by Lisa

Not everything around here is always good manners, family dinners, cooked-from-scratch and served with calm fortitude and candlelight.  Those things are the standard (ok, not the candles), and I try, and we succeed more often that not. But over here, we aim here for small improvements, not perfection.   But some nights, kids are squirmy. Other nights, parents or kids are tired.  We all have bad days when making dinner conversation sends us over the edge.  Still other nights, we’ve had one too many activities, or stayed at the park too late, or misjudged the time, or someone has had a melt down. And on those nights, well, we are still what we eat. Or more accurately:  what we eat  comes from who we’ve been in the last hour. This is true for kids and true for the person making the dinner. At least in our house.

Case in point:  Last week, Kory was away on a rare business trip, we got home late after running errands, I had nothing prepped, we had run out of produce, and I had nothing quick to cook.  I didn’t want to make an effort: in prepping, in serving, in eating, in cleaning it all up. You know the feeling.  I did have a small amount of leftover pesto, some leftover macaroni and cheese and apples.  So that’s what we ate: reheated pastas. Apple slices. I might have thrown in a few carrot sticks.   Finn thought eating apples for dinner was just great. They both will eat pasta in any form.  It certainly wasn’t a good dinner, and I thought it was kind of terrible, but I just chalked up to Judith Viorst, and told myself that some days are like this. It’s the nature of kids, mothers, fathers–all family work.