The Banana Solution

My two-and-a-half-year-old twins were off tonight.  I arrived home at 5:00 to find Baby Girl A still napping and Baby Girl B running on steam, having not taken a nap at all.  When A woke up, she cried for 45 minutes straight.  About the time she stopped, B started melting down over everything.  In the few minutes of relative peace between their storms, we sat down for a delicious dinner – which they both refused to eat.

I was not up for fighting any more battles tonight, so I gave them both our old stand-by’s for dinner: peanut butter and banana.  A protein and a fruit – not too bad, if you ask me.

I peeled B’s banana and handed it to her. She happily began munching away.  I then picked up A’s banana and pulled the peel down one side before I realized what I had done.  While B likes her “beena” completely naked when she eats it, A insists that hers still be in the skin with just the top peeled down.

Oh great, I thought, just what I need. This was, of course, the last banana, so I couldn’t just give her another one.  I tried to pull the limp yellow strip back up, but to no avail.  Think, Shawnda, think…

“Here you go, Baby Girl,” I sang, holding the loose peel up and facing the naked side away from A as I handed it to her, hoping she wouldn’t notice as she peeled down the other sides.  But, of course, as soon as she grabbed the banana, the peel fell down and she fell apart with it.

“No! No!” She cried, grabbing the limp yellow strip and pulling it off completely. “Stick it on!  Stick it on!  Stick it!  Stick it!” She yelled this at me over and over again, pressing the piece of peel to the banana as she willed it back into place.

“A, it’s okay, you can still eat it,” I begged, offering all the possible solutions I could think of.  “I’ll hold this side up while you eat it.  You can peel the other sides down while you go.  Look how B is eating it.  You can eat it like her tonight.”

“No, stick it, stick it!” A pleaded, giant tears rolling down her cheeks.  I knew she was not going to eat the banana without that piece of peel in place.  Suddenly, an idea flashed into my mind.

“What if we hold it on with a rubber band?” I asked her.

She stopped crying, sniffled, and nodded. “Rubber band,” she repeated, handing the banana over.

I fished around in the junk drawer and found a thick blue rubber band.  Holding the peel in place, I wrapped the rubber band around the banana and then handed it back to A.  She looked it over before smiling at me and declaring, “I happy now!”

Then, finally, she took a bite.  I let out a sigh of relief.  Nice save, I congratulated myself.