“Chicken nugs, or peanut butter sandwich?”

The clamor around the kitchen counter grows as one asks for peanut butter sandwich, open, with jam. But not blackberry jam, or strawberry jam, raspberry jam. If we don’t have raspberry jam, they want honey…and then they want it closed.

The other keeps yelling, “Mac ‘n cheese! Mac n’ cheese! Mac n’ cheese!” as if the repetition will make it one of the options. When pressed to choose between the two, the answer becomes, “Logurt,” and I give in by plopping a cup of yogurt down in front of them.

The microwave beeps, alerting me to the fact that the oh-so-nutritious, dinosaur shaped chicken patties are scalding hot. I will then leave them in there for another five minutes, until they have cooled to room temperature. At that point, Silas will do one of two things: eat them so quickly that I’ll search for them on the floor in disbelief, or break them into little pieces and hide them in the cracks of his high chair.

After 10 minutes of getting their meals prepared, cut up, arranged on the colored platter of their choice and filling their prefered cup, I start on my own lunch. Of course, whatever it is, they will decide that mine is better and swarm me for bites and pieces.

Someday I will get to eat my own lunch…the whole thing.