The Tally

Yesterday, my son managed to waste quite a lot of food. Aside from the food that he requested ("I need 'nanas"), carried around the kitchen and left in unusual places (on the bottom shelf of the fridge just next to the yogurt -- "I need yoegurt"), he also managed to squander food as a result of general toddler curiosity. This peaked during the time I was trying to make supper. He pulled the apple juice out of the fridge and I grabbed it and put it on the counter. Then he knocked his booster seat off of its chair, climbed onto the chair and then onto the table. He emptied about 4 Tbsp of salt onto the table before I caught him mixing it with the juice left in his sippy cup. After I removed him from the table and cleaned up this mess, he pulled a chair up to the counter and, you guessed it, grabbed the juice container and emptied it onto the counter. I took the hand tea towel and mopped up the apple juice. I went to throw the soaking tea towel into the laundry bin in the laundry room (10 steps away from the kitchen). By the time I got back, he had managed to get the eggs out of the top shelf in the door of the fridge, remove two eggs, crack one on the floor and open the top of the other. He was poking the contents of the egg in his hand. He looked up at me happily and said "egg". I removed the egg from his hand, trying to remind myself that he's just being a healthy, curious toddler, and snatched the placemats off the table to mop up the other egg. By the time I had come back he had managed to smear the second egg all over his hands, the floor, and the nearby stack of empty yogurt containers he had tossed out of my cupboards earlier in the day. It was at this point that I decided that I was not making a stir fry after all, but rather baking some chicken, putting some rice and some frozen vegetables in pots to boil, and reading "Richard Scary's Busiest People Ever" for the thousandth time that day. After all, reading about Huckle and Lowly's busy day AGAIN was easier than cleaning up after Andrew's busy day.