This is the story of a little girl and her desire to eat an apple at breakfast.
To be sure she'd already eaten a pretty good breakfast, so I was a little surprised when she asked for some apple too, but who am I to deny someone so cute something so healthy?
It was at that moment, the exact moment that I innocently approved her request, that our tale begins.
The apples live in the little plastic bag they came home from the farmer's market in, a bag which has already been unceremoniously ripped open because if there are two things we are in this house, it's apple-lovers and impatient. Getting an apple out of the gaping hole in the bag is typically not a very difficult task, as evidenced by the numerous times I've had to put apples back into the bag when they roll out all by themselves (we've either got poltergeists that enjoy removing things from their packages just to strew them about, or else a liar in the house... I'm not sure which just yet).
As is the wont of a three-year-old, Kaeleigh decided that today she was going to be independent. Some days she's hopelessly helpless and forgets how to do even the most basic of things like how to dress herself or use a tissue or not walk into walls, and other days she's fiercely independent and will not accept help with anything, no matter how difficult the task may be. Today is an independent day, so she had to be the one to get the apple out of the bag. No big deal, I figured. It'd probably be one of the easiest things she'd do today.
Except it wasn't. She could not, for the life of her, figure out how to get one of the apples out of the bag. She turned it and twisted it and flipped it over and moved apples around like she was trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. The more she tried the more frustrated she became, but still she would not accept any help, so I did my best to pretend not to watch her struggle. Finally, after several minutes, she figured out that she could just rip the bag some more and victory was hers! She had her apple and I had a shredded bag to throw away and several now homeless apples.
Beaming and obviously proud of herself, she handed me the apple to wash and cut for her, which I did, but I made the single worst mistake any one could ever make with a 3-year-old: I failed to read her mind to know exactly how to cut the apple.
The first slice was too small. Okay, no big deal. I ate that one, even though I didn't particularly want apple at the time, and cut her a bigger slice.
That one was too big.
I cut it into two smaller pieces, but now she noticed that they had "spots" on the skin and wanted the skin removed.
Okay... she's being difficult but I love my daughter and I can't get mad over something so small, so I deftly removed the skin and give them back to her, but, using an electron microscope, she detected two tiny pieces of skin I'd missed. So I take the slices back once again and neatly cut the tiniest piece of apple skin off and hand them back to her, certain that she will finally be happy enough to just eat them... and she accidentally drops them on the floor. Both of them.
She looks down at the fallen skinless apple slices for a moment, then slowly raises her head and looks up at me with that sad puppy dog look all kids have mastered, smiles, and informs me that she is done with breakfast.
And that is how I ended up eating an apple for breakfast because that is a microcosm of what life with a 3-year-old is like.
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