No wonder our parents hate us.

Of all the things I hate about Ryland, mealtime has found its way to the top of the list. It isn’t just because I have to think of something for him to eat every single meal, 3 times a day, every day, and the sheer monotony is making me braaaaiinnnsss. It’s because meals have become the biggest struggles of our day. And that says a lot, because each day brings about 900 different struggles, of varying degrees.

There’s the mess of course. Every meal requires a great deal of preparation and cleanup.

Whoa, the biggest crack of thunder right now just made me pee my pants a little.

Anyway, there’s the mess. I don’t pretend to be a neat and tidy person; we all know the depths of my laziness. Hence, cleaning is not my favorite pastime. But still, you have to clean up food. There’s no getting around it. Otherwise you get bugs and weird smells and tacky floors and basically a house covered in filth, like the one we just bought. I’m lazy, not gross.

Ry makes a huge mess, all the time; doesn’t matter if I feed him in his high chair, at his little table, at the big table, in the bathtub, out on the porch, in a sealed, airtight container, somewhere out in space. There is always some icky, sticky mess for me to clean up.

I’m always cleaning. Always. “Hmm, where’s Christa? Oh there she is, cleaning. Hey, she was doing that yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. She’ll be doing it tomorrow, too, I suppose, unless cleaning stops her.” Cause see, all the cleaning keeps getting in the way of more cleaning.

As far as the actual location of the meal, it’s up in the air. Mr Prince doesn’t like sitting in his high chair very much anymore, which I totally understand, but he’s too little for the adult table, unless someone holds him in her lap, and if you do that, then everything in the immediate vicinity becomes a potential toy and/or weapon, and invariably winds up broken or all over the floor, including your own plate of food. His little kid table is fine, for the actual 10 seconds or so when he sits there and takes a bite of something.

Sometimes, I just want to put down a giant tarp, throw some food on it, strip him naked and let him be. I suppose that isn’t teaching him proper behavior, but I’m one nerve short of being the most uncivilized household in the city, possibly the world.

The food, though, that’s the real kicker. Finding something healthy is hard enough, finding something healthy he will actually eat is frigging Mt Everest. And even when I do manage to give him something he likes, the next day, hell the next MEAL, he will hate it and absolutely refuse to touch it, or let it be on his plate, the tray, the table. For him, the ideal place for food he doesn’t want is on the floor. Or his hair. Or down his shirt. Or down my shirt.

A woman can beg a tiny human only so many times to please please please for the love of the universe, just TRY it, you’d like it if you just tasted it.

It is the single most frustrating aspect of my life, getting Ryland to eat and to eat healthy. I don’t know how countless parents before me did it and how they managed to not kill their children and themselves. What is their secret? How can mothers tirelessly prepare meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, over and over, the same food, the same kids, the same messes, day in and day out, and still be sane enough for normal human interaction? I’m a lousy mom, I guess. what else can I say?

braaaainssss

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