Chew Your Chicken

My six year old hates eating dinner.
Every night we gather around the table as a family, say grace,
and then all buckle down to spend the next 45 minutes begging her to eat.

It’s just what we do.

It doesn’t matter what feast I have prepared.
Be it boring burger, or a lovely Chicken Marsala.
I only know that the longer I slave over it, guaranteed,
the more she will hate it.

This fact has felt even more frustrating in the weeks since the start of this sparkly, fresh year.
2019 – The year where I decided to be better about meal planning, and get back to more creative cooking;
More recipes and fewer last-minute trips to Papa Murphy’s.

When more effort goes in to revolutionizing your family’s life in the new year,
the harder the reality,
however,
that your family still consists of the same exact people as it did last year.

The last several nights I have made Chicken Parmesan, my mother’s famous meatloaf,
and tacos with shredded lime chicken.
Every meal prepared and then met with the poking of a fork as if I have presented her with something hairy that I have scraped off the road.

I don’t know why I thought the beef stew night would be different,
because on that night,
as is her normal dinner-time M.O.,
Paige was hemming and hawing over dinner, complaining that even my delicious homemade slow-cooked stew was
“too hard to chew and to want.”

I looked flatly at her sitting there complaining again; like my own personal Groundhog Day.
My eyes at half-mast.
My breaths silent and slow.
I realized then that maybe the pieces of beef were just too big for her to chew easily,
so I stood up without saying a word,
and I went to get a knife with which to cut them.

In retrospect,
I should have told her what I was doing;

Because that kid took one look at me returning with a knife, and she threw up both hands in the air, slunk down in her chair,
and she hollered,
“OK! OK! I’LL EAT IT! I’LL EAT IT!
WHAT ARE YOU DOING WIF A KNIIIIIIFE?!”

“Paige! I am cutting your meat! Good grief!
I want you to eat,
but I’m not about to STAB YOU to make it happen!”

She ate every bite of that stew after that,
with much relief,
and a chorus of laughter from us.

It seems to just be this stage.
She, not the first of my Food Haters.

I can remember the night I told my 19 year old, then only 3,
that if she wanted to go to the bookstore – Her own personal Mecca –
that she needed to finish her dinner.

That particular dinner I think I said the words,
“Chew your chicken” at least 30 times.
Finally, when she seemed to have finished
I told her well done,
I loaded her in the car,
and I drove her a half-hour to the bookstore a city away.
We perused the book aisles,
we chose a few books, and sat down to read them on a bench.
I looked at her lovingly then, as I read,
but stopped absolutely dead when I saw that angelic face eeeeeever so slowly use her tongue to shift something in her mouth to the other side of her cheek.
I could not believe my eyes.
“Alena! Do you STILL HAVE A BITE OF CHICKEN IN YOUR MOUTH?!”
I’m sure I hissed it much too loud for a bookstore.
“Open your mouth.” I told her.
It took a few times of coaxing for her to finally open her mouth in order to reveal quite possibly the driest, most depressing bite of chicken there was on the face of the earth.
The bite she had stored in her cheek now for almost 2 solid hours.

We still say “Chew your chicken” to her when she eats slow.

Next we have my middle two.
The ones who would not finish a whole school lunch if you payed them.
Almost like returning a school lunchbox absolutely slathered in yogurt and pulverized grapes is a part of their genetic code.

So, at this point I feel like I’ve had it.

“I am tired of schlepping myself to the store after a long day of work to peruse aisles for things that I hope you will like!
I am tired of searching Pinterest to come up with something new!
I am tired of spending my time packing lunches only to throw them in the trash!
I am wasting my money!
I literally might as well throw this money right in the trash once I cash it!”

I lectured this as I pulled up to the bank to deposit a check.
I waved the check for dramatic effect.
Three sets of big eyes quietly watching my unravel.

“Now, I am going into this bank,
and when we go home, I might just have YOU GUYS make dinner.
I just need a pen to sign….”
This was the moment I reached deep into my purse to feel for a pen,
when what did my fingers find instead?

Something thick.
Something wettish.

I stopped talking, my eyes now wide like the girls’,
and I looked into the recesses of my purse to find not one,
but TWO
completely rotten bananas.
Black and both partially opened.
I pulled them out and held them up, aghast.

The children’s museum.
I had put them into my purse the last time I’d taken the girls, and had forgotten about their existence completely. My purse is deep.
I’m very busy.
There had been days worth of my heavy wallet just smashing them on repeat.
The bottom of my purse was now some sort of bog.

I mentioned nothing about how this was not the first rotten banana I’d found in my purse.

“EEEEEEWWWWWWW!” The chorus rang out from behind me.
“What IS that?!”
“Those,” I whispered humbly,
“were bananas.”

We had a brief moment of silence.

And then Paige’s voice broke through
with a very humbling,

“Wooks wike YOU waste good food, too.
Might as well just frow money away….”

Needless to say,
that is where my lecture stopped.

At least until dinner tomorrow.

Mom Outnumbered

Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.