Taking Candy from a Baby

Emma and I enjoy eating snacks. From puffs and veggie straws to Cheerios and animal crackers, we truly love our between meal pick-me-ups.

In fact, we dig snacks so much, we would be extremely hard-pressed to limit our consumption to just one type. Well, on second thought, that’s not quite true. Actually, it’s pretty much a no-brainer. We could. And easily.

You see, the Bug and I are hopelessly addicted to and certifiably insane for grapes. Green ones or red ones, as long as they’re round, we’re into them.

Some of us more than others, it would appear.

Yesterday afternoon around 5 PM, Emma, doing her best imitation of a pinball, bounced and careened between a pair of human bumpers: Fehmeen on the couch with a box of salty, Annie’s bunny crackers and me on the recliner with a bowl of grapes. Back and forth she went, from Mama to Daddy, her little legs propelling her at a dizzying rate of speed (for a baby) as she deftly and expertly alternated between bites of grapes from her left hand to bunny crackers in her right.

Initially, she was quite content to accept my meager and labored offering of a single, lovingly, hand-picked grape from my fingers to hers. (And when I say labored, tearing a grape from the stem, to me, feels a lot like I would imagine pulling rebar from concrete would feel like, thanks to a lack of adequate finger and hand strength brought about by non-functioning motor neurons. Thank you ALS).

After two go-rounds of me handing her a grape, the limit to her patience was quickly exhausted and she began to reach into my bowl herself, easily extracting a grape of her own from the stem. She and I were both happy with this arrangement until the time she grabbed for a grape and ended up taking about fifteen grapes, which were attached to a long stem, leaving me with a big bowl of nothing.

It was like taking candy from a baby.

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