Feeding time at the other zoo

It's very discouraging trying to feed children who don't want food.

Last night, in particular, I was discouraged. 'I have to leave the house for a minute and walk around outside so my head doesn't explode' sort of discouraged.

Most of the time, I make our (nice) dinner, I give them their (boring and simple*) dinner, and I try not to think about it. I've been through the guilt, the self-blame, the introspection, the angst, the Satter, the well-intentioned expert blogs, and I've pretty much arrived at, "They're fine; they'll be fine."

But hey, I'm their mother. The well of self-blame is infinitely deep, and whenever I choose to draw from it, a refreshing draught of guilt will be there waiting for me.

*They will not, on no account, no way no how, eat the nice dinner. Please do not tell me to offer them the nice dinner and nothing else. I know the theory. I've tried the theory. It does not work here.

Dash was having a large tantrum, the sort that begins with a simple request to do your homework before your TV show starts, and swirls into a galaxy of injustices that stretches out to bedtime and beyond. In the middle there was dinner, which I felt would make him feel better and help put things back into perspective, but he felt was just adding insult to injury. When he eventually decided to eat, there was something amiss with his sandwich.

Of course there was something bloody amiss with his sandwich. It's a peanut-butter sandwich made on horrible store-bought bread (wholegrain, at least, but still fairly horrible) and you've been having one for lunch and one for dinner for as long as I can remember because it's all you will eat. What's not amiss with that? How could he choose just one thing to be wrong with it? (The bread on one side was too hard, apparently.)

Simultaneously, Mabel, who had been alternately bugging and preaching to her upset brother, was rejecting her pasta and broccoli. This too was bringing me to the brink of tears, because for the previous two nights she'd been nursing a lot (yes, yes, despite the new regime) and I had realised it was because she was simply hungry due to not eating enough dinner.

(It's all very well to say, "They'll have dinner later, when they're hungry," but that doesn't account for those who have a dribble of nourishment - sweet, delicious, effort-free nourishment - on tap all night. Just enough to sate them for now, so long as they have some more in another few seconds. It's very efficient for the child, not so much for the cow. I mean, me.)

The day we went to the zoo I was fully able to blame myself: after lunch there had been popcorn, and a banana at 4.30, and apparently that's enough to fill Mabel up all the way to bedtime and beyond. But yesterday, she'd had two cheese sticks and some toast for lunch, half a banana at 2.30, and very little since. Why, oh why, was she not eating the pasta?

At this point I left everything in the capable hands of their loving father, while I took a walk outside, put freshly laundered sheets on beds, submitted a last-minute order to the Internet, and tried hard to decompress myself. (Their poor loving father who was rather tired and sore after running, you know, a marathon, the day before.)

We worked things out. I think B probably made Dash another sandwich (I didn't ask), sorted out the "But I have to have dessert" tantrum (somehow), and made some concessions on the matter of bedtime stories. I got Mabel to eat a piece of toast, half an apple, and two tiny yogurts. Everyone, eventually, went to bed. I had a glass of wine and a piece of cake.

Epilogue:

Mabel was still up half the night, though the first time she woke, she went back to sleep very easily with only a story and no nursing at all.

Dash and I talked about yesterday on the way to school, and agreed that we'd have to work things out better in the coming days, because - oh yes - B is going to be out of town for six days, four of which are spring break/weekend days, so I'll have the kids all to myself all day - and night - and won't be able to storm out for a quick breather and to let someone else make the sandwich, or to have an extra hour in bed while Mabel gets up with Daddy, and now I'm, well, apprehensive about that.

And then I saw Mabel and her father off to school this morning (he's helping in the classroom today) and walked Dash to school, and came home all maudlin about the tragedy of sending my beloved children - my heart, after all - away from me every day.

It's quite confusing being me. I think.