Many of you know that Susie not only enjoys her food, but she enjoys it audibly. Ever since she started eating solid foods, she punctuates her chewing with appreciative “Yum…Yum†murmurings. This practice is especially pronounced when she consumes anything sweet, like bananas or cookies.
So this afternoon, while I was in the kitchen preparing lunch for the girls, I didn’t think twice about hearing a loud “Yum…Yum†emanating from the dining room.
That is, until I realized I hadn’t served the girls any food yet.
I remembered that when I placed her in her high chair, she had ogled all the Christmas decorations that were piled on the dining room table in preparation for the season’s end. To keep her content while I finished making her sandwich, I had handed her a candle. To be specific, it was a Yankee Candle “tart warmer†insert. I had figured the design on the front would occupy her for the few remaining minutes before lunch.
Well, occupy her it did. I quickly approached Susie and saw that she was vigorously munching on the candle. I grabbed it out of her mouth and told her she shouldn’t eat things that aren’t food. Susie looked up at me with a look of pained disbelief, and promptly burst into tears.
Confused by the intensity of her outcry, I looked down at the candle.
Poor Susie! No wonder she was upset that I yanked the thing out of her mouth. Not only did it look like a cookie and smell like a cookie – it even SAID cookie on it! Not that she can read yet…
She had just assumed I was letting her eat her dessert first, and here I was rudely and abruptly changing my mind. To make up for this perceived injustice, I gave her extra peaches for dessert. It wasn’t quite a cookie, but it was better than wax. Or was it…she had been enjoying the wax, after all!
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