Kids Dish

Some time ago (back when Teletubbies were the in thing in this household, so, like, an Ice Age ago…) I started teaching Little Miss about shapes. She got the hang of squares pretty easily, and apart from a bit of a confidence wobble about ‘triangle’ vs. ‘rectangle,’ she got pretty good at them, too. And she knew what stars were before she learned any of the basics…

She knew circles, too - could recognise them a mile off - but she wouldn’t call them circles. She called them bubbles. Because she loved bubbles. Really. Obsessively. Completely.

Even now, when she knows shapes so comfortably that she doesn’t even have to think about them, she lapses into calling that round shape a bubble rather than a circle as her general default.

I digress. When she was starting to learn her shapes, I tried to make them relevant to her life. Whenever I made her a sandwich to eat at home for her lunch, I asked her if she wanted triangles or squares. She always wanted squares. Her Daddy (who makes her lunch for Daycare) started making her sandwiches in squares without even thinking about it.

But I usually asked, just for the hell of it. It’s always good to give her a choice to make her feel she’s in control. Once, a few months ago, she threw me for a loop. I asked her if she wanted squares or triangles, and she said Bubbles!

Crap.

But, you know, I’m one of those inventive mothers. I grabbed a metal egg ring and used it like a cookie cutter, neatly turning the sandwich into a bubble. I served it with the crusts neatly arranged around the bubble, so as not to waste anything. She ate every crumb.

I made her bubble sandwiches one or two times more, but the Man of the House was skeptical about it, and rightfully so. There was something a little try-hard about the cookie cutter sandwich. A little too indulgent. A little too Cher from Mermaids.

So I stopped doing it, and she didn’t really notice.

But a month or two later, Little Miss asked for a bubble sandwich, and I had a brainwave. We’d picked up the habit of feeding her Corn Thins by then - kind of a flat rice cake, but made of puffed corn and other grains - and it was pretty easy to slap her usual sandwich filling between two of those. Because they’re round.

Bingo! Lunch now has a round option.

And now that we have reached this marvellous equilibrium, you know what? She’s gone off both circles and squares, and now requests fairymite (vegemite) triangles at every meal.

The day she requests a star sandwich, I’m leaving home.