J and the kids met me for lunch the other day, and we went out to a burrito place called "Moe’s" for lunch. Quite tasty. We ordered a couple burritos and a cheese quesadilla for C. Our plan was to give N (who is transitioning from baby food to solid food) some rice, shredded meat, and cheese.

During meals, J & I typically divide our forces. She manages one child while I handle the other. In this case, I was dealing with C and she took N.

For some reason, N decided that he really wanted the lime from J’s water glass. She said no a couple times and then gave in – at which point N grabbed it victoriously and gave a mighty triumphant "yah!"

Then he put it in his mouth.

It only took a few licks for him to realize that he really didn’t want the lime in his mouth. However, he had apparently decided that it was his lime and he wasn’t putting it down for anything. J continued to try to feed him other food, but he wasn’t interested.

Then he spotted the chips they served with the burritos.

We should have seen this coming. Half the chips are a vivid red – how could he not be interested? Seeing him focus on them, J tried to move them far enough away from him, but N had seen that trick before. It was just a matter of time before he had a big chip in his left hand.

Then he put the chip in his mouth.

The thing about N is that he has four teeth: two at the front top and two at the front bottom of his mouth. This is enough teeth for him to bite off a piece of a chip. Lacking the teeth in the rest of his mouth, however, made chewing the hard salty chip quite unpleasant.

So there he was with a lime in his right hand, a chip in his left, and no desire whatsoever to eat anything we handed to him. He spent most of lunch that way, occasionally bringing either the chip or the lime to his mouth, only to make a face and pull it away again.

I’m sure there’s some sort of moral to this story, but I don’t know what it is.