Tales of Life with a Girl on the Go

There are many things that children blame their parents for, not the least of which is their weight. Recently we were having breakfast when Reid announced that she didn’t want to eat her crusts. I said that was fine but that she wouldn’t be getting another piece of toast before the previous one was gone. All of a sudden, the offending crusts were more palatable. Amazing how that happens.

A bit later, Reid announced, “I’m full.” I responded with, “Stop eating.” This is the sort of thing that I’ve been saying in these situations for a long time. I always wonder why we have such conversations since we say the same sorts of things each time. I don’t want food to be cause for battles – I have to save my energy for keeping Reid in her chair and using an “inside voice”.

Two Sundays past, Reid and I met Melissa for lunch at the food court in the mall by our house. As Reid dressed after swimming last Sunday, Reid asked if we could go to a restaurant for lunch. When I said, “no”, she asked if we could eat at the grocery store. I repeated that we were eating at home and Reid said plaintively, “But it’s fun to eat out.” Truer words were never spoken. Reid really is my daughter, you know. I reminded  her that we’d had hotdogs for lunch on Saturday and we headed for home. I noticed that Reid’s jam sandwich from Saturday was still on the passenger seat, safely in its Tupperware, and offered it to her. She accepted it and announced that she was going to eat in the car and then stay in it to play while I went in the house. I guess that Reid is willing to interpret “eating out” to include any meal that doesn’t occur within the confines of the main part of our house. It’s good that she is flexible about food, since I’m the chief cook in our family. ;+)

Reid was eating a raisin recently and she turned to me and said, “This is like a Craisin only made from a grape.” “In fact,” said I, “raisins came first and Craisins are just dried cranberries.” Reid didn’t look convinced. It goes to show how different the foods she has access to are from what I ate as a kid, I guess.

It also makes me think a bit of David, a guy in my MA class, who asked me once what pickles started out as. I’ve been conscious since Reid’s birth to take her berry and apple picking and to point out the crops growing in fields so that no one is still smirking about a question she asked 14 years after she asked it. Of course, David asked his question during the weekend I first met Ken and that special occasion might keep it in my mind.

Sometimes I regret telling Reid exactly where her food comes from, though. For instance, on the way to school yesterday, Reid was asking in the baby chick comes from ‘”this part” – the yolk if the hard-boiled that she was in the process of eating. Since I was planning to eat one myself later, I was blocking the thought as much as I could and gave a brief “Sort of” as an answer and talked about how chicks couldn’t hatch from the eggs in our fridge because they’d gotten cold and eggs needed to be kept warm by the hens sitting on them. And then, I asked Reid about school or something in a clever bid to distract her. Reid is not easily distracted, though, and while I hoped fervently for my car pool folks to be ready so that I could leave, Reid wondered if maybe we could hatch chicks by warming the eggs that were in the fridge. Ken explained that it was too late for that and, in an undertone, agreed that it was pretty nasty what we do to chicken babies. I have to agree that it would be if you thought about it. But if I thought about it or most other food choices, we’d have to be vegetarians. I don’t think Ken would like that much (okay, at all) and Reid would much rather be a carnivore than an herbivore, if she had to choose. Omnivore suits her best, really.

Or maybe I’ll check into Ottawa’s bylaws on backyard poultry. Raising chickens would be a fun summer project don’t you think? Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess has been down this road. I’d have to check to see if our current pet sitters would tend them, I suppose.

[Disclaimer: the views in this message have not been approved of or even reviewed by Ken. I come up with them all be myself.]

Update: The City of Ottawa prohibits the keeping of livestock within the city limits unless in specifically zoned areas. We have some obvious farm land still but not in my neighbourhood.

I’ve started hard boiling a bunch of eggs on the weekend so that I can easily bring them in my lunch. Reid noticed me packing one and asked for an egg with her cereal. I peeled it for her but was upstairs brushing my hair before she had time to eat it. As I came back downstairs, she confronted me with the pristine yolk on her palm. “Look,” Reid said, “it’s all yellow.” And it was but I couldn’t see why we were discussing this fact. Reid elaborated, “It’s supposed to be green and then yellow.” “Oh!” says I, the one who usually forgets to watch the eggs as carefully as the need to be watched, “The green only happens when I boil the eggs too long.” Reid could not be persuaded to egg that little ball of sunshine, though. At least she won’t complain if I’m less vigilant next week. This is how bad cooking turns into family favourites, eh?

When Reid and I got to the top of the ramp from the arrivals area at Union Station in Toronto, we could smell cinnamon, or at least I could. Before I had a chance to comment, Reid sniffed the air and said, “Mama, it smells like Beavertails!” That’s my Ottawa girl. ;+)

I explained that people use cinnamon in cinnamon buns, too, and we went to Cinnabon for a demonstration. Reid chose a chocolate milk In the past, Reid has been uninterested in the cinnamon bun but decided on Friday that she should taste it. And, oh bliss, it was good. She didn’t seem to think me a bad mama for never having forced the issue before but she definitely wanted her share of the bun in front of us. It’s good to have someone to share one of those cinnamon buns with since they’re crazily high in calories and sugar (and I’m to cheap to buy a mini bun because the cost per gram is too high).