A Man in Touch with His Emotions

Mealtime around here lately has gotten to be a bit like feeding time in the monkey house.

The kids often use their chairs or stools not as a place to sit but rather as props in elaborate feats of acrobatics. And they still think the utensils that flank their plates are mainly decorative.

But worst of all is the spitting.

This is new and really, really annoying. It's mostly of the lip-buzzing "raspberry" variety but occasionally involves a protuding tongue. And sometimes, like at lunch yesterday, projectiles come into play.

Our two-year-old, who is a voracious fruit-and-vegetable eater, has one picky quirk--she doesn't like the tough peel on many of her favorite foods. Apples are the clearest example; I used to let her munch a whole MacIntosh free-range style on the lower level of our house--until I started discovering curled-up bits of apple peel behind the couch, on the desk, and just about everywhere else her size 7 feet had trod.

I didn't know that bell peppers had a "peel" until, at yesterday's noontime meal, she leaned to her left after taking a couple bites of a red pepper strip and rather daintily (but still noisily) spit the tough outer skin to the floor.

"Hey!" I said in my disciplinarian voice. "We DON'T spit food out of our mouths, es-PECIALLY onto the floor!"

I continued to give her "the look" until she apologized in her sweet, forgiveness-inducing chirp.

Then her big brother said, "I know how you were feeling just then, Mama."

"You do?" I asked. "How was I feeling?"

"Disappointed," he said with certainty.

"Well, you're right," I replied, switching into teachable-moment mode. "I AM disappointed when you kids do something that I know you know is rude."

"Know how I knew, Mama?" he asked, ignoring the lesson.

"How?" I asked back.

"By the three lines in your forehead," he said.

I'm going to try to do four lines tomorrow to see what he calls that.