The lunch battle

For many weeks now, I have been fighting The Lunch Battle.  It is epic.  It has drama, laughter, tears, an explosive soundtrack, and even has 3D effects with food flying.   It stars myself as The Bad Guy, apparently, and my daughters L and E as The Eaters.  Rather, I guess it usually stars them as The Non-Eaters.

It starts out rather calmly.  I get up to make lunch and ask L what she wants.  She promptly says "peanut butter sandwich and juice!"  I have a good idea what I'm going to feed E, so I start getting that out too.  What am I going to have?  I start looking around for that as well.  While I begin preparing lunches for everyone, E decides I'm not moving fast enough and starts wailing while trying to cling to my legs to possibly procure food.  I ask her for two ounces of patience, which never happens, and she continues to wail and escalate to tears.  Meanwhile, L is running around trying to squeeze every last moment of play out of her time before lunch starts.  That usually involves a lot of running, loud noises, and getting in my way.  This?  Is all before lunch.

Then, lunch begins.  I set up everyone's food in the appropriate places at the table and we sit down to eat.  E fights getting into her high chair and then starts grunting and pointing at other things on the table that she wants.  L sits down, demands to be pushed up to the table, and then begins to play with her place mat.  I begin my first of 572,195 times of saying "eat your lunch" to both of them, and usually they start picking at their food.  E turns into a little vacuum, sucking down everything in sight for about two minutes.  The more food I can get in her in those precious 120 seconds, the better.  After that time, E will suck in food, chew it for good measure, and then spit it all out in order to fling onto the floor.  She'll eat bits and pieces of everything available to her, as well as drink a bit, but she'll mostly grunt for other things, burp loudly, and drop things on the floor while hysterically giggling.  On the other side, L will stop eating for no apparent reason.  She'll drink her juice.  Then she'll drink some more.  And more.  And more.  And more...until I say "eat your lunch" for the 578th time.  All of a sudden, she'll start playing with her food, as if they have personalities and can talk to one another. 

Hello goldfish #1, how are you? 
I'm pretty good, goldfish #2. 
Are you going to get eaten, #2? 
Probably not, #1, as this chick never eats her food. 

After awhile, I have to start feeding L her lunch in order for her to eat it.  She makes horrible faces, says "I can't eat it!," moans, groans, laughs as E throws things on the floor, cries, screams, and makes it seem like I'm torturing her with poisonous horrible foods that no human should ever have to consume.  I mean, come ON, what parent would feed their child a PB sandwich, goldfish crackers, dried cranberries and juice?!?  Oh, the horrors!  We eventually get through eating most of the lunch, then she asks to be excused and I plunk her down on her potty.  I turn back to E to wipe up her hands and face (and whatever else got hit in her flinging spree), and she proceeds to try to smack my face while screaming at the top of her lungs.  I call the dog over to clean up the disaster area that has been created (dog is very excited, mind you), clean up both girls some more, and then clean up the table.  The dining room is rather grisly-looking at the end of this trouncing, and Mommy is definitely in need of the very-soon-to-come nap time for everyone. 

Total time for this battle = 40 minutes.  Battle score = Girls 2, Mommy -391.

Every now and then, like today, L will be a gem and eat everything in front of her.  I reward her on those days for such fantastic behavior.  Today, it was chocolate ice cream.  Every now and then I get to have a normal, civil, calm lunch time that makes me think that I did, indeed, give birth to human children and not rabid apes.  Lunches like today make me think that someday I'll be able to have lunch without having to go deaf, vacuum, or find a way to get crushed food out of the cracks in the high chair.  I can't wait for that day to come!  It probably won't be until I'm an old-and-gray widow or something (the husband can fling food with the best of them), but I look forward to that shining day without a battle very, very longingly.