This Piece of Chicken is for You

I made dinner last night. Any Mom knows to make a dinner is a Herculean task and that’s not even mentioning the clean-up.

It was the usual suspects. Me, T.Puzzle and Full Speed and Mad Dog absent because he is working. We sat down to partake and spend quality time together. Since I had already spent about 10 hours of quality time with my boys, the conversation was a little sparse. It mostly is in our house because my boys are so young. This is unless you consider my very vocal Full Speed who talks at me non-stop from morning until night to be conversing. He doesn’t always need me to respond to his questions, statements or negotiations so I don’t qualify this as actual give and take talking. This is all normal in our house.

I recently have begun to ask Full Speed if there are particular culinary inclinations that might interest him. I figure since he is nearing five years old and is a good eater; he should be rewarded with some input for our grocery list. Last week he requested cherries and popsicles. This week he said mushrooms and popsicles. I asked if he wanted me to make tacos next week. All he could say over and over again to my question was “tacos, tacos, tacos.” No excitement, no negative energy emanated from his words.

“I don’t know what that means, Full Speed.  Do you want tacos or not?” I was trying to be as direct as possible. He was so distracted about the taco question when he placed a piece of baked chicken in his gaping mouth and started to chew, it fell out of his mouth onto the floor. He jumped down and closely examined the piece of chicken. We have much discussion as the level of cleanliness of foodstuff that falls to the floor. Full Speed is kind of a neatnik perfectionist so mostly the floor food ends up in the garbage. Occasionally I can convince him that I did recently clean the floor and it’s okay to chew away. That’s what I told him tonight. He had even lent a hand when I had cleaned the floor earlier today. So, he picks it up, dusts it off and says “this piece of chicken is for you,” and proceeds to place it partially chewed and all on my plate. Yum!

He quickly moves on and a full five minutes after I asked the question, he screams “TACOS!!” at the top of his lungs. I guess we are having tacos next week. I hope they manage to stay on everyone’s dinner plate.