Sometime around 5:30 the four of us huddle around our plastic folding table in the kitchen to have “dinner.” We aren’t so poor that we have to use outdoor tables inside, it’s just an oddly shaped space that apparently only fits furniture from the Rubbermaid collection. We could have one built for us, but that costs more than our house.
The table is really supposed to be used outside where the grass can hold it in place. On wood floors, it glides around like an air hockey puck, meaning one of us is always too far from or too close to our food. Our 2 year-old, who sits in a highchair, is the only stationary member of the dinner party, but he’s usually too busy taking his shirt off and spreading milk around with his hand-zamboni to let us use him as an anchor.
It’s supposed to be a family dinner – at least I think it is – but somehow Lindsay never makes enough food for the grown-ups. Last night, my rations were 1 “fish nugget,” 17 peas, and a small dollop of cinnamon applesauce. It reminded me of the meals my grandma used to make my grandpa the week after he had quadruple bypass surgery. My wife didn’t even have a plate. She was eating applesauce out of a plastic container while trying to convince our 4 year old that his peas weren’t too hot.
“Why do the kids have more food than me?” I asked jokingly. “Why don’t you just say, ‘Hey, I made dinner, but there isn’t any for you.’”
She laughed because she knows I don’t actually care, and would rather ridiculous things happen than for life to be boring and predictable.
“Oh, is that not enough?” she responded sarcastically, “I figured we could just finish what they don’t eat.”
That’s what it’s come to apparently; we gobble our children’s leftovers like unloved basement-dwelling stepchildren in a fairy tale. Sometimes I even eat stuff off their plates as I’m putting them in the dishwasher. We’re scavengers in our own house – watching in hunger and desperation, hoping our kids accidentally leave some food for us which we’ll scoop violently into our mouths with bare hands like forest people.
Some couples have dinner after their kids go to bed. That seems nice and romantic, but unfortunately our 4 year-old crashes at 7:30 and our 2 year-old is usually up partying his balls off until around 9:30, and since this isn’t Spain, we eat dinner before 10pm.
I guess we’ll just continue to have a kids meal at 5, and then after both kids are asleep, eat pie while watching Enlightened until we fall asleep holding forks.
__________________________________________If you enjoyed this, like my Facebook page Share this post
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Seriously…I can't bother to put eye make up on anymore if I'm gonna read your blog…it's a total waste cause I laugh so hard I cry everytime! Awesome writing…thanks for sharing!
I keep looking for the surveillance camera that is obviously hidden in my house. Otherwise, how would you be able to chronicle my life so accurately?
I gained 3 lbs. in 4 days during a recent visit to see my grandchildren. I hear you.
DOH! After The Trips go to bed, I prefer to snarf down frozen pizza and beer whilst watching The Biggest Loser (true story) in HOPES that someone will interrupt my dinner with a wheedling "I POOOOOOOPED," so that I can change said poopy diaper on the floor just next to the coffee table where my dinner is waiting. If I'm lucky, this happens three or four times, while dinner gets cold and beer gets warm. What can I say? The boys like to wait until they're maxin and relaxin to drop a deuce. Is there anything better? I think not.
I read this while eating my two year olds left overs from lunch at 11:00 at night and drinking a glass of wine. Todays parenting joys included an epic battle over bed time (as if he had never experienced this foreign concept and it didn't happen every night), and great tears and shouts of sorrow when I couldn't figure out what foot he was asking for and informed him that he had two fabulous feet of his own attached to his very own legs. :)
I actually am so poor I use an outdoor table inside. And I often don't eat until everyone else has because, I want them to have the available food.
I believe in making light of these situations. Making heavy would collapse the table.
Good for you making light too, regardless of the why's of your situations, and thus saving your furniture. And for seeing your family and not just your families issues.
Just found your blog and love it. Hand zamboni made me lol. I thought I was the only one who ate like this – I call it the 'last three bites' diet – I get to eat the last 3 bites of whatever my 3 year old doesn't finish. He's super picky and I get tired of cooking two seperate meals. I'm also pretty tired of chicken strips though, homemade or not. Sigh.
I never thought this was such a common eating situation – I just thought we were too cheap to make extra food!
ROFL, I swear I just sat down to read this after cleaning up the kitchen, while munching on some leftover halved grape tomatoes my 2 year old didn't finish. (I cut up way too many because they were the awesomest thing in the world, requiring loud cries and precarious leaning from our arms to get to, before we put him in his booster seat, and then suddenly they were gross.) And yes, sometimes we don't eat dinner until 10. Or occasionally 11. Our dinnertime comes down to "can we fix our own dinner before El Munchkino implodes from hunger crabbiness?".
You know, in some countries, pie IS the dinner. I would just tell people you're on an all pie diet, and roll with it. You won't lose weight, but you'll feel so much better about yourself, because you're calling it a diet. It works with all candy diets and all coffee diets, too.
are you kidding me Jason thats some funny shit, but you know that I was so poor growing up that us older kids had to eat their cereal with a fork so that the younger kids still had milk to eat theirs! Man just kidding but that was funny!
Hand-Zamboni, perfect! I've never known what to call that…
Thankfully we have chickens! They may eat better than us sometimes.
OH MY! I have not laughed that hard in a while. I really needed that! Thanks!
How did you know I eat my kids' mashed potato and gravy leftovers off their plates with my hands? Seriously! I scoop that shit up -three fingers wide and fast 'cause I'm sure when my husband witnesses this crime of humanity, he's gonna see me for the true food junkie that I am. Except…., he licks his own plate after nachos and then licks anyone else's available plate as well. So, I guess we're even.
And, thanks for making me laugh so hard that I cried. Now I will have the giggles all damn day. Ass.
When I got to "partying his balls off" I lauged out loud so violenty that I'm most assuredly busted for reading your blog at work.
Totally worth it.
oh just wanted to say, i am absolutely enjoying my Friday at work, for once, because i StubledUpon your site… i think i love you man
Too too funny! In our house, #1 dilly-dallys over his food like he's waiting for the royal taster to give him the all-clear. #2 pronounces absolutely everything nasty until forced to succumb to the 3-bites rule, and #3 starts shoveling in food with whatever handy implement he can grab as soon as the plate hovers over his spot at the table.
It doesn't matter if there is snack when we get home, or if they are made to wait, they are all STARVING by dinnertime, and yet, the plates of #1 and #2 are rarely emptied.
Oh, and we are poor whenever we don't have strawberry jam, fruit snackies, applesauce cups, yogurt and disgusting cheese slices. Kinda makes you wonder what their stomachs are lined with.
SO well done. Jasey was always the "cuda" (baracuda) at the kitchen table watching Jesse's plate possessively. She's 25 now, and I think he still does that.
Syd, did he hum an ominous tune?
Dying. Long time fan, first time commenter.
Just tonight I fed my 2-1/2 yo son and 1 yo daughter take out Mexican "healthy fast food" (we go once a week…we all eat recognizable food for under $20 and the boy loves his quesadillas). As I was cleaning my daughter's high hair tray I thought, "did she actually chew on this? Can I get sick from eating drooled-on tater tot? It's not like it was on the floor…or was it?".
Add to this I have the same thoughts about breakfast leftovers daily from my son's plate–but I can't really tell if the scrambled eggs have been in his mouth already (probably–and that's why he didn't eat them I imagine), so I haven't touched those. But I did eat a section of banana that I think only had one tooth mark on it.
Ha! Haha! Dead on……I literally fiend, hoping that my below 5th percentile in weight 4 yr old won't finish his mac n cheese (which he only acknowledged as food 3 mos ago) so that I can swarm on it like meat bees when I clean the plates. I am a bad mom, he needs these calories. Parenthood…who knew?
Haa. When my husband comes home late from work he usually gets 2 chicken nuggets and some broccoli stems for dinner. I actually look forward to eating sandwich crusts. So many things nobody tells you before you have kids. It must be part of some vast conspiracy to propagate the species.
Faith – when you have two, you don't get to tag team anymore. You will need to learn to distract Destroyo's eyes and hands with a toy that is allowed to be dipped in spaghetti sauce while shoveling protein in his occasionally open mouth with the hand you are not using to feed yourself. This is, in a weird time reversal way, why Jason studied juggling in his youth. His future self knew he would need those skills one day.
I love EVERYTHING about this post. Too freakin funny
Haha hand-Zamboni, that is a perfect description. Also got me giggling was Faith's molten lava reference. Spot-on. Thanks for the daily chuckles.
Its 9:39 and I'm reading this post while sipping a (plastic) glass of wine and eating leftover cheerios that seem a little stale.
Are you kidding me? In our house (aka crappy apt near our jobs), the midget eats a snack while I cook dinner. Then his father and I eat (tonight it is coconut-lemon salmon, jasmine rice and….well, peas) while his food cools down. After all anything above room temperature is apparently molten lava. Then the two of us tag-team feed the kid. "Oh, you wanna throw a pea in Mommy's eye? Well here's Daddy shoveling a bite of protein in your cackling little mouth." The parents win.
Of course, we haven't gotten drunk enough to have a second child yet.
Ha!
Just wait til they are teenagers…
when they are teenagers there's never any food left to cook dinner
I can relate much too well to this… 'sept I'm the "Lindsay" of the story…
Yep…I can relate. Glad those days are over:)
I am quite saddened by how much I relate to this post. It is spot on!!