eating and natural consequences

Eating always entertains.

Let me first say that we’re blessed with girls who eat. Sure, we wheel and deal and pull some tricks, but they end up polishing the plate (granted, not all of the food ends up in the mouth…some of it ends on the floor, the wall, the face, Mami and Papi’s sweaters). And while we can’t seem to get much of anything green in Monica’s mouth, they both love their fruit.

Our major currency is the potato chip. Right now the going rate for one, full sized potato chip is 1 green bean, or 4 pieces of melon, or 6 bites of spaghetti, or 4 spoonfuls of edamami, or 2 asparagus. Potato chips can pretty much buy a mouthful of anything. They’re also my favorite food, so we always have them around.

We’ve had some Goldilocks moments with eating. At first the girls would vacuum their food up without giving us time to chew. For a good amount of time things got better. The right amount of time for us to eat and talk. Recently they’ve taken forever to finish.

Part of this is because Kelly enters into her imaginary world during dinner. She talks and has conversations with herself. She pretends that she’s Mami and tells Monica she has “Cinco Minutos” in the chair. She directs symphonies with her spoon, splaying the table and wall with mash potatoes. She touches everything – salt, napkins, our food, her hair, Kenzie, juice – and wriggles in her booster seat (which at least kept her from wondering out of the dinning room). It’s cute, funny, sometime irritating, and requires constant parenting.

Monica, in a different but similar way, brings high drama to the green vegetables that touch her food that she intends to eat. First it’s a Shakespeare tragedy, her eyes and mouth pouting and her body leaning away from her plate, “I can’t eat this, I won’t eat this, I don’t want it!” Then it’s the floor of the stock market where she exhibits a keen understanding economics. Overall, I have a hard time not giggling through the entire production.

I look forward to dinner. It’s always fun.

* * * *

How do parents deal with natural consequences?

For example, this evening I went out the front door to put the recycle on the corner. The girls helped me collect all the recycling (which seems to have gone up exponentially with the growing family) and wanted to go out with me. I said no because the front walk was very snowy and icy. After starting down the walk I heard the door open and out came Monica.

She hit a patch of ice and flew through the air. I can still see it in slow motion – I kept praying “please God, not the head, not the head.” Fortunately, she landed on her butt and skidded onto her back. But it hurt. A lot. And she started to wail!

I confess I had mixed emotions. Part of me was terrified for her. Part of me wanted to run to her and pick her up (this part actually won out). But part of me wanted to yell “well if you’d only listened to me in the 1st place!”

We have moments like this. We say don’t run, but they do and they trip and they fall. We communicate danger when around dangerous things (fireplaces, ice, electrical sockets, etc.).  We role play the proper way to go up and down the stairs. Often times they listen and I think they understand. But we’re starting with a deficit of understanding. We just got them.

So when the natural consequences happen I sometimes feel like I’m hunting for the right mixture of comfort and “well now do you get it?” You want the lesson to sink in. But you want part of that lesson to be that Mami and Papi will be there for skinned knees and bruised butts.