Jeckyll and Hyde

First, some parenting/physics advice: Spaghetti may be eaten with a spoon if you cut it up reaaalllly small. In case you were wondering.

Why do I know this? Because my little man was a complete Jeckyll and Hyde last night! Admittedly, it was a long day — we went to get our pictures taken for our holiday cards, and the photo shoot took longer than it should have, and there was a lot of waiting involved. Alex was very, very good throughout the whole thing, despite some wandering out of pose between shots, and charmed everyone at lunch, and then fell asleep on the way home. I guess he wasn’t quite ready to wake up when we arrived at Grandma and Grampa’s house for dinner, though, because when we got there at 5:30-ish he was a whiney bear. It was grandpa’s birthday, and before pictures, he had helped me frost a cake, so he knew that birthday cake was on the menu. The entire time Mike and his dad were out picking up our dinner, Alex whined, whined, whined about “I want birthday cake” and “NO DINNER, birthday cake!” Lots of loud repetitions of “I SAID NO, NO DINNER.” I explained very patiently that skipping real food wasn’t an option, and we would be having dinner first.

When dinner arrived, he fought getting in his seat, and didn’t seem to want to eat. Or at least, he fought eating with anything other than a spoon. He kept refusing the fork, and was getting angry and frustrated and whiney as he tried to pick up the cut-up tomatoes from my salad with a spoon. I kept trying to explain to him how much easier it would be if he used his fork, but to no avail. Same deal with the spaghetti and meatballs next course. Have you ever tried to eat spaghetti with a spoon? Not happening at full length, and messy to boot. He refused to let me feed him, too.

I finally figured out the cutting-it-up-small trick, and all of a sudden — *poof* — Mr. Hyde was gone, and my nice civilized young man returned. He got a few bites of food into him (which, I am sure, was what he really needed anyway) and turned into his normal happy self. Eating nicely, saying please and thank you as he asked for and received two additional helpings of spaghetti, excitedly singing happy birthday to Grandpa when the cake came out (and blowing out the candle!), and then happily reading stories on the couch after dinner, and just generally back to charming and wonderful.

I remarked that I really need to have those hour interludes of crazy toddler child to remind me of just how wonderful Alex is on a regular basis.