Blueberry Lessons in Mommyhood

There are so many lessons that you learn as a parent. It seems like a new one every day. “I’ll never try THAT again”, or “wow, that works really well!!”.

Yesterday’s lesson: even if a child can eat something without making a mess while being watched by Mommy, the same may not be true if you let them eat it out of sight.

Ali woke up from her nap and I had to make it by both offices, and so we left as soon as she woke up. She asked to eat, and even though it was nowhere near a mealtime, I felt guilty for slinging her in the car as soon as she woke up, so I agreed to a snack. She asked for a “bar”, which is a Nutrigrain bar. She eats one every morning for breakfast – I hand her the whole bar, and she eats it with only mild crumbage, and usually no smearage. So, I agreed, somewhat reluctantly.

Of course, I grabbed a BLUEBERRY bar, of all flavors.

It was raining pretty hard, so I had to fully focus on the road, and so my imagination just went wild of what was being smeared with dark blue slime in the backseat.

The one time I did manage a look back, she was pushing her bar into her seat with her thumb. I told her to eat her bar or I’d have to take it away.

After a few minutes, Ali said “Wet wipe. Clean up!” (something she says anytime she sneezes or even coughs, also). So, as usual, I passed her back a wet wipe.

Lesson #2: Sometimes a child can make a mess bigger by smearing it with a wet wipe.

When we got off the interstate, I looked back to see that Ali looked like she had been battered to be fried – except that instead of an egg base to get the batter to stick, it was a blueberry base, and then brown crumbs stuck on top of that. Maybe more like a fancy doughnut.

Actually it wasn’t quite that bad. But it did take some clean up from Mommy.

I fully expected to find chunks of “bar” in her seat and surrounding area, but have yet to find them. So she either a) ate the whole bar, or b) hid some “surprises” for Mommy that we will get to find on our car trip today.