(Almost caught up!)

[conuly]

Today was... frustrating. Jenn has gone back to school, and the ONLY day she can get her class is on Sundays, which means I have the nieces most of the day. They're... not happy about the change.

Yesterday we went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. Michele has her birthday at the same time, so she was there too with her cute kids. (The baby really is VERY cute, and very verbal for a two year old! Her birthday was just in December, and she's using full sentences and everything! At one point her sisters and the nieces and I were crowded around her playing the "Point to a body part" game and after she obliged us for several minutes she finally shook her head and said "I have to eat, you know, guys."

She was ADORABLE. Looks nothing like her sisters, though. (They were equally cute at that age, but they looked nothing like her.)

Near the end of dinner, Ana got sick and ended up taken to the emergency room, where they tentatively diagnosed her as having reflux. Michele drove them down, and Azra was very concerned. "Where's Anne (Ah-nay, Turkish for "mom")?" "She's gone for now. Let's sit down!" "No, Anne sits there. Where's Anne?" "She'll be back! Let's sit down, come here now!" "No, I have to look for my Anne. Anne?"

Anyway, we packed up our remaining food and went home after Michele got back.

Today I overslept in the morning, and decided that since we'd all woken up so late it was better to skip breakfast and just eat lunch early. So I went to heat up the leftover sesame chicken.

Evangeline: There's not enough broccoli in that!
Me: You're right, there's only four pieces. That's all right, we have a whole head of broccoli in the fridge, I'll just cook some of that to go with it.
Ana: No, don't do that!
Me: Why not? Don't you want broccoli?
Ana: Yes, but I only want four pieces!
Me: Right, and there's four pieces left. That's why I'm making some more.
Ana: But I only want four pieces!
Me: Yes, and?
Ana: And don't cook any more!
Me: There are ONLY four pieces.
Ana: Right.
Me: And you WANT four pieces. What, exactly, does Eva get?
Ana: BUT THEN SHE'LL HAVE MORE THAN ME!
Me: Well, if you want more, you can have more. I have a whole BUNCH of broccoli in here.
Ana: I ONLY WANT FOUR PIECES!

Apparently, if Ana gets four pieces (by her own choice!) and Eva gets four pieces but had some yesterday while Ana was at the hospital, this is massively unfair. Once this was revealed, Evangeline started hollering that she didn't even EAT any broccoli, baby Azra ate it all. I just noted that we pretty much finished dinner when Ana left, Ana - alone out of all of us! - was permitted to eat her dessert first (lychee nuts), and that Ana had finished her dinner before she left to go to the ER.

ANA is massively unfair. Once this was revealed, she got the lecture of her life on the subject of fairness and why it absolutely does not mean that she gets to dictate who does and does not get to eat broccoli when there is a very abundance of the stuff right now. Once we'd exhausted the subject of fairness we got to move onto the concept of sisterhood and the difference between reasonable and utterly reprehensible behavior.

Ana was really just in a pissy mood because her mom wasn't there and she'd been sick, but god damn if her attitude didn't completely infuriate me. We all calmed down after eating, though, and later the nieces teamed up in an attempt to stuff a sash in my mouth, climb on my back, and make me be a horse.

(It's really a very strange family at times.)

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay for you for the Lecture of her Life! I have seen too many children work that 'Fairness' schtick to death, and their parents and teachers let them get away with it.

LOL, in a different era, I'd have been burned at the stake as a Communist for teaching so many young children that Fairness means "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." This is why it is Fair that the older kid has both more responsibilities and more privileges; why you can have seconds of the food you like only after you've finished all your firsts, but also why your serving of the food you don't like is only a little token dab - AND why there will be no fussing and complaining about the food at the table, because that is Unfair to the person who worked hard to make it, as well as to others who are trying to enjoy it.

Bean-counting, or rather, broccoli-counting, is Right Out. I'm guessing broccoli is their particular favorite? Might be good to reassure them that the season's just beginning, and there'll be plenty of lovely Spring broccoli; nobody's going to go short. But there's also the principle to understand, that in a family, people do not lay claim to 'shares' of certain foods: "we each get ten cookies from this box, and eight pieces of broccoli, and two scoops of ice cream even though one of us can only ever eat one scoop..." - no, that's absurd; the food is the food, and nobody gets to play Oliver Twist about it.

I was reared with the whole "don't talk about food at the table" thing, where you're not even supposed to say "Oh, that smells wonderful" or "what a gorgeous cake" - the idea being that conversation at table is supposed to be Conversation, instead of just ordinary talking. Blah blah, whatever; it's an absurd rule, and it doesn't work in modern society, where the Foodies all want to hear your exact taste impressions in extensive detail, while telling you the arcane criteria for judging the quality of every ingredient down to the salt.

It still grates me - it's like people who have to tell you what they paid for every item they own, and how much more than that they think it's 'worth', or who have to describe their injuries and medical treatments in horrific detail at a social gathering: So Not Done! But in the case of the Foodies, it's worth bearing, because OMG those folk can COOK, and I will happily hear every step of the process of constructing the perfect Beef Burgundy if I can - "yes, thank you, it's exquisite!" - have another serving while I listen.

Therefore, the modified version of the rule is, complimenting the food is okay at the table, especially to people who approach cooking as a Fine Art; appreciative audiences get invited to repeat performances. But it's still never polite to complain about the food on the table, and a lot of kids have never been informed of that fact; they'll monopolize every mealtime with their litanies of dissatisfaction if they're allowed.

The fact is, some food tastes better than other food, and some food is better for you. It's hard to not get all you want of something you like; it's also hard to have to eat the damn oatmeal because that's all there is. Yeah, life is full of its Hard aspects; shit we gotta do or put up with that we don't wanna: one may sympathize, but seriously, Suck It Up.

LOL, one Winter morning when the Outcry Against Oatmeal was particularly bitter and prolonged (perseveration is a super-power) I went so far as to get out One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch and read her Ivan's thoughts over his own breakfast, and his regretful longing for just one handful of all the oats he once fed to horses.

I don't think this actually instilled any gratitude for oatmeal, nor sympathy for the starving of the world who would love to have hers, but it DID reinforce the lesson that there are worse things in the world than being forced to eat oatmeal, and one of them is being forced to listen to Mom read depressing Russian literature at you while you eat it. LOL, we're a strange family too: small and broken, but still good.

I hope you managed to escape those lil horse-rustlin' varmints and make your way back to the Cimarron eventually! :D

[conuly]

Broccoli is EVERYbody's favorite. We never do go short, I buy a minimum of a head a week and have been known to cook it up for breakfast. Real breakfast :)

But there's also the principle to understand, that in a family, people do not lay claim to 'shares' of certain foods: "we each get ten cookies from this box, and eight pieces of broccoli, and two scoops of ice cream even though one of us can only ever eat one scoop..." - no, that's absurd; the food is the food, and nobody gets to play Oliver Twist about it.

We will share out evenly food that REALLY is limited, but again - broccoli ain't one of 'em. (Though I try to make sure we save some for Jenn most days.)

Though, LOL, have I told you about my grandfather, he who was MOST CERTAINLY autistic? (I told somebody this once online and she went "Oh, well, that must mean all the history books are wrong!", snippety fool. I can't stand talking to people too ignorant to know how ignorant they are, and stupid too - even a moment's thought will tell you that any random condition must have existed for some amount of time before it was first identified!)

He was very big on fairness, and my mother still brings up her first (?) visit to Belgium with the young grandchildren, me and my sister. First night there, my uncle was there too. BIG man. Eats a lot, and did then as well.

There were sausages for dinner. Twelve sausages for six people. And Bonpapa carefully doled out two sausages to himself, two for Bonnemaman, two for my mom, two for Gabriel, two for Ginger (my sister), two for the baby (me).

Nevermind that neither my sister nor I could eat more than half of a single sausage at one sitting. Nevermind that Uncle Gabriel could easily eat five all by himself! Oh no. Twelve sausages, six people = two sausages each. I don't know if the rest of them ever convinced him on the issue....

it DID reinforce the lesson that there are worse things in the world than being forced to eat oatmeal, and one of them is being forced to listen to Mom read depressing Russian literature at you while you eat it.

*snickers*

A valuable lesson to be sure!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

LOL, it was! When she was in second grade and having a terrible time with spelling (because the spelling program had been designed by a moron don't get me started,) to cheer her up I read her Gaelic names and had her try to guess how they were spelled. This sort of backfired, though; she learned to spell in Gaelic, but not noticeably better at English.

"We will share out evenly food that REALLY is limited"

Oh, for sure - the Christmas fudge comes but once a year; the first strawberries are the first, no matter how many will follow - in my own house, two of us are VERY unhappy if there's no milk for their coffee at 5:00 AM, so if there's only enough left for that, that's their rightful share: "to each according to his needs." (One of my needs is to not have to listen to my pirates bitching because they had to go to work insufficiently caffeinated: oh the humanity.)

"Oh, well, that must mean all the history books are wrong!", snippety fool"

Oh, indeed! Which specific history books are these, then? Do they mention any of the historical figures sometimes considered autistic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_figures_sometimes_considered_autistic)? Of course ALL the history books agree on all important points, even those that hadn't yet been raised at the time they were written, or that are moot from a research viewpoint because there's not enough evidence to research.

Which is neither here nor there, because even if the snippy fool could actually name a single book she's read - or even heard of - that talks about autism from a historical perspective, her assertion is absurd. I have read a lot of them, and none claim that autism didn't exist until it was officially defined. Gah, kill stupid with fire!

"Twelve sausages, six people = two sausages each."

Y'know, as long as my parents lived, whenever we had family gatherings, out of habit I invariably poured my brother's milk and mine exactly equal, because that had been a Big Deal to us back in grade school - for NO reason, because there was always plenty of milk in the fridge.

I assume you and your sister donated your extra sausage-and-a-half to your Uncle, so he ended up with five in the long run, even though it was a circuitous route.

[conuly]

1. At dinner on Saturday I got to sit across from Deniz, who is inordinately proud of how well she can spell and kept asking people to give her tough words. This wouldn't be a problem, except we all ran out of tough words LAST time we had dinner together.

Su wanted to get in on the act, and tried to show us how well she can spell "Samhain", but unfortunately that got a little derailed as I corrected her pronunciation... and then her repeated attempts to correct me and claim she didn't mean the word that, in fact, she meant.

Of course, if you insist on saying it the way it looks in English, it's not very hard to spell at all. (At least, not if you're speaking English.)

2. Of course ALL the history books agree on all important points

She probably thinks that, actually. Which has got to be the saddest part of all.

3. I assume you and your sister donated your extra sausage-and-a-half to your Uncle, so he ended up with five in the long run, even though it was a circuitous route.

Most likely, but I give it even odds that we (more like my mother) either had to do that behind my grandfather's back. It might not surprise you to hear he could get entrenched in an idea of how to do things and have trouble getting out of it. (I'm named after him, actually. It's turned out to be apt.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

There's a limit to how long adults can pretend that they have any interest in listening to a child show off her spelling at the dinner table. Time for the child's Mommy or dear Auntie to take her aside and explain that while her accomplishment was politely applauded one time, nobody wants an encore. It's possible to be precocious without being obnoxious, but it doesn't usually seem to come naturally.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Ana got sick and ended up taken to the emergency room, where they tentatively diagnosed her as having reflux.

While that sucks, it amuses me that she took 8 and a half years to catch up to S and have the same exact issue.

It really does suck though. I hope she doesn't have nearly as hard a time with it (the whole "being upright and mobile" thing probably helps).