Always Hungry

Today I found myself yelling, "No you CANNOT have a salad!" to my four year old.

Because that's logical.

But really, kids are so manipulative they will twist and turn you so hard you'll be saying no to veggies and demanding they finish their cocaine before bed.

Adeline's fav thing to do is ask for snacks before naps and bed. And I always give in because we are basically the same person and if I'm even the slightest bit hungry I am either on the brink of death or the brink of murdering someone. Pretty much if my blood sugar is low someone is going to die.

So, despite the fact everyone thinks I'm crazy for letting my four year old stay up late to eat ("She should eat at dinner and if she doesn't finish, let her be hungry, she'll learn!" or "Offer her a snack at 7pm and that's it!"  Ok, you guys. Cool, plan. Except I do all that. She DOES get a snack at 7pm, but then at 8:30 she's starving again. And how do I know this? BECAUSE WE ARE BASICALLY THE SAME PERSON. I know her very thoughts and feelings before she has them.

Put that in her future-psychologist-fund and suck on it.)

(For the record, I do not feel that way with my other three. I love them beyond life itself, and I am super intuitive about them, but Adeline and I are in sync with our food needs like N'Sync was in sync with their masterful vocal styling sync-y-ness.)

I do it because she needs to eat so that she doesn't wake up in the middle of her nap crying and trying to stab someone.

BUT.

Sometimes, she does go a little overboard, and gets a little too demand-y with her snack options. Can I bring her a granola bar? Hell yes. Can I make some wild rice and steamed asparagus for her? No. Does she want pretzels and cream cheese? Sure. That sounds good, I will have some too. But can I make her an effing salad with olives and steamed asparagus? Not when it's 10 minutes into nap time and I only have 50 minutes of quiet time left to myself, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend 8 more of it steaming damned asparagus!

STEAM YOUR OWN ASPARAGUS, ADELINE!

Jeeze.

Of course, then I inhaled a donut in about 4 seconds flat while I was raging about the audacity of my daughter to ask for a salad - A SALAD - of all things! And about 30 seconds after that, the donut hit my belly and started to work it's amazing blood sugar magic, and suddenly I realized that here was a girl asking for something healthy and I should not be denying it. Because I want her to want to eat healthy things. And I want to encourage that sort of snack option.

And because I am a giant pushover.

But really, who doesn't love asparagus?

Or this girl?