Dinner tales

"Is this all that's for dinner?" Zoë asked, taking in the spread with disgust.

Homemade tomato (and carrot (but shhhh, don't tell)) soup with grilled cheese sandwiches. Between school and soccer and organ and activity days and young women activities, Wednesday dinners are always a little rushed.

"What you see is what you get. Why? There's nothing here that you don't like..." I said.

"I was just hoping for a little more..." she said, still entirely unimpressed.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like some vegetables!" she snipped. "Can we have, like, a cucumber or something?"

How can you argue with a request like that? (I mean, aside from her attitude...)

So I peeled and cut a cucumber to add to our dinner.

This morning (after a long, hard night, with many wake ups by Zoë and Alexander both), Zoë woke up complaining of a sore throat.

"I'm sick," she said, "So I need healthy breakfast, not ordinary breakfast, but something super healthy, okay?"

She settled on oatmeal (because that would soothe her throat).

If she's got the same thing that Alexander and I had, it won't be such a terrible cold—just a scratchy throat for a few days.

*****

Zoë's little outburst at dinner, though, reminded me of an earlier outburst of hers over dinner. This time we were at a ward party (back in August, right after they announced our ward would be splitting, kind of a final hurrah before the big rearrangement came into effect) and we sat with this other family. They also have five kids who more or less line up with our kids (we are 2–12 and they are 0–10). The dad of the family was being really nice and talking to Zoë directly instead of asking us questions about her, but while he was talking he was popping grapes into his mouth and munching on them.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Zoë," said Zoë, after a few seconds of shocked silence.

"That's a nice name. How old are you, Zoë?"

She stared at him, looking mortified, before whispering, "I'm four."

He popped another grape into his mouth and said, "What do you like to do, Zoë?"

She stared back at him in disgust; he took this for shyness and had the audacity to continue probing.

"Do you like to swim or dance or ride your bike?" he asked, all the while chomping on those grapes.

Zoë muttered what he thought was a response, but he didn't hear it and asked her to repeat herself.

"I said," Zoë loudly proclaimed, "YOU. NEED. TO. CHEW. WITH. YOUR. MOUTH. CLOSED. Because we don't talk with food in our mouths."

All the grown ups stared at her.

"I'm...so sorry," I stammered. "Zoë, that's not the way we speak to..."

"No, she's right," he said. "I wasn't being very polite. I'm the one who's sorry."

Still, I was mortified with how she spoke to him. She's a very...assertive...person.