the (organic) grapes of (toddler) wrath

Today, we finally bought grapes at the grocery store because, FINALLY, organic grapes are in season.

Is it bad to let your toddler eat an entire half-pound?

He held the bag in his stroller as we shopped, popping them in his mouth and pronouncing them “good” (guut!). And then he demanded a banana, which I peeled and he didn’t eat but tucked on the other side of him in the stroller except for when he brandished it at me and ordered me to take a bite, and then a portobello mushroom, because he likes to hold a mushroom whenever the opportunity presents itself, and especially a BIG mushroom. Which was surprisingly not as big as the giant zucchini muffin the size of his head, the possession of which led to him handing over all other food items in order to focus on the one.

We had stopped at the store just to get celery to take up to the Little Farm and feed to the goats but one thing leads to another.

At the farm we fed the cows and the goats and for some reason the big black sheep were Baa-aa-ing extra loud, in a manner that one might interpret as hostile and as soon as we got close to them, and they let a few rip, Jonah completely freaked out. He screamed with a level of terror I’d never heard before. Not a pleasant experience.

Not to mention — how could I forget? — the screaming that was sandwiched between coming home from preschool to “show daddy” his clay snowman sculptures that he’d made and leaving again to go to the Farm.

When I’d picked him up, he was very excited to show them to daddy so I thought, why not? Stop home, grab a bite to eat for myself, have a little daddy interlude and then hit the road again so daddy could go back to his work-at-home work. Yes, well. Taking Jonah away from daddy again? Let’s just say the loudest sheep on earth, with his own dolby surround sound system, could not have out bleat-ed my kid, screaming and writhing on the sidewalk, which is where we landed at one point during his temper tornado. Because you really can’t just throw him in the car seat and buckle the buckles when he’s in that state, if you know what I mean (and I know some of you do). There was one point where he was bawling, face down on the floor of the car, and hiccuping, telling me he “needed a daddy hug.”

(And it goes without saying that this is midday, with no nap.)

This would all be really awful and pathetic, and I would be really evil, a wicked mom-witch, if it weren’t for the fact that eventually he actually calmed down, and did let me put him in the seat, without force; and daddy’s name didn’t come up again. What got us there, frankly, I can’t remember. I tried very hard to not offer ice cream as a bribe (that works, and I need to save it for true emergencies; this was only like def-con 4). I think I’d convinced him that we could go to a toy store to look at trains (you know you’re waiting for me to get to that Thomas post).

En route to toy store, we discussed several options and therein settled on the idea of Little Farm, goats, celery. When I mentioned that we would have to stop at the store to get the celery, he suggested that he could get “something hwheeet (sweet) like a cupp-cake with frost-ting onn it.” I told him I thought that was too sweet but that he could have a muffin. “I want my OWN muffin,” he said, to which I agreed, thus concluding the negotiation.

He also reported to me as we drove, “Mommy and Jonah had a fight on the sidewalk.” Why yes, we did. (I’m told kids process difficult things out loud like this.)

Little Farm, aside from the scary sheep, was delightful. I had hoped that the long drive there would knock him into napland; no such luck. However, the weather was warm (rare! and good because in the melee, I’d forgotten to bring him a jacket), the rabbits were accessible for petting through the cage wire, the cows were sociable, the goats much less scary than the sheep. At the interpretive center, they brought out a turtle, but Jonah was more interested in climbing on the wooden mountain lion statue.

The grapes came back into play when I needed a bribe to get him to leave the Little Farm. Back in his car seat, I gave him the whole bag, which he happily consumed nearly half of, and then marveled at the “Christmas tree” branches that remained.

And then, when we were almost home, he told me a story that went something like this (I wish I’d had a tape recorder!):

“There was a boy and he had a lot of grapes. His mommy take-ed them away from him. This made me mad. The boy screamed. His mommy throwed the grapes in the trash can.”

And then Jonah said to me, “What happened next?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

A few moments passed. He continued:

“The boy take-ed the grapes out of the trash can and ate them all up.”

(In that moment I was much too proud of his improvisational story telling abilities to notice how I’d been cast as the villain. Oh dear.)