Good bacteria, bad bacteria and violent chocolate bunnies
I’m not quite sure how we get on the topic of bacteria, late on a Sunday evening as Atlas eats two slices of toast with butter at the kitchen counter.
He once again refused to eat his dinner – a cheese quesadilla, prepared by his Dad, followed by a bowl of spaghetti, prepared by me, followed by a bowl of strawberries, requested by him – each with a single bite taken out of the offering, and once he’s finished with his nightly bath, he announces, as he does every night, that he’s hungry.
My child will now eat a handful of things. Pizza, pasta (but only certain shapes, and he won’t eat them with any kind of sauce any more, just butter or grated cheddar cheese), toast, Rice Krispie treats, McDonald’s chicken nuggets and fries, Doritos, cookies, cinnamon toast crunch bars, donuts and, on a rare occasion, strawberries and bananas.
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We’ve tried presenting him with a variety of foods – some “safe”, some not – and encouraging him to try those he claims not to like. Last week, we gave him pasta that had been cooked in chicken noodle soup, thinking, he’ll probably like the flavour once he actually tastes it. (Reader, he spat it out and bawled crying at how “yucky” it was. I felt terrible, as if I’d tricked him into eating something I should have known he would never eat.)
We’ve tried bribery. “If you eat this [horrific piece of non-McDonald’s chicken nugget] you can have this [giant chocolate bar].” It doesn’t work. We’ve tried reading books: How do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? and Daniel Tries a New Food.
I thought the latter had worked miracles when Atlas announced he wanted to make banana swirl, just like mommy Tiger; I dutifully froze two bananas, then blended them to a smooth, ice-cream-like texture, only to have him pronounce, “yuck! I not want to eat that.”
“But,” I protested, “what does Daniel Tiger say? Try a new food, it might taste good!”
“Ew YUCK!” he responded.
So now, instead of bribing and cajoling and encouraging and beseeching (and begging, for I’m not above it), I’ve resorted to… letting him. (No, I haven’t read the Mel Robbins book, but I have listened to this podcast about it.)
I’ve decided that the most important thing is that he eats, so I focus on calories, rather than what the actual foods are.
This morning, for example, when he sees a chocolate chip cookie on the counter and asks if he can have it for breakfast, I say yes. Why not? Is a chocolate chip cookie any “worse” than the other options (croissants or toast with butter or yet another cinnamon toast crunch bar)?
And, at night time, when he announces that he’s hungry, I think, that makes sense, and we go downstairs and we make toast or pour out a bowl of Doritos or grab a cinnamon toast crunch bar from the pantry and I sit with him while he eats them and watches Creature Cases or Octonauts or finishes whichever Jurassic film he’s been working on that day.
On this occasion, he eats his toast at the counter while Brandin tries to troubleshoot our coffee maker. “It’s taking ages to make the coffee,” he tells me, his voice thick with frustration. He specifically bought this coffee maker because it makes a full pot in about 30 seconds, so I can see how this is a disappointing turn of events.
Still, I have no suggestions. I sit next to Atlas and threaten to eat his toast as a way of making him hurry up (I don’t like saying “hurry up and eat!” because eating shouldn’t be rushed but, you know, it’s already past his bedtime) while Brandin tinkers around with the filter.
“A-ha!” he announces, in the tone my psychiatrist took when he “discovered” I have ADHD (a month after I told him I thought I had ADHD). He’s found some buildup in one of the filters, probably caused by our hard water, although what do I know? I try not to learn about things I have no interest in, lest the knowledge take up valuable space in my brain where song lyrics could otherwise go, or the names and back stories of every Love is Blind couple in history.
“What’s in there, Daddy?” asks the toast-eater, spraying crumbs on every available surface.
“It’s just from the coffee maker, bud,” says Brandin (“bud”, by the way, is my least favourite term of endearment ever and I’ve literally no idea why). “Just build-up.”
Build-up! Who would tell a four-year-old that there’s BUILD-UP in the coffee maker.
“You’ll have to explain a bit better than that,” I tell him, laughing.
“Well,” he begins, and then utters the fateful words: “It’s just, uh, hard water and probably bacteria.”
“Bath-eeyah,” repeats Atlas, eyes wide. He turns to me. “Mommy! You read me a story about bath-eeyah in bed.”
I should tell you now that when Atlas says “read me a story” what he wants is for me to make up an elaborate tale of adventure and mystery with Atlas Eddie Wallace as the main character. His brothers must feature – but not too heavily –and every story must contain at least one of the following: an indoraptor, an indominus rex, a baby T-rex or three ready-to-hatch dinosaur eggs.
So. A story about bath-eeyah before bed.
I decide to use this tale to lecture him about healthy eating, because nothing else seems to be helping on that front. I tell him that, inside him are two kinds of bacteria: good bacteria and bad bacteria. I don’t bother going into the concept of some good bacteria becoming bad bacteria if found in too large quantities. That seems above his pay grade. And mine.
I ask him what he thinks these two types of bacteria are doing inside of him, and he offers, delightedly, “They are fighting! Like an indominus rex and a T-rex!” I’m relieved not to have to shoehorn those into the story all on my own.
“Yes, they’re fighting,” I confirm. “And did you know that you can help the good bacteria get stronger and stronger?” He looks sceptical.
“When you sleep, you recharge the good bacteria’s batteries,” I tell him. “Because fighting is very tiring. And when you eat good food like strawberries and bananas and vegetables…” (here he volunteers a “yuck!”) “…you give the good bacteria more energy to fight better!” (I never claimed to be a master kids’ storyteller.)
“You know what would help the good bacteria fight?!” he suddenly asks, in the excited tone he usually reserves for stories about dinosaur eggs which are in the process of hatching.
“What?” I ask him.
And my son. My beautiful, adorable, hilarious, genius four-year-old son, remembers the tiny chocolate bunnies I’d fed him earlier that day. The bunnies I’d given him three of and then taken away, telling him, “you can’t eat too many of them, they’re not good for you” (even though I’m not sure I even believe that?! And also who cares?! See above re: calories).
“The chocolate bunnies,” he says, making small bunny motions with his hands. “The chocolate bunny army comes to help the good bacteria! They hop, hop, hop and then they fight and they a-stroy the bad bacteria!”
My healthy eating allegory has fallen apart spectacularly, but truly the most important thing is that he accepts this as the end of the story. My work here is done.
I lie with him for a further five minutes, cuddling. Every now and then he’ll ask me to move over, further away from him. This is very difficult as we’re in a pirate ship bed that fits only a crib mattress, and I am a large, adult woman and he is a medium-to-large sized four-year-old boy. I press myself up against the edge of the bed until I can press no more and I say, “It’s time to go to sleep.”
“Goodnight, honey,” he says. He’s never said this before. I laugh.
“Goodnight, honey,” I parrot back at him. He laughs, then.
“No, mommy. You honey. Not me.”
I blow him kisses from the door and tell him to sleep tight. “Dream of bunnies,” I say. “Hop, hop, hop,” he says.
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To the spoiled go the victories
The baby’s crying downstairs. He’s been crying a lot today. He wants the remote control. He wants his Dad’s enormous (plastic – ugh, America) cup of water. He wants the Xbox controller. He wants that can of Mountain Dew he spotted on the counter. He wants, he wants, he wants.
He cannot have.
It’s very relatable, if you think about it.
And honestly? I’m tempted, a lot of the time (most of the time), to just give him what he wants. I’ve become a dab hand at removing batteries from things at speed. “Oh, you want this?” I’ll ask him, and his eyes will light up as I hand over the object of his desire. “Here you go.” I enjoy the moment of handover. He looks at me so adoringly.
Sure, he can only say “dada” but I know what he’s thinking is, thank you mama. I love you so much. I just know.
My parents didn’t spoil us, growing up. At least, I don’t think they did. I’m sure there are some people who would disagree.
I did, at one point, own 32 Barbies, which was a point of great contention for my friend C, who had five. But in my defence, these were hand-me-downs. And several were SINDYS, for shame.
(Roman is screaming again; Brandin has taken away the fingernail clippers. That’s one thing I wouldn’t just give him, although I’ll admit I’d be tempted.)
But I don’t remember getting everything I wanted, precisely when I wanted it. My Dad would come home from work on Friday with a chocolate bar for each of us. We would receive gifts at Christmas and on our birthdays; sometimes, on our summer holiday – to Kerry, or to Spain, both places my uncle had holiday homes – we would get a souvenir.
From Spain, a figurine in a red dress, not entirely unlike the dancing lady emoji. From Kerry, a stick of rock, to be eaten in spurts on the car drive home, which always felt 10 years long.
Still, my mum loves to ask: “If you can’t spoil a child, who can you spoil?”
She has a point.
On Monday evening, Brandin takes the older two boys and Atlas to the shop, to pick out the bike that was our eldest’s Christmas gift. We had ordered one for him in December, but it was sold out and didn’t get delivered. In any case, the sub-zero temperatures we’ve experienced in the weeks coming up to and since Christmas have meant he wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to get out on the bike.
Until last week, when false spring arrived and we saw a day of 22-degree weather before things took a sharp right turn back to – checks weather app – a cool -5C (with a realfeel of -10C). So with the warmer weather came a strong desire to get out and bike around the neighborhood, and it was conceded that we couldn’t put things off any longer. Hence the shopping trip.
“Do not go down any of the other aisles!” I, a frugal queen, caution as Brandin sets off with the lads. I know what they’re like when they catch sight of something they want.
As it happens, they didn’t need to go down any other aisles. There, in the middle, between the bikes and the craft supplies, is a display of Jurassic World: Rebirth merchandise, prime among it a mosasaurus play set that included a boat, a little gun that affixes to said boat and fires bullets at the included mosasaurus, and a lifeboat.
Brandin doesn’t buy it – I am impressed with his steely determination, honestly –but, for the ensuing three days, it is all Atlas can talk about. He goes to bed asking if tomorrow is the day he’ll get his mosasaurus with the boat and the crane (the boat comes with a kind of mosasaurus trap, a little cage thing that dangles off its stern). He wakes up asking if the mosasaurus set is here yet.
I tell him I’m not sure we’ll be buying the mosasaurus. “You have a lot of toys,” I say. “I don’t have that toy?” he responds, quite rightly. He didn’t have that toy. (Note the past tense. It shouldn’t come as any kind of spoiler to learn that I am nothing if not weak-willed.)
“Maybe we can ask Santa to bring it,” I suggest, but once he learns how far away Santa is – “This many days?!” he asks, holding up three fingers and a thumb – he has a better idea. “Mommy!” he exclaims. “The mailman can bring my mosasaurus to me! In a box!”
I give in on Thursday and order the mosasaurus set from Walmart, asking Brandin to pick it up on his way home from work, along with bananas, strawberries, bread, eggs and milk (pickup is free but I can’t bring myself to order a single item; that seems ridiculous).
I tell Atlas that Brandin is bringing him home a treat, and let me tell you he misses not a single trick. “My mosasaurus?!” he asks, delightedly.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Daddy didn’t tell me. He just said he’s bringing you home a surprise.”
Atlas has just woken up from his afternoon nap when Brandin’s truck rolls into the drive. This is usually a very chill (read: grumpy) time for him, when he sits on the couch sucking his thumb and demanding snacks, but today, he hears the crunch of Brandin’s tires on the asphalt and runs down the stairs at a pace that, honestly, makes me a bit nervous. (He’s not the most coordinated four-year-old, no idea where he gets that from, and still moves a little more like a toddler than a little boy.)
“Mommy, MOMMY!” he shouts up the stairs at me. “Daddy got me my mosasaurus! Daddy, you the BEST Daddy getting me my mosasaurus!”
I feel a mixture of emotions. Rage, that Brandin is getting all the credit. Slight embarrassment, that my child is getting exactly what he wants, again. But mostly I feel so happy, because he is overjoyed and excited and so, so grateful.
And if you can’t spoil a child, I remind myself, who can you spoil?
Survival tips (including screen time)
I know I can’t be the only one who’s making allllll the parenting mistakes, so I asked on Instagram for other people to share their recent parenting fails. I was heartened to read that I’m not the only one leaning (heavily) into screen time in moments of great stress, and that other people are saying yes to treats and ice-cream when asked.
What was slightly disheartening, though, was the sheer number of people who listed co-sleeping as a parenting fail, when there’s an increasing quantity of evidence that shows that safe co-sleeping can have myriad advantages for both mother and baby. (Check out the safe sleep seven here.)
There were other avowed parenting fails that I have yet to experience, but I enjoyed hearing about. Among them:
“I dress my kids every day before school – they lie there and I dress them, because it’s just easier. I even warm their uniforms in the dryer as an incentive.”
“I give my kids marshmallows. I KNOW it’s a choking risk – but I supervise!” [Girl, same, except the most recent choking hazard I gave my angel baby was a lollipop. Similarly, I supervised.]
“Only brush their teeth once a day.” [Relatable!]
“I compare them to others to shame them into doing things.”
“Give them something different to eat when they won’t eat the dinner you cooked.”
“I can’t remember the last time I cleaned a dodie.”
“TV during meals.”
“Screen time! It’s my only saviour at times. Also I’ll sneak her a 7Up every now and again…”
What all of this has taught me is that, truly, we’re all just trying to get by. And you know what? We’re doing a great job.
