Saturday, March 07, 2009

Nuts

"Mom, mom, mom," she wailed like a seasick banshee, "Can I have a bowl of cereal?"

It was 7:30pm.

"Fine," I say dropping the load of laundry onto my bed, otherwise known as laundry folding central, and wander into the kitchen.

Although we'd just returned home from a delicious Chinese dinner with our friends, apparently that was just not enough for our wee little princess. Apparently she had a hankering for a little cereal to top things off. Apparently I will be needing to visit the children's section of Old Navy before they go out of business and purchase her a wardrobe in the next size up (I know I'm not the only one doing this)!

So I dug around in the pantry until I found the last box of Honey Nut Cheerios and began to pour.

"That's not it!" she yelled, desperately.

"What do you mean this isn't it? You always eat this cereal."

"That's not it!" she demanded.

I scratched my head and took a deep breath, willing all the patience I had left after a day of visiting the dentist and asking the boys to kindly stop wrestling in a voice I feared was about to jump ship (or so says the scratch that won't go away in the back of my throat), I said, "What kind of cereal are you talking about?"

"The kind in the white box." she said.

So I looked in the pantry again, wishing that a white box of cereal would appear. It didn't.

"I don't see any in a white box," I told her, "Are you sure it was in a white box?"

"Yes, Mom. I am sure," she said "It was in a white box and it had nuts on it, the kind that are brown on the outside and white in the middle."

Brown on the outside and white in the middle?

What?

I looked in the pantry again, hoping with all my might that this special box of desired cereal would appear. It didn't.

"Honey, I don't know what you are talking about, I don't see any cereal in there that has brown nuts with white in the middle."

She was having none of that.

"Mom! The brown nuts with the white in the middle!" she announced, followed up with, "You know what I mean!"

'Cuse me?

OK, I admit that lately my brain has had a hard time keeping track of the most basic of things, like when Wyatt has crossing guard duty (the teacher put the wrong initial after his name on the schedule, how was I to know?) and my appointments (totally, completely forgot one last week), but I really had no idea what she was talking about.

I thought, and I thought, and I thought.

And then, it hit me.

The brown nuts with the white in the middle.

"Do you mean almonds, Katie?" I asked.

"Yes! Yes, almonds mommy." she squealed.

And then I knew right where to find this special cereal with the brown nuts with the white in the middle, the almonds. I reached up high where we put the big boxes of cereal whose time hasn't come yet and pulled the white box from the shelf. There it was, plain as day.

A box of Honey Bunches of Oats, with Almonds.


Well, now that we have that all cleared up...

7 comments:

Unknown said...

You have waaaaaaay more patience than me, my friend.

My kids wouldn't get cereal much less the cereal of their choice after coming back from a restaurant.

Yep, I'm a mean mommy. Heh.

They're still hungry? Fruit. That's always my response. You're hungry? That's all you get. Banana. Apple. Orange. Tangerine. And it's definitely a get it yourself. It's been this way since they were 3 year old. I have fond memories of waking up at 7 AM to a diaper clad eldest eating blueberries straight from the package in the fridge.

On a side note, they do love fruit so there's not much grumbling.

As for understanding kids, it took us 2 years to figure out a word our son demanding said from age 12 months to 3 years. I can't remember what it was now, but we almost had a party when we finally, finally figured it out.

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

I knew it was Honey Bunches of Oats right off.

Kyla said...

Don't you love it when they are speaking in code! LOL.

Ace said...

Nothing like a good bowl of cereal following Chinese food. I don't know why but we're always hungry about an hour after stuffing ourselves with Chinese!

Anonymous said...

I don't mind ferreting out whatever food the girls want, if it resides in our cupboards. The bit that drives me bonkers is when they won't decide what they want. They want us to run through the litany of options - aggravation at it's finest.

Kevin Charnas said...

I'm pretty sure that Katie's my daughter.

Little Miss Sunshine State said...

I have a box of those in my pantry and I STILL didn't know what she was asking for.