A New Family Dynamic

Yesterday at lunch (I nearly posted this right after, but decided that two posts in about as many hours seemed a bit much), I discovered that the roles have somewhat shifted in our family. Let me go back just a bit to build up to what I mean, though.

For several months now, we've been battling our kids on a meal by meal basis to both get them to eat and to get them to eat something different. Up to this point, Gabe had been pretty good about eating just about anything that we put in front of him and eating enough of it to call it a meal. As he's gotten older, though, he's also gotten to be more difficult. He is now reluctant to try "new" things--even though he's eaten them in the past, if he hasn't eaten them in the past few days he considers them new--and he is also pretty stubborn about eating more than a bite or two at each meal, insisting that he's "all fulled up" when I know, in fact, he will be whining about being hungry in less than thirty minutes.

And then there's Norah, whose love of brown foods still hasn't changed. But her eating, while integral to this story, is not the main impetus for it.

Anyway, every meal becomes a battle of wills (that escalates to a war of ultimatums, and inevitably ends in an armistice of compromises--with much haggling for what, specifically, he has to eat to constitute a "done" state). Yesterday, we had a somewhat more tantalizing offer on the table to convince him to finish his meal, beyond the normal "if you don't eat, then you can go to bed right now" type conditions. We have ice cream in the house. And I told Gabe that, if he ate his entire plate full of food, he could have a little bowl of ice cream. Then the negotiations began.

"If I eat all my french fries, then I can have some ice cream," he suggested.

"Nope. You have to eat all your french fries AND chicken nuggets to get ice cream. OR, you can stop eating now and go take a nap. If you take a good nap, though, you can still have ice cream after that." I figured I could at least bribe SOMETHING useful out of him if I couldn't get him to eat his lunch.

"If I eat my chicken nuggets, then I can have some ice cream," he countered.

"No. Eat it all."

"Ohhhh," he whined.

Meanwhile, Norah was finishing her french fries and chicken nuggets--all too happy to devour them because they are brown. When she got done, I got her out of her highchair and let her roam around in the living room again. Gabe was still eating.

"Norah can eat my french fries, then I can have some ice cream," Gabe said.

"No. But you can go to bed now if you want." I was bored with this exchange by this point and ready to move on to the next point of contention, napping.

"If I eat everything, then I can have some ice cream," Gabe conceded.

"You have five minutes and then it's nap time. Eat quickly."

So I went about getting things around for naps for a few minutes then came back.

"My French fries are gone so I can have some ice cream," Gabe informed.

"No. Your chicken nuggets are still there. And now your five minutes is up, so get your stuff for nap time and go upstairs."

"Ohhh," he whined again, but he started gathering his blankie and things and went up. As he was going up the stairs, I grabbed Norah's bottle then noticed her doing something rather strange under the table.

And here is where the family dynamic has changed. I am not, generally speaking, a dog person. I like the idea of dogs, and I'm fond of dogs when they are outside, but I find them to be too big and cumbersome in a house--and small dogs aren't really dogs, they are just cats without dignity or self-control. However, I do envy people who have dogs and children because dogs take care of all the food that gets dropped on the floor.

But now our family has something LIKE a dog! We have a Norah-dog!

To get rid of his French fries, Gabe had slyly deposited them onto the floor under the table, and Norah was down there dutifully picking them all up and shoving them into her mouth as fast as she can--probably because she knew that I would stop her as soon as I saw her doing it. Which I did. With many sighs that went out in the direction of both of my children.

So, currently, our modern family consists of two parents, two cats, one child, and one half child-half dog. Hurray for us!