Sticks!

The other night, we had my mother over for dinner to belatedly celebrate her birthday. To start the evening, we had put out an appetizer of olive tapenade over crackers, and a little bowl of marinated white beans. The crackers you ate with your fingers. The beans you ate with a toothpick.

Reilly, being her usual curious self, was very interested in the toothpick-impaled beans. Already a bean lover, using the toothpick as a utensil elevated this food to the sublime.

Fast forward to the next night. Shawn and I are looking at Reilly, who is staring down at her usual dinner of chicken nuggets, peas, and zucchini, as if something is missing. She looks back at us and asks for “sticks.” When she realizes that we do not understand what she is asking for, she goes into lock-down mode and refuses to eat until we honor her demand. It takes us a minute to figure it out, but we finally realize that she is asking for toothpicks.

That night she ended up eating her whole meal with toothpicks, requesting a new toothpick for each piece of food on her plate. (It’s a good thing we had a whole box of them.) Aside from the two-dozen toothpicks she went through, all went well with dinner except for the peas. Toothpicks are not so good for peas.