How is it possible?

How can we be out of diapers again? She never eats!

Actually, before I do this I just want to thank the random lady at the drug store for letting me go ahead of her. I was waiting to pay for a pack of diapers and a box of wipes at around 1 today.(Because, you know, we need another goddamned wipes container...a container in each bedroom and on every bookshelf downstairs and they are all empty. All the time.) I was behind a homeless looking woman and in front of her was a 40 something lady with a 7 year old buying about $80 worth of Easter decorations.

Now I know I am way behind the curve on holiday decorating, thank you notes etc. And I further know I am a miserable failure as far as not having any sense of when the hell Easter is until the PAAS shit ends up in the stores and I knock over the feather light boxes as I make a turn near the meat department...why are they near the meat? Can't they be somewhere else? Near the vinegar? Whatever. All I am trying to say is: Easter? Wtf? Isn't that in April? Can I fail at Valentine's Day first?

Back to the lady. After the 10 minutes of Easter paraphernalia rinning in she turns to me and says:

Would you like to go ahead?

I tried not to audibly communicate my complete shock.

Seriously?

Sure, honey, I can tell you are trying to do this on your lunch hour. I remember how hard that is.

Oh my gosh, thank you!

I spent the next 5 minutes falling all over myself to thank her. I cannot believe she let me pass. It was, and not to sound too gushy about thbis, but it was one of those redeeming moments for humanity. You stand long enough waiting to cross the street at a cross walk at 8.5 months pregnant and holding a 19 month old and watching car after car blatantly accelerate to make sure there isn't enough space between cars for you to cross you begin to lose faith. But then a lady lets you by, your mom buys you dresses, your husband makes you dinner and your co-worker makes you a card...these are the moments that make the other crap less suffocatingly depressing.

But I have so digressed.

Here, quick, let me reel you back in!

Briar eats like a Hollywood starlet. Sip of orange juice here, nibble of cracker there. Ok, not going to go any further with that. I don't even want to joke about that stuff. I just read that Mandy Moore is coming to grips with not being thin. She'll never be like other stars. She's a big girl. A 6 or an 8. Give me a large fucking break, child. How many girls would die to be a 6? Literally. Our local paper polled kids and they said that the acceptable size, the ok size, the size that girls should be?

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I'm a tad annoyed that she would try and suggest that she is the big girl norm. C'mon, something makes me find it hard to believe that Mandy has trouble fitting her ass in a pair of jeans. Blech!

Anyway, my Briar. Not a hearty eater of late. I was tickled to find that other moms fight this as well. (and dads...actually no dads wrote, but I don't want to silently denigrate fathers by insinuating that they don't struggle with this, because maybe they do, but they sure don't share that with me.) I had posted about the cream cheese and jam sandwiches I make in order to feel a bit less like I am just offering whatever snack food the little finicky princess will eat. So I thought I would share a dark little secret, a backpocket silver bullet to be used sparingly so as to preserve its ability to pass the toddler taste test.

When things are really bad, and I mean really bad, and I just want her to experience the ritual of a meal, I make Briar cream cheese and jam sandwiches on white hot dog buns.



I have been really struggling to figure out where I went wrong with the eating thing. She was a good eater, slightly adventurous, partial to vegetables and white meat.It was bliss. Standing over my pathetic lunch attempt last week, not nearly as gross as the seaweed, I realized that perhaps if I'd been offered this kind of slop I'd be demanding food out of a box too.