Lately, my kids (really only Monkey in the Middle and Monkey Girl) have gotten into “saving” their food and their drinks.
It came from the fact that when we would go out to dinner, Monkey Girl would always suck down her drink before her meal arrived and then would be upset that we wouldn’t let her get another drink except for water.
So, we would say, “Save your drink until your meal comes.”
Monkey in the Middle grabbed that and ran with it, always making sure he was the last one to finish his drink.
“Look guys,” he’d declare when Baby had taken his last sip. “I still have a full glass!”
Then the others would be kicking themselves that they, too, didn’t still have a full glass of whatever it was they were drinking.
A little healthy sibling competition is not a bad thing.
However, it’s gotten a little out of control.
My Dad took us out to lunch at a local diner the other day and as we were putting our coats on, I realized that neither Monkey Girl nor Monkey in the Middle had even taken a sip out of their orange juice.
“You didn’t drink your orange juice!” I said.
“I didn’t want him to win,” Monkey Girl responded.
“Me neither,” Monkey in the Middle countered.
I made them guzzle it right then so it wasn’t a waste of my father’s money, but I realize it was getting out of hand.
Tiny, of course, has no clue what’s going on, and Baby Monkey stays true to himself and eats and drinks at his own pace, but the other two?
Savers.
I mean, I get it.
When I was a kid, my Mom used to always do that to my Dad and I.
We’d be sitting, eating Oreos and we’d each have three.
We’d chat and eat and my Dad and I would be done, and then boom, my Mom would have two more. Turns out she had shuffled them off to the side where we hadn’t seen them and now we had to watch her eat hers and wish we still had ours.
We’d get ice cream pints and my Dad and I would eat ours in a reasonable amount of days and then, bam, my Mom would pull out an almost full pint and we’d have to watch her eat it, again.
(Yes, perhaps the Oreos and ice cream weren’t such good ideas anyway in light of the fact that my Dad and I later developing diabetes…anyway…)
So, I get it.
I do.
The other day, we were all sitting at the table, eating and I suddenly noticed that Monkey in the Middle wasn’t eating at all.
I said, “Aren’t you hungry?”
He replied, “I’m going to wait until everyone else is done.”
Weird.
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