What Kids Want

My nephew, age 9, stumbles into the house with a can of soda in one hand, and a bag of questionable "nosh" in the other. 

"I'll take that," I say, and pluck both from his hands. 

"Hey!" 

"I have a bunch of grapes for you." 

His eyes light up. "Purple?" he asks hopefully. 

"Purple." 

Well, in that case . . . 

After slicing up an apple for his baby-ish brother, the 3-year-old murmurs, "I want chocolate." 

"Sure," I tell him, waving to the big bin of Hershey's finest in the pantry. "Just eat two slices first." 

I hand him two, one for each hand, and tug away away the bowl from him, closer to his sister. Frantically he munches away, freeing a paw, and pulls the dish back. He plows through them all, with no coaxing from me.

At dinner the big boy gives me another hard time; he barely ate his pasta. While Ta munches on pistachios, the kids only want the discarded salty shells to suck on. 

"Do you want to grow tall, like Daddy? You have to eat the right foods. Here, just taste a pistachio." 

He willingly crunches one, and the next thing I know, I can barely shell them fast enough.

As for the baby? Well, he has become obsessed with sugar snap pea innards. Surrounded by fruit and chocolate wrappers, he ignores the other offerings as his eagle-eye glare is focused on my hands as I slice open the pods and pour out the peas. "More!" he demands. 

Via campeastral.blogspot.com

"I don't have any more." 

"MORE!" 

Sure, they "want" candy. Right.