“Why do I have to try new things? Why do you make me do this?”
“Because it’s part of life, Babyman. Trying new things is part of being alive.”
This was perhaps an unfair, all-too-world-weary response for my young child at the dinner table. However, in my defense, sometimes the whining and the arms-crossed refusal to eat get a little…old. Sometimes I want him to just take the damn bite, already, so we can all get on with our lives.
Babygirl attacks her veggies with exuberance. The mere sight of her brightly-colored bowls being carried to the table sends her into babbling fits of excitement, and if one should pause, mid-feeding, to, say, answer the phone or help Babyman untangle his cars from their elaborate rubber-band “traps”, she will keen and wail and bob back and forth like a starving animal.
Babyman used to be like that, before he developed a suspicion of all things green and a distaste for the “strings” on bananas and sweet potatoes and, yes, string cheese. There was a time for him — as there was for all of us, I suppose — when life was entirely about trying new things, when he was, quite literally, a beginner at living. Sand was a new thing. Grass was a new thing (city kids, what can I say?). Ice cream and guacamole and fireworks and Adele, before she got way overplayed on KFOG.
Of course, he is still impressively easy to surprise. A lightning storm. This past Christmas, the first when he really grasped what was going on. A homemade hot chocolate with a mountain of whipped cream after a snow-fort battle with the big kids.
Those eyes get so big and sparkly, that gappy smile opens wide and this — THIS — is the singular wonder of raising children: through their eyes, you get to experience the freshness of the world again.
It’s amazing how quickly we settle into our routines. I think about my grandparents, and how they watched the 5 o’clock news and a Cheers rerun every single night, sipping white wine at their table in the corner window…and how, at barely four years old, Babyman is exactly like them, with his post-school ritual of mixed nuts and bubbly water while watching one episode of Berenstain Bears.
My preschooler is a little old man.
But aren’t I the same way? (Or at least I used to be, before I had kids and my routines went to hell in a handbasket as I feverishly established theirs.) I used to adore my ritual cereal and Today show fix at 7:26 each morning, just after coming home from the gym. My Saturday mani-pedi and high street stroll, window shopping (or shoe shopping). My walk to work. And even now, my husband and I close out pretty much every evening with an episode of Mad Men or some such on DVR and a shared bowl of peanut M and Ms (and you should see us when we run out of M and Ms; it’s serious business).
Enter Babygirl and her unbridled enthusiasm for minty peas. It’s infectious: suddenly I, too, am enthused, back at the food processor, poring over cookbooks, whirring roasted red peppers into the chevre to spread on tiny chunks of toast. And Babyman must face his vegetable demons again. Sorry, dude, we got complacent for a while there, with all the avocado and the applesauce, but lentils are officially back on the table. And you will try them. And just to prove a point, so will I. Because trying new things is part of being alive.
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