Love/Hate

I don't have much luck getting my kids to eat soup. For my part, I've been enjoying trying these fun little alphabet letters in soups periodically this winter. They're so fine that they don't even require cooking time. You just put them into hot soup and they're done. Love.

At lunch today, I put together a "chicken alphabet soup" from rotisserie left-overs, some broth, mashed sweet potato and chopped carrots. I went heavy on the letters, thinking it might make it more pasta-like and somehow help interest the kids. My 4-year-old, non-plussed, started slowly eating. My 2-year-old looked at the bowl and with hardly a moment's hesitation threw the bowl against the dining room windows. Alphabet letters streaming down the window pane, plastering the radiator below, and pooling on the floor.

I was furious.

I manage to pick him up fairly calmly to lift him over the mess and tell him, "Time to clean up." He is a food-thrower by nature, so he knows the routine. He grabs a kitchen towel and starts mopping. I start on the windows. We clean for awhile, as I fume. We then spend a futile 2 minutes in time-out together (I hold him on my lap to get him to stay put but at this point, he's bawling. He wants lunch.) We return to the dining room, he asks for a cookie. I said, "No." He says he's hungry. I tell him that throwing your food against the wall is not a good way to indicate hunger. He'll have to wait until afternoon snack time. The next 20 minutes was a bit rough as we prepare to take my daughter to preschool. But somehow, we both move on with the day.

I admit to myself that had I been watching this scene unfold from my neighbor's house, I would have been deeply, deeply amused. Especially when the window-washing started.