"blending in" is overrated

Sitting down in a hotel restaurant in Deming, NM we had no plans on being the strangest family in the place.  It all started with the kids menu.  What would Calder eat?  Oatmeal, banana, and yogurt...ok great, we're going to be just fine.  Until.....well the oatmeal is different than the kind at home.  Once Calder understands that, we're down to the yogurt and banana, still a pretty decent breakfast.   We ask (badger) the very young waitress for a banana which now we are told they don't have.  We decline the bowl of cut fruit assortment that Calder won't eat.  We're down to just the yogurt.  I warn him that it will be pink with bits of strawberry.  We strike a deal. We order our food and get the fruit cup for Elodie (easy).

When the meals come we see that the waitress didn't understand that the low-carb breakfast plate Eric ordered should not have potatoes and bread on it.  We sent the waitress and the carbs away to the kitchen.  She no sooner left when she returned with the enlightened notion that since Eric's plate was already cooked did he want the potatoes and bread anyway?  She had no idea what "low-carb omlette" implies.

Calder had come over to my side of the table and we were "eating" yogurt together, meaning that I was picking out the whole fruit and eating that while he would get fed spoonfuls of creamy *pink!* yogurt.  I decided to point out that while we had to dismiss the oatmeal and banana, I was very proud of him trying a yogurt color other than the usual white.  Right in the middle of my compliment he got his bundled silverware, asked me to unwrap the napkin out, walked over to Dad's side of the table and proceeded to spit out all the contents in his mouth, which was creamy yogurt, a strawberry molecule and spit.  Eric started to tell Calder that doing that was gross and unacceptable when I interrupted him and said that it was I who taught Calder to spit out food onto a napkin.  Otherwise it would have looked a lot worse...spitting in his hand, spitting in my hand, spitting on the table, spitting on the floor all possibly while freaking out.

In this moment after Eric's side of the table has been cleared of anything the baby could grab, while Elodie was eating bits of cut fruit (dropping some on the floor next to the fallen cheerios from last nights dinner), I noticed how thoroughly I had picked through my egg and bacon muffin.  I wondered out loud "I see where Calder gets his pickiness from" while complaining that american slice cheese ruins anything it touches.

So here we were a family all feeding each other.  Without the carb sides, Eric was still hungry and I was feeding him spoonfuls of my rejected american slice cheese and disproportionate amount of egg on my muffin.  Eric was feeding the baby, I was feeding yogurt to myself and Calder...

For most of my life I've never bothered much with "blending in", but this morning I really felt like a family with very freaky rituals revolving around food: like maybe even when we are in the privacy of our own home we take turns feeding each other under the full moon, facing West.

"By the light of the moon...by the light of the stars...from there to here...from here to there...funny things are everywhere". (T. Geisel)