Newspapers and Broccoli

Yesterday James caught a cricket. Jokingly, I told him to eat it. His eyes flashed with that 'I'm actually contemplating it' look and I was surprised, since is the self-professed 'mosty gaggy-est Groves child' when it comes to being squeamish. Being the good mother that I am, I offered him a quarter to eat it. He held it up in the air for a moment, and I realized if he actually ate it that I should probably give him a dollar or something, maybe spare him from future therapy for me paying him low ball prices to eat disgusting bugs.  (ha!!) Still, I didn't think he would eat it. He ripped it in half and scrutinized its guts, hanging out for the world to see. At this point, I was cringing like no other at the thought of my baby eating a cricket, but I also knew that lots of people eat crickets and even find them tasty. And I still didn't think he would do it. I am pretty sure you know where this is headed: he ate the cricket. First, he ate the bottom half. And he chewed it. I repeat, he CHEWED it up. Now if I were eating a cricket, I would swallow it whole and be done with it but that's just me. After he finished chomping away, he looked again at the gooey, even more disgusting half of the cricket, threw it in his mouth and chewed it up. There was some gagging, and difficulty swallowing but he ate it and kept it down. Holy moley! And eww! He reports that it was very crunchy, not bad, and its guts were gooey. Later that day, we were having vegetable chowder for dinner, which we eat frequently and James loves. He somehow bumped his bowl and spilled some on the table. He took one look at it, jumped up and ran from the table shrieking pathetically saying 'Its gross! It looks like throw up! I can't eat it anymore! I can't clean it up!' At this point I non-sympathetically reminded him that for the love of Pete, he had eaten a CRICKET that morning and why was he crying over spilled soup. He repeated his tirade and Katie (also non-sympathetically and very sarcastically) said "James, you ate the crickets BUTT." She's a quick thinker, that one.

In other news, after watching an episode of Cupcake Wars, the kids decided they all wanted to make cupcakes...which we did. If you don't have children, let me tell you that baking with children is not a smooth operation nor is it particularly enjoyable per se. But life skillz, man. So we made ye olde cupcakes, let them cool, mixed up the frosting (everyone had their own job) and frosted them. Tyler was in charge of setting up the sprinkle station, which was a bad move. After making cupcakes with kids, I had snuck away to take a much deserved 5 minute break and didn't scrutinize his choices. When I came back, I went to sprinkle my cupcake and was puzzled by the sprinkles he had chosen. I didn't remember buying them, and they didn't look right. And indeed they weren't. They had sprinkled the cupcakes in a combination of blaze orange sprinkles and .......poppy seeds! haha