an evening with us

I'll start by saying that it feels totally amazing outside today!  This is my kind of day.  The windows and doors are open at my house to let in all this fall-ish goodness. :)

We are in the process of getting dinner ready.  There is some Wynton Marsalis playing on Pandora, I can feel the breeze from outside coming  inside the kitchen, and for the moment all is right with the world. 

Today has also been nice because Chris has spent the day with the kids and me.  A nice little family day where we didn't really have to do much.  

Just thought I'd let you in on tonight's dinner...

We picked up some shrimp at Kroger today (that's all we went there to pick up as I do NOT enjoy shopping there).  With our pound and a half of shrimp we were given a free crab cake- which Chris fried as an appetizer for the two of us while we were preparing the other stuff and it was just delicious.

We found a recipe for spicy grilled shrimp in Food Network magazine that we wanted to try.  You can find it here.  Some yellow rice and grilled asparagus sounded like it would go well with that, so we put it on our menu for this week.  Today was my first time deveining shrimp...it was kind of disgusting, but not too difficult.  All that said, it was shaping up to be a lovely meal.

That was until the children came to the table.

I had cut up the asparagus for them, and the first words out of Christian's mouth were, "I don't like those kind of green beans."

Seriously?  This is not the best way to start the meal.  I tell him that it's asparagus, and that I like it.  He doesn't know this, but that is really saying something!  

Audrey starts with a piece of shrimp which she promptly removes from her mouth.  This is not a good sign since normally this kid eats anything!  It only went downhill from there.  Both kids ate the rice, and that was about it.  I put a piece of shrimp on Christian's fork and in his mouth it goes.  It was carefully stowed it in his cheek and proceeded to sit there.  As I'm telling him to chew and I see the motion start, I thought it would be ok.  No.  I was wrong.  

Finally, I decide that I'll just get out some fruit and go from there.  Now, let me just say that at our house this is NOT what we do.  We fix a meal.  If you don't eat it, then you must not be hungry, and therefore you just don't eat dinner that day.  Since Audrey tried everything on her plate, I give her the fruit.  I tell Christian that as soon as he swallows what is still in his mouth that he too can have fruit.  I thought that would do the trick.  No.  I was wrong again.

He commences to gagging!  REALLY?  

All the sudden I am catapulted back to a particular meal when I was a kid.  It involved hamburger patties and lima beans.  I thought maybe if I shoved the limas into the ketchup that no one would be the wiser.  Wrong.  All that got me was a fresh helping of the dreaded limas.

I am so annoyed with Christian because he won't even swallow the shrimp, that I dismiss him from the table.  Before he gets out of his chair I tell him that he's getting nothing else.  He spits the shrimp into the napkin I'm holding out for him and get this: he didn't chew it.  At all.

Those of you who are now worried that he went to bed hungry: rest easy.  I took pity on him.

I told him that I had fixed him a new plate (one that had more rice, fruit, and roast beef with gravy).  He told me that he was sorry for being ridiculous but that he didn't like that other supper. :)

He apparently liked this one better since he all but licked the plate.

Oh the joys of parenting.