Healthy Food Obsessions

I was in a cooking mood this afternoon so I made some fresh minestrone soup and decided to make more kale chips although I was a little worried that I was overdoing the whole kale chip thing. I’ve made about 4 batches in the last 3 weeks so it would be perfectly reasonable for my oldest to say he was sick of them. Instead, when he realized I was making a new batch he hovered by the oven with a calculator figuring out the seconds involved in the wait time. (The timer now says 3 minutes so that is 3 times 60 which is 180 seconds! Now it says 2 so….) Yeah, he was kind of excited. And that was after eating probably more than 30 baby carrots dipped in hummus (Lily’s is our house favorite) so he couldn’t have been that hungry. His obsession reminded me of my recent trip to the doctor where I had to admit exactly how many sun dried tomatoes I had been eating lately. (I’m pretty sure they were the culprit BTW, b/c I’m back to eating large amounts of dried mangoes without any issues. Not that I couldn’t stop, if I wanted to, I just don’t want to, but I could. Really.) Anyway, he was so excited about his kale chips that my younger son actually almost ate one, but just couldn’t stomach the dark green color and smell, so he opted for carrots and green juice instead. Good enough. The whole thing got me thinking about the apple not falling far from the tree though, when it comes to my son obsessing on certain foods, as I tend to do. The other morning this same son woke up especially early, which means I woke up too of course b/c he’s loud and talking from the moment his eyes open. He immediately started asking me questions, and saying crazy things like, “if I live to be over 50 my wife will think it’s weird I have color pictures of myself when I was a kid” and other things that no pre-caffeinated person should have to deal with at 6:15 in the morning. I was grumpy about it all morning and was thrilled when my husband finally woke up so I could tell him all the crazy conversations I’d already had that morning and even filled in with details of what we were all doing, how we were feeling, etc, until I realized I was doing the EXACT same thing to my husband that my oldest does to me! We both had a good laugh, luckily he is far more generous in the pre-coffee state than I am, and I was left chastened for the day. I suppose there are worse traits I could have passed onto my kids, and actually, I probably have and don’t even know it yet. Scary thought.