in mid-air. It was the only little bit of grace that poor dog possessed.
There were no rinds on their plates. None in the trash. None stuffed under the sofa cushions or inside Lightening McQueen’s hauler truck.
Behind the Christmas tree, on the wall, there was a work of post-modern art that would make Jackson Pollock proud. Right before he puked.
A crooked line of circle bologna and square slices of American cheese, arranged in a pattern.
Circle.
Square.
Circle.
Square with a nibbled corner.
I recognized Quin’s teeth marks on that one.
At first they had used scotch tape to hang up the slices, but realized they didn’t did it as bologna has a sticky cohesiveness of it’s own. A couple of slices had been up there for days, right over the heater, baking behind the lights of the tree. They had hardened to plastic, one actually seemed to have become part of the wall.
I had to use a scraper to get that one off.
I should be pleased they like shapes and pattern recognition and all that. Even so, I think we’ll stick to chicken nuggets for a while.
