The evils of grapefruit
This morning Madison asked for and received grapefruit (along with porridge, which is how she refers to oatmeal) for breakfast. She was annoyed I didn’t put it in a bowl because Daddy always puts it in a bowl but she deigned to eat it anyway. Unfortunately, while she was pleasantly eating it (no sugar, sipping the juice out of each section as she goes) it squirted her in her eye! And you know how that hurts. She jumped up from her chair screaming and I ran and got her a wet paper towel to wash her eye out. Ten seconds later she was sitting quietly eating her grapefruit again.
“You know what I like about you?” I told her. “I like that you’re resilient. You don’t let a squirting grapefruit scare you. You go ahead and finish eating.”
She wriggled in her chair proudly.
Now Noah wouldn’t bounce back like that. If Noah, at three, had been squirted by a grapefruit he would still be refusing grapefruit. (As it is he only likes grapefruit with sugar unless it’s the very sweet kind that he has with his grandparents when we go to Florida.) But here’s the thing — I love this about each of my kids.
I’m just like Noah — easily traumatized by fruit and other unpredictable things. When he falls apart I get it because I totally see the logic of falling apart. I see why he’s doing it, I usually think it makes sense (even if I want him to stop) and so I can steer him back towards sanity since I know the path he took away from it. I love his sensitivity and his navel-gazing worrying and his poetic spirit. There are things about him that drive me crazy like when he was younger the way a tangle of emotions stopped up every transition physical or otherwise — a trait that now translates to someone who hits every step in maturation and balks, gingerly putting one toe forward before leaping to his next developmental task. But I love Noah — the good, the bad, the ugly, the very nice. And I admire so much about him.
At the same time, I love that Madison doesn’t fall apart even though I don’t personally understand what it means to be easy-going. I love her go-get-’em-ness. I love her outrageous excitement and energy. I love that she never lets anything keep her down for long. There are things about her that drive me crazy, too. Like the way that her prodigious creativity means that nearly every toy (and kitchen appliance) is pressed into a service in which it was not meant to serve, severely curtailing its lifespan. And there’s the challenge of the chaos she leaves in her wake — the stopped up sinks, torn up papers and small pieces of broken plastic. But I love Madison — the good, the bad, the ugly and the very nice. And I admire so much about her.
I’m very excited to see who these two grow up to be. I can’t wait to have the hindsight to say sagely, “Well, it’s no surprise to me that you [insert accomplishment here] because you always had inclinations that way.” They are such interesting people!
This is the only thing that makes me even slightly interested in parenting again — I know that every single kid out there is just as interesting, frustrating and fascinating. But I also know that paying attention to these two the way I want to pay attention to them is awfully hard and I don’t think my brain would stretch to any more. But if I were fabulously wealthy (i.e., didn’t have to make a living, could afford a bigger house), I’d be tempted.
I feel the same way. I would be tempted again, were it not for money, to see what another child would add to our family. How he or she would be different from my other two.
Step AWAY from those thoughts IMMEDIATELY! Just kidding!LOL
Seriously…I loved this entry!
Not the point of your story but the oatmeal/bowl thing made me smile because Ky was so used to daddy and her having their own routine in the mornings (I was working and he was staying home) that once when I was the one to get us going (I, apparently, do it MUCH more differently than daddy) she said “mom…I really prefer to get up in the mornings w/ daddy” umm..ok!LOL It’s funny how the little things mean so much.
Hang in there…they’ll be home soon!
I just LOVE that Madison refers to her oatmeal as “porridge.” It’s a good thing she’s too young to read Dickens, otherwise she’d probably be calling it “gruel.”
ME TOO, ME TOO! I actually *am* tempted, I even wrote a post about it a few weeks ago. But you’re right, I don’t think it’ll be wise at all.
And… BEAUTIFUL, wonderful post! I love it when you write about your children and I wish I could be as perceptive. I mean, it’s not that I’m not, but I often cannot articulate it as well.
Our kids call oatmeal “porridge,” too, because that’s what the nannies called it in Ethiopia. They had an electronic thing-a-maggigy that said “all clear,” and H. thought it was saying, “oat meal!”
Anyway, like the way you describe your kids, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I feel the same curiosity — who will these kids grow up to be?
But oatmeal really is porridge right? It’s not just rolled oats? We have porridge every morning in our house and we call it porridge because, well, that’s what it’s called. In Australia. Assuming we are talking about the same thing…
PS, I did read the rest of your entry too
Yup, oatmeal is porridge but a lot of people in America don’t call it that (and many don’t know that) like not knowing curds and whey is cottage cheese.