The Incident of the Strawberry Pop-Tart

This is how my morning went:

Gabriel woke up at the insanely early hour of 6:15 AM. He got up and went downstairs where David was eating breakfast, and it was determined that there were no Cheerios in the house.

Gabriel, distraught, ultimately consented to eat a strawberry pop-tart. (Actually, it was an organic dye-free strawberry toaster pastry from Costco, but, as far as my kids are concerned, a pop-tart.)

It was...(cue dark foreshadowing music here) THE LAST STRAWBERRY POP-TART.

I came downstairs at 7:15, ate my breakfast, and then went upstairs to retrieve Sleeping Beauty from her bed. (I've been trying to let her sleep until 8:50, but, this morning is my early court morning, so, it wasn't an option.)

There was angry growling as I pulled her from bed and took her to the potty.

She was asleep on my shoulder when I opened the car door to strap her into her seat, followed by crying that she was "too cold, too hot, too tired". I asked her what she wanted for breakfast and, eyes still closed, sleepily she said, "a strawberry pop-tart."

FRAP.

Of course she wants a strawberry pop-tart. How the hell does she KNOW that her brother has eaten the last one? HOW? HOW????

I go into the house. We have blueberry organic dye-free toaster pastries that are the same color as the strawberry ones, so, I grab one of those. I run to the car and hand it to Lana, run back in the house, shoo Gabriel out the door, grab my purse and my coat and my lunch, and run back to the car, where Lana is crying hysterically.

What's the matter? I ask.

"I WANT A STRAWBERRY POP TART. THIS NOT STRAWBERRY." Lana is wailing. She is beside herself.

"Lana, we don't have strawberry. We have blueberry and we have cherry."

(Now, my kids have only disdain for the Cherry Pop tart (which we have in actual Kellogg's Pop-Tart form, and which is, in MY opinion, a superior tart to all other flavors of tart. The cherry pop-tart is da bomb (verily, da cherry bomb) but my children normally disagree with me on this fine culinary point. They shun the Cherry Pop-Tart. The Cherry Pop-Tart is tarta non grata to Gabriel and Lana.)

"I want STRAWBERRY" she wails again.

At this point I am in the car with the key in the ignition. "Do you want a cherry pop-tart instead?" I ask her as I turn the car on.

"I want STRAWBERRY!!"

Seriously, I have no idea how she knows the tart in her hand is blueberry, because these organic dye free toaster pastries all have the same color frosting - vaguely graham-cracker-colored. If "graham-cracker-color" is a color. They all look the same.

I pull out of the garage and hit the garage door remote and the door closes and we are driving down the street and she starts to scream, 'I want cherry! I want the cherry one!!"
And I am ticked because she is pulling this crap a lot lately - waiting to ask for something until it is incredibly inconvenient for us to get her what she wants - I swear she wants to see if we will run in circles for her. (She doesn't have to pee until there is no bathroom anywhere near her, she's not hungry until there is NO FOOD anywhere, she wants a particular toy when it is at the very bottom of the carry-on luggage, etc.)

I had to be in court by 9:15, it was already 8:07, and I needed to get both of them to different schools.

So, I kept driving, and I said, "I'm sorry, you should have told me that when I offered it to you, you're going to have to eat the blueberry one."

"I WILL NOT EAT IT. I WILL NOT." There is screaming and crying and gnashing of teeth.

"Well, then you'll eat it for a snack on the way home from school then, cause we don't waste food."

"I WILL SMASH IT IN YOUR CAR!! I WILL MAKE A MESS WITH IT ON THE SEAT!!" she threatens.

I about lost it with that one. Gabe was crying cause he said her crying made his head hurt. I told her if she smashed it on purpose she was going to eat it ANYWAY. (She hates to eat things that are broken or smushed.)

I let Gabe off at the elementary school and she continued to cry and scream and tell me I was a "mean, mean mommy" for another 15 minutes, during which I kept saying, "if you're hungry, eat the pop tart" every minute or so, until she finally ate the damn thing.

When we got to her pre-school, her face was a mess of tears, snot and blueberry pop tart remains. She looked pathetic and wretched. "You are mean to me" she cried some more.

I picked her up and took her into class and she stopped crying and laid in my lap in a lump in a chair in her classroom.

I tried to hand her to her teacher S~ and she said, "I want to go to work with you" and S~ convinced her that mommy's work was boring and that they were going to play beauty shop and do jewelry making today, and Lana agreed that sounded like more fun...

And when I got into my car, thinking, well, at least I can turn on NPR and have a few minutes of CALM, I remembered it was *&%$#!@# pledge week and I had to turn the radio off. I hate NPR pledge week. (We pay our pledge every year, we do. I just hate to hear them beg other people to do it. Mostly because I've already paid. Ugh.)

So, that was MY morning...

 

Gretchen