Chip!

Last week, I made sloppy joes and served them with green beans and potato chips.  I love this dish because it's a homemade recipe that everyone likes and it's the perfect excuse to open a bag of kettle chips.  However, I made the grievous error of actually placing potato chips on the plates at the beginning of the meal - with the sandwich and vegetables, the way a normal person might choose to plate a meal.

N, my little eater, is quite good at picking up table manners, surprisingly.  He wasn't so much in the beginning:

March 2010: avacado!

He everything equally: some meat, some bread, a chip, some veggies, drink of milk, start again...basically.

M is a bit more...shall we say...focused?

He ate one chip, two chips, three chips, then...
"Chip?
"Eat your joe and your green beans first," we replied.
"Mo?  Mo chip?"
"No, eat your sloppy joe and drink your milk," we repeated.
"Mo chip? Chip? Chip? Chip? Chip? Chip? Mo chip?"
We ignore this, and praise N for eating his sandwich and green beans.
"CHIP?  CHIP?!"  Here is where he decided that we most certainly ARE deaf and resorts to the sign language that I taught him last year, repeating louder and with the "more" sign:
"MO CHIP?  PEEESE?  MO CHIP?!  MO CHIP?!  PEEESE!!"

Here's where I have a flashback of a lactation consultant helping me with nursing twins say (about M, of course), "He's escalating."  No kidding, Sherlock.

"CHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPCHIP!!!!!PEEAASE?!CHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPS"

Hubs and I make eye contact across the table, and we smirk.  This is actually getting quite funny because we both know that we cannot back down now, that we cannot give him a chip and therefore teach him that this is the way to behave to get what you want.
"CHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPCHIP!!!!!PEEAASE?!CHIPCHIPCHIPCHIPCHIP!!!!!"

"Okay, you're done.  You're going to time out." One of us gets up to wipe off his hands and end his meal.

And what did he find under the sandwich at just that moment?

A chip.  One lonely chip.

M gobbled it and with his mouth full and smiling said, "Chip!"

I love chips!