I do. I feed them All. The. Time.
In fact, there are days that I feel I do nothing but prepare, serve, and clean up from feeding them. I make them well-balanced meals; hitting all of the different food groups (except fish, cause that stuff is nasty). Quality snacks are prevalent in our home, and occasionally, some good dessert food. Also, most days they have two breakfasts, I feed them breakfast at home and then they like to have a second breakfast at school before they head off to class. Then, they are still hungry when lunch comes around in a few short hours.
Years ago, I did not feed them the first breakfast, partly because I knew they got a breakfast at school, and partly because I just could not get my act together enough to get us all out of the house on time, dressed and fed. But, after my then five-year-old told his teacher that “he was hungry and there was no food at his Mommy’s house to feed him” and the mildly awkward conversation I had to have, trying to convince her that I did, indeed, have food at home, I made it a higher priority.
It wasn’t just him either. My oldest used to hide snacks everywhere, just in case. Crackers in his dresser, cheese in his toy box, grapes in shoes (you haven’t lived until you crush grapes with your toes), toast under his pillow, apples outside in the sand box (that did not go well), oh, and crackers under the gas cap of his dad’s truck (I’m not making that up). As far as I neither of them hide food anymore, but I think that’s because they are big enough to get food on their own now. It is not uncommon for me to enter what was a clean kitchen find The General frying himself some eggs and Edison making a ham and cheese sandwich.
The younger ones on the other hand, last week I went to tuck Batman into bed, and he asked me not to move one of the toys that was on his bed. I explained that we don’t keep toys on our bed at night time, because that is a time to be sleeping not playing. His little eyes welled up with tears, and he said, “but please leave this one it has my ‘Nite Nite Snack’ in it.”
Umm what?
At this point, one of his older brothers from above us in the loft shares that there is generally some kind of snacking going on in my four-year-old’s bed at night, I asked for some examples, still holding out some hope that the “snack” was part of some pretend game. Nope. Apparently it is not uncommon for him to have apples, crackers, cereal, banana, or you know, whatever he can find hidden on his bed or in his room somewhere. On this particular night, his stash was full of tater-tots
For real, I swear I feed them.
…It has been at least a week since the last time I made tater-tots.
