No Ice Cream For Me
I’ve been a mom to little P for a smidge over nineteen months now, and last weekend I finally had the irrefutable proof that I have stepped the line to thorough mama-hood.
For some reason, this proof didn’t come while I was pushing her form out of my nether parts into the world, or when we brought her home for the first time, or when we figured out that she was smiling at us.
Nope. The proof came in a frozen yogurt shop in Carmel. When I turned down a perfectly good opportunity to have ice cream. I love ice cream. I never turn down a good chance to get my hands on some frozen deliciousness.
We ended up in a frozen yogurt shop because, you see, P is a picky eater. Picky in quality and taste, yes, but also in the form of entertainment that is presented to her when she eats. As I told her doctor at her last well baby visit, A and I pretty much have to do a song and dance routine to make her eat.
The entertainment comes in the form of books, crayons, toy cars, and gasp Caillou. Anything to make the girl open her mouth. When we visited A’s parents in Italy, entertainment came in the form of our large, extended Italian family doing their daily thing. Loud uncles, dancing cousins, cooking grandma—who needed Caillou at that point? She opened her mouth for anything and everything (although the yummy Italian food served up by said grandma may have had something to do with it).
But in restaurants, we’re pretty much out of luck. We don’t go out to eat very often, because “eating” turns into one of us snarfing down food as fast as possible while the other tries to get P to open her mouth, then passing her along to the satiated parent to repeat the ritual. It’s great if the restaurant in question has some sort of coloring instrument, and we generally bring some toys along, but the attention span wanders after about five minutes.
This past weekend, we went to Big Sur for a friend’s wedding (FYI, a wedding reception happening in the background is also enough entertainment to make her eat). Adding a day to the trip to enjoy the California coast before heading to the wedding seemed like a good idea. Except, of course, for the whole having-to-make-a-child-eat-sans-Caillou.
On Saturday, we had lunch at a really cute bistro, which had a respectable kids’ menu. I ordered P a quesadilla and a side of broccolini. She had about a half an inch of the quesadilla, and the majority of the broccolini (what can I say, she does love her greens…for now). But as far as the calories actually consumed, I figured she’d had about 150, max. She needed something else.
Which brings us back to the yogurt shop. One thing P never says no to is frozen yogurt. So we bought her a cup and watched happily as she proceeded to consume the entire thing without any jazz-hands routines from us.
As she was eating, I suddenly had a flashback to when I was a kid, happily eating ice cream while my parents watched. And my 4-year-old self would think, “Why would you NOT have ice cream?” It didn’t even cross my mind that sometimes, you might not want ice cream. You may be too full for ice cream. You may not be having an ice cream sort of day.
That’s when I kind of knew that the line had been crossed, and there wouldn’t be any going back. I was full but not stuffed; I hadn’t had dessert at the cute bistro; I wasn’t having an anti-ice cream day. But I was perfectly happy to watch P eat her cup without any need to enjoy some myself.
Mama-hood, at this point I must embrace you wholeheartedly. I looked around the yogurt shop and noticed that there were multiple sets of adults there with their kids, and only the kids were having ice cream. We had all crossed the line.
The way I figure it, this is the ice cream thought process at different ages:
4 year-old: “Ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream!”
14 year-old: “My parents gave me money for this ice cream, but I’m too cool to share it with them. Or be within 100 miles of them when I eat it.”
24 year-old: “Ice cream? I’d love some! Who cares if it’s midnight and I just had a slice of pizza?”
34 year-old: “My child is sure enjoying that ice cream.”
Oh, ice cream, I love thee. But definitely not as much as P does.
M is a copywriter in the Bay Area. In addition to writing Third Culture , riveting copy, she loves old buildings and cooking, although not necessarily in that order. She and her husband became first time parents in January 2010, when their extremely energetic daughter, P, was born.
