Dear Mom you know what is sweeter than a banana?

Dear Mom you know what is sweeter than a banana?

I have tried as best I can to make sure Claire understands she has to eat fruits and vegetables. We have to have a vegetable with every meal. I usually let her pick it out. As of late her choice has been Corn or Corn. So, we had to start taking turns picking out the vegetable. I used to make two vegetables but decided it was more important she get the proper number of servings of vegetables instead of a variety every day. Besides it lead to a lot of waste. She was resistant to eating the same vegetable two days in a row unless it was corn. I am not even sure if we should still count corn as a vegetable. At Claire’s school ketchup counts as a vegetable so maybe my standards are too strict.

When it comes to snacks, I always make sure we have fresh fruit. I remember you always tried to do that and depending on the season there was always something in the house. Times have changed and now we can get strawberries all year long. The same goes for bananas and oranges. When she asks for a snack, a snack being decisively different than food, I always suggest a piece of fruit. As of late it is more like, “Okay, if you eat a banana you can have some cookies.” Or, “You know you only get cookies once a day, but you can have as many oranges as you want.”

When she comes back from her mothers it takes a day or two for her fall back into the pattern. I sometimes feel I am the only person in the world that cares if she is healthy but I soldier on.

I never keep soda in my house. I don’t drink soda, I have not since the 80s. My guests are welcome to have beer, wine, whiskey, or tea, but if they want soda it is bring your own beverages. Evidently that is not the case at her mother’s house. Lately she begs for sprite or root beer. There was a time when I kept a few cans of root beer around. The deal was anytime I had a pint of beer, she could have a root beer. This lead to a less than desirable situation of her asking me every day, “Dad, do you feel like a beer?” or “Boy it sure is hot in here, think we should have a nice cold beer?”

For a long time I had got away with only letting her drink soda when we went out to eat. Since I cook most of our meals this was a rare thing maybe two or three times a week during the summer at most. Hardly at all during the school year. I was kind of proud at the low number of happy meal toys we had cluttering our house.

She gets a completely different experience while visiting her mother. I know from the past they go through a couple cases of soda a week over there. I don’t want to come right out and say it is unhealthy to drink soda, or go to an extreme and tell her sugar is poison to scare her off of it, but it is a habit I am afraid she is doomed to pick up despite my vigilance. Trying to divert her to juice or chocolate milk is only partially successful.

Still, she is getting older and smarter everyday she seems to understand that Daddy has expectations for not only behavior but eating habits. When I ask her what she wants to drink she still sometimes says ice water. This is not really a surprise since I drink water with every meal, but I am heartened. Recently it was after lunch and she had already had cookies, already had a candy cane, been turned down for ice cream or a soda so picked up a banana and asked, “Can I have a banana?”

I have made it clear she does not need to ask me to have a piece of fruit, yet dutifully she asks me before she eats something. I should be grateful. “Yes Sweetie, you can always have a piece of fruit.” I reinforced my open fruit policy.

She peeled the banana and started to eat it. “Bananas are sweet but they are good for you right?”

“Yes they are Sweetie, bananas are very good for you.”

“Which is better a banana or an apple?” She posed the question as if I would have an answer.

“They are both equally good for you Darling, you can have either one.”

“But an apple keeps the Dr. away so is an apple better for you?”

“In the bigger scheme of things apples just have a better publicist, bananas keep the Dr. away too.”

“How about oranges? Are oranges good for you?”

“Yes, all fruit is good for you, you should eat fruit every day, along with your vegetables.”

“Fruit is sweeter than vegetables.” She took another bite and stared at the banana as if pondering something. She finished chewing and looked at me. “You know what is sweeter than a banana?”

“I don’t know, what is sweeter than a banana?” I had long ago given up answering questions like this. Instead I waited to hear her answer.

“You are!”

“You are way sweeter than a banana!” I told her and stole a big banana flavored kiss. The smile on her face was as big as the sky, and only half as big as mine.

Love Mike