Apparently, when you have children, they need to eat.
Let me rephrase that. They need to eat you out of house and home. After all, they're not paying for the groceries, and the food is just there, so they must do their job and eat it. Then you have to go to the grocery store for the fifth time this week, and the vicious cycle starts all over again.
Mostly, the ravishing appetites come from the snack monster: "Can I have a snack?" (asked by Kelsey just this morning, five minutes after breakfast), "Is it time for a bedtime snack?" or the ever-irritating, "I'm hunnngrrryyy!" When these questions are met with a "No, you just had breakfast/lunch/dinner; it's too close to breakfast/lunch/dinner; it's too late," then the whining ensues as if you've purposely withheld food from them all day and they will absolutely keel over at that moment if they can't have a graham cracker/pretzels/piece of candy (which never qualifies as a fulfilling snack, yet they assure me that will be enough to get them through. Ha.).
I know when I was younger, my family coined me as "Heather Hungry". I was a bottomless pit of sorts, a skin and bones, ribs-peeking-through kind of bottomless pit. I'm not sure how my parents managed to keep me fed and satisfied, and I know it got worse in high school. I can remember coming home from school, devouring an apple, a plate of Triscuits with melted cheese, string cheese and a granola bar. I fear for the teenage years in this house, not because I have all girls, but because they will all need to eat. A lot.
I try to make sure they eat their fruits and veggies, so once a grocery trip is made, I'm chock full of fresh fruits and carrot sticks, and so when they are hunnngrrryyy, I can offer those healthy choices. I can feel like a pretty decent mom. And as blueberries are nature's laxative, I can feel pretty spectacular that everyone is regular. After all, consistent pooping makes the mom's world go 'round.
But then you get to days like today. I've just come off working three evenings in a row. The bananas Jake picked up at Walmart two days ago are just a distant memory. Grocery shopping won't happen until later this evening. In search of a fruit to have with lunch, I had a flash of memory: dark chocolate yogurt-covered raisins. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Only in this house will you hear "Finish your peanut butter and fluff sandwich or you won't get any dark chocolate yogurt-covered raisins!"
Yup. That's how we roll. Just keeping it real.
