Where's The Macaroni?!

I think I may need to hide the macaroni container again.  I’ve done it in the past and now I may need to resort to hiding it again.  Why?  Because Aaron absolutely loves uncooked macaroni, and for some reason will decide out of the blue to focus on that food item.  Once that focus starts, he is not to be deterred.  We often hear him dumping them into one of his plastic bowls.  The loud clatter of uncooked noodles is hard to miss.  Into the kitchen we go, intercepting Aaron’s plot, and so back in the macaroni container go the noodles. 

 

 

I’ve offered to cook Aaron some noodles, but he wants them “raw,” as he says.  He doesn’t understand why we object.  They’re hard on your teeth, Aaron.  They’re hard to digest when uncooked, Aaron.  You’re eating all my macaroni and I won’t have any for dishes I want to make, Aaron.

He doesn’t care.  When he’s on a raw macaroni binge, which might last for days, then nothing we say or do will change his mind.  He’s a proficient sneak and can often have a huge bowl of noodles without us even knowing it.  He definitely knows how to take advantage of times that he’s at the house alone, too, which is by far the best time to have an uninterrupted raw macaroni feast.

Sometimes it’s hard to know if he’s eaten the noodles because there are no signs such as are often left with other foods that he sneakily eats.  There are no piles of individual wrappers…..no bag left in his trash can…..no drips…..no mess.

It’s hard for Aaron to sneak his chocolate milk, for instance, because he always leaves such a mess. 

“How many powders do I use to make chocolate milk?” he asked me one day, his spoon poised over the open Nestle’s Quik container.  He only asked because I happened into the kitchen.  He will use three or four spoonsful of powder if left alone, so it really doesn’t mean anything for him to ask me how many powders to use.  I may as well go outside and tell the oak tree how many powders to use as to tell Aaron.  But I tell him, regardless, and then take the spoon to actually show him that using two helpings of powders is plenty. 

“Be sure you spin it, Mom,” he reminds me as he watches to make sure I adequately stir the powders into the milk.  So I spin the powders and the milk, and then offer to carry it to his room so that there are no chocolate drips left all over the floor leading to his desk. 

Another way he leaves signs of what he has eaten is to look at his clothes.  Macaroni leaves no such evidence, such as I saw on his shirt one recent morning.  I asked him about the brown smudge on his pajama shirt.

“I was drinking my coffee,” he explained.  “I got grounds in my mouth and I had to wash it off with my shirt.” 

Of course.  Please, please put that shirt in the hamper.

He knows that some food temptations are sometimes just too much, such as the recent bout of macaroni madness.  Often, he will give me an item of food that’s in his room at bedtime because he knows that the pull is too strong and that he’ll want to get out of bed to eat when he’s supposed to be going to sleep.  One night he thumped up the hall and knocked on our bedroom door after he had gone to bed.  I opened the door and he thrust a bowl of peanuts toward me.

“Mom?” he asked.  “Could you take this out of my room so you can trust me not to eat it tonight?”

I laughed.  No need to try to explain how I don’t need to trust him if the bowl is NOT in his room.  I just loved the way he worded it.

Back to the raw macaroni.  Aaron knows that when he’s in a macaroni mood, the pull will be strong and he will have trouble resisting.  We were in Wal-Mart the other day, after he had put a large dent in my macaroni container.  Aaron was following behind me, singing, “And heaven and nature sing,” without a care in the world or a realization that he was being observed by all the other shoppers nearby.  But suddenly he was aware that we were in the pasta aisle, so he told me that I should buy more noodles.

“Mom, you should get more noodles because I’m making you lose less macaroni and cheese noodles,” he said as we walked up the pasta aisle. 

I know.  Try to figure out that sentence.  I just kept going.

“Mom!  You passed the macaroni and cheese noodles!” he exclaimed.

Yes, Aaron, and I imagine you’ll be passing them for quite some time.  No new noodles today.

Keep singing!