A few days ago, we stopped in at the Co-op in Boise's North End for lunch. We were on our way back from the library, and Clara was starving. I found a shopping cart and tried to sit her in the child's seat in the front.
"No, Mommy!" She made her legs stiff and straight as two bedposts. I gently karate-chopped the backs of her knees to bend them and then worked her feet through the leg holes on the front of the cart. She collapsed to one side and stared up at the ceiling. "Mommy, noooo!" she moaned, shaking her pigtails from side to side. I brought the buckle up to snap it across her belly and she arched her back and tossed her head back as though I'd just administered a fatal blow.
"No, Mommy! No buck-kell!"
"Are you kidding me?" I said. "There is no way we're going without the buckle. I know you too well, Sweet Pea."
"'Nack, Mommy, 'nack!" She pointed to the salad bar and display cases filled with pastries and miniature cakes. I filled a small container with some split pea soup, got us some bread to go with it, and grabbed a container of spinach farfalle.
"Eedles," she said, pointing at the farfalle. I opened the container so she could see the bow-tie pasta better. "Yiiiik," she said.
"But you love noodles!"
"Eedles," she nodded, as if to concede, "Yes, I do love noodles. Noodles are cheesy and shaped like tiny shells or miniature bunnies. These are obviously not noodles."
Along with the farfalle and soup, I got some containers of broccoli salad and coleslaw, and I grabbed a yogurt.
We paid for our food and found a seat at the bar. Clara flatly refused any of the pea soup and looked at the coleslaw with deep suspicion. She wanted little bites of bread dipped in yogurt, but I was determined that she eat some vegetables.
Just two months ago, Clara drank low-sodium V8 with enthusiasm, and could take down an entire portion of Lebanese salad on her own. She ate oranges and blueberries and strawberries from my garden. She ate peas by the fistfuls. Then she started getting horrific diaper rashes, so we had to cut out most of the fruits and veggies in her diet to determine what her skin was so sensitive to. We came to the conclusion that her body's not very tolerant of citrus fruits and blueberries.
We kept her away from fiber awhile to let her bottom heal. Then we were stuck in the conundrum of which veggies to keep away, and then we became overwhelmed and sort of let the whole veggie thing slide for a week or so. She became a protein and carb baby. Grumpy. Constipated. Paradoxically craving bacon and large quantities of cheese.
Last weekend, Simon and I, being the very astute parents we are, realized there are more veggies and fruits than just those of the citrus variety. There was no reason for Clara to miss out on the good stuff.
At the Co-op, I fished a tiny broccoli spear out of the broccoli salad.
"Look, a baby tree!" I said. It's what my parents always called broccoli when I was little.
"'Don't eat me! Don't eat me!'" I made the broccoli spear plead. "Sorry!" I replied to the spear and chomped it voraciously, like a pterodactyl. The man sitting next to us shot me a sidelong glance, and I had a sudden mental glimpse of what he must have seen: mother attacks broccoli spear with flashing yellow teeth while making weird, growling sounds.
Clara started to giggle.
I straightened in my chair and tried to wipe my mouth with more decorum.
"How about if we put these next two baby trees to bed?" I said. I laid the spears in the fold of a napkin.
"Oh, yesh," Clara said softly, patting the napkin over them. "Bash," she said, dropping a dollop of yogurt on them.
"Okay, now you try the next one," I said, handing her a tiny piece of broccoli.
She put it carefully in her mouth. Then she popped her tongue out and said, "Yish!" The broccoli rolled out and fell to the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment