marketing

We're not church goers, but it was a guaranteed hour during which my kids wouldn't be eating chocolate or jelly beans, so I was in. Jack Peter demanded that we go when he saw a family off to Palm Sunday the week before. He likes singing. His first sentence in life was the command, "Sass SING!" (Sass was his beloved first nanny, Alissa) I'm pretty sure my mother in law was panicked that I'd start breast feeding the baby in the front pew. My modesty is on a par with Brittney Spears. She kept referring to the "kid room." I did wander back there to feed Toby; Steel took the opportunity to prance down the aisle with her dress above her head waving at everyone. A pimply butt in Dora-the-explorer underwear is just what that service needed.

Easter is such a tyranny for the health conscious, stingy mom. What do I do with peeps now? Penne pasta with peep sauce? Can I make rice crispy treats out of them? What is the acceptable time period during which I can bribe my kids with Easter candy? My parenting strategy is based entirely on bribery. Should I throw away the Halloween stuff I've been using? It's so hard for me to throw food away especially when it's been so powerful.

I was given a ray of hope for my daughter's future ability to edit her sweet intake. I'm not being sexist by worrying only about my daughter's sweet tooth. My son will clutch 1 skittle in his fist for an hour. Steel can only be given sweets in a finite form: A lollipop, A popsicle. Knowing that a bag of skittles is unfinished and being withheld is too painful for her. After a day of making bunny cakes and eating cookies, she actually said to my mother in law as she scrambled up into her Mickey Mouse highchair, "Nanny I want REAL FOOD"

I'm such a hypocrite. I've eaten half a white chocolate egg that's as big as my head in the time it's taken me to upload the image of my forcing my children to eat their veggies and fruits...
Besides how much of it I consume, another thing that bugs me about Easter candy is that the chocolate eggs aren't egg-shaped. I used to call them chocolate footballs when I was little. I had no idea they were attempting to be eggs. That true egg shape is so appealing. Even the early Christians were onto it. They just grabbed the pagan images of fertility: eggs and bunnies and whacked them onto the dead-guy-on-the-cross packaging. So many people bought it! It's like the "pet rock."

Tim had a huge marketing coup last week. Our current beloved nanny who is normally a phenomenal cook made a piece of leather. It had bananas and oatmeal and chocolate chips, but it was only marginally sweet. She probably tries to make the sweets healthy because of all of my food rants, but I like naughty sweets with all the real stuff: eggs, butter, sugar, white flour. I feel the same way about juice. You're only supposed to give your kids 3 oz. of juice a day. We do "juicy water." Everyone does it, but it tastes wretched. Why not give them the 3 oz. straight up and water for the rest of the day? I'm the same in my pottery...if it's bright, it's bright; earthy earthy; am I a purist?

I bet Tim 1.5 hour massage he wouldn't get the kids to eat the hide. He started his campaign as soon as they hopped into bed with us. "You guys are going to have a super special breakfast treat!" He cut each kid a bottle-nosed dolphin out of it and put whipped cream on. They each ate the requisite 2 bites, and Jack Peter went on to eat almost his whole dolphin. Every time Tim said something about his super special breakfast treat, Jack Peter would suspiciously take his bite and mid-chew he'd say, "Yeah, but Dada, what IS it?"