mellow moments

Does your son refuse to eat everything orange? Does your daughter have a conniption if the peas on her plate touch one another? Are your kids getting by on a diet that consists of cheese, crackers and little else? Is there anything worse in life than having a fussy eater for a child and unevenly shaped eyebrows? (If I had to choose, I’d take the fussy eater)
Perhaps there is. Presenting, ladies and gentlemen — the indiscriminate eater. Now I know that all children put things in their mouth, and that it is our duty as parents to snatch the
offending object out of their hands before it makes its way down their oesophagus. But sometimes you’re just too busy watching America’s Next Top Model to realise that your Ikea Allen key is making its way in to the gaping black hole that is your toddler’s trap.
Now most kids, dumb as they are, will realise once the Allen key is in their mouth, it is not a silver-coloured cheese stick. And then they will spit it out. But what does it say about your child, and more importantly about your cooking, if the apple of your eye does his best to repeatedly try and consume the dratted thing?
For instance, last weekend, we were woken up by the alarm, which you can’t throw out the bedroom door (it’s not like I haven’t tried) — our son. Being a Sunday and 6 am, I decided that I would rest along with the Good Lord and kicked my husband and son out of the room and went back to sleep.
As I settled down in to a nice dream that involved me, George Clooney and a rather large quantity of Limoncello, I heard a rattling near my head. Like any woman in the middle of a dream involving George Clooney and strong liqueur, I ignored it. The rattling went away, but then in wafted a strong, pungent smell. This, I was sure, was not a part of the dream.
I found myself staring in to my son’s eyes; they widened in surprise as his brain registered the rather peculiar taste of my Body Shop Hemp foot protector cream. Yes, you read that right. The rattling had been the sound of him opening my side table drawer, and not as I had erroneously imagined, Gerard Butler trying to pry open my bedroom window.
My immediate reaction was to of course ask George to wait, yell at my son, jump out of bed, rush him to the bathroom for a thorough mouth washing and return to my bedroom and check how much of my over priced foot cream was left. Ok. So I checked how much cream was left before I took my son to have his mouth washed, but why nitpick over small details?
You would think my son would be more grateful for having his life saved. But oh no! Instead he cried, kicked and screamed in anger. My husband said it was like watching a very small version of myself when I find out there is no more Ben & Jerry’s Chunk Monkey in the freezer.
Since then, the foot cream has been perched high up on the window ledge. My son points to it every morning and says ‘Mamm mamm’. Who wants dosas for breakfast when you can eat recreation drug-flavoured unguents? I have considered giving him some for lunch though. He was very mellow for the rest of that Sunday.