I am so out of my league, here.

The other night, I'm making dinner while Henry is complaining that he's huuungry, that he can't waaaiiit for dinner because he's huuuuuuuungry. "It's only five minutes away," I say as I run around dropping things and burning other things. Once again I have foolishly attempted to cook more than one dish. When will I learn?

"Five minutes is a long time and I can't wait that long," Henry declares. "I need applesauce."

Applesauce. Mostly water, right? No big deal. I can't imagine how any human being could eat applesauce without potato pancakes, but that's me. So Henry gets a container of applesauce and a spoon, and he shuts up for approximately 30 seconds.

"Now I need a slice of American cheese," he announces.

"Henry, dinner is four minutes away. Four minutes!"

"Four minutes is One, Two, Three—" he gasps for breath, "FOUR, and that's SO LONG."

"No, you're not having American cheese," I tell him. No. I am firm. I am invincible. I am Mother. No little kid's going to push ME ar—

"Mom," says Henry, "You have to be more appreciating."

Excuse?

"You have to be more appreciating, and gentle, and loving, and kind."

I look at him. He's giving me that face, with the big cow eyes and the rosy cheeks and those stupid crazy eyelashes. Actually it's just his face the way it always is. But when you really look at that face, you're helpless.

"You need to be gentle to me," he repeats. He smiles. He's won. He knows it. "Cats in the Cradle" is playing in my head and my eyes are tearing up and ONE SLICE OF AMERICAN CHEESE, it's not like it's a candy bar, Alice, GOD. Lighten up for once.

"Okay. One slice of American cheese. That's IT."

"I love you so much. You're the best Mommy ever."

Yeah, yeah. I've blown it. I hand him the cheese.

"We're playing the appreciating game," he says as he bites into his cheese slice. "You have to do everything I ask because you appreciate me."

Whoa, boy. No one said anything about a game. I tell him as much, but he's insistent. "We're playing the Appreciating Game. You do everything I say because I'm just so good. THAT WAS THE DEAL."

We like to do this lately, this rewriting of recent history. Sadly no stenographer is present to support the non-crazy version of events, so I decide to ignore him.

"Do you hear me? Don't ignore me! You're appreciating me because you love me! You ARE LOVING ME!"

I turn my back to attend to something else boiling over, and when I turn back, he's standing right behind me. I yelp.

"Mommy, we have to play the appreciating game, because I said so," he tells me. "And then we're playing another game. I have so many games in my head."

It took all of my strength not to run screaming into the night.

Marriage is hard.

Problem: My husband is unreasonable, and I am not.

To wit: he takes issue with my comments regarding his parenting (which is what he calls what he does). I agree that I shouldn’t interfere, but on the other hand what he’s doing is wrong, whereas my way is almost always right. Please note that I changed that last sentence from "always always" to "almost always." Hey, I’m not perfect! I can recognize this.

For instance, this morning I caught him helping our son get dressed. When our son is perfectly capable of getting dressed by himself! So I say, reasonably, “You don’t have to help him, you jerk.” I know this sounds harsh, but “you jerk” is our marriage shorthand for “unless you really think this is a special circumstance, and if it is I respect your opinion, although we both know deep in our hearts that it isn’t, doofus.” We have a few of these marriage-shorthand terms. Although only I use them. My husband is more given to hand gestures. Usually behind my back. (Guess what? We have MIRRORS, doofus.)

I can leave Scott alone when it comes to him mishandling the trivial stuff, but for the big issues, like buttoning, I have no choice but to step in. If I don’t, our son will be twenty and unable to button his pants. He will be chasing the other students around his junior-college dorm, shouting “BUTTON ME.” He will never have a healthy adult relationship wherein he can call his partner names for disagreeing with his parenting style. Because of my interference, someday he will stride confidently about his Ivy-league dorm, never looking down, because he knows—he knows in his heart—that his pants are securely buttoned, and will stay that way, until such time as he unbuttons them himself. That’s the kind of confidence Scott is undermining, people. I am saving my son.

On the other hand, Scott often butts in where he best should leave his trap shut. For instance, Sunday morning I was gently admonishing Henry for acting like a nutcase. This was part of a long-standing debate between the two of us, regarding maintaining a calm and quiet demeanor when the situation warrants it. It was not because I hadn’t had coffee yet and Henry was waving his arms about and shrieking LA LA LA LA while twirling around me. I was not “clutching my head and shrieking.” I was calmly and rationally explaining that I would be happier if he would lower his voice and cease any and all movement. Telling me to “lighten up” was unwarranted. Patting me on the shoulder was clearly condescending, and suggesting that I “take a break” was really too much. And really, kid’s not going to be scarred by a little high-pitched screaming. Who’s the one who really should lighten up? Answer: always him and never me.

I tell you, it’s not easy being a hypocrite.

I just want to live to see him eat salad. Is that asking so much?

Just about one year ago, I wrote about Henry’s maddeningly limited food preferences. Henry was a strict adherent to the all-dairy, all-white-with-a-little-light-yellow-in-it diet, claiming that it “tasted good” and also “I’m not trying anything else ever nyah nyah nyah.” Any attempts to introduce new foods were met with shrieks of protest. It was a fun time.

Since that post, Scott and I have employed different strategies to get him to eat new foods. We created an enormous New Food Chart, with shiny gold stickers for each food and the promise of a new toy when 10 stickers were achieved. On the recommendation of some expert or other, we tried making the tasting of new foods his “job,” with no rewards given except the satisfaction of a job well done. We tried reverse psychology (“don’t you dare eat that broccoli stalk. I mean it.”). We tried explaining the food pyramid and what foods would make him big and strong like a Rescue Hero. We tried begging.

Guess what worked?

Nothing. Nothing worked. In fact, I do believe we made it worse. Congratulations, feckless parents!

In this entire year, Henry has pretty much stuck to his original diet. He added two new foods to his repertoire: baked beans and grilled cheese. The latter makes it much easier to go out to eat. The former means at least he’s getting some fiber, albeit with more sugar than I like to think about. True, these foods would not have entered his repertoire without our cajoling, but looking back, I think we won a couple of battles but in doing so lost the damn war.

Here’s what we accomplished: Henry now knows how deeply we care about what he eats. He knows it’s pretty much the one thing we can’t make him do. And most of all, he knows that he’s got us. He now delights in telling me all about what he’s not going to eat. He tried tomato sauce and loved it, but now, he says, he’s never going to eat it again. Same thing for peanut butter. And carrots. And pierogi. And about 36 other items.

(Parents of younger children, take note: do not give your child even the merest hint that you give a flying fig about what they eat. Don’t even look at their plate. Serve them whatever you made (or ordered) (or microwaved) and consider your job done. Because I am telling you, once your kid senses that they have the upper hand, you’re done. Heed my words! Heeeed! )

So now that every one of our tactics has backfired, I have officially given up. I have ripped up the food chart. I am done begging and punishing and even suggesting. I told him that what he eats is entirely up to him, but that I would no longer make him a different dinner from ours.

We’ve been doing this for about a month, and it’s made absolutely not one smidgen of difference in his diet. I more or less wimp out every night and make some kind of a pasta with dinner—the difference being that it’s part of everyone’s dinner and not just his special foodstuff—so he eats that. So in other words he’s not eating differently, but I am, and sweet Moses I’m sick of macaroni and cheese. (At some point I will gather up the courage to make a dinner that doesn’t include one of his greatest hits, and deal with his keen disappointment at the absence of beige foods laid out before him. I’m sure he’ll go without dinner that night, but at the very least he has to learn that it’s not the end of the world. Right? Someone’s anecdote of their kid who never ate anything and now eats snails cooked in tripe would be appreciated just about now.)

The only thing left for me to do is just be okay with what he eats or doesn’t eat. I am trying, lord how I’m trying, to think positively. What he likes, he really, really likes. And that’s good. He could eat 56 containers of yogurt a day. He derives more satisfaction from blueberries than I previously believed possible. He gets positively dewy-eyed over the thought of pasta mixed with ricotta cheese. If I keep pushing, I’m going to dampen his enthusiasm for what little he does eat, and pretty soon he will eat nothing but sand. Just to spite me. Kids are nuts, did I mention?

So these days when he refuses any and all foods I do my best to laugh gaily, tra la, as if he just told me he’s not going to do my taxes. And I say, “Someday you’ll eat that,” and he agrees. “Someday,” he says, watching me for signs of discomfort, “but not now. And not soon.”

4.2

Now that I am two months into Four, I am learning all sorts of things about this fascinating creature.

Whereas Two and Three can be easily distracted from any complaint or demand, Four lets go of nothing. Four forgets nothing. Four wants to sit with me at the end of the day and review my parental failures. “You shouldn’t have given me a banana with my lunch last week,” Four wants me to know. “And you promised not to take off Band-Aid even when it was hanging off but then you pretended your hand slipped and it just came off by itself. That was not true.” Then he gives me a thumbs down.

Four is onto me. And you. Don’t you give him that look.

Four is also terrified of everything. Oh, he’ll act like a tough guy, insisting that some cartoon meant for the 6-and-up set doesn’t scare him. Do not believe him, readers, because before you know it Four will be unable to stay in a room by himself, and will have to walk everywhere in front of you, pressing his back against your thighs, because otherwise the zombies he saw for 2.5 seconds on the Nicktoons Network might get him.



Or maybe this is Four and Two Months talking; maybe by the third month he’ll be pleased with me again, and fearless enough to, say, sit in a room without being curled up in a fetal position on my lap as he berates me for my shortcomings.

(Also: there's a new post at Wonderland today.)