Mother, Murderess

I horrified my daughter today.

Let me begin this story with an explanation of her character.

You see, Sweet Pea forms bonds with... well, everything. She does love people, and of course pets, but she also has favorite toys, as I suppose all kids do. But they're not necessarily the same toys from day to day, and her particular fondness can as easily be showered on a paper cutout of a fish as a stuffed animal. Or a can of tomato sauce. Or an egg.

Once she chooses a friend, she always wants me to "talk it" for her. She will hand me whatever she's currently loving and I will have to make it say, "hello, Sweet Pea, how are you today?" and then she will pour forth an explanation of what she has been doing, or what she is about to do, or what she just did, or what Mommy just told her, etc. Sometimes she will feed me my lines. "Mama, have it ask me where the ballie is." Often she will tell me exactly what to make her "friend" say AND what she is going to tell it in reply.

Last weekend while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa, Auntie and Uncle and their pet bunny were also visiting. Grandma had hard boiled two dozen eggs before we arrived and Saturday night Auntie (my sis) got six cups of dye made up and she sat with Sweet Pea on her lap for a good hour or so and they had a jolly time decorating Easter eggs. This was the first time Sweet Pea had gotten to do this and she had a ton of fun and was also very gentle with the eggs (which I only mention because although she has a great capacity for gentleness, we didn't know a 2yr. 8month-old could do so well with two dozen eggs - she only dropped and cracked one).

Sweet Pea kept wanting to look at all the colored eggs and had particular favorites among them (some of the ones we put the shrinky plastic things on and then dyed). When we left for home on Sunday, Grandma sent an entire dozen of the decorated eggs with us. Sweet Pea has enjoyed taking them out and looking at them, having me "talk them," introducing them to her kitties, etc.

So you can imagine where the trouble started...

Today after Sweet Pea awoke from her nap, we went to the kitchen to rustle up some grub for lunch. I hardly ever actually meal plan, so usually we go to the kitchen for a meal (any meal) and I open the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry (yes, one at a time in that order) to see what we have. Today I remembered out loud, "oh yeah, we have all those hard boiled eggs - we'll have egg salad!" Sweet Pea likes egg salad. A lot. And that's saying something - this kid doesn't have a lot of interest in eating in general, so her having a food preference is one of those experiences for me where the clouds open up and light shines down and choirs of angels sing.

So I announced to her that we were going to make egg salad for lunch. Sweet Pea seemed pleased. I asked if she wanted to help me make it, because she loves to help me cook. "Yes! I want to measure!" she chirped in reply. We put the stepladder up to the counter and I, aware that breaking her colored eggs might cause her some distress, told her so it wouldn't be such a shock, "we're going to use the Easter eggs that Grandma gave us, so we're going to have to break a couple of them."

She looked at me.

I took out two eggs, the two with the worst cracks (some had cracked when they were cooking, so the one Sweet Pea dropped wasn't the only cracked egg in the two dozen), and smashed them and started peeling the shells off and throwing the shells into the sink.

Sweet Pea freaked. She started whining and asked me to stop. I explained to her that these are just eggs, this is what egg salad is made of (I expect that was a big mistake; now she'll never want to eat it again!), and this is what eggs look like when you cook them before you take them out of the shell. I told her I was going to chop them up and we'd mix in some mayo and other things and I tried to continue on to the sandwich idea, but she was crying by then, since I was now chopping up the first egg, and she begged me to stop. She pulled the remnants of the eggshells out of the sink and tried to put them back on the eggs. She begged me to put the shells back on.

At this point I realized the depth of her distress due to her attachment to these egg friends, and how much I was therefore terrorizing her by chopping up her friends in front of her.

We had applesauce, buttered bread, and cheese for lunch.

I wonder what she thinks of me now... the horror, the horror!