“MOM!  I am NOT eating!  I’m PRETEND!”

 

That’s what I heard after scooping up a heaping serving of my favorite potato salad recipe  – that quintessential summer dish – and hoping it would pass for breakfast for Muffin my three-year-old.  Eggs and potatoes, right?  (With a little fat and celery for balance.)

 

Because I have a new grocery store (…and it rocks) I’d boiled a week’s worth of ingredients the night before, which I didn’t have time to peel.  And I was scurrying to get us out the door – trying not to miss the window for a mid-morning swim invitation.  (I know, I only have one child.  And my biggest goal is that this will not be the summer that we can count on one hand the number of times we made it to the pool.  The struggle is real.)

 

I watched the clock and whipped up enough to last us the rest of the day… because why serve something so balanced just for breakfast when it can double as lunch too?  😉

 

But my eat-anything girl has been picky recently.  I don’t know what that’s about.  It’s weird.  And she’s turned her nose up at every banana offered to her over the last few weeks, something she used to devour several of in one sitting if we’d let her.  Now she just wants peanut butter.

 

So when I hurriedly filled the only regular sized bowl in the house that is not currently in the dishwasher and plopped it down on a geography placemat in front of my child I really hoped she’d eat it without a fuss.  Which is why it was surprising to soon hear a very exaggerated,

 

“Nom nom nom…!  Yum yum yum…!” 

 

 

I immediately count this as a small victory but just as quickly chock it up to not feeding my poor child until several hours after she woke up, which means she’d eat anything for breakfast.  (My super power is being able to think about forty things in the space of 1/3 of a millisecond…and randomly verbalize them.  This makes me a dazzling conversationalist.)

 

But then after my flurry of brain activity I want some affirmation, so I ask Muffin, “Do you LOVE it?!”

 

That’s when the “MOM!  I am NOT eating!  I’m PRETEND!”  comes into play.

 

And while I’m silently getting a kick out of how she talks (it’ll be gone before we know it), I’m also leaning back from the sink in our new-to-us galley kitchen and begging the small child at my table to please, please, please eat!  This is weird for me; I’m usually saying, “OK, that’s enough.  We’ll eat the rest tomorrow.  Go play.”

 

 

But I am happy to report that we did go play (and can no longer count on one hand the number of times we’ve made it to the pool this summer this month).  And my afternoon was easy-peasy when my child devoured a second bowl of potato salad for lunch 🙂

 

-RM