Its dinner, and tonight we're having vegetable stew.  I watch as the girls methodically sift the edible components of the stew from the undesirables.  Their results are remarkably similar; under-cooked carrots and over-sized potatoes hunks lump to one side, everything else in the mouth.  I watch in awe as mounds of cabbage, sausage morsels, peas and corn stream ceaselessly into their little faces by way of little hands, marvel at how food ends up in such obscure places; yogurt behind the ears?  Raisins on the scalp?  Curious little creatures!  I learned long ago to stop meddling in their meals.

To wit- watch as a younger me tries to intervene in the mashing of oatmeal into faces.  Watch as we struggle over the bowl, as the baby overcomes me, the bowl is whipped asunder. Oatmeal oozes down the wall.  The dog, fond of anything humans eat,  watches expectantly for it to reach the floor.  Lesson learned.

We can sit for minutes or hours in those little plastic chairs, eating or mashing or throwing food as the moment dictates.  We can laugh, shriek and slam our hands down in this wonderful mess for just about ever because when you're under two and its mealtime, all bets are off.
There's a curious kind of paradox that runs through the experience of parenting, a tenuous edge on one side of which you run the house like a cold dictator and on the other, an uncaring slob.  While your job in the family picture is to provide structure and guidance, you are up against not a small child but rather what the child introduces into your life; namely the chaotic tendency of the universe.  You see in children we are reminded, most invaluably, of the limitations of control.   I think almost all adults, however slightly, develop a low-grade megalomania about power and their ability to decide outcomes.  Surely you've heard, 'we make plans, God laughs'?  Replace the word 'God' with 'your kid' and it works all the same.  Indeed, perhaps it was somewhere in the plans that children should come along just as the claws of adulthood have gripped us, to break up the rigidness it took to become upstanding, responsible members of society!

Sometimes my daughters won't take their food from my hands.  They only want it from Mom's.  Sometimes even Mom won't do; only their brother can feed them.  Is this about food?  Sometimes they will thrash and struggle away until i bring that first bite to their lips, after which we are best friends and i can't shovel it in fast enough.  Some days they eat raw vegetables, other days they gasp in disgust as i gingerly offer them.  Today's truth is tomorrow's joke.  There are no set rules in their tiny experiments with power and control, only the wonderful experience of doing it for the first time and watching what happens.  Meanwhile we adults, not yet finished with our own experiments, are left in that strange adult world of reasons and consequences to watch with a mixture of awe and perplexity, they who know only the curious wonder and newness of it all; see only the vastness and mystery in the world where we find struggle and strife.  While we seek wealth, power and influence, the highlights of their days are splashing in water, going outdoors or hiding in the cabinets.  I don't think it would be to much to say that as adults somewhere we bear a deep-seated envy for our children, for the heavenly world they live in, even if we've forgotten that we lost it, or were forced to lose it, forced to grow up possibly before we were ready to let go of the richness of childhood.  Somewhere in all of our toil, in all of our vacations, new purchases and weekend parties we are looking backward toward that initial sweetness.  In our hearts we feel indebted that simple feeling of freedom and happiness that was once our natural state.

 With effort and sincerity, however, I do believe we can seize part of it back.  At least it feels that way when I too have applesauce on my eyebrows, jigging in the living room even though it should be bedtime.