Proven facts:
- If you feed your children sugar cereal, they’ll grow up to be fat, lazy and have bad teeth.
- If you feed your kid rice cakes, rye crackers, plain cheerios (not the honey nut kind – are you crazy??), your children will grow up to be healthy, contributing members of society.
Those facts are true unless you’re my husband.
Or me.
OK, so they may not be true at all. But it sounded good when I started.
Greg was raised on Lucky Charms. I’m pretty sure Greg’s mom offered Raisin Bran, too, but I’m almost positive Greg didn’t eat it.
Greg has never had a weight problem.
Greg is a smart, healthy, contributing member of society.
Greg thinks he should eat only when he’s hungry.
Seriously. Please feel free to be as irritated by that as I am.
We have conversations that go like this:
“Greg, do you want some of this double chocolate fudge layer cake?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
I’m sorry, but are you kidding me? What does double chocolate fudge layer cake have to do with hunger?
Nothing, I tell you.
Not one thing.
You eat double chocolate fudge layer cake because it’s yummy. And because it makes the bad feelings go away. (Ha! Just kidding on that last one. Kind of.)
In fact, one of the main reasons I run is so I can eat double chocolate fudge layer cake. I saw a van once when I participated in a relay race. The women in it had decorated all the windows. One window read, “We run so we can eat.” I wanted to hang out in that van.
By contrast to Greg’s childhood, I was not allowed to have Lucky Charms. My mother was very good about having a healthy house. We ate Adam’s natural, no sugar peanut butter. And then I bought and hid tubs of Betty Crocker fudge frosting under my bed to eat by the spoonful. Or went down the street to my friend Shannon’s house where I’d beg a Carnation Instant Breakfast bar off of them. Heaven!
Enter parenting.
I kind of preemptively lost the sugar cereal battle.
Like, what am I gonna say? I’m so much healthier for excluding it? Eating Adam’s-peanut-butter-and-natural-honey-covered rice cakes gave me such a good attitude toward food?
Greg brought home more Lucky Charms this week. (Actually, it was a bag of Magic Stars, the knock-off brand, but that doesn’t have the name recognition. Name brand cereal while feeding five kids? Hahahaha!)
Lucky Charms makes the natural Mommy in me crazy.
No one noticed the difference, though, since I operate on Crazy most of the time.
When Cai saw his Daddy’s bag of crappy goodness, he did an actual happy dance.
We pray before dinner on the nights when we sit down to eat all together. My kids fight over who gets to pray. There’s yelling. There are tears. It’s darling.
Cai won the knock-down, drag-out prayer fight the night Greg brought home more Lucky Charms. This was his prayer:
Dear Jesus,
I played wiff my fwends.
No timeouts at We-anne’s house.
Daddy bought Wucky Chahms! Yay! YayayayayaaaAAAAAYYY!
Amen
I’m so proud.
17 responses to “Lucky Charms”
That reminds me of being a kid. There were 8 of us and therefore cereal of any kind was a treat. We usually only had it at my grandma’s house for a snack. One time my grandpa wrapped up a huge box for me for my birthday and the only thing inside was a box of my very own cereal. Thanks for providing me a trip down my very own memory lane.
Love it, Julieann! I was just talking to someone about how my kids’ favorite gifts of all time were:
a) when someone wrapped my twins an empty apple box — they played with it longer than any of the other toys they got for their birthday, and
b) when my brother (see “Stupid Jeffy” above) gave my oldest son a huge stick with “fer burnin’” written on one end and “fer cuttin’” written on the other end. You never saw a boy so excited.
A box of your very own cereal! Love it. Why, oh why, do we buy expensive things for our kids? 😉
Beth
I’ll bet God just adores each and every one of their prayers. He needs a sweet little chuckle just like the rest of us. How precious that they fight over who gets to pray.
My mom was kind of a healthy mom – in our lunch boxes we only got fruit for dessert. But she herself is a chocoholic so we always knew where her stash was.! ;P
Yes, I believe we’re God’s comic relief, Holly. I also believe God was showing off a sense of humor when my “just one more, a biological child this time” came out as twins. Silly God. 😉
AND your lunch boxes sound like mine! While other kids were eating Wonder bread, Pringles and Hostess cupcakes, we were eating Adam’s peanut butter and honey on whole wheat with a side of apple or… if we were really lucky… fruit leather. I wish you were there in elementary school to hang out at lunch time! Of course, I now torture my kids the same way. Hehehe.
Beth
Seriously? All the amazingly tasteless stuff mom forced on us, and the best you can come up with is rice cakes and Adams peanut butter? You could write an entire entry on “treats” alone. Carob chips (“It’s JUST like chocolate!!”) Tigers Milk bars (I know there’s something really wrong with them, but can’t remember what exactly, I must be blocking it out…) Love you, Mom!!!
Love the multiple exclamation points you used, Jeff. Fitting tribute. 🙂
Kim!!!! Whatever do you mean about my mom and lots of exclamation marks?!! 😉
Jeffy. You’re so right. I just thought I might have to explain too much. Maybe Kevin should guest-post on how desperately he tried to avoid being at our childhood home for snack time.
Here’s the list:
Tiger’s Milk bars – I might still be trying to chew through them
Carob chips
Rye krisps
Lamb and rice noodle soup
Lamb and rice
Lamb
Lamb and bananas
No, poor Jeffy with food allergies shouldn’t have to eat his lamb alone. Let’s all eat it with him to make him feel better. Stupid Jeffy.
Lamb and carrots
Lamb and Tiger’s Milk bars
🙂
That about covers it.
Girl, you could be feeding your kids Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Krispies, and all the sugary cereal you want for $0.50-$1 a box if you coupon! We call it “treat cereal” in our house and my kids LOVE having it for dessert! I found your blog through Kelleigh Ratzlaff. Check out her posts on couponing. You will be hooked 🙂
That Kelleigh Ratzlaff IS amazing! I have friends who read her blog and do the mega-incredible couponing, too… one of whom only feeds her family free cereal. She hasn’t bought a box for months!
I read Ms. Kelleigh, too… but I haven’t figured out how to spend the time on the super savings yet. For sure on my to do list.
Beth
i’m married to that same irritating man (ok well not the SAME man.. that would be weird) who turns things down because he’s “not hungry”… he too does not understand it is not about hunger but about enjoyment and yummy goodness. no wonder they say marriage takes work. i work at not hating him some days. hehehe
me too! I’m married to a man like that too! my husband gets all excited about a cheese sandwich, with just cheese… sheesh! could there be a special make of husbands, some kind of secret healthy blood line of guys? European, American, Asian, no matter where they’re from? I wonder… 😉 I bet if we could find that gene, we’d be rich, for sure! 🙂
You had me at cheese.
😉
While it would be awkward to be married to the same man, I’ve wished for a wife for quite some time. I’d like a traditional 1950’s housewife, please. Someone to cook, clean and manage the children. Someone who will bring me my slippers and a newspaper at night. I’ve proposed to several women, but, alas, they’ve all turned me down. Something about already having spouses… oh, brother!
On another note, your msg cracked me up! Thanks for the laugh.
Beth
Oh, yeah! I forgot about Chucky Arms! He really was raised on the stuff. That and puckles. 🙂
Puckles?
As a small child Greg called pickles puckles. Since then our family has used the word puckles in his honor.
I love your kids’ show & tell prayers! And by the way, your kids might love Wucky Chahms, but Greg was raised on Chucky Arms.