Things My Kids Don’t Like

My big kids don’t like these things, just go ahead and ask them:

1. Tomatoes, unless it’s in soup form or ketchup form or pasta-sauce form or pizza-sauce form or enchilada-sauce form or mixed into their favorite soups and main dishes, like lentil soup or taco soup or minestrone soup, all of which have a tomato base.

2. Corn, but frozen corn is okay for Jamie while Charles will eat corn-on-the-cob, but please don’t try to serve it off the cob and warm, and don’t put it in soup except taco soup, and they really would rather not eat cornbread with actual kernels of corn in it unless you drench it in butter and honey, then it’s okay, and oh, yeah, they like popcorn, too.

3. School, all school, any school, except when it’s gym day, or when the preschooler gets to go outside, and plus they like their friends and school is where their friends are, and when there are holiday parties it’s pretty cool, too, and nacho day in the cafeteria is always a plus, and maybe today we’ll do some hard math so that will be fun, and I like library day, and Friday is the after-school program and that’s awesome.

4. Piano lessons, except when Charles gets to play Star Wars songs or Charlie Brown songs, which is EVERY time, and also piano lessons are fun because he gets to jump on a trampoline before and after his lesson.

5. Swim lessons, except as soon as they get in the water, then they’re amazing.

6. Walking to school, except every morning after we start walking, when it quickly becomes the “best time of the day because we get to talk together.”

7. Playing outside, except as soon as they actually get outside and start chasing each other and fighting with light sabers and drawing ninjas in chalk on the sidewalk and then they don’t want to come in, ever, will you please bring our snack outside, mommy?

8. Bedtime, because they’re not tired.  And they need a drink of water.  And please can I have another kiss?  Mommy, you forgot to kiss me!  And their brothers breathe too loudly so they can’t sleep, and they don’t need this much sleep, why do they have to go to bed so early, and it’s too dark and the nightlight is too light, and did I tell you I’m just not tired?  I need more time to read zzzzzzzzzzz…

9. Grocery shopping, which they think is stupid even though they like to eat, but also great because they get the chance to complain about meals in their raw, unassembled form and since they clearly love complaining more than anything in the whole world, you’d think this was the highlight of their day.  Also, free doughnuts for kids because the grocery store knows that hell hath no crazy like a toddler in a grocery store.

10. Cleaning their rooms, unless I get sneaky and ask them to take out the compost, which stinks.  Then they’ll gladly bargain for a “lesser sentence” and clean their rooms with gusto.