One of the few things I love about summer is the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. We got a ton of strawberries and pluots (a yummy plum/apricot hybrid) at co-op yesterday, so I chopped some up, added a cubed apple, and couldn’t wait to dig into my fruit salad this morning. And I did not intend to share it.
Before you label me a terrible mother, listen: I know my kids. Violet doesn’t like pluots. Jonah probably wouldn’t, either, especially if unpeeled. They both like strawberries and apples, but Jonah prefers his apples peeled and I wanted the fiber.
I mean, honestly — sometimes Mama just wants to enjoy something the way SHE likes it, without having to share!
SO…I sit down with my bowl of yummy goodness and Jonah comes over and stares at it, longingly.
“I want that…”
Foiled, once again!
“OK, I can share. Go get a little bowl.”
He skips off to the kitchen and returns with a bowl and spoon.
“What’s that?” he asks as I scoop pieces into his dish, pointing to the ruby-red pluot.
“It’s like a plum. You should try it. It’s very sweet.”
I spoon the pluot in his dish, along with half a dozen pieces of apple and strawberry. He looks at his bowl, then mine, clearly sizing up the situation.
“OK. You can have THAT one,” and he points to his bowl!
“No!” I laugh. “The smaller one is yours! Eat it all and I’ll give you some more.”
So, he sits down beside me and, totally ignoring his spoon, picks up the chunk of pluot with his fingers and bites off a little chunk.
“MMM! Good!” (Yay, I think! Another fruit to add to his list of “likes”.)
Then he plunks the rest of it back into my dish. “I don’t want it.”
“What are these? Potatoes???” and he drops an apple chunk back into my bowl.
“No, silly! They’re apples. With the skin on. Just pick the skin off with your fingers if you don’t want the skin.”
“OK.”
A minute later, as seen below, he sprinkles a wad of apple peel into my bowl.
“I don’t want these.”
(Do you see? Do you see WHY I didn’t just share to begin with?)
“Jo-NAH! OK, listen…you eat the pieces you want from your bowl, and just leave whatever you don’t want in it, m’kay?”
He tosses one more little fistful of apple chunks into my dish.
“I only want the strawberries.”
And this all happens five minutes after I showed him the container full of freshly washed and stemmed berries in the fridge. If all he wanted was strawberries, why didn’t he just grab one of those?
I guess because no Mama’s meal is complete without a large percentage of it coming in contact with little kid hands and/or mouths.
Sheesh.