Hunger Strike

Sweet, beautiful Thanksgiving.  About 48 hours from now, I’ll be tryppin’ hard on turkey, stuffing, and cranberries.  As will everyone around me.  Everyone, that is, except for the Mayor.  Sure, there’s the possibility that being at Grandma’s house brings out his best behavior, but there are other forces at work.  The boy who once gleefully wolfed down huge portions of salmon and bok choy is now in the middle of a fussy eating stretch that would make Randy from “A Christmas Story” seem like a joke.

I used to stay up for hours after he went to sleep, preparing his food for the next day.  It was the only thing that kept me connected to my old restaurant life.  Instead of cranking out dinner for a couple hundred people a night, I just had one very needy guest who had no clue what he wanted to order.  But it never mattered, because he ate anything I made for him.  Flounder, English peas, hybrid fruits, couscous, all welcome on his plate.  Then teething happened.  Watching him devour sweet potato risotto and lamb meatballs devolved into me banging my head against the wall while he catapults chicken nuggets and mac and cheese across the room.  How he doesn’t look like Skeletor at this point is beyond me.

Dinner time has become the low point of my day.  He could spent the first 11 hours of the day building me a life size Mega Bloks replica of Amanda Seyfried in a Catwoman outfit riding the Millennium Falcon, but the second the oven timer goes off, he becomes my sworn enemy.  Every time I’m forced to see another meal go uneaten, I feel a piece of myself die.  With that in mind, I decided to apply the Kübler-Ross model to the situation.  I give you the five stages of dealing with a picky eater

1. Denial

Everything’s ready to go.  The Mayor is in his chair, drinking his milk through a silly straw.  The rice is at a good temperature, the chicken is cut up in to perfectly grabbable pieces.  All veggies have been pureed to avoid detection.  Nothing can go wrong this time.

“Is it still too hot?  I could have sworn it was good.  Did it hurt your tongue?  I’ll go put it in the freezer for a minute to cool it down.  Watch some Elmo and have a few crackers while you wait….OK, its should be good now.  Do you want to try another bite, buddy?”

2. Anger

There’s a knock on the door.  Oh, we have a guest coming over for dinner.  Hello there, Mr. Hoover, won’t you join us?  The tension in the room is mounting.  The Mayor sees me plug the vacuum in and the fear sets in.  He frantically shakes his head back and forth and begs “Nooooo, peeeeze!” as I attach the dusting brush to the hose.  I pause with my finger on the power button, last chance to do this peacefully.

The first salvo consists of a ball of rice and what was once a Stegosaurus leg.  I fire back with a three second burst of noise from the vacuum.  His ensuing rage results in heavy casualties, a quarter of his dinner is now on the ground.  Fortunately, I’m holding a device capable of cleaning said mess.  After a few back and forth exchanges, about 40% of the food is lost, while only 5-10% has actually been consumed by its intended recipient.  This clearly isn’t working, maybe you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

3. Bargaining

The last weapon I have at my disposal is dessert.  I come back from the kitchen with two Oreos in my hand.  Years of negotiating fantasy hockey trades have prepared me for this moment.  If I can get Steven Stamkos for next to nothing, I can definitely get an almost 2 year old to eat chicken for cookies.  I can see the gears spinning, he knows the only way to get the sweets in his belly is to stuff his mouth full of this “nasty” stuff in front of him.  The balancing scales are swaying back and forth, as if to say “How much do I love cookies, and how much of this chicken that I hate equals one cookie?”

The Mayor is nothing if not stubborn and principled.  One bite of chicken and half a spoonful of rice later, he demands payment.

“COOOOOKIIEEEE! PEEEEEZE!!“

“Not yet, buddy. You need to have six more bites before you can have your cookie.”

“PEEEEEEEZE!”

“OK, four more bites, how about that?”

“NOOOOOOOO!”

And on it goes until negotiations completely fall apart.  I literally walk away from the bargaining table, chomping away at my chocolate and cream conciliation prizes.  The other side of the table is not a pretty sight.  Sugar deprived tears mix with smears of cauliflower puree.  He’s the living, breathing definition of a hot mess.

4. Depression

One of us is pounding the table with food stained fists, while the other is hiding in the kitchen, sitting on the floor, clutching a pretzel rod between two fingers, pretending it’s a cigarette.  Both of us are fighting back tears.  The irony of it is that my son’s unwillingness to eat is driving me to stuff my face with Pirate’s Booty, Goldfish, and Cheez-Its.

5. Acceptance

I pull myself off of the ground, wet a facecloth, clean the boy up and remove him from his chair.  His tears dwindle as the two of us snuggle with Baby Bear on the couch.  I cave in and give him the damn cookie.  I’ve fought enough battles with him for one day.  All is forgiven when I hear him say “Love you!”  It’s amazing how little he has to do to absolve himself of any wrongdoing.  The kid could burn down the house, and I’d be over it by the time we were standing outside and he said “Firetruck, wooooo wooooo!!”  He knows exactly which cards to play, and that look in his eyes when he stares at…..wait, he’s not even looking at me.

Son of a…he was talking to the cookie.

The Sound of Teething

Hello gum pain, my old friend

You’ve come to wake me up again

Because the boy next door keeps screaming “NO!”

And my eyelids just cannot stay closed

`Cause the wailing and the endless stream of tears

Burns my ears

It is the sound of teething

 

It wasn’t cute at 3:15

I do not want to seem mean

But this rocking chair is not my bed

This embolism races through my head

At 6:30 I can see the sun start to rise

It hurts my eyes

Thanks to the sound of teething

 

Back in my bed, his mother snores

Protected by two wooden doors

These Hyland tablets were supposed to help

I’m gonna write a bad review on Yelp

Sophie le giraffe isn’t worth the time of day

We over-payed

Stuck with the sound of teething

 

He hasn’t eaten in three days

With the exception of Yoplait

No mac and cheese, no chicken, eggs, or cheese

Despite my begging sobs and heartfelt pleas

Cheerios dropped and ground in the floor

Please, no more

I can’t take more teething

 

Incisors, molars, and canines

Pop through like little Claymore mines

His grandpa told me to use whiskey

He didn’t say that it was not for me

And the coffee pot automatic timer starts to percolate the beans

Guess I don’t need sleep

Just the sound of teething

Battlefield: Living Room

My living room looks like a typhoon got it on with an earthquake and popped out a baby tornado.  A certain someone figured out a loophole in his new sippy cup that allows him to let the water flow unregulated, onto the floor.  He followed that up with an overturning of his play tent, spinning in circles while holding an open bag of wooden blocks, and then dumping a box of puzzle pieces and dragging them to the four corners of the room.  I actually think I saw his rocking horse shed a tear.  Did I mention he woke up two hours earlier than normal today?  There isn’t enough vodka coffee in the world to last me until bedtime tonight.  All of this can be chalked up to the fact that Mommy is on a day shift, because otherwise, this $#!% wouldn’t be happening.

It’s a strange Murphy’s Law like phenomenon where anything that can go wrong will, unless Mommy’s here.  On the days when she closes the restaurant or has the day off, the Mayor wakes up at a reasonable hour, plays nice, cleans up, eats every morsel of food without a fuss, and takes 3+ hour naps.  We even had to cancel a trip to the Boston Children’s Museum yesterday because his nap lasted until an hour before it closed.

But when Mommy opens, my morning goes something like this.  I’m in the bushes taking heavy fire, Daniel Tiger and Curious George my only allies.  My enemy is unrelenting.  Where does he get this boundless energy from?  Certainly not from his dinner last night, because most of that is now a lovely sweet potato and chicken mosaic on the dining room walls and ceiling.  Seriously, the ceiling.  Sweet potatoes do not abide by the laws of physics.

To add to my pain, the boy finally learned how to say “no.”  Oh, joy.  Although I take pride in his going almost twenty months without it, he’s now making up for lost time.  I’m trying desperately to make it “no, thank you” but it’s an arduous battle.  Honestly, he would turn down a monster truck full of chocolate chip puppies just to tell me “NO” at this rate.  The terrible twos have arrived, about four and a half months ahead of schedule.  I’m at the point where The Wiggles get me ready for war, and Mastodon is my calm time listening.

It always amazes me how quickly he can turn the charm on and off.  He went from a full scale tantrum in the car to flirting with the Dunkin’ Donuts girls, right back to screaming in my ear, all in the span of about three and a half minutes.  That spectacle earned him an early nap time, sans-banana, the ultimate punishment around here.  I contemplated putting his stuffed Sulley‘s head on a spike to serve as a warning.  I’ve been re-watching season one of Game of Thrones, it seems like an effective tool.

At present time, we’re about seven hours from Mommy getting home from work, seven and half hours from bedtime.  So I can reasonably expect a minimum of forty-five minutes of good behavior.  He’s smart enough to turn on the smiles and giggles beforehand, just in case she’s early.  Usually, when his morning is so bad, his afternoon/early evening are good, provided he gets a decent nap.  If it gets cut short today, I’m screwed.  The two weeks of New England fall are over and winter is basically here, drastically reducing our park time.  There’s only so much time I can kill by reading “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom“.  I’ll set up a barricade in the living room, man.  I don’t even care.  I’ve got enough stuffed animals down here to do it.  For now I wait, sharpening my pretzel rod arsenal and clearing out a good hiding space behind the couch.