This has got to be the most frustrating statement to be uttered out of the mouths of either one of my babes. It starts like this. “Mom, I’m full,” as Avery and Jack look at me from their reserved spaces at the dinner table,barely a discernible drop of food touched on their plates.<\/p>\n

Me: “You barely ate anything.”<\/p>\n

Avery: “Yes, I did.”<\/p>\n

Jack: “Yeah, me too.” He literally didn’t even move his fork.<\/p>\n

Me: “No, neither one of you hardly touched your plates. How could you be full?” Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that there is meatloaf on their plate and not Cheetos.<\/p>\n

Avery: “I ate a really big lunch.”<\/p>\n

Jack: “Yeah, me too.”<\/p>\n

Repeat above conversation about three more times.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, folks, I relent. I do. I fight the fight, and then give up. Now, you may be asking, why don’tyoutake every opportunity to impart a valuable lesson about trying out unfamiliar foods and nourishing your body in a health-minded way? Yada yada yada. Because. I’m friggin’ tired.<\/p>\n

Okay, here is the point in time where I experience the equivalent tonails scratching down an invisible chalkboard…are you ready? After dinner. Fast forward about, oh, 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

Avery and Jack: “Can I have a snack? I’m hungry.”<\/p>\n

Me: “Um, no. You just finished dinner. And if you remember right, you had the option to eat more of that. Your loss.”<\/p>\n

Avery and Jack: <insert whining here> “But, we’re still hungry.”<\/p>\n

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!<\/p>\n

Can you feel my pain here, people? I’m sure you do. If you live in a land filled with miniature little dictators, then I know you feel it. What is unfathomable to me in this here situation is not that they are asking for a snack. I mean, come on, I’ve been guilty of sneaking a handful or two of Party Mix after dinner at times. Who hasn’t?<\/p>\n

Oh, you don’t? Well…this is embarassing. Another blog post maybe.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

What is unfathomable to me is the nerve they have asking me to eat a snack 10 minutes<\/em> after battling with dinner. Either they have suffered some type of temporary amnesia or we are raising some cheeky little folks, my hubby and I.<\/p>\n

Looks are often a whole heck of a lot more powerful than words around this house. And sometimes I just stand there and look at them after they ask forthat snack. I look at them like, “I can’t possibly have heard you correctly. Did you seriously just ask for a snack? Really? Really?”<\/p>\n

And then they look right back at me like, “Um, no. We were mistaken. We didn’t mean ‘snack.’ We meant to say, um, ‘can we have a glass of water’? We’re a bit parched.”<\/p>\n

I narrow my eyes, they shake their heads, and they scamper off.<\/p>\n

Ugh.<\/p>\n

You know, these little tykes can take a lot out of you. If you drop your guard, even for an instant, they take full advantage…and GOD, I LOVE THEM FOR IT. Life is never boring when living with children. Imperfect people raising imperfect people. Perfect.<\/p>\n

I mean, really, come on…who wants Stepford children?<\/p>\n

Love to all, Mindy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has got to be the most frustrating statement to be uttered out of the mouths of either one of my babes. It starts like this. “Mom, I’m full,” as Avery and Jack look at me from their reserved spaces at the dinner table,barely a discernible drop of food touched on their plates. Me: “You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,22],"tags":[54,174,176,65,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stuff","7":"category-family-life","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-dinner","10":"tag-snacking","11":"tag-the-suburban-life","12":"tag-toddlers","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesuburbanlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}